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Neoliberal Rationalities in Old and New Nollywood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2015

Moradewun Adejunmobi
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Abstract:

This article focuses on shifts, or “new waves,” within contemporary African film as sites of struggle and moments of exposure of the divergent forces at work in the struggle. From this perspective, attempts at initiating a new style in commercially oriented storytelling do not so much culminate in a break with previous styles of storytelling as they create a new space for tension over ideological claims and narrative coherence. As illustration, the article considers the competing logics at work in the strategies or rationalities associated with the branch of Nigerian filmmaking described as New Nollywood.

Résumé:

Cet article se concentre sur des changements, ou de “nouvelles vagues,” dans le cinéma africain contemporain perçu comme sites de lutte et moments de révélation des forces divergentes à l’œuvre dans la lutte. Dans cette perspective, les tentatives de lancement d’un nouveau style dans la narration à vocation commerciale, représente moins une cassure avec les styles narratifs précédents, qu’il ne crée un nouvel espace pour une tension entre revendications idéologiques et cohérence narrative. A titre d’illustration, l’article examine les logiques concurrentes à l’œuvre dans les stratégies ou rationalités associées avec la branche de cinéma nigérian décrit sous le nom de Nouveau Nollywood.

Keywords

Nollywoodneoliberalismstructural adjustmentmodernitypopular culture
Type
ASR FORUM: WHAT’S NEW IN AFRICAN CINEMA?
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , December 2015 , pp. 31 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2015 

