(Being remarks at the CONFERENCE ON HUMAN DIGNITY On Promoting, Protecting and Preserving Human Dignity Through Media Practices held by the Institute of Humanities, Pan-Atlantic University Lekki, Lagos on Friday 19th August, 2022)
I AM grateful for the opportunity to say a few words as we examine Nollywood’s contemporary storytelling cultures with a focus on how it promotes, protects and preserves human dignity. I am particularly excited because there is a recognition in the theme itself of the affective power of cinema to shape behaviour, to foreshadow value creation, and to impact broadly our community experiences beyond entertainment. It recognizes the storytellers not just as entertainers and court jesters, but as well as public intellectuals and social philosophers who, beyond the razzmatazz of the entertainment business, can be forces for positive orientation and ethical change at a time in Nigeria’s history when the value of life is cheap and human dignity is wounded by the realities of poverty, hunger, and illiteracy which has bred levels of violence, ritual killings, robberies and all manners of desecration of our basic humanity. We see too much violence, both physically and emotionally, in real life in today’s Nigeria. And we seem to see exactly the same on our social media, on our news media and of course in our films. I say this to simply admit at the onset that yes Nollywood has showcased in some of its popular narratives images that offend sensibilities and sometimes created starring characters whose emotional intelligence and choices betray a poor understanding that does not protect or promote human dignity.
Our stories have created interesting themes, characters and stories that have brought us into the stark realities of what we read in the newspapers and social media, but perhaps Nollywood has failed to address the opportunities it is presented by these realities offer through our stories and stars the insights necessary to sensitize our audiences differently. So It is my hope we will not only x-ray Nollywood’s failures and missed opportunities in this regard. We must design how we engage Nollywood’s storytellers to embrace the possibilities of their power with stories and characters that are not only commercially viable but also culturally affirming and emotionally intelligent.
Nollywood needs the transformative consciousness to create stories and emotionally centered characters who process information rationally and whose minds expand beyond basic sensations of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement. The missing value space of Nollywood is how our characters respond to the realities of their world not just as represented but how it can be. Cinema is the only media form that can foreshadow in real terms how a society can grow into the future differently from its past.
It is well-documented history that the rise of Nollywood has been organic. There is a sense in which it feeds on itself and has grown its own narrative structures and visual language. We know its audiences are drawn to the familiarity of its stories, its spaces, places, and faces. And we cannot discountenance that it began as an insurgent street theatre with its practitioners purely focused on commercial profits, unencumbered by rigorous intellectual engagement or questions of conscience that its global success is now demanding. It is not a surprise that in confronting an audit of how well its narratives have storified around the complex issues of human rights and dignity, what will be clear is that our scriptwriters and storytellers can only account for their capacities to create stories and characters for principally for entertainment and for sales.
To be effective and affective in the protection and preservation of human dignity and human rights our creative instincts must be motivated with deeper emotional intelligence and value propositions. The challenge and the opportunity is to reframe our creative motivation as an industry from growing markets to also making meaning. It is the pathway for the sustainability of the success of Nollywood. Alfred Adler says “Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give our situations.” So for Nollywood, as the premiere representational artform in contemporary Nigeria, an important existential question emerges: What is the role of a thriving cinema in a country tethered on the strings of inequity, injustice, and desperate crimes like kidnappings, ritual killings, mob killings and various shades of domestic violence? Shouldn’t the stories and characters we create respond to what is happening around us? It is from the subliminalities of our stories, plots, and characterization that we are able to express the value systems that undergird the choices that confront us. How do those choices reflect or advocate for the highest value for human life, the fundamentality of human rights, and the dignity of freedoms that come with those rights to choose, how we live, where we live, how we love, who we love in our peaceful pursuit of prosperity?
When we break these into molecular parts, the questions focus not just on our creative craft but on the emotional intelligence our storytellers need to elevate our viewing experience beyond slapstick humor and love stories. How authentic are the values of our creative intent? Do the conventions of our genres have shared meaning? How intentional are our images and visual cues? What do these images mean in the syntax of film language? How are our films detailing the structures of social representation, gender inclusiveness, value referencing, conflict containment? In the world of our stories what subliminalities in characterization, visual language, historical context, and referencing invite our audiences to imagine or foreshadow a reality or a future different from our present realities? We need not just filmmakers, but Producers, Distributors, and broadcasters with the understanding and a commitment to embrace the possibilities of a Nollywood that is grown beyond refraction, to reflection, and towards a deliberate insightful engagement with the social challenges and human development ambitions of modern day Nigeria. We cannot tell consequential stories or create heroic characters without understanding the primary imperative to humanize the value propositions of our premise and the themes of our stories. We need to expand the context of and world of our characters both in their physical actions and in the inner recesses of their mind. We need the articulation of performances in our films to go from the inside out and not in the reverse. We need to surmise the emotional worlds of what they are sensing, thinking and feeling, so that their ethical choices make sense and are maybe even sometimes profound. We need the conflicts and choices in our stories to be larger than life, perhaps even existential in scope. That is when we can evolve more multi-dimensional characters and performances that will showcase the awareness, respect, kindness, and empathy that are the emotional intelligence quotient necessary to the dignity and rights of another human.
It is these basics that help us connect to the subtext and meanings that elevate, protect and preserve the humanity of the characters we create and the stories that express their journeys. They in aggregate will assign a higher creative signature and a conscious visual language to Nollywood’s impact.
Putting these questions on the table is the real opportunity of this conference. I hope it is also the start of new collaborations and interventions by scholars in humanities to sensitize Nollywood to the thought leadership it must embrace to elevate the power and purpose of popular media in Nigeria.
Thank you.
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