Ogbeni Ketefe,
I agree with a number of the points you make. I also agree subtitling could be improved, though I don't think the subtitles hinder a viewer's comprehension of the film. And the titles do have many misspellings. The film I am watching this morning is advertised on the cover jacket as "O'meko," which should really be "O ò m'Eko." The mistake is corrected in the opening credits, and the theme song leaves no doubt as to the meaning. But from my experiences, viewers grab the meaning of the titles in spite of spelling mistakes. Like you, I am also troubled when Yoruba videos collapse incredibly rich and complex traditions of thought, such as Ifa divination, into scenes of banal magic or occult dealings. There are some who are arguing against this reduction of traditional Yoruba culture to mere superstition on the screen.
But this point on cultural representation sidesteps what I take to be your main critique, which is that Yoruba videos do not take social education as its responsibility. The freedom of creativity afforded to producers of popular culture is a hallmark of Nollywood. It is an industry that never envisioned itself within the paradigms of filmmaking that predominated in canonical African cinema. We frequently are reminded of Sembene Ousmane's adage that his films were "the night school" of Africa. In films audiences could see the source of their alienation and oppression revealed. Nollywood filmmakers have refused these terms of filmmaking and embraced the freedom to shoot whatever stories compel them and their audience. They don't seek to plunge down to the root of social immiseration, or bring us to a higher, idealist plane of understanding. They rest at the surface of everyday life and discover the romance, pleasure, misfortune, and humor that exist there.
Yes, Yoruba films are disjointed, self-contradictory, and messy. Yes, they are produced to give viewers pleasure. Yes, they are fixated on the superficial: money, sexy women, sexy men, flashy cars, fine cloths. But I am more drawn to what film critic Siegfried Kracauer says about the "distractions" of popular culture. The audience encounters itself in these films, insofar as they encounter the fragmented, disintegrated, and contradictory nature of social reality. More so than the refined culture of scholars and artists, popular culture is more intimately related with the people who buy and enjoy it. Visiting Idumota market, where the Yoruba industry is based, one could not get a more clear sense that the videos live embedded in their social reality. These videos are not mirror reflections, but one sees in them the contradictions of everyday life. If these contradictions remained hidden, then audiences could not choose to dispute, attack, or change them.
The Yoruba comedies are particularly good at revealing such contradictions while making light of them. There are dozens of videos about the exigencies of life in Lagos (Alejo Eko, Eko'go, Ipaja si Idumota ninu BRT, Keke NAPEPE are the most recent I can find). We laugh of the misfortunes the characters face, and we are never taught a lesson about ameliorating the social conditions of Lagos. We couldn't be farther from responsible filmmaking, and yet there is social preoccupations embedded in the depictions of the latest fashions and technology, relations between poor and wealthy, Lagosian Yoruba dialect, the experience of alienation in the city, and so on.
These videos are far from banal, and that they are suffused with magic and humor is part of their virtue. In any film or play reality is refracted (or "distorted) through the film/play's project of representation. In the genres most common in Nollywood, reality is refracted through melodramatic codes, supernatural deus ex machina, and comedic caricature. Whatever lesson or instruction they depart to viewers is offered not from above but from below; it grows out of the common place stories that the videos depict.
Connor Ryan
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