African binaries and Academic Plurality

Paracinema by Any Other Name

“Upward mobility plus romantic entanglements: a sure recipe for success” –Barlet, 221.

While Olivier Barlet is cautious not to reproduce the inevitably elitist argument over quality and value in African cinema, that “trivial binarism” still seems to inflect the essay, and the prolific Nollywood output seems to be implicitly denigrated in a high culture/low culture schism. Barlet is quick to acknowledge that commercial success does not preclude artistic sophistication or prescient social and political content, but again and again, the African home-video market is marked by a sense of relegation, and acceptance, as if it is a necessary evil, a national shame on the international stage, and geared towards palliative mass appeal. Barlet makes repeated reference to their formulaic structure and the superficial, materialist, or sensationalist nature of their content,

Nigerian video film will not make African cinema shine any more brightly around the globe. Despite some rare exceptions, it is characterized by the same self-perpetuating formula as Indian films. These super-codified films retell endlessly, and at top speed, the same stories without generating the myths and utopias needed to bring people together and help them build their future…Much like Bollywood, Nollywood responds to its audiences’ demands. The Nigerian films rework anxieties of a society confronted by violence and the growing role of the occult and money, while replaying the ambitions of upward social mobility in tales of romance and jealousy (218-219).

Passages like these suggest that Nollywood serves as both a fantasy projection and an opiate for mass taste, playing to a desire for the lurid (tales of prostitution, witchcraft, gangsterism), as well as a reassurance that material success is possible (the rags-to-riches narrative). Admittedly, my only experience with Nollywood is the provocative documentary on Lancelot Imasuen Nollywood Babylon (2008). In the doc, he comes off as a sort of manic messianic figure—something like Moses crossed with Ed Wood. He has vision and passion and truly wants to create a sustainable and powerful Nigerian cinema, but he is also admittedly venal and desires material success by churning out film after film. A contradictory figure, he is deeply religious (he engages in prayer circles before takes), and completely meretricious and status-seeking—his persona seems to embody the dichotomies that fuel Nollywood, like the stark moralism counterpointed by valorized violence and glamorized crime; the religious revivalist zealotry combined with a clear fascination with the occult and supernatural storylines, etc.

Given the content and the rapid-fire nature of production, I can see why Barlet may be unintentionally lamenting the lack of “quality,” but then, paradoxically, he seems discomfited by the fact that subsidy commissions and cooperative programs will ultimately control quality in their criteria for funding, and exercise a European influence (221). However, despite the particularization of this essay on African cinema, is this phenomenon of mass-produced popular cinema vs. quality cinema really any different from any other film industry? Reading Barlet’s description of the Nollywood model, it brings to mind American exploitation cinema, and based on its production style, content, and reception, Nollywood could probably fit neatly into Jeff Sconce’s concept of “paracinema.”

With his frantic, guerilla-like shooting schedule, his savvy funding, his keen knowledge of the audience and its desire, and his predilection for the salacious, sensationalist, and didactic, couldn’t Lancelot be the Herschell Gordon Lewis of Nigeria, or any one of the grindhouse and exploitation luminaries who gleefully entertained outside the margins of mainstream Hollywood (and certainly outside of the arthouse crowd that would be deemed 2^nd cinema in the Solanas/Getino model). Lancelot and his Nollywood compatriots seem to be operating from a similar imperative of crowd pleasing/shocking and formulaic fare that can be quickly cranked out and consumed, so is it really a cause for concern? Then again, unlike America with a firmly established cinematic culture and the hegemonic rule of Hollywood, I can understand Barlet’s anxieties about the ascendance of a definitional African cinema. Can and should Lancelot and the home-video filmmakers speak for a country? Will they fill the void of a direct African address that the disaporic hybridized filmmakers are unable or unwilling to fulfill? Admittedly, I have the luxury of having access to first cinema, while be able to delve in second and third cinema if I desire something outré—perhaps for a nascent film industry this a more pressing goal, one of identity and definition, but I do wonder if it’s any different that paracinmea elsewhere.

Mette Hjort: Amen to That, Sister

All I could think when reading “The Plurality of Cinematic Transnationalism” was “Testify!” True, I probably couldn’t tell you the exact difference between affinitive transnationalism and milieu-building transnationalism, but that’s beside the point. I love that Hjort takes scholars to task for relying on a conveniently malleable and pluralistic term without the necessary clarifications. As she concedes, the semantic umbrella that is “transitional” is very useful, and it doesn’t get bogged down with competing theories, but that very unification can be confounding and counterproductive, so I really like the idea of setting up a typology that is inclusive, rather than a proscriptive definition that works through negation or exclusions. I also really like the reference to fashion, that at once acknowledges the de rigueur, trendy element of transnational discourse, while accepting its longevity and potency as a concept:

It is the discussion of these films in transnational terms that is giving rise—among certain film scholars and students, and certainly among colleagues in other disciplines—to the suspicion that the discourse of cinematic transnationalism is driven to a significant extent by fashion, which is not, of course, to say that will not be with us for a long time” (13)

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Whether or not it would actually play out effectively, I found her new taxonomy immensely helpful to deconstruct these ubiquitous terms and ground them in a bit of an empirical reality, with case studies, examples, and scalar levels. This is probably my favorite thing that I’ve read with the word “globalization” in it.