The 3Ws of Nollywood: Women, Wealth, and Witchcraft

Critics often upbraid Nollywood for what they term its "thematic obsession" with the occult world, obscenity, prostitution, and money worship. But according to Brian Larkin, "[i]t is the mixing of melodrama with horror and magic and the linkage of financial with sexual and spiritual corruption that makes the melodrama of Nigeria... video film distinctively African."

The critics contend that this "obsession" casts Nigeria and Africa in a negative light. What they fail to acknowledge, however, is that Nollywood frames and represents its society, drawing inspiration from its milieu. No doubt, it does exaggerate its representations for filmic effects, but it does not invent its narratives.

It derives its content mainly from the socio-cultural realities of its environment, constantly beaming its cinematic light on the ugly and uncomfortable realities within society and, instead of allowing us play the ostrich, forces us into an open discursive arena to keep talking about such issues like ritual killings and the burning, torturing, and even killing of innocent children under the guise of forcing witchcraft confessions out of them.

That some of us don't feel comfortable with such representations does not negate the Nollywood enterprise. Besides, like other film industries that distinguish themselves on particular fixtures, like Hollywood's "nudity, violence, and foul language," Nollywood thrives on its own unique selling point of this "obsession," what I call the 3Ws of Nollywood--women, wealth, and witchcraft.

These industry-specific themes set Nollywood apart from other film industries in the world. They make Nollywood Nollywood. They designate sundry names inferred by their usage: women (female, feminine representations, stereotypes and objectifications, nudity), wealth (luxury, affluence, unrelenting materialism, occult economy), and witchcraft (black magic, juju, voodoo, superstition, supernatural evil, occult, cultism, devilish, spiritualism, mysterious, fetishism, ritual killing).

It's two decades now since the first cultural mediators condemned Nollywood for its "obsession," rather than pay attention to the fact that witchcraft psychology and ritual/occult economy, for example, are pervasive in contemporary Nigerian (and African) society. But one truth remains: Nollywood keeps smiling to the bank with its year-in-and-year-out "obsession." And its Nigerian and growing global audiences are loving it the more for that.

As Femi Shaka aptly captures it: "As self-professed moderns, we may hate the mumble jumble of the native doctor... but the truth of the matter is that they still command the imagination of millions of our compatriots who patronize them daily."