Troubled heroism: public health pedagogies in South African films about HIV/AIDS

This article examines several feature-length films made in South Africa about HIV/AIDS, including Mother to child (2001), Looking for Busi (2001) and Yesterday (2004), in an attempt to chart and analyze identificatory possibilities offered to viewers. It argues that, despite the educative potential of these films, their emphasis on black women's capacity for self-sacrifice and transcendence is problematic in two significant ways: considering the complexity of South Africa's HIV/AIDS context, the delivery of public health messages may be compromised when a film attempts universal address rather than targeting specific audiences; and a strategy of universal identification is complicit in denialism, in that privileged viewers (in South Africa and internationally) are encouraged to make an emotional connection with HIV/AIDS without having to consider or do anything about the structural inequalities driving the epidemic.