Rearticulating cultural myths across time? A semiotic comparison of Shaka Zulu (1986) and Shaka iLembe (2023) television series posters and pilot episodes.

Abstract

This study investigates how the image of Shaka Zulu is visually and narratively constructed and re-articulated across time through a comparative semiotic analysis of promotional posters and pilot episodes from Shaka Zulu (1986) and Shaka iLembe (2023). Situated within a constructivist paradigm and employing a qualitative textual approach, it approaches media texts as culturally constructed through which meaning, ideology, and historical consciousness are relationally produced with their context, rather than merely reflected. Theoretically drawing on representation theory and especially the processes of myth making, the study adopts a basic semiotic visual methodology to analyse television promotional imagery and the meanings they connote and symbolise. The findings reveal that the 1986 series constructs Shaka through a militarised and conquest-centred myth that fixes meaning around warrior masculinity and exceptionalism, reflecting apartheid-era representational logics. In contrast, the 2023 series re-articulates Shaka through Afrocentric visual and narrative codes that foreground lineage, land, ritual, and becoming, allowing greater polysemy and cultural depth in a post-apartheid context. By placing posters and pilot episodes in direct dialogue, the study demonstrates how promotion and narrative function as an integrated system of signs that stabilise or reconfigure preferred readings. The research contributes to media and cultural studies by showing how myth-making adapts across historical moments and by bridging a gap between analyses of visual promotion and television narrative. Ultimately, the study underscores the role of visual media in negotiating African historical representation, identity, and cultural memory across generations.