The Rhetoric of Return in Kunle Afolayan's Film October1

Matatu 49 (2017) 416–438 brill.com/mata The Rhetoric of Return in Kunle Afolayan’s Film October 1 Azeez Akinwumi Sesan Osun State University [email protected] Abstract The popularity of Nollywood movies has established their relevance in cultural studies to interrogating afresh the presumed norms among people of ethno-cultural and racial difference. To this end, film critics have focused their attention on the theme and genre studies of Nollywood movies with a view to relating the issues in the film texts to the often heated sociological debates on coloniality in African socio-cultural and political experiences. Kunle Afolayan’s October 1 contributes to these raging debates through the motif of return (return to self, return of nation, and return to nation) that runs through the film text. This motif of return contributes to the overall film gestalt through characterization and plot. Postcolonial theory is adopted to describe the return motif through the investigation of consciousness, nostalgia, and trauma, as experienced individually or collectively. The theory explains the nature, pattern, and dimensions of adjustment and adaptation of individuals, communities, and the nation to complexity and dynamism of change during colonial encounters and the journey towards political independence on October 1. The kernel of the movie’s argument is that the country’s independence was heralded by hypocrisy, dishonesty, and violence. The movie thus questions the misconceived notion of racial purity by the white racists through their ignoble role in the return process of the country at the attainment of political independence on 1 October 1960. Keywords Nollywood studies – Kunle Afolayan’s October 1 – postcolonial criticism – Nigerian film industry © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/18757421-04902010Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 12:01:25PM via free access the rhetoric of return in kunle afolayan’s film october 1 417 Introduction The redirection of interest from traditional criticism of movies to recent discourses on film aesthetics has also informed the shift of attention from Nolly- wood to neo-Nollywood discourses. This redirection has motivated filmmakers to improve on their film techniques in terms of montage and pre- and post- filmic activities. Current practice, therefore, requires and expects filmmakers to explore all possibilities in their budgetary allocation to ensure that their movies meet best-practice requirements in the global film industry. Some film critics and scholars have hurriedly concluded that Hollywood sets the standard in the global film industry. In their conclusion, they argue that Hollywood belongs to the first category of cinema while Bollywood and other Asian movie industries such as the Japanese, Korean, and Chinese are to be grouped in the second category of cinema. Nollywood and other African film industries are grouped in the third category of cinema (this third category of cinema is not used in the same manner of ‘third cinema’, which was a term used to describe film from South America). This classification is inadequate because critics use the same parameters to evaluate film industries across all countries and continents.They are, however, expected to consider specificity of cultural ethos and episteme, availability of resources, and prevailing film policy in the determination of the efficiency and effectiveness of the movie industry. There is, however, a common front in the categorization of the global film cultures—this paper employs the idea of film cultures, in this instance, to refer to different film traditions and norms that exist across the continents of the world: American Hollywood, Indian Bollywood, and Nigerian Nollywood, etc. This common front is reflected in the regular film awards at sites where filmmakers across the countries and continents exhibit and screen their movies for award of excellence. These films are judged by the same parameters of film ethics in terms of quality of sound and image, costuming, props, decor, locale, and setting. It is for this reason that most Nigerian filmmakers, such Kunle Afolayan, Tunde Kelani, Tade Ogidan, Frank Rajah, and Pat Nebo among others, have been making frantic efforts to meet the ‘Hollywood standard’ in their respective movies. ‘Hollywood standard’ is scare-quoted here because cultural activism argues that no culture is superior to another and a given cultural product expresses the uniqueness of a culture; no film culture upholds better standards than another. The differences in the quality of the movies produced across the cultures of the world are attributable to the efficiency and effectiveness of the human and material resources invested in the making of films. With the above background information, this paper’s focus is on the assess- ment of Kunle Afolayan’s October 1 as an evolving mode of cinematography in Matatu 49 (2017) 416–438 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 12:01:25PM via free access 418 sesan Nigeria’s