Nollywood Productions and Campaign against Drug Abuse: Undergraduates’ Perception of Teens Characterization in Far From Home Movie

Abstract

Nollywood productions have been characterized with depictions of social vices which may influence teenagers indulging in such vices. However, early 2022 during the global campaign against the menace of drug abuse, Nollywood as an industry under the umbrella of Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN} threw their support behind National Drug Law Enforcement Agency to combat the menace of drug and drug related crimes through their productions, targeting the youth. At the end of the same year, Far from Home movie was released, which characterized teens as major characters that were selling and using drugs in high school. This work is set out to seek the views of undergraduates in Anambra State on teen characterization in a drug related movie like Far from Home and the support of AGN in combating the menace of drug and drug related crimes. This work was hinged on reception theory and adopted focus group discussion as research design to elicit data from undergraduates in Anambra state. Findings revealed that respondents perceived the teen characters as replica of what is obtainable in the society as the movie reflected the happenings in secondary schools and higher institutions. Also, this study showed that Nollywood