Film is an instrument for expression as well as for recapturing moments that could be reflected upon to help make our existence worth the while. Film may not deal with the totality of representation of life in whole but it achieves that by dealing with slices of life which in its set goals make of the totality of the whole which is our way of living and ways to improve it. This research paper will attempt to look at ways films in Nigeria have failed in representation of our cultural values and this can only be understood when we look at the manner film elements have been manipulated by the Western and European countries to threaten the culture of other countries. How did they achieve that, and why has Nigeria not been able to do same taking into consideration the period filmmaking started in Nigeria?
Countries in Europe and the West including Asian countries have been able to manipulate the positive elements of filmmaking to assess and evaluate their culture and also have succeeded in developing ideologies that have helped in no small measure in making their culture popular. What is Nigeria doing wrong, even though films are made on daily basis and such movies are dominating Africa very fast? What are the cultural values of these movies and how well have they truly represented us as a people?
Ordinarily, many people narrow culture to traditional mode of worship or fetishized lifestyle among a people. That would be seen as a deliberate attempt to narrow culture to one extreme minute aspect of it. People do see culture as a way of life of a people within a society. They develop their cultural values along what can sustain their union as a people as well as survive within that scope.
What is culture? Culture, though a bit complex and difficult in its definition, has to do with humans, their environment and society. The word culture is laced with diverse meaning which of course led to various attempts by many to define it as well as itemizing the components that make up culture.
Let us not forget that the word ‘culture’ comes from the Latin word ‘cultura’, which relates to cult or worship, invariably referring to the result of human interaction.
Culture, however, has been defined in some ways simply, as the manner in which human beings learn, share their behaviour and interact in their communities.
The first definition of culture came from a British anthropologist Edward Taylor in the 19th century and was captured in this manner: “Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”
According to J.P. Lederach, “Culture is the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of people for perceiving, interpreting, expressing, and responding to the social realities around them.”
Culture, going by the various definitions, could make one liken it to the air we breathe. We feel and breathe the air in such manner it has become natural for us to just breathe without considering at every moment we breathe what would have happened if there was no air to inhale or the impact it would have had on us.
Culture can be defined as “all the ways of life including arts, beliefs and institutions of a population that are passed down from generation to generation”. This can be seen in the manner we dress, our language, religion, arts, rituals and so on.
Culture has been categorized into two parts or types. The first is herein referred to or called the “nonmaterial culture”, which includes the values, beliefs, symbols, and language that make up or define a society. The second type is called “material culture”, which is made up of all the physical objects any society would need to survive such as its tools and technology, clothing, eating utensils, and means of transportation.
From the various definitions of culture by different people, we cannot but notice that the study of culture varies between academic disciplines, and sometimes even within them. Theorized research can make the concept of culture go the exact way any scholar wants it to, but bearing in mind that culture is dynamic and therefore must be subjective to clear methods of empirical analysis by researchers which should be evaluated, analyzed and understood by others.
There is the need to have a background to how films in Nigeria have not truly beeen representative of our culture. This will help create a window of perspective from which we may see the missing point when viewed against the backdrop of what culture is and the role played by ideology in the space.
Ideology and culture might want to seem like same coin but on a critical detailed look, it won’t be difficult to notice that they are like two different sides of same coin, conjoined twins with separate minds but have to achieve their varied purposes with an ethical goal. Before we look at these differences it would be essential to look at the definition of ideology to enable us see how it plays a role with culture in unity in diversity. It might be a bit weird to describe ideology as a form of parasite that needs a host to survive, but that is what it is. Ideology needs culture for survival. There must be first a people, their ways of living (which is culture) before ideology which is the human capacity development of how to create rules and acceptable political and sociological mode of peaceful coexistence. Ideology is what differentiates us humans from the lower animals with their diverse communal ways of living together away from each other.
Ideology is a number of organized ideas that deliberately set out to find answers to some or all aspects of reality, accepted values and actions for the attainment of the defined ends.
The term is considered to have been coined by the French thinker Claude Destutt de Tracy during the nineteenth century, in his study of the Enlightenment. For De Tracy, ideology was the science of ideas and their origins.
Definitions:
(1) “Ideology is a cluster of ideas about life, society or government, which originates, in most cases, as consciously advocated dogmatically asserted social, political or religious slogans or battle-cries and which through continuous usage and preachings gradually become the characteristic beliefs or dogmas of a particular group, party, or nationality.” —Richard Snyder and Hubert Wilson
(2) “An ideology is a system of abstract ideas held by an individual (or group) which purports to explain reality, expresses value goals, and contains programmes of action for the rejection or attainment of the kind of social order in which its proponents believe the goals can best be realized.” —Charles P. Schleicher
From the above definitions of culture and ideology, one can liken both to a vehicle (culture) and the driver (ideology). Culture is the way the people with same beliefs come together as a community while ideology is what set in motion the combinations of the two types of culture to enable harmony and development of the people and their ways of live. People in the same society May have same cultural values but divers in ideologies for example, taking Nigeria into cognizance, the last election was driven by varied ideologies even though the actions of that idealism sprouted from the various societies, with varied cultures.
Ideologies can unite people from different cultural backgrounds because of its set goals of “body of ideas concerning economic, social and political values and goals which posit action programmes for attaining these goals”. According to Padelford and Lincoln, ideology does ask “why”, which is what questions the root cause and essence of culture (the value system) and tries to weave a co-existence between the people knowing what binds them together as a unit and how to utilize that knowledge via ideas which later become accepted by a group as their values and beliefs.
