Abstract
The first part of this analysis discusses film critics as historians and historians
as film scholars via an examination of texts, subtexts, and contexts. The article
recalls the primary contributions of some prolific film critics, offering a personal
testimonial to those who had significantly contributed to the teaching of film at
universities or who had contributed to popular film discourse. An
autobiographical historical overview explains how newspaper and magazine
film critics shaped the author’s own analyses of twentieth century South African
film, with special reference to Afrikaans movies framed by the insider-outsider
genre. As an active member of the film industry since 1970, the author explains
the significance of key contextual events. The study focuses on the metaphorical
and subtextual elements where fictional characters engaging in discursive social
struggles are studied as indicators of wider social roles in conflict. The second
part examines questions of language, empirical observation, and subtextual
analysis in metaphorical relation to the methods used by the film critics who
informed the author’s theory of Afrikaans film narrative as a social metatext.
The conclusions are two-fold: first, that academics who are also criticpractitioners
constitute holistic value; and second, that journalists are actually
theory-based intellectuals.