Absolute Prohibition on Going to See the Infernal Spectacle of the White Sorcerer : The Function of Narrative and Metaphor in the Historical Reconstitution of Cinematographic Spectacle in an African Village

The article deals with the historical reconstruction of a case of cinematography's cultural reception in an Islamic African village. My interpretative analysis of this process is based on a reading of a short story by Amadou Ba Hampate. From Ba's text, I raise a number of questions: how do the enunciative structures of a first-person account and the speeches of other characters and viewers mix with a historical description? What does the figure of the spectator of the first cinema reflect? Are the speech, opinions and public reactions in that African village about cinema different from or similar to those of other publics around the world at that time? What are the socio-cultural determinations and mediations that Ba's narrative allows us to glimpse between cinematic spectacle and religious "institution" ? What is the role of metaphor in the cultural reception of cinematography? My hypothesis is that the narrative of Ba can be read and interpreted as both a metaphor and a historical document.