Someone sent me the message below this morning, bemoaning what he called the "perpetuat[ion of] primitive stereotype by Nollywood.
"Dear Sir,
I would like to make a comment on a new movie going
round in Nollywood. Please permit me a space to make this short commentary on
the new Nollywood movie, "Nkoli Nwa Nsukka":
I am from Nsukka and I speak from a deep-seated
cultural resentment: There is a very disturbing movie going round "Nkoli
Nwa Nsukka". Most of us think it is a comedy or even a slapstick!
Yet, intelligent ones would easily recognize this
brutal attempt to dehumanize and perpetuate primitive stereotype of Nsukka
people by way of comic parody and cultural travesty. I find it disturbing,
disgusting and in the least unpalatable that even some Nksa people are
re-posting this charade instead of challenging this assumption.
There has always been this historical need to look
down on people from Nsukka as the least or among the least civilized or
cultured people of Igbo Land. Our people have continued to perpetuate this
stereotype by trying to speak central Igbo even at Ashua Og’ge Nska.
Now, Agbaelu people have succeeded to immortalize this
stereotype as the true image of our people, hence, “Nwa Nsukka” is synonymous
with an “uncivilized” people.
As a true Nsukka person, I do not find it funny: is this a new trend in Nolly culture? It is very unpalatable and extreme abuse of my sensibilities ... that is all!"
As a true Nsukka person, I do not find it funny: is this a new trend in Nolly culture? It is very unpalatable and extreme abuse of my sensibilities ... that is all!"
Here's hoping that the above concern will elicit some discussions to engage this and other issues portrayed in Nollywood movies.
Hmmmmmmm, so sorry bros.I dont really think it was just to 'stereotype' people from Nsukka.I have seen other nollywood movie titles like 'Ada Abakaliki and Ada Mbano',the later being the first of what you referred to as 'stereotype'. I think its just a problem of the movie producers not being creative,but resort to copy other people's creativity. I saw just a clip of that 'Nkoli,Nwa Nsukka' and i found it exaggerated, because the everyday Nsukka woman is no where near that 'boldness and wild-ness' i saw in Nkoli.I preferred that of 'Ada Mbano'. So please, 'coolu temper' in flavours voice and console yourself that the producer is out of this planet to have thought of such a story to portray the people of 'Nsukka'. It may be fictious but most times,the movie stories are based on true life stories or rather a make believe and this one was no way near it.
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ReplyDeleteIf only in eliciting the above reaction from the writer, the movie could be said to have succeeded! if not for any other thing, it has brought a concern of one Nsukka person to the fore. I wish more people would have engaged his concerns and questions. Nollywood is a producer of (popular) culture and it does that by exaggerating particular idiosyncrasies of the cultures it portrays. It exaggerates for effects. Nollywood audience knows that "Nkoli Nwa Nsukka" is a parody. Parodies are a genre with deliberate or even elaborate exaggeration for comic effect. I doubt if the producer set out to riddicule Ndi Nska. The movie could have actually been pointing to how far the Igbo people have come in their encounter and interaction with modernity. The one thing it does is to localize the trajectory of this encounter among the Nsukka people, like another producer did with the homongously [pardon my adverb] popular "Ada Mbano." Notwithstanding the essentializing and localizing these stereotypes, the popularity of "Nkoli Nwa Nsukka" could be attested to from its multiple episodes, "parts," as Nollywood entitles them. It has more than twenty parts, each with an average of more than a hundred thousand views on YouTube. To be sure, some parts have as much as three hundred thousand plus views. Nevertheless, beyond my submissions here, which in no way trivializes the concerns of my very erudite reader who raised the question (yes, I know who he is) one of the questions one should be asking is "where does Nollywood stand in the general scheme of cultural production in today's Nigeria and how do the peoples of Nigeria (as well as Africa and its diaspora) interact and engage with its contents?"
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