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References

References

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Confusion Na Wa. 2013. Directed by Kenneth Gyang. Digital Video. Nigeria: Cinema Kpatakpata.Google Scholar
Girls Cot. 2006. Directed by Afam Okereke. VCD. Nigeria: Simony Production.Google Scholar
Glamour Girls. 1994. Directed by Kenneth Nnebue. VHS. Nigeria: Nek Video Links.Google Scholar
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Living in Bondage. 1993. Directed by Chris Obi Rapu. VHS. Nigeria: Nek Video Links.Google Scholar
Phone Swap. 2012. Directed by Kunle Afolayan. Digital Video. Nigeria: Golden Effects.Google Scholar
Runs. 2002. Directed by Elochukwu Anigbogu. VCD. Nigeria: Elonel International.Google Scholar
Saworoide. 1999. Directed by Tunde Kelani. VCD. Nigeria: Mainframe Productions.Google Scholar
Street Fame. 2005. Directed by Mac Collins Chidebe. VCD. Nigeria: Annex Merchandise Inc.Google Scholar
Tango with Me. 2010. Directed by Mahmood Ali-Balogun. 35mm. Nigeria: Brickwall Communication.Google Scholar
The Figurine. 2010. Directed by Kunle Afolayan. DVD. Nigeria: Golden Effects.Google Scholar
The Mirror Boy. 2011. Directed by Obi Emelonye. Digital Video. Nigeria: The Nollywood Factory/OH Films.Google Scholar
Adejunmobi, Moradewun. 2002. “English and the Audience of an African Popular Culture: The Case of Nigerian Video Film.” Cultural Critique 50: 74–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrews, Edmund. 1997. “Behind the Scams: Desperate People Easily Scammed.” New York Times, January 29.Google Scholar
Afolayan, Kunle. 2013. “Afrinolly Meets Kunle Afolyanan.” Afrinolly, June 4. http://allafricancinema.com.Google Scholar
Ali-Balogun, Mahmood. 2009. “‘I’m Passionate about Filmmaking’ Says Mahmood Ali-Balogun.” Modern Ghana, August 12. http://www.modernghana.com.Google Scholar
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Brooks, Peter. 1976. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, and the Mode of Excess. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Matthew H. 2015. Review of Global Nollywood: The Transnational Dimension of an African Video Film Industry, edited by Krings, Matthias and Okome, Onookome Bloomington. African Arts 48 (1): 91–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheru, Fantu. 2001. “Overcoming Apartheid’s Legacy: The Ascendancy of Neoliberalism in South Africa’s Anti-Poverty Strategy.” Third World Quarterly 22 (4): 505–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, Matthew J. 2013. “African Popular Crime Genres and the Genres of Neoliberalism.” Social Text 31 (2): 103–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John. 1999. “Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction: Notes from the South African Postcolony.” American Ethnologist 26 (1): 279–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curry, Neil. 2010. “New Nigerian Cinema Sparks Nollywood Renaissance.” CNN Entertainment, November 19. www.cnn.com.Google Scholar
Cruikshank, Barbara. 1993. “Revolutions Within: Self Government and Self-Esteem.” Economy and Society 22 (3): 327–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diawara, Manthia. 2010. African Film: New Forms of Aesthetics and Politics. Munich: Prestel.Google Scholar
The Economist. 2011. “The Hopeful Continent, Africa Rising.” December 3. www.economist.com.Google Scholar
Ekeh, Peter. 1975. “Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement.” Comparative Journal of Society and History 17 (1): 91–112.Google Scholar
Emelonye, Obi. 2013. “Afrinolly meets Obi Emelonye.” Afrinolly, June 4. http://allafricancinema.com.Google Scholar
Ferguson, James. 1991. Expectations of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, James. 2006. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, James. 2009. “The Uses of Neoliberalism.” Antipode 41: 166–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ganti, Tejaswini. 2012. Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Garritano, Carmela. 2013. African Video Movies and Global Desires. Athens: Ohio University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartley, John. 2009. The Uses of Digital Literacy. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haynes, Jonathan. 2014. “‘New Nollywood’: Kunle Afolyan.” Black Camera: An International Film Journal 5 (2): 53–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haynes, Jonathan. 2011. “Nollywood and African Cinema: Contradictions.” Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination 4 (1): 67–90.Google Scholar
Haynes, Jonathan, ed. 2000. Nigerian Video Films. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Hoad, Phil. 2012. “Out of Africa: Kunle Afolayan Bids to Bring Nollywood Cinema to the World.” The Guardian (U.K.), October 30. www.theguardian.com.Google Scholar
Ives, Sarah. 2007. “Mediating the Neoliberal Nation: Television in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 6 (1): 153–72.Google Scholar
Kapur, Jyotsna, and Wagner, Keith, eds. 2011. Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture and Marxist Critique. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, Birgit. 1998. “‘Make a Complete Break with the Past: Memory and Postcolonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourse.” Journal of Religion in Africa 28 (3): 316–49.Google Scholar
Miller, Toby. 2006. Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Negra, Diane, and Tasker, Yvonne. 2013. “Neoliberal Frames and Genres of Inequality: Recession-Era Chick Flicks and Male-Centered Corporate Melodrama.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 16 (3): 344–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okome, Onookome, and Haynes, Jonathan. 1995. Cinema and Social Change in West Africa. Jos, Nigeria: National Film Corporation.Google Scholar
Olivier de Sardan, J. P. 1999. “A Moral Economy of Corruption in Africa?” Journal of Modern African Studies 37 (1): 39–52.Google Scholar
