CrossCurrents. 2020. 70 (3): 206-219
"Since the inception of cinema, religion has constituted an essential element of screen images. With the production of its inaugural film, Living in Bondage (1992), Nollywood —the cinema of Nigeria and the world’s second largest film industry—established itself within cinema’s tradition of enchanting the world. The supernatural (often explored in Nollywood films through the occult and witchcraft) has remained one of its staple genres and distinctive features, a hallmark that speaks to the quotidian beliefs of African Christians who navigate their everyday interactions in a milieu where religion not only permeates the daily social life but also the economics and politics of the continent. It constitutes a key factor for plumbing Nollywood’s constructions of popular religion or the understanding of religion in public space, given how Nollywood films position the occult as the force against which different religious traditions (Christianity vs. African Traditional Religions) and denominations (Pentecostalism vs. Catholicism) battle one another for supremacy. Nigeria, which accounts for about a fifth of Africa’s population and a sixth of its Christian population, presents a significant site for the interrogation of religion. ... At the core of its message, Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity in Nigeria posits a world entangled in a perpetual struggle between the forces of good (as established by the Christian God) and the powers of darkness.
Operating within a southern Nigeria steeped in a Pentecostal-charismatic outlook, Nollywood has remained the foremost site for the production and counter-production of religion in popular culture, constituting the occult as a central element in the discourse of public religion in Nigeria. The enduring images of the occult that it reinforces incessantly make their way back into Christian prayers, rituals, spaces, and discourses, as Christians devote unwholesome amounts of time to discussing the occult, praying against (“casting and binding”) it, and invoking God’s destructive power over its witchcraft manifestations. Drawing from one of Nollywood’s classic witchcraft films, End of the Wicked (1999), this article argues that, by producing innumerable such movies that constantly reiterate the power and dangers of the occult as well as its anti-Christian values, Nollywood inadvertently makes the occult mainstream in popular religion and sustains it as a potent component of public religious consciousness and imaginary.
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