Sugar Man and Anglo-Sweden

Searching for Sugar man, for all its success in appealing to a global audience, has a distinctly Swedish provenance. Attention to its local preconditions can shed light on the film-maker Malik Bendjelloul's project and explain some of its elisions and emphases. With a media degree from a Swedish university, Bendjelloul started working for public service television in Sweden. This enabled him to experiment with documentary formats and later to discover the story of Sixto Rodriguez. With a public grant and large amounts of enthusiasm, he shaped a film that could be interpreted as an outcome of a specifically Anglo-Swedish culture. As a heavily anglicised country, Sweden is reaping the benefits of globalisation, but this also produces anxieties of influence. Searching for Sugar man is, in that respect, more about providing an alternative narrative about the USA and the English-speaking world, than exploring the cultural politics of South Africa.