Showing the Unshowable: The Negotiation of Homosexuality through Video Films in Tanzania

A flourishing video film industry has produced a new platform for the negotiation of love and sex(uality) in Tanzania. Video film’s melodramatic and shocking aesthetic is marked by transgressions of local understandings of morality. With reference to Popobawa and Shoga, which for the first time have homosexuality as a topic, I show how video films are challenging the limits of what can be shown and point to the aesthetics of showing what used to be unshowable. In making homosexuality visible, the film Shoga provoked a reaction from government censors, the national guardians of morality. The act of censoring, after which the film and the performance were discussed in the media and on the Internet, brings to light how homosexuality is currently discussed in Tanzania.