Reel Pleasures by Laura Fair

Author:Laura Fair [Fair, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Media Studies, History, Africa, General, Modern, 20th Century
ISBN: 9780821446119
Google: TbpCDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2018-01-16T05:51:08+00:00

Chapter 7

THE INDEPENDENCE GENERATION GOES TO THE SHOW, 1960s–80s

THE POPULARITY of moviegoing soared after independence. In addition to the thousands who thronged to the new drive-in each week, there were another ten to fifteen thousand going to the movies across the country every day. As a mass form of urban leisure, moviegoing was no longer confined to the coast; by the 1970s, Tanzanians everywhere were taking in a show. Annually, more than four million tickets were sold.1 Urbanization and the popularity of moviegoing increased hand in hand. In the first three decades after independence, the number of urban Tanzanians rose from less than 5 percent of the total population to more than 20 percent. In many regional towns, including Mbeya, Kigoma, and Shinyanga, the rate of population increase was as high as 2,000 percent during these years.2 For many people, one of the particular delights of urban living was the novelty of spending afternoons or nights watching a film with friends. This chapter picks up on themes developed at length in earlier chapters and explores both continuity and change in the postcolonial era. As chapter 8 will detail, the socialist state transformed the political economy governing the film industry, yet despite pervasive structural changes, moviegoing remained a key means of familiarizing oneself with downtown neighborhoods, making new friends, and learning about city ways.

One thing that was distinctive about the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s was that the majority of urban newcomers and moviegoers in those years were young and single; they gave both cities and cinemas a new and youthful vibe. In the 1960s, 75 percent of all migrants to town were under thirty years old, and most were between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four.3 By 1978, a quarter of a million people in Dar es Salaam were from fifteen to thirty years of age, which was actually more than the total population of the city at independence.4 That same year, youth outnumbered those over forty by a five-to-one ratio in Moshi, Morogoro, and a host of Tanzanian towns.5 Demographically speaking, the city was a great place to be if you were young. Life was far from a perpetual party, but with such an overwhelming preponderance of young people, the vibrant pulse of youthful style was palpable. Most young migrants came in search of economic opportunities, but many towns, including Iringa, Morogoro, and Tabora, to name just a few, were also educational hubs. Regional towns hosted numerous boarding schools, and the postcolonial state’s massive investment in education meant that by the 1970s and 1980s, a sizable number of young Tanzanians were entering secondary school for the first time. The student population at the University of Dar es Salaam also grew astronomically. At independence, the university enrolled a mere fourteen students, a figure that increased to two thousand a decade later and nearly doubled again by 1984.6 Urban commercial nightlife blossomed like never before. With new genres of global film aimed directly at this youthful audience, young people swarmed to the theaters like bees to their hive.

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