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As The Plot Thickens In Those Nigerian Home Movies!
21 August, 2003 03:11:00
By Tonye David-West, Jr., Ph.D
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Playing Games...Nigerian movie poster
In the last few weeks, especially, during the holiday months of December and
January, I was able to take off some time from my hectic professional endeavors
to relax with family and friends and watched several Nigerian home movies. It's
part of the social culture in Nigeria since most cities do not have public
movie theaters. So when friends and other family members come visiting, after
the usual exchange of pleasantries and serving of refreshments, those movies
seem to be next on the agenda.
But coming to think of it, even if there were public movie theaters in Nigeria,
who in their right mind will go to those theaters when armed robbers could
easily enter and turn a nice movie watching experience into a nightmare, raping
and robbing? It's no wonder these home movies are selling like crazy,
infiltrating markets in the US, in Europe, in Asia, in Latin America and in
other African countries.
It's a big business that has really earned the Nigerian movie industry big
money. They are counting their profits by the truck loads. I was surprised to
learn that some of these movies have been translated into numerous foreign
languages like French, Spanish, German, Portugese and many others. This only
proves the fact that they have become very popular and have gained the
attention of non-Nigerians. According to a movie critic who saw one of those
movies, he noted that besides Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart", they are the
most popular items that portray the Nigerian society, accurately or otherwise.
But the question we should be asking ourselves is, what images are these movies
portraying of the Nigerian society to the rest of the world? Are those images
the right one? What does the world think of Nigerians when they watch such
movies? Several months ago, I was surprised when a nine year old boy in the US,
born to Nigerian parents, approached me after we had all watched a movie
titled, "Spellbound." I should have known with a title like that.
The plot was so sinister that the young boy was compelled to ask if Nigerians
were that wicked. Of course, I was quick to answer that question with a
resounding "no", but how do I convince that impressionable young boy that a
great majority of Nigerians are not wicked when he sees Nigerians killing
Nigerians and always planning evil against fellow Nigerians in one Nigerian
movie after another?
Having watched a lot of those movies over the years, especially, while vacating
in Nigeria, I must confess that I am yet to see one with a decent plot from the
beginning to the end except for the one titled, "Goodbye Tomorrow", where Saint
Obi and Hilda Dokubo are the main actor and actress. I would not hesitate to
recommend this movie to anyone as I was encourage by the plot which portrayed a
very loyal and faithful husband in spite of his wife suffering from the dreaded
disease of AIDs and in spite of the fact that they lost their infant baby at
birth to that disease.
That movie is educational in nature as it warns of the dangers of sexual
recklessness and teaches the values of faithfulness and the fulfillment of
marital obligations, a concept that is increasingly fading away in the Nigerian
marital lexicon. I am sure there are other movies which also have such
encouraging plots, but the vast majority of them are down right evil and the
producers have deliberately made them that way because like sex, evil sells.
Their plots are so predictable, just like the plots of Hollywood movies where
one always knows when a love scene is about to erupt. If it's not a man
cheating on his wife and having children outside of his marriage and his wife
finding out and planning revenge, it's a man whose wife is barren and is set
about finding who is responsible for her misfortunes. She would never accept
the fact that her being barren might be of natural course, it's got to be
someone else responsible. If not that, then it's armed robbers chasing people
all over Lagos, killing them and taking their possessions. If not that, then
it's a case of two brothers fighting over the inheritance their rich dad left
them. If not that, then it's a man turning into a killer cat or a cat turning
into a man.
If not that, then it's a witch trying to kill people and suck their blood for
riches or for the heck of it like the "Spellbound" movie which got that nine
year asking questions. If not that, then it's someone hacking off the head of
his neighbor for medicinal purposes. If not that, then its somebody raping
university girls. O', let me not forget the part where the wife poisons the
food of the house-girl because she was able to get pregnant for "Oga" while
the madam "kpatakpata" of the house remains barren or a man inpregnating
his daughter and blaming another guy for his actions. Where does this end? One
sinister plot after another.
The titles are not any different. These movie producers find some of the most
freightening titles ever known to man. Why are we so creative in this wise? I
have been asking myself this question for years now without a single answer.
For most of those movies, the title alone would give you nightmares. I imagine
what would happen if one were to watch the movie contained therein. Recently, I
perused the shelves of one of the many movie stores in Port-Harcourt and found
the following horrifying titles:
- Man Eater [Are we starving in Nigeria for it to get to this point?]
