Every night, when I was little, my aunty would gather all the children in the house around the fire that had just been used for cooking diner. I was always sleepy having gulped down several calabashes of water to wash down the balls of banku and spicy hot sauce that almost always accompanied these meals.
When I finally went to bed, I could hardly sleep as the tales my aunty told by the fireside constantly tormented my every imagination. I became afraid of the dark. If you were screaming for help in a room with no lights, you would wait a thousand centuries. I wouldn’t make the trek!.
On the other hand I learnt a great deal from the traditional folk tales that my grandmother would tell when she wasn’t too busy dealing with extended family matters. But, for some reason my aunty found course to often design and infuse folk tales with religious connotations to strike fear in every nerve in me and my siblings. Hence my experiences with most West African folk tales – Adesa (Ga), Anansesem (Akan), Egli (Ewe), Aunty Nancy (Africa-American), Anancy (Jamaican) – have been quite ‘tormenting’. Growing up, I always looked over my shoulders often making sure I was the only one in the room or the only one walking on the dusty isolated footpath to the village well.
I always wondered why my grandmother told tales that taught moral values only, but, my aunty did not – she would embed ghosts and dangerous spirits at every twist and turn in any plot. In fact, when I came to the USA, I watched The Ring and The Exorcist in one night and I went to sleep just fine. Call it training. Nothing scared me anymore and when my friends were shocked, I assured them I have had more than my fair share of scary imaginations.
In the beginning of the Nollywood boom, in the 1990s, many African movies adopted and developed some of these scary Ananse (Akan), Anaanu (Ga), Aye (Ewe) story plots, perhaps, with a new infusion – Christianity. There are many reasons for this addition but the paramount ones cannot be missed. First, Christianity has fast become the West African Religion. The second is a derivation of the first – the rivalry between Traditional West African Religions and Christianity. These two have combined to create good and lucrative drama – Traditional Religion is often depicted as ‘dark’ and evil while Christianity is ‘white’ and good.
In the wake of these plots Nollywood and Ghanaian movies have left indelible marks on African Religions, Culture and African Perspectives around the world. Like my aunty, they have completely turned the traditional folk tale on its head. Why the Protagonist has to always be Christian and more ‘Westernized’ and the Antagonist an ‘Animist’ and more ‘African’ is entirely baffling, but, it is the reality in many African films. Only a few African movies have succeeded with story lines other than Christianity against traditional religion. Notable amongst them have been Beyoncé, Viva Riva, A Screaming Man and such.
But the lure still remains as many filmmakers continue to exploit the church going folk. Often, because the messages in these movies are ones that preach an escape from poverty to riches – from Africa to the West, from Darkness to Light, from Voodoo to Christianity – they have the power to captivate and give hope to the desperate. However they also hold the power to reduce anything African to ‘darkness’.
Stay tuned for Part II and Part III.
Traditional religion is seen in a negative light by a lot of people. Some people won’t watch any movies with magic or witchcraft or anything to do with traditional African religion.
The thing is, I don’t understand why people would think African religion is witchcraft but Christianity is not?
African religion is witchcraft. It’s wrapped in secrecy. Christianity is not! It’s for everybody.
Is that why African religion is ‘witchcraft’ and ‘evil’? Secrecy? Where have you been? You ever been a Roman Catholic? You know what the Lodge is about? I don’t think you understand the issue at stake here.
Ghanaian and Nollywood movies are rife with black magic and superstition. When you watch movies in America about some religious thing, at least it makes sense in the realm of the reigious rules they set up in the movie itself. But in African movies, anything can happen and that’s why people think them ridiculous.
If the African does not know who he is and what his culture is all about and stands for, how can he write and make movies about it?
The majority of Christians in West Africa know more about Jewish History than their own History. They know the color of the shirt some chieftain called ‘King’ Nebuchadnezzar was wearing on some Saturday in the distant past, but they have no idea that Ghana was the name of an ancient West African Empire that ruled most of the world as we know it today.
In order to make good movies that reflect truly on your own culture and history, you first have to know the culture, be immersed in every sinew of it — know it well and thoroughly. You can’t read it from books, especially from books written by people who do not only despise you, but do not want you to know the truth!
Exploitation of the church going folk hmm… that sounds familiