Of Religion, Theodicy, and Monsters

"Like his far more eloquent counterpart in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, [James] Whale's god-forsaken, posthumous [1935 movie The Bride of Frankenstein] monster is something of a theologian. Not a theologian with all the answers but one who raises profound questions, questions that survive their answers. By playing God, does one inadvertently end up playing monster? Who is more monstrous, the creatures who must live through this vale of tears, or the creator who put them here? What does it mean to be 'monstrous' anyway? Are we not all rendered monstrous under God? Is our monstrosity in the image of God? Where is God in all this?
          Very quickly we find ourselves in deeply unsettling theological territory, a territory traditionally called theodicy. Theodicy concerns divine justice in the face of unjustifiable suffering. Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer? In a world such as ours, how can we possibly conceive of a just God? Indeed, Shelley's novel begins with an epigraph from the quintessential English theodicy, Paradise Lost by John Milton, whose explicit although inevitably unrealized aim is to 'justify the ways of God to men.' Shelley's epigraph draws us to the theodic question, which echoes far beyond any answer, and which will be posed again and again by the monster to Victor Frankenstein throughout the novel:

          Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
          To mold Me man, Did I solicit thee
          From darkness to promote me?
                                                         --Paradise Lost X.743-5

The voice of the monster is the audacious voice of theodicy. It is addressed not only to the creator Frankenstein but also to the creator God. Why did you make me? Why did you put me here? What were you thinking? What kind of a world is this? What kind of divine justice is this? What kind of God are you? The monster in Shelley's novel, as in Whale's movie, stands for these questions and terrifying religious uncertainties. His questions pry at cracks in the world's foundations that open onto abysses of unknowing."

Timothy K. Beal, 2002, 3

Religion and its Monsters

Of Monsters and Contemporary Cultures

"Contemporary cultural interest in monsters is still very strong. ... Monsters of demonic possession are imaginative expressions of ... loss of control. The specific face of the monsters will vary from culture to culture, but the universal dimension seems undeniable."

Stephen T. Asma, 2009, 279, 284

On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears

Africa: A People Imprisoned By Its Religion

Of African Female Filmmakers

Hermon Hailay, dir. Price of Love (2015)

"Traditionally denied access to the medium of film, African women have been increasingly taking control of the camera in recent years. Female video makers are exploring cultural conventions and innovative strategies that challenge Eurocentric and male chauvinistic assumptions/readings of black female subjectivity. One of the most innovative video-films by an African woman that emerged from this practice is Veronica Quashie's Twin Lovers (Ghana, 1996). The film is about the consequences of urban life, the lure of the city, promiscuity among young people, and the menace of of 'sugar daddies.' The film revolves around the central character Juliet, who at about the age of 22 is still a virgin until she meets Kobbie - not by choice, but in the company of socializing friends. Her friend Doreen slips a narcotic into her drink making it possible for Kobbie to lure her home to be raped. Kobbie is a rich engineer and, as a notorious Casanova, he uses his charm and other dubious tactics including intimidation and deceit to achieve his goal. As a village girl, Juliet is pure, but the city full of vices, to which she went for education, destroys her ambitions. Now pregnant, she is terrified that her father will kill her if she fails to perform puberty rite, a ritual of honor that makes parents proud. In tranquil villages where tradition is upheld, sex and pregnancy before marriage are abhorred. Here, the film reminds us that villages are where cultures and traditions are preserved in modern Africa, while the city is a confluence of foreign influences. This emphasis on purity and culture also explains why in those days in Africa, civil servants who lived in the cities would go home to their respective villages to marry, ignoring the young city women, who were thought to be contaminated."

Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, 2003, 130

"Video Booms and the Manifestations of 'First' Cinema in Anglophone Africa,"

in Rethinking Third Cinema, ed. Anthony R. Guneratne and Wimal Dissanayake

Dear God: A Child Writes

Sarra Lou Comandante

Nollywood is Too Big to Ever Die

"Nollywood is too big to ever die: it is the third [now second] largest film industry in the world, as we
like to keep repeating, and it will eventually be seen as one of the world's major film cultures. The story of its beginnings ought to be told with an appropriate level of depth, detail, and accuracy. One hopes that Nollywood will evolve into dazzling glory impossible to imagine at present, but the remarkable extent to which it holds on to and repeats themes, stories, and aesthetics suggests that a lot that will remain fundamental was laid down at or near the very beginning, that some of the early works will remain as classics, and that whatever the future of film in Nigeria turns out to be, it will be recognizable as an extension of what has already been created. To an extraordinary degree, [Kenneth] Nnebue's Living in Bondage (1992), the film that started the Nigerian video boom, contains the seeds of almost everything that followed."

Jonathan Haynes, 2010, 15

"What Is to Be Done?: Film Studies and Nigerian and Ghanaian Videos,"

in Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-first Century: Art Films and the 

Nollywood Video Revolution, ed. Mahir Saul and Ralph A. Austen

Bonang Matheba: "Bury Them With Success"

The Husband and Wife "Jesus Industry"

Nkem Owoh, Osuofia, and Nollywood

In Memoriam: Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike

Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike (1950 - 2018)
-Professor of communication and Africana studies
-Scholar of cinema and film history, African cinema, film and media of the African diaspora
-Author of Black African Cinema (1994), Questioning African Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers (2002), African Cinema: Narratives, Perspectives and Poetics (2014), and Critical Approaches to African Cinema Discourse (2014)

Of Popular Memory and Official History

Teshome H. Gabriel (Dan Chavkin / UCLA)

"Once memory enters into our consciousness, it is hard to circumvent, harder to stop, and impossible
to run from. It burns and glows from inside, causing anguish, new dreams and newer hopes. Memory does something else beside telling us how we got here from there: it reminds us of the causes of difference between popular memory and official versions of history.

