56. Harnecker, M. 1971: The Elementary Concepts of Historical 'Aaterialsm. Translated by E. Sadler an cW. Such'tung, University of Sydney, p. 79 57. Bozzoli, op. ait., especially pp. 1-25 58. Strydom, G.S. 1976: The Establishment and Expansion of the School Radio Service of Radio Bantu. HSRC, Report No. 0-53, especially pp. 24-28. This document is quite clear as to the material basis of Bantu Education 59. Adam and Giliomee, op. ait. pp. 46-50 60. Ibid. p. 46 61. Ibid. p. 49 62. Ibid. p. 47. They quote as examples, Legassick, M. and Innes, D. 1977: "Capital Restructuring and Apartheid: A Critique of Constructive En- gagement", African Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 305; and a special Africa in The Journal (sic) of African Political Economy, No. 7, 1977. Adam and Giliomee appear to have got their journals confused. The journal one assumes they are actually referring to i s, in fact, Review of African Political Economy issue on South 63. Ibid. pp. 133-134 64. Ibid. p. 136 65. Ibid. p. 157. Of significance is that Giliomee seems to have been adopted by the English press, notably SAAN, as an important figure in the Afrikaans academic establishment. He has written extensively f or the Sunday Times and may be classified as a Known whose advice is solicited on h i s t o r i c al and p o l i t i c al matters 66. Koers, 2 August 1934 67. Miliband, R. 1973: The State in Capitalist Society. Quartet, London, p. 197 68. Tomaselli, K.G. and Tomaselli, R.E. 1981: "The South African Mass Media and the Dissemination of Apartheid Ideology". Journalism I Reader, Dept. Of Journalism and Media Studies: The Sociology of "lews, Rhodes University, Grahamstown Godard : Images, Sounds, Politics Text: Colin MacCabe with Mick Eaton and Laura Mulvey Published by MacMillan in association with the British Film I n s t i t u t e, 1980 175pp. Illustrated with many Dhotographs Price: Approx. R11.60 Reviewed by John van Zyl 25 Godard is perhaps the most important political filmmaker in the Western world, matching the Argentinian, Cuban and other Third World filmmakers. By "political" we understand "overtly and clearly political" in the sense that his films are political films as well as films about politics. A film like La Chinoise (1967), for instance, needs to be stopped every few minutes for discussion to take place. Also, he has firmly re-established the value of the soundtrack as an independent source of communication, not just as a means of confirming the image track. By doing this, he has managed to structure his films around such problems as the representation of sexuality, the grammar of advertisements, the ideology of Hollywood,'and the anatomy of the Maoist revolution in short, the ideology of communication. What makes this volume particularly interesting is that Godard for the first time considers the place of television in modern communications (as well as the more predictable questions of montage, capitalism, images of woman and technology.) In this section Godard points out the inherently authoritarian nature of television. For instance, the viewer's attention is held through a fixed camera position which reassuredly articulates the relation between interviewer, interviewee and viewer. It avoids the necessary question, "When and where do you find yourself there?" which would jolt the viewer into active participation. Then, the selection of images is done by professionals. The subjects are never allowed to express their own images, in the way that free speech allows for the expression of individual words. Worst of all the subjects selected for interview are typical of, and consistent with, the conventional media image expected. Godard expects the viewer to actively participate in the production of meaning. For this to happen the communications theory which holds to the sender, message, receiver model must be exploded. For Godard there can be no message independent of the relation between sender and receiver. It exists as an nanalysable complex beyond the simple channel of trans- mission. Godard has formed a company, Sonimage, to make television programmes that fulfil his own criteria and distribute the programmes to whoever wrote in, or otherwise subscribed to them, thereby partially solving the inevitable problem of distribution. Godard insists "the eye must listen before it looks" and the lesson that all the television programmes he has made contains is once meaning has become fully social it ceases to be communication but becomes a repetition that binds us unknowingly in our solitude. The strategies he employs to defeat this makes up the burden of the book. It also has a number of reflexive interviews with Godard by MacCabe and a useful filmography. Next Issue: Popular Culture 26