- Lost Forever
- The One Eyed God [Mine, I wonder what he would do if he were
two-eyed.]
- Cursed in The Womb [By whom, if I may ask?].
- Murder in Heaven [Who is the murderer in heaven? How did
they smuggle a weapon in there? Did they 419 God?]
- Most Wanted
- Bundle of Sorrow [I am sure they have never heard of bundle of
joy].
- The End of the Wicked. [I am sure while the wicked may meet
their end in this movie, they would resurface in another
titled, "The Beginning of the Wicked"]. Trust me on that.
- Deadly Proposal [Must the proposal be deadly?]
- Agony
In almost fifty titles in that store, I never saw one that said, "Ways to
Educate Yourself" or "Man Lover" or "Found Forever" or "Blessed in the Womb",
etc. all negative---bravo!
In more than ninety percent of these movies, the plot begins and ends with
evil. They prepare you right from the previews. The moment you press play on
the VCR, heads start flying left and right, up and down and let's not forget
the center. All this, even before you are able to removed your hand from the
VCR and take your seat. The worst thing about it is that the heads continue to
fly even in the main movie. In fact, it has gotten to the point where one would
need to have a psychologist on standby if one is to maintain his sanity after
watching the gruesome plots in those Nigerian home movies. In most cases, an
instant counseling session would be in order to get rid of those gory images.
And let's not even talk about copyright violations that abound in these movies.
One of the movies I saw in December, can't recall the name, had the logo and
theme song of an American movie company. I believe it was AMC or so---and they
had the audacity to warn viewers not to violate the movie's copyright. Aren't
we something?
Is that what the Nigerian society is all about? Is that really an accurate
portrayal of our society? I am not naive, I am a Nigerian and I know what our
society is like. I know that Nigeria is corrupt in all facets. I also know that
we have witchcrafts and evil minded people all over, but I must say that some
of these movies have exaggerated and compounded our problems that non-Nigerians
are beginning to believe that the Nigerian society is truly evil, intoto, at
that. Are the producers of these movies telling me that there is nothing
positive that happens in Nigeria they can use as a plot?
Last summer, an American friend of mine, a former classmate in the university,
who works for an oil company in Houston, Texas was told that he was being sent
to Lagos for a few weeks. Unaware of what life was like in Nigeria and unable
to reach me to get some practical advise, he went to the local Nigerian food
market which also sells a lot of the Nigerian home movies and picked up a few
hoping to get a bird's eye view of the Nigerian society.
After just watching two, the guy was scared out of his pants that he begged his
superiors at work not to send him to Lagos. When they asked why he had changed
his mind so suddenly when it was only a few days ago he was estastic about the
fact that he was going to Africa, his dream journey, he formulated a lie and
told his superiors that he was suffering from a rare form of skin disease and
that the hot Nigerian sun would do a number on him. Thanks in part to the movie
titled "Narrow Escape" parts I&II, that did it for this would-have-been
Nigerian visitor.
Don't miscontrue me, some of these movies reflect the social problems we have
in Nigeria and those have been portrayed tastefully and realistically. But
admittedly, that is only a few. I remember watching "Glamour Girls" parts I&II,
several years ago, a movie that talks about the prostitution trade of Nigerian
girls in Italy. When I watched it with some friends, it made for a good social
discussion of the Nigerian human trafficking business and how young girls are
being sold into prostitution, encouraged by their own mothers in some cases for
the sake of hard currency.
That movie, while it revealed the prostitution trade, ended sadly. The movie
had it [and I am sorry if I am revealing too much for someone who is planning
to watch it] that a young couple who wanted to make it big decided to go to
Italy so the wife can join the prostitution trade with the husband serving as
her manager. Upon getting there, they make it big with a contract worth N30
million where the young wife was required to sleep with a dog for an Italian
commercial.
With that money, the couple decided that the husband should return home and
begin setting up the mansion they had wanted all along, while the wife was to
follow suit, after sleeping with a few more men. Acting on a tip off from from
a friend that the husband was having too much fun without her in Nigeria, the
wife decided to fly to Nigeria unannounced and finds out that the reports about
her husband are indeed true--that he had taken another wife, enjoying the money
she made from the prostitution trade with another woman in the new mansion
built with that money.