Olurunnisola, Anthony, ed. 2009. Media and Communication Industries in Nigeria: Impacts of Neoliberal Reforms between 1999 and 2007. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press.Google Scholar
Ouellette, Laurie. 2008. “‘Take Responsibility for Yourself’: Judge Judy and the Neoliberal Citizen.” In Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader, edited by Brundson, Charlotte and Spigel, Lynn, 2nd edition, 139–53. Maidenhead, U.K.: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Ouellette, Laurie, and Hay, James. 2008. “Makeover Television, Governmentality, and the Good Citizen.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 22 (4): 471–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peck, Jamie. 2001. “Neoliberalizing States: Thin Policies/Hard Outcomes.” Progress in Human Geography 25 (3): 445–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfaff, Françoise. 2013. Review of Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century: Art Films and the Nollywood Video Revolution, edited by Şaul, Mahir and Austen.”, Ralph A.Quarterly Review of Film and Video 30 (2): 193–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierson, Michele. 2002. Special Effects: Still in Search of Wonder. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rice, Andrew. 2012. “A Scorsese in Lagos: The Making of Nigeria’s Film Industry.” New York Times, February 22.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas. 2006. “Governing ‘Advanced’ Liberal Democracies.” In The Anthropology of the State, edited by Sharma, Aradhana and Gupta, Akhil, 144–62. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ryan, Connor. 2014. “Nollywood and the Limits of Informality: A Conversation with Tunde Kelani, Bond Emeruwa, and Emem Isong.” Black Camera: An International Film Journal 5 (2): 168–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sahara, Reporters. 2015. “Movie Stars Walk against Piracy.” April 20. http://saharareporters.com.Google Scholar
Sánchez Prado, Ignacio. 2014. Screening Neoliberalism: Transforming Mexican Cinema 1988–2012. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Şaul, Mahir, and Austen, Ralph, eds. 2010. Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century: Art Films and the Nollywood Video Revolution. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Daniel Jordan. 2007. A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tsika, Noah. 2015. “The ‘Osuofia’ Connection: Notes on a Nollywood Film Cycle.” African Studies Review 58 (1): 263–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vale, Peter, and Maseko, Sipho. 1998. “South Africa and the African Renaissance.” International Affairs 74 (2): 271–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Billionaire’s Club 1. 2003. Directed by Afam Okereke. VHS. Nigeria: Great Movies Ind.Google Scholar
Confusion Na Wa. 2013. Directed by Kenneth Gyang. Digital Video. Nigeria: Cinema Kpatakpata.Google Scholar
Girls Cot. 2006. Directed by Afam Okereke. VCD. Nigeria: Simony Production.Google Scholar
Glamour Girls. 1994. Directed by Kenneth Nnebue. VHS. Nigeria: Nek Video Links.Google Scholar
Ijé, The Journey. 2010. Directed by Chineze Anyaene. DVD. Nigeria: Xandria Productions.Google Scholar
Inalé. 2010. Directed by Jeta Amata. Digital Video. Nigeria: BiK Entertainment.Google Scholar
Last Flight to Abuja. 2012. Directed by Obi Emelonye. DVD. Nigeria: The Nollywood Factory/Screen Nation.Google Scholar
Living in Bondage. 1993. Directed by Chris Obi Rapu. VHS. Nigeria: Nek Video Links.Google Scholar
Phone Swap. 2012. Directed by Kunle Afolayan. Digital Video. Nigeria: Golden Effects.Google Scholar
Runs. 2002. Directed by Elochukwu Anigbogu. VCD. Nigeria: Elonel International.Google Scholar
Saworoide. 1999. Directed by Tunde Kelani. VCD. Nigeria: Mainframe Productions.Google Scholar
Street Fame. 2005. Directed by Mac Collins Chidebe. VCD. Nigeria: Annex Merchandise Inc.Google Scholar
Tango with Me. 2010. Directed by Mahmood Ali-Balogun. 35mm. Nigeria: Brickwall Communication.Google Scholar
The Figurine. 2010. Directed by Kunle Afolayan. DVD. Nigeria: Golden Effects.Google Scholar
The Mirror Boy. 2011. Directed by Obi Emelonye. Digital Video. Nigeria: The Nollywood Factory/OH Films.Google Scholar
Adejunmobi, Moradewun. 2002. “English and the Audience of an African Popular Culture: The Case of Nigerian Video Film.” Cultural Critique 50: 74–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrews, Edmund. 1997. “Behind the Scams: Desperate People Easily Scammed.” New York Times, January 29.Google Scholar
Afolayan, Kunle. 2013. “Afrinolly Meets Kunle Afolyanan.” Afrinolly, June 4. http://allafricancinema.com.Google Scholar
Ali-Balogun, Mahmood. 2009. “‘I’m Passionate about Filmmaking’ Says Mahmood Ali-Balogun.” Modern Ghana, August 12. http://www.modernghana.com.Google Scholar
Barber, Karin. 1982. “Reactions to Petronaira.” Journal of Modern African Studies 20 (3): 431–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, Peter. 1976. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, and the Mode of Excess. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Matthew H. 2015. Review of Global Nollywood: The Transnational Dimension of an African Video Film Industry, edited by Krings, Matthias and Okome, Onookome Bloomington. African Arts 48 (1): 91–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheru, Fantu. 2001. “Overcoming Apartheid’s Legacy: The Ascendancy of Neoliberalism in South Africa’s Anti-Poverty Strategy.” Third World Quarterly 22 (4): 505–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, Matthew J. 2013. “African Popular Crime Genres and the Genres of Neoliberalism.” Social Text 31 (2): 103–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John. 2000. “Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming.” Public Culture 12 (2): 291–343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John. 1999. “Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction: Notes from the South African Postcolony.” American Ethnologist 26 (1): 279–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curry, Neil. 2010. “New Nigerian Cinema Sparks Nollywood Renaissance.” CNN Entertainment, November 19. www.cnn.com.Google Scholar
