Road Called Vagina: African Womanist Detours of Túndé Kèlání's The Narrow Path

Abstract

ABSTRACT Studies have shown that Nigerian films, like literary works before them, are complicit in the prescription of hegemonic cultural citizenship. One particular dimension of such prescription is the stereotype that defines how to be a woman and delegitimates gender heterodoxy. The films of Túndé Kèlání, a male Nigerian auteur, constitute an alternative to this androcentric mainstream. Adopting a womanist interpretation, this article examines the counternarrative value of Kèlání's film The Narrow Path (2006) not only in relation to contemporary filmic tradition but more particularly to the pre-existing literary source from which the movie is adapted, the novel The Virgin (1985) by scholar and novelist Bayo Adebowale. In the film, characters are better fortified to confront the dominant order which thwarts them in the novel. A final womanist resolution is ensured in the epilogue in the film – contrary to the novel which ends in apocalypse – that preempts war and destruction, and initiates regeneration and peace.