Terrorists or cowards: negative portrayals of male Syrian refugees in social media

the (white, afrikaans) pharmacist waves the wealthy young customers through. in their mockery of the impotent guard we see the intense disjuncture between this “new” black masculinity—signified by slang, expensive cars, disposable income, branded clothing, consumable materials like drugs and alcohol, anglophone accents, and fashionable ennui—and “old” black masculinity, reminiscent of an apartheid-era imaginary—traditional, respectful, hard-working, low status, less proficient in english, a guard at a shop rather than a purchaser of expensive goods. the first film uncritically lauds the depiction of the black south african man as both consumer and consumable object while the second laments the affective consequences of apathetic middle class adolescent modernity. Both construct versions of blackness that are largely shorn of any agency but the personal and that are divorced from a sense of the political. Collectively they suggest the development of a new polysemy in south african popular cultural representations of black masculinity that may move beyond historical hegemonic injunctions.