A Visio-Cultural Study of Nollywood Video-Film

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A Visio-Cultural Study of Nollywood Video-Film The Fantastic Subject: A Visio-Cultural Study of Nollywood Video-Film A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Art History) of RHODES UNIVERSITY By Nomusa Makhubu 2013 Declaration I declare that this essay is my own work and that all the sources I have used have been acknowledged by means of complete references. _____________________________ 2013/12/12 Abstract The increasing popularity of Nigerian video-film, defined as the ‘Nollywood phenomenon’ (Barrot 2008, Haynes 2010, Adesokan 2011), has attracted recent interdisciplinary academic attention, now known as ‘Nollywood Studies’. The aesthetics and ideological approach of Nollywood video-film are often differentiated from those of the long-established and illustrious African Cinema. Films of Africa are, however, generally characterised by seemingly unique forms of the fantastic – an uneasy theme in scholarship on Nollywood. Although Nollywood video-film is commended by some scholars, its representation of the supernatural and the fantastic is often perceived to be demeaning. Considering the complexity of fantastic themes in creative arts of Africa, this study contributes to this field of study by positioning Nollywood as an interventionist artistic practice that subverts the division between art and popular culture. Further, it considers how this positioning could shift our thinking about what constitutes art and creative practice in Africa. The distinctions between art and popular culture have been inherited from particularly Western disciplines. A critical analysis of the fantastic in Nollywood could expand interpretations of the broader uses of new media and appropriation and develop the discourse on contemporary creative practices of Africa and the parameters of the art history discipline. I interrogate the visual language of the video-film medium through a discussion of other forms of artistic media such as photography, video art, and performance art. The fantastic themes, such as ‘magic’, ‘fetishism’ and violence, conveyed through new media open up a field of questions regarding contemporary social-political dynamics. The cultural value of Nollywood video-film is often based on who makes it. As a proletarian product, Nollywood has been underestimated as a ‘low’ form of culture. Its use of appropriated material connotes the complex dialectics that formulate class difference. I consider how a positioning of video-film as a creative practice could be complicated by the fact that it also operates as a theocentric implement that is used by churches to evangelise. Moreover, I examine how ‘epic’ films construct idyllic notions of ‘ethnicity’ based on dialectics of rational/irrational or real/fantastic. Nollywood video-film also creates images of fantastic spaces. In this thesis, I address concepts of space in Nollywood from which fantastic desire is constructed. Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................................ i Contents ............................................................................................................................................................. ii List of Images .................................................................................................................................................... v List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................................................... xi Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................... xiii Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1: Why Nollywood – Re-thinking the Limits of Art History ................................................... 2 1.2: The Fantastic ....................................................................................................................................... 6 1.3: Video-film: An Interventionist Medium ................................................................................. 13 1.4: On the Question of Genres and Thematic Categories ........................................................ 19 1.5: Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 22 1.6: Nollywood Literature Review .................................................................................................... 25 1.7: Thesis Structure ............................................................................................................................... 29 Images .......................................................................................................................................................... 34 Chapter 1 ......................................................................................................................................................... 35 Interrogating the Visual Language of Nollywood ............................................................................ 35 1: The Video-Film Medium as Visual Langauge ........................................................................... 36 1.1: Serial or Film: Regarding Repetition ................................................................................... 40 1.2: Temporality and the Element of Banality ......................................................................... 47 1.3: Textuality and Performance ................................................................................................... 55 1.4: Music and the Narrative ........................................................................................................... 58 2: The Visual Language of Nollywood’s Fantastic Themes and Imagery ........................... 63 2.1: Magic, Magic Realism and Occultism................................................................................... 66 2.2: Fetish(ism) and the Object of Money .................................................................................. 75 2.3: Violence and Construction of the Criminal ....................................................................... 78 2.4: Power, Authority and Public Intervention ........................................................................ 83 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 87 Images .......................................................................................................................................................... 89 Chapter 2 ......................................................................................................................................................... 99 Nollywood and the Cultural Logics of Value ...................................................................................... 99 1: The Nollywood Aesthetic in the ‘Petro-Naira Context’ ..................................................... 102 2: Situating Nollywood – Itinerant Theatre, Cinema and Television ................................ 108 ii 2.1: Itinerant theatre ....................................................................................................................... 108 2.2: Cinema ......................................................................................................................................... 111 2.3: The National Television Authority (NTA) ...................................................................... 112 2.4: Operational Relations in Nollywood ................................................................................ 114 3: Nollywood – Proletarian Culture and Popular Culture ..................................................... 118 3.1: On Culture and Class in Nollywood .................................................................................. 119 3.2: Re-thinking the Nollywood Phenomenon as Popular Culture ............................... 123 4: Kitsch and the Sublime in Nollywood ...................................................................................... 129 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 134 Images ....................................................................................................................................................... 136 Chapter 3 ...................................................................................................................................................... 145 Nollywood within a Theoconomy ....................................................................................................... 145 1: Liberty Gospel Church and the Use of Video-film ............................................................... 149 2: The Spectacle of Pentecostalism ................................................................................................ 156 3: “To God be the Glory” – A Political Economy of Christianity in Video-Film ............. 163 3.1.: The Church and Social Infrastructure ............................................................................. 163 3.2.: Ideology and the Correlation of Religion and Culture .............................................
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