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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
Beyond Popular Entertainment: Citizenship Articulation within Nigerian Video
| Panel |
20. Popular culture and politics - alternative channels of expression
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| Paper ID | 286 |
| Author(s) |
Lester, Todd Lanier
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | In his foreward to Literature for the Masses: An analytical study of popular pamphleteering in Nigeria, Chinua Achebe states that “seriousness is necessary because the authors are concerned not to provide exotic entertainment but to tackle seriously in the light of their own perception the social problems of a somewhat mixed-up but dynamic, even brash, modernizing community (Obiechina 1971, x).”
“Nigeria has not stopped trying to make sense of itself as a nation (White and Peel 2004).”
In The Medium is the Message, McLuhan rehearses the argument that media are "extensions" of our human senses, bodies and minds.
Nigerian home video can be simultaneously viewed as community media, popular culture, a formalizing domestic commercial sector, and media flow – or market niche – used to transmit Nigerian cultural symbols into the international marketplace. Whereas the revolution of consumer technology on which video cassette recorders and video cameras were carried into Nigeria was predicated on low costs and the demand for entertainment, these films carry pertinent information regarding a range of agendas – from individual to collective, subconscious to intentional – that redefine community, state and national citizenship. Nigerian video films – by their popular placement in society and characteristic fluidity – contribute textual imagery that validates alternate groupings as they imagine and project their cohesiveness and solidarity.
How does Nigeria’s historical relationship with visual media and deployment of protest media factor into the current market situation for Nigerian video film? Despite the export of a cohesive national film industry vis a vis Nollywood branding – and thus an ostensible collective identity – Nigeria shows some classic signs of subnationalism which can be seen clearly by examining ethnic factors for the video film industry. How is the historical Yoruba project indicative of this? Did a consumer technology revolution meet with the self-determination – or incorporation – project of the Yoruba in order to create the conditions for subnationalism? Does film production afford individual citizens the opportunity to express societal concerns through scripting, acting and promotion of a film, thereby conferring management of raw materials needed for propaganda transmission to a non-governmental actor? Does this shape future citizenship in ethnic and, ultimately, subnational terms?
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