Official history tends to arrest the future by means of the past. Historians privilege the written word of the text -- it serves as their rule of law. It claims a 'centre' which continuously marginalises others. In this way its ideology inhibits people from constructing their own history or histories.

Popular memory, on the other hand, considers the past as a political issue. It orders the past not only as a reference point but also as a theme of struggle. For popular memory, there are no longer any 'centres' or 'margins', since the very designations imply that something has been conveniently left out. Popular memory, then, is neither a retreat to some great tradition nor a flight to some imagines 'ivory tower', neither a self-indulgent escapism nor a desire for the actual 'experience' or 'content' of the past for its own sake. Rather, it is a 'look back to the future', necessarily dissident and partisan, wedded to constant change."

Teshome H. Gabriel, 1989, 53-54

"Third Cinema as Guardian of Popular Memory: Towards a Third Aesthetics"

In Questions of Third Cinema, ed. Jim Pines and Paul Willemen

How Religion Undermines Nigeria's Development

(By Okenyi Kenechi) – I have never seen a dilapidated church. I have seen hundreds of dilapidated schools.

In my home town, the schools are rotting away while church buildings are growing bigger. No industries, just churches.

I once told someone that if the churches in Port Harcourt were to be transformed into industries, unemployment will vanish within one year and crime will be brought to a screeching halt. He agreed. 

Truth is, if a politician asks a certain village what they will prefer to be built for them, chances that they will chose a church will be higher.

Doubt me? Gitto in a bid to show appreciation to former president Goodluck Jonathan, asked him to chose one thing they will build for his village people and he chose a church. I don't know if there are world class hospitals in Otuoke or standard schools but he chose a church.

Of Nnewi and a Resourceful Igbo Town

(By Eromo Egbejule) – The Small Town Of The Super Rich 

Shortly before Nigeria’s independence in 1960, Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, reportedly Nigeria’s first black billionaire, and founding president of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. The royal honor came after he helped the British during World War II with his fleet of trucks. He was so wealthy that during the Queen’s visit in 1956, she was chauffeured around in his Rolls-Royce – apparently the only one in the country at the time – on the request of the colonial administration.

Profiled in September 1965 by TIME magazine, Ojukwu made his money by importing dried fish for resale, and diversifying into textiles, cement and transport. When he died a year later, his wealth was an estimated $4 billion in today’s economic value.

His son, Chukwuemeka, who also ended up a billionaire, returned from Oxford University at 22 with a master’s degree in history and led his fellow Igbos into the Nigerian civil war as head of the secessionist state of Biafra in 1967.

Nnewi, Nkwo Market, and Biafran War

(By Azuka Onwuka) – How the Civil War aided Nnewi’s Industrial Transformation 

Before the 1966 pogrom against the Igbo and indigenes of the former Eastern Nigeria, Nnewi in Anambra State was under the shadow of Onitsha. The markets in Nnewi were like the typical Igbo markets that were in session every four days, depending on which name each market bore. The Nkwo Market, which was situated at the centre of the town, was in full session every Nkwo day, even though some isolated traders could sell some petty things, especially food items, on other days. Anybody who wanted to buy anything of substance went to Onitsha, some 20 kilometres away.

On religious matters, the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church (the two big churches in Nnewi) had their diocesan headquarters in Onitsha. So, the bishops resided in Onitsha and were seen occasionally in Nnewi. To travel to any part of Nigeria from Nnewi, one had to get to Onitsha first. If the trip was to the North or West, one had to cross over by boat to Asaba (before the construction of the Niger Bridge in 1965). But after the bridge was constructed, Onitsha became the connecting city to other parts of Nigeria for most towns and villages in the current Anambra State.

Ghana, Fufu, and Ebunuebunu Soup

Ariel Lee

(By Ayesha Harruna Attah) - Slow-Cooking History 

Fufu is boiled green plantains and cassava, pounded in a wooden mortar to a distinct pum-pum-pum beat. Fufu, the way I like it, comes out a warm yellow, with specks of black from the plantain seeds. But fufu on its own is bland. Fufu is both food and utensil, and strong enough to scoop up soup. Ghanaians eat it with palm soup, groundnut soup, a tomato soup called light soup or ebunuebunu, green soup. Adventurous eaters go for a combination of all four, known as nkatenkontobenkwan. But I am a purist. Ebunuebunu is my favorite.

Fufu originated among the Akan, the ethnic group that includes the Ashanti, Akwapim and Fanti people of what is today southern Ghana and Ivory Coast. It journeyed across West Africa as foofoo, foufou or foutou, and sailed across the Atlantic in the hearts of the people who were uprooted and enslaved, even keeping its name in Cuba. Of ebunuebunu, however, I am hard pressed to find derivatives. Its ingredients are the leaf of the cocoyam plant; dried mudfish, tilapia or other river fish; mushrooms; snails; onions; ginger; garlic; and sometimes grasscutter, the cane rat, which my mother says “adds gamy flavor for those who like it.” The ingredients are slow-cooked until they coalesce into a forest-green broth that looks like witches’ brew and tastes like smoke and earth, with a wholesomeness that lingers on the tongue.