Alternative to what? : the rise of Loslyf magazine

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this study I analyse the first year of publication of Loslyf, the first and, at the time of its launch inJune 1995, only Afrikaans pornographic magazine. The analysis comprises a historical account of itsinception as relayed mainly by Ryk Hattingh, the first editor of Loslyf and primary creative forcebehind the publication. Such an investigation offers valuable insights into an aspect of South Africanmedia history as yet undocumented. As a powerful contributor to an Afrikaans imaginary, emerging ata time of political renewal, Loslyf provides a glimpse into the desires, tensions and tastes of and for animagined community potentially still shaped by a censorial past. The magazine is worth studying, inpart, as an example of an attempt at reinvesting the prescriptive and seemingly generic genre ofpornography with cultural specificity and political content, with a view to making it more interestingand relevant. The study argues that whilst Loslyf succeeded in fracturing the 'simulacrum(Baudrillard 1990: 35) of pornographic representation, it also demonstrated that this kind of„alternativity‟ is difficult to sustain. An analysis of the written and visual content of the first 12 issuesof the magazine, under Hattingh‟s editorship, investigates the basis of Loslyf‟s status as „alternative‟publication. I conclude that the first year of Loslyf contributed towards the broader project ofdemocratic expression in an expanding South African visual economy, as a simultaneously wellconsidered and underrated (at the time of its publication at least) cultural product.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University