Abstract
Nigeria, the Giant of Africa, has three big tribes: Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa. It was a British colony which was amalgamated in 1914. The country became independent in 1962 and was right away bedeviled by military coups d’états and a bloody civil war (1967-1970). In 1999, the country experienced democratic dispensation. In the 1990s, the Nollywood nascent movie industry—following in the footpath of Hollywood and Bollywood—flourished. The movie industry grew thanks to four factors: Rapid urbanization; the hand-held video camera; the advent of satellite TV; and, the overseas migrations of Nigerians. Local languages are used in these films; however, English is the most prominent, along with Nigerian pidgin broken English. Many themes are treated in these films: tradition and customs, religion, witchcraft and sorcery, satire, urban and rural lives, wealth acquisition, consumerism, etc. I discuss the ways in which American popular culture is adopted in Nigeria and recreated on screen. Nigeria and USA share Federalism, the superlative mode, and gigantism (houses, cars, people, etc.), and many Nigerians attend American universities. In the final analysis, the arguments exposed in this paper highlight the multitude of ways in which Nigerians navigate the treacherous waters of modernity and globalization.
Highlights
Historical Background: “Thou Shall Call Twice” or When Oral Culture Meets the Moving Image One of the biggest novelties in entertainment in Africa towards the end of the twentieth century is, without a doubt, the birth of Nigerian cinema commonly referred to as Nollywood, following into the footsteps of the American giant Hollywood movie industry and the Indian one, namely Bollywood
Starting in the 1950s, the synthesis/combination of traditional and modern musical styles gave birth to brand-new musical styles such as high life (Ghana) or palm-wine music (Liberia and Sierra-Leone). When it comes to the search for a viable model in Nigerian film, there are two trends: In the first trend, there is an effort to be as close as possible to Igbo culture thanks, for instance, to the usage and adaptation of cultural traits borrowed from the tradition; this trend is in the minority
In a final conclusion, I concur with P. Ebewo when he writes: “With the global world united under the sway of visual culture, the emergence of the video film in Nigeria is timely and crucial as it serves as the voice of its people and responds to the drudgery of a social and economic existence characterized by high unemployment and dwindling opportunities”
Summary
Historical Background: “Thou Shall Call Twice” or When Oral Culture Meets the Moving Image One of the biggest novelties in entertainment in Africa towards the end of the twentieth century is, without a doubt, the birth of Nigerian cinema commonly referred to as Nollywood, following into the footsteps of the American giant Hollywood movie industry and the Indian one, namely Bollywood. Many other cultural markers which belong to Igbo traditional society are featured in films, the most pre-eminent ones being proverbs and sayings These proverbs serve as pedagogical and educational tools since there was no formal schooling. To briefly come back to the concept of tradition, the way the latter is treated in Nollywood film generally echoes the way it is concretely considered and lived at large in society, namely the usage of the concept in order to justify the most backward aspects of the prevailing culture; one often hears in the movies a character proclaim: “This is our tradition, this is how we do things, this is how our ancestor used to do things, etc.”. How one thinks that the Englishman will consider the Black Negro man, the latter being, the colonially dominated subject of the former? In my opinion, the answer is clear and emphatic, meaning that in the Englishman’s racial scale, the black man is at the very bottom of the rung
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