Cruikshank, Barbara. 1993. “Revolutions Within: Self Government and Self-Esteem.” Economy and Society 22 (3): 327–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diawara, Manthia. 2010. African Film: New Forms of Aesthetics and Politics. Munich: Prestel.Google Scholar
The Economist. 2011. “The Hopeful Continent, Africa Rising.” December 3. www.economist.com.Google Scholar
Ekeh, Peter. 1975. “Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement.” Comparative Journal of Society and History 17 (1): 91–112.Google Scholar
Emelonye, Obi. 2013. “Afrinolly meets Obi Emelonye.” Afrinolly, June 4. http://allafricancinema.com.Google Scholar
Ferguson, James. 1991. Expectations of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, James. 2006. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, James. 2009. “The Uses of Neoliberalism.” Antipode 41: 166–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ganti, Tejaswini. 2012. Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Garritano, Carmela. 2013. African Video Movies and Global Desires. Athens: Ohio University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartley, John. 2009. The Uses of Digital Literacy. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haynes, Jonathan. 2014. “‘New Nollywood’: Kunle Afolyan.” Black Camera: An International Film Journal 5 (2): 53–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haynes, Jonathan. 2011. “Nollywood and African Cinema: Contradictions.” Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination 4 (1): 67–90.Google Scholar
Haynes, Jonathan, ed. 2000. Nigerian Video Films. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Hoad, Phil. 2012. “Out of Africa: Kunle Afolayan Bids to Bring Nollywood Cinema to the World.” The Guardian (U.K.), October 30. www.theguardian.com.Google Scholar
Ives, Sarah. 2007. “Mediating the Neoliberal Nation: Television in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 6 (1): 153–72.Google Scholar
Kapur, Jyotsna, and Wagner, Keith, eds. 2011. Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture and Marxist Critique. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, Birgit. 1998. “‘Make a Complete Break with the Past: Memory and Postcolonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourse.” Journal of Religion in Africa 28 (3): 316–49.Google Scholar
Miller, Toby. 2006. Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Negra, Diane, and Tasker, Yvonne. 2013. “Neoliberal Frames and Genres of Inequality: Recession-Era Chick Flicks and Male-Centered Corporate Melodrama.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 16 (3): 344–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okome, Onookome, and Haynes, Jonathan. 1995. Cinema and Social Change in West Africa. Jos, Nigeria: National Film Corporation.Google Scholar
Olivier de Sardan, J. P. 1999. “A Moral Economy of Corruption in Africa?” Journal of Modern African Studies 37 (1): 39–52.Google Scholar
Olurunnisola, Anthony, ed. 2009. Media and Communication Industries in Nigeria: Impacts of Neoliberal Reforms between 1999 and 2007. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press.Google Scholar
Ouellette, Laurie. 2008. “‘Take Responsibility for Yourself’: Judge Judy and the Neoliberal Citizen.” In Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader, edited by Brundson, Charlotte and Spigel, Lynn, 2nd edition, 139–53. Maidenhead, U.K.: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Ouellette, Laurie, and Hay, James. 2008. “Makeover Television, Governmentality, and the Good Citizen.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 22 (4): 471–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peck, Jamie. 2001. “Neoliberalizing States: Thin Policies/Hard Outcomes.” Progress in Human Geography 25 (3): 445–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfaff, Françoise. 2013. Review of Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century: Art Films and the Nollywood Video Revolution, edited by Şaul, Mahir and Austen.”, Ralph A.Quarterly Review of Film and Video 30 (2): 193–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierson, Michele. 2002. Special Effects: Still in Search of Wonder. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rice, Andrew. 2012. “A Scorsese in Lagos: The Making of Nigeria’s Film Industry.” New York Times, February 22.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas. 2006. “Governing ‘Advanced’ Liberal Democracies.” In The Anthropology of the State, edited by Sharma, Aradhana and Gupta, Akhil, 144–62. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ryan, Connor. 2014. “Nollywood and the Limits of Informality: A Conversation with Tunde Kelani, Bond Emeruwa, and Emem Isong.” Black Camera: An International Film Journal 5 (2): 168–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sahara, Reporters. 2015. “Movie Stars Walk against Piracy.” April 20. http://saharareporters.com.Google Scholar
Sánchez Prado, Ignacio. 2014. Screening Neoliberalism: Transforming Mexican Cinema 1988–2012. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Şaul, Mahir, and Austen, Ralph, eds. 2010. Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century: Art Films and the Nollywood Video Revolution. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Daniel Jordan. 2007. A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tsika, Noah. 2015. “The ‘Osuofia’ Connection: Notes on a Nollywood Film Cycle.” African Studies Review 58 (1): 263–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vale, Peter, and Maseko, Sipho. 1998. “South Africa and the African Renaissance.” International Affairs 74 (2): 271–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar