A dramatized society: representing rituals of human sacrifice as efficacious action in Nigerian home-video movies

Abstract

There is a vibrant Nigerian home-video industry occasioned by the decline in celluloid film making and the rise in the availability of video technology and hardware. The entry of the Igbo people of the south-eastern part of the country into the industry in the early nineties changed the configuration of the practice. The pace at which the ‘films’ (as they are also called in Nigeria) are churned out especially by the Igbos far outweighs their relevance in the construction of public good. The dominant refrain in these films is the utilization of rituals of sacrifice to generate contexts in which wealth and riches transport the characters from a normal reality to a world of fantasy. The ritual sacrifices required to achieve this ‘success’ are almost always of humans. The journey to this fantasy world of riches, though often monstrous, appears to bring ‘success’. This success however, usually turns out to be temporary, an aberration of reality rather than a new reality. The stated moral intent of the films is to present a form of bad behaviour in order to discourage people from engaging in it, yet more than anything else the video-films validate the efficacy of rituals in the way and manner that the characters in the filmed ‘rituals’ are portrayed: fabulously rich and successful. Far from acting as a deterrent therefore, the selective scapegoatism of failure which leaves the majority of them not only unpunished but in fact ‘rewarded’ sustains the belief and perhaps fuels the urge to practice and fulfil such rituals as a quick and easy means to affluence. It is on the above premise that this study aims at investigating the use of rituals in Igbo videos and its implications for the wider viewing public.