filmic/cinematic culture in terms of characterization, thematization, plot, and overall aesthetics. As a fresh direction in the discourse of Nigerian movies, Kunle Afolayan’s October 1 qualifies as neo-Nollywood—a recent term in the description of the nature and quality of films produced in the country’s film industry. Kunle Afolayan’s October 1 as an Example of Neo-Nollywood Neo-Nollywood is not a derivate of Nollywood.The former is simply a discourse on the quality of the process and product of filmmaking in the country, whereas the latter is a name imposed on Nigeria’s film industry by Matt Steinglass in 2002. This paper accordingly reiterates the view of Duro Oni on the etymology of the term ‘Nollywood’ in discussing films produced in the Nigerian film industry: Among the major issues in Nollywood is strangely the name with which the industry is now known, which was apparently first used in 2002 by Matt Steinglass in the New York Times (Haynes 2005) who for want of a name for the emerging Nigerian video film industry simply used n- to connote Nigeria and called it Nollywood after the American Hollywood and India’s Bollywood.1 The inference to be drawn from the above is that ‘Nollywood’ is an inaccu- rate and inappropriate terminus for characterizing the country’s film industry because it does not consider the cultural complexities and complications that characterize filmmaking in Nigeria. It is not, then, a name but, rather, name- calling, as argued by Foluke Ogunleye, who proposes the name ‘Naijafilms’ to describe movies that are produced in the country. In support of her argument, she provides the following explanation: The word, Naija, is now synonymous with the expression—proudly Nige- rian. […] This new nomenclature is very apt because a name is a term used for identification and names are usually given by parents or rel- atives, not by outsiders who possess less than honorable intentions. A 1 Oni Duro, “Context and Nature of Contemporary Nigerian (Nollywood) Film Industry,” in Africa Through the Eye of the Video Camera, ed. Foluke Ogunleye (Matsapha, Swaziland: Academic, 2008): 19–20. DownloadedMatatu from 49 Brill.com09/27/2021 (2017) 416–438 12:01:25PM via free access the rhetoric of return in kunle afolayan’s film october 1 419 Yoruba proverb states: Oruko omo ni ijanu omo, which loosely translated means that a name is a means of checks and balances for the bearer of the name. A name is different from name-calling and the term Nollywood smacks more of name-calling than a name. The name ‘Naijafilms’ reveal the Nigerian-ness of the video films and it is designed as a revolution to reclaim the video film universe and its aesthetics in a way that will position Nigeria and its people at the epicenter of the art form.2 Ogunleye’s conceptualization of ‘Naijafilms’ for the description of the Nigerian film industry is not magisterially final. It is a proposition that needs testing and validation for appropriateness and accuracy. The focus here, however, is not on weighing up the rightness or wrongness of the name Nollywood in the description of Nigerian films. Rather, the focus is on the discourse of neo- Nollywood and the qualification of the Kunle Afolayan’s October 1 as a film in the neo-Nollywood category. Neo-Nollywood here is viewed as a tradition and not a name—a tradition of quality that advances the technical and dramatic components of Nigerian films. This tradition of quality is reflected in casting, costuming, props, sound and image, decor, stunts, and (sur)realism. Open-endedness of meaning, therefore, is one of the qualities of movies in the neo-Nollywood tradition owing to the innovation and creativity of the filmmakers. In this line of argument, this paper aligns its view with the position of Azeez Akinwumi Sesan and Toyin Shittu: The core argument of creativity in neo-Nollywood is that the films should have open-ended meaning and the audience should take active role in the reading and interpretation of films. Neo-Nollywood filmmakers are radical, apart from being creative, in their filmmaking process. In the neo-Nollywood tradition are Ije, Maami, October 1, Narrow Path, Madam Dearest and DangerousTwins, etc. These films reconstruct the production paradigm of films in Nigeria.3 As a neo-Nollywood movie, Kunle Afolayan’s October 1 revels in multiplicity of meaning—a term close to Sesan and Shittu’s “open-ended meaning.” Consid- ering the open-endedness/multiplicity of meanings and ‘radical’ innovation in 2 Foluke Maltida Ogunleye, Thespians and Cineastes as Engineers of the Nigerian Soul (Ile-Ife: oau Press, 2012): 50–51. 3 Azeez Akinwumi Sesan & Toyin Shittu, “Nollywood and Cultural Re-Orientation: Prospects and Problems,” Nigerian Theatre Journal 15 (2015): 23. Matatu 49 (2017) 416–438 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 12:01:25PM via free access 420 sesan the ethics and aesthetics of filmmaking in Nigeria, the term ‘neo-Nollywood’ is to be understood as a by-product of the cultural diffusion of neo-colonial realities.

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