Of Cowboys and Elephants: Africa, Globalization and the Nouveau Western in Djibril Diop Mambety's Hyenas

Djibril Diop Mambety's film Hyenas (1992) has typically been read as an Africanized version of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 1962 play, The Visit. Although the play is an important influence on Mambety's film, it is not the only one. The form and iconography of Hyenas seem to derive from the Hollywood western. Mambety engages the western in his film in order to critique materialism, American cultural hegemony, and Western economic imperialism. Moreover, Hyenas suggests that the western serves as a narrative that promotes and legitimizes all of these. Ultimately, Mambety presents globalization, and the narrative of the western to which it is linked, as a new form of colonization, one that Africans have willingly embraced.