Conclusively, ideology is the gravitational force that makes culture rotate in its axis. It is what gives the flavour and spark to human existence, thereby bringing about dynamism in the manner we view our living as humans politically, socially and economically. It is clear that ideology is the voice with which culture is heard. Which means that the expression of culture is ultimately wrapped up in ideology.
How do all these analogous concepts reflect in making us see where filmmakers and the cinemas fail in representing our culture in their films? Within the African space, we know we are different in looks, languages and cultural values which thin away from each other as you move from one society to the other, but in whole, the African beliefs in mode of traditional worship, celebration of birth and death, communal living and so on are similar in appearances. When you place an African alongside others in Europe or Asia, the dissimilarities are evident. Are our films not supposed to be seen from that perspective taking into cognizance the differences in ways of life amongst these people? Are films not supposed to contribute immensely via visuals towards the ideological advancements of our culture? For the sake of this research, let us understand that culture is dynamic and positive towards self and communal development and comparison of African culture to the Western countries and Europe is purely from the perspective of positive attributes of cultural ideologies from proper representation of films and how misrepresentation of same has done the African culture more harm than good. When you look at American films, your eyes are besieged with patriotism stating the importance of their flag and the need to give to their country than what they expect from their country. The question here is, when you watch Nigeria movies, what are the thematic structures that hit your eyes? Religion, rituals, gangsterism and the failures of a political system. Are all these features non-existent in the Western and European countries? Your answer is as good as mine. They exist. What is the difference between their films and ours? They deliberately pursue an ideology of positivism, patriotism and how to conquer the world while ours deal with using humans for rituals to create wealth and be successful, relying on religion as the only tool to solve otherwise marked challenges considered unconquerable except via prayers, fasting, holy water and anointing oil. This ideology has turned the direction of our culture towards relying on religion to solve our problems, while a short-cut is human sacrifice. This has become popular culture in Africa because our films made it so instead of consciously dealing with productivity, positivism and patriotism.
The first film shot in Nigeria in 1926, “PALAVA”, directed by Geoffrey Barkas is quick to be referenced when we want to beat our chest in terms of film development. How has this history and the Colonial Film Unit impacted on our film culture towards development of African culture? This answer in in the negative as the films made in Nigeria only created a culture of supremacy of the western religion over the African religion, supremacy of the whites over the blacks. They made films in Africa to further convince their white community of their superiority over the stupidity of the black people. Unfortunately, Nigeria has all the training in all aspects of filmmaking, but centuries of in-built white supremacy in all aspects we believe in as African people rubs on our culture and cultural ideologies. Our films misrepresent our true identity, our true strength and creativity, our technology and intelligence but only what the westerners told us of who we are, our beliefs as fetish, our attributes as weakness and our way out of every quagmire through western religion.
African films are dominated by Nigeria films and creating a negative up growth of African culture via films in what is considered entertainment and creative licence rather than a deliberate consciousness towards using the tools of filmmaking to question our culture, our ideology towards culture and direct Africans towards self-esteem, self-expression, beauty of our creativity in food, clothing, architecture, and love for ourselves and our country. The misrepresentations are seen in the various film genres in Nigeria from contemporary to epic movies. We see our technology as inferior to that of the western and European.
The movie “Living in Bondage”, a commercially successful movie in Nigeria and embraced in Africa, is one amongst many which misrepresented the African culture and created an identity which Africans and non-Africans have embraced as true reflection of who we are.
An article by Onu Stephen published in Premium Times on April 22, 2022 said, “There have been growing concerns over the involvement of young Nigerians in ritual killings in the last four months with many blaming Nollywood for the menace of money ritual. Concerned about the ugly trend, on February 9, the House of Representatives resolved to declare a national emergency on ritual killings in Nigeria. The House noted that while citizens of other countries are embracing science and technology, Nigerian youths are turning to ritual killings. Similarly, in February, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, directed the National Film and Video Censorship Board (NFVCB), to censor Nollywood movies to eschew money ritual content.”
Conclusion
Film is a strong tool that can change people’s perceptions of life and acceptance of their environments and values. Colonialism was structured on this premise and the Europeans achieved their purpose. Film is beyond just entertainment only. It is psychologically made to deliberately tailor people’s beliefs and via proven information that can educate the people’s minds towards its objectives. Culture does not exist in isolation and so is its ideology. For people to exist freely, become inventive and develop beyond measures, a deliberate effort must be infused to challenge man’s thoughts and sensibilities, and this the film can effectively do.
Today, Africans have changed their beliefs system from food, dressing, speech, teaching methods, etc to suit the western and European cultures because of their perceived superiority over our own culture. Nigeria is carrying over this in their movies to further make their culture acceptable than the African culture in movies. The cinema is just a vehicle to distribute these misrepresentations to the diverse heterogeneous population and not to change it. The cinema before now only showed western and European movies where white supremacy dominate in all their movies. Film is a strong institution of change and if well utilize deliberately to develop the African culture and its ideology, what we hitherto condemn from the western and European perspectives would be seen holistically from it’s beneficiary standpoints to the African people. If there is any FORM that can take any community or society to the dark ages faster, it is film as it uses entertainment as a medium to capture the mind, inform and educate it to suit its purposes.