The enraged prostitute angered by the betrayal of her husband and her best
friend in the university, who is now the new wife, took out a gun from her bag
and ended their lives, including the life of the house keeper who witnessed it
all. A true reflection of the grim realities of the prostitution trade where
our young girls have become sex slaves and endure all sorts of violence and
abuses, even from their husbands. And what irks me about these movies is the
fact that most of them have part II, III, IV and part infinito. The producers
wants us to buy all of them when they are all pretty much the same thing with a
little twig here and there.
And have you noticed that most of the actors and actresses are called Terry or
Vivian or some funky American name like Tracy, Keith, Jason and the actors who
are portrayed as drunkards are always called Boniface? Come on now, producers,
you can do better than that. And what's with all the big titles the actors and
actresses give themselves? Retired justice this, chief that, Dr. this,
barrister that. Some even call themselves double chiefs. What they could not
amass in real life they amass in their own version of Hollywood to satisfy
their egos. No one is a Mister, everyone of them has amassed titles just like
real Nigerians--a true eflection of our society in this particular case.
In the movie I watched most recently called "Delimma", one of the main actors
called himself Chief Peter Pedro. For heaven sake what's with the double name?
Isn't Peter the same thing as Pedro in Spanish just like Jose is the same as
George? Is it common for one to answer Jose George? I am sure there was nothing
strategic in their choice of that particular name other than the fact that it
sounded funky, especially, when it's pronounced with the emphasis on the last
three letters, " ..dro-oooooooo." I wonder if they even know that Peter is
Pedro in Spanish. Nigerians like heavy sounding names, names that once called
everyone would nod in approval. Look at the main actor in "Narrow Escape" I &
II, answering a heavy sounding name like "Vincent ODUMODU" or another one in a
movie whose title I can't remember answering "Chief, Dr. Fabian AMANAMAS". What
part of the country would such a name come from? This our country men are just
too much for me.
Albeit, it is expected that most educated people should be able to filter
fiction from reality, most Americans and non-Nigerians who watch these movies
believe that those evil plots mirror our society. Since most of them would
never go to Nigeria to find out the true sitiuation, or take the time to ask a
Nigerian about these bad images been portrayed, they would live and die with
this impression. We Nigerians know that our society is filled with these evils,
but do we need to compound and exaggerate this in movies we export to other
countries because we are interested in money? Do we need to overdo it as is the
case in most of these movies? Haven't all those tarzan movies done enough
damage to our wonderful culture?
I am truly yet to see a movie that portrays the inventions of Nigerian doctors
or the inventions of Nigerian scientists or something to portray Nigerians in a
positive light. This year, Miss World is a Nigerian, let's see whether they
would make a movie out of that or out of the fact that a Nigerian just invented
a computer, the Zinox computer. I am waiting for movies about these two
wonderful achievements by Nigerians to grace the movie shelves. But I am afraid
I might be waiting for eternity. If someone knows of any movies that portray
us well, please let me know and I will watch it and go out of my way and
commend the producers. I've watched some that start off with evil and ends with
the power of God prevailing over an evil situation. But in most cases,
especially, to a non-Nigerian, the impression would have been made before the
part about God/good prevailing sets in, that is, if they have the bravity to
watch until the end.
Most people simply can't watch these movies from the beginning to the end as
they get disillusioned mid-way and take to their heels, afraid that the ghost
may jump out and come after them. Many cannot watch them alone because of their
nightmarish plots. That is why one always sees two or more people band
together, hurdled on a couch, holding hands to encourage one another while
mapping out their escape routes should the movie they are watching become
unbearable. Anyone who is able to watch a Nigerian home movie alone from the
beginning to the end should be given a Nobel prize for bravery.
We owe it to our country to help uplift its image, one that has been battered
by our governments and Nigerians themselves. As that movie critic noted above,
apart from Achebe's masterpiece of "Things Fall Apart" which has sold more than
forty million copies and has been translated into numerous languages, including
Chinese, Nigerian movies are increasingly becoming the medium for non-Nigerians
to catch a glimpse of our society and culture. Unfortunately, that glimpse nine
times out of ten is a gory one.
As the plot thickens in those Nigerian home movies, someone out there is
misinformed and scared out of their pants. So next time you watch a Nigerian
home movie with a gruesome plot with non-Nigerians or with children, take some
time to explain to them that not all Nigerians are wicked and our society is
not all evil. There is good to be found, plenty of it.
Join me next time for another edition of Naija Rooney Commentary. Until then,
this is tdw, jr., your very host, signing off and saying, so long, my worthy
compatriot.
***First published Tuesday, February 19, 2002. Re-printed with the permisson of the author.
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