By
Obododimma Oha
One had an
encounter with the reach and power of Nollywood films while on a taxi at Legon,
Ghana. The feeling that Nollywood may
have gripped the whole of West Africa, and even the deep South of Southern
Africa, may first sound like a mere speculation, but while in that conversation
with my cheerful taxi driver at Legon, I had to start thinking about it
seriously. The taxi driver’s observation stimulated my mind to race from Plato’s
theory of mimesis through Abrams’ The
Mirror and the Lamp to the folk contribution made by my ancestors in the
form of the proverb, “Ka e jiri nwamkpi maa atụ, a sighị agụ buru ya” (That a
he-goat is used in citing an example, is not to suggest that the leopard should
devour it). The taxi driver said: “Chei, you Nigerians could be bad, very bad”!
I was shocked at his boldness and forthrightness, but summoned courage, between
anger and curiosity, to ask him why he said so. “Don’t you see what you do in
your films? Heartless killings here and there! Many rituals involving human
beings! Charms, even among educated people!” I laughed and laughed and
laughed. At a stage, he did not know whether I had gone insane or I was laughing
at his driving or whether he had said
something funny. As far as he was concerned, he was certain about what he just
said and could cite a couple of Nollywood films to support his claim. I reassured him that he was driving well and
that what he said could be seen as the street perspective, but that I looked at it
differently. I told him that a Nollywood film involving human ritual and
killing was mere fiction, and was like the fiction of Efua Sutherland’s Edufa.
However, people get carried away while watching the film, and may think they
are watching real-life occurrence! Well, he was surprised, just as I was. I
thought that, maybe, he felt that I said that to defend or protect Nigeria, since
I was a Nigerian being flogged in a clean taxi
by a Ghanaian, and must be looking for a way of escaping!
But the
encounter narrated above set me thinking about how many people who watch
Nollywood films may be thinking that fiction is reality and that the situations
in the films may, in some way, affect our behaviours, especially fears for our
safety in a Nigerian world. Could it be that, in consuming these films that
feature superstitions, we unconsciously become more and more superstitious so
that reality begins to mimic fiction (instead of the other way round)? How does
the frequent consumption of these films on rituals affect our interpersonal
or even inter-group behaviours? I think that this demands a well-planned study,
with a sensitive experimental design, or at least, a correlation, for I am
beginning to speculate, like my Accra taxi driver, that these films may be
injecting a behaviour into us, consolidating fears, dividing families, and
setting one group against another through their simple metanarrative of seeing
is believing!
But this may
be a simplistic way of looking at the problem. Why, in the first place, do some
film makers go for scripts that present these ritual killings and
superstitions? First, they are businesspeople. They could just be exploring and
exploiting what the audiences (or customers) might predominantly prefer. If
two million (ignorant) people are led to believe that what they are watching is
reality, or satisfies what they prefer to watch, good for the business. Who
cares about cultural nationalism and patriotism? African cultures are a huge carcass and businesspeople (and not vultures) can feed on it to their liking!
In other
words, the focus of the films is based on the film-makers’ study of the market:
its preferences, desires, and what constitute a hot hamburger! There maybe, of course, newcomers who want to rush in there, to have a piece of the hot hamburger.
But, as one
Igbo proverb says, “Ewu nụ na ibe ya amụọla, ọ n’akaghị aka,” (When a goat
hears that her colleague has littered, she would go into premature labour).
Goats of Nollywood (Is that too hard?) may rush in because one Nollywood
film-maker has made a great success with a ritual film. But, as another proverb
says, “Oke soro ngwere maa mmiri, ọ kọọ ngwere, ọ ga-akokwa oke?” (if the rat
joins the lizard in dancing in the rain, when the lizard gets dry, would the
rat get dry?). Of course, many newcomers dancing with Mr. Lizard in the
Nollywood rain are shivering with cold!
Further,
apart from this search for a fertile ground, there is also the exploration of
aspects of local culture, to maintain friendship and grip on the African
cultural market. As businesspeople, major Nollywood film-makers should know how
to maintain their territory. Some businesses have territories; even airlines
have their routed which are rooted in divide-and-pocket. Nollywood film-makers
may be negotiating territorial control through exploration of "sellable" stories.
Some
film-watchers in Nollywood that are already carried away by what Hollywood
features predominantly may not like this. Those submerged in high crime (of the
Al Caponne type), or lady in trouble delivered by a cowboy who is a stand-up guy, science fiction explorations of space and crime fighting that is
exemplary, may be looking for some reinvention in Nollywood to accommodate
their interest. Major Nollywood film-makers looking for a way of doing something
different in a crowded market, might start engaging some aspects notable in Hollywood,
which entails crossing of territory or inevitably being swallowed up by major
Hollywood marketers through patronage and repurchase.
Fiction will
remain fiction in the film industry and may end up becoming one way of
measuring the cognition of backward societies – those still living in the
Hobbesian state of nature and could easily mistake fiction as reality, opinion
as fact.
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