Dispatch from Mali: A Soap Opera Education

Abstract

Dispatch from Mali:A Soap Opera Education Anh Ly (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Television in Mali. Photo by Anh Ly. [End Page 94] My first image of Malian TV occurred unexpectedly during my training as a Peace Corps volunteer. A teacher pulled out a TV one night and turned it on to watch the news. What I saw was clearly an amateur video presented as national TV. Stoic and stiff faces appeared next to random background shots that panned endlessly before focusing haphazardly on some inconsequential object such as a cup. Needless to say, the camera work interested me more than the content of the news. The year was 1996. Mali was still in its nascent stage of TV programming, having only been given the freedom to explore this medium in 1983, a period still under the dictatorial regime of Moussa Traoré. Traoré governed Mali from 1968 until 1991, when a coup under Amadou Toumani Touré, Mali's current president, successfully overthrew him and opened the first democratic elections a year later. Alpha Konaré became Mali's first democratically elected president in 1992. His presidency ushered in a democratic spirit that touched upon every sector of the government, including its radio and TV programming known as L'Office de Radio et Télévision Maliens (Malian Office of Radio and Television), or ORTM. The effects of this new democratic spirit were especially liberating for Malian TV. Ten years later, I returned to Mali to do research for my dissertation. This was not my first visit to Mali since my Peace Corps days. Earlier and shorter visits had already hinted at the bourgeoning presence of TV in Malian life. Walking around Bamako, the capital city, sights of Malians—men, women and children—gathering at sunset around a TV have become a normal albeit unusual scene—normal because group gatherings are ubiquitous in Mali; unusual because they are all gathering in front of a TV. Usually [End Page 95] a Malian who owns a TV will pull it outside in the evenings for himself and the neighbors to watch. TV viewing turns into a collective as well as a neighborhood event. Moreover, owning a TV is no longer quite the luxury item that it was in previous years. After radios, TVs are the most common electronic accessory for Malians (of course, cell phones will soon supercede the two). What has made this change so profound? Surely, it was not the amateur news program that I witnessed ten years earlier. What has captivated Malians, young and old and men and women alike, are the soap operas, otherwise known as feuilleton in French. Under Konaré's presidency, Malians engaged hesitantly but willingly in an unexplored artistic freedom coupled with a creative expression in TV programming. Of course, Malian artistic expression is not a new phenomenon since it has its precedence in the kotéba, a traditional theater group that travels from village to village to perform its varied satires and critiques of Malian society. Extending this artistic expression during the Konaré years to TV programming was a new and unexplored step in Mali's creative production. These years stood in stark contrast to earlier ones when the sole purpose of TV was to show les émissions pédagogiques (pedagogic shows). Today, Malians separate the development of Malian TV from the pre-dictatorial regime of Traoré to the post-democratic rule of Konaré. It was not until 1999 that the first Malian-created, -produced, and -acted soap opera appeared. Before the turn of the century, Malians viewed many imported shows that ranged from Brazilian telenovellas to the egregiously bad nighttime soap operas from the United States. Does anyone remember Dynasty (ABC, US, 1981–1989)? These imported shows provided a sense of escape, at the best, and a dream to imitate, at the worst. Not surprisingly, Malians questioned the values and morals these shows perpetuated. Mali, after all, is a strongly Muslim country. Not only were the values not coherent with their Islamic and cultural beliefs, but also the problems they addressed were foreign—not Islamic, Malian, or even African. The older generation also feared the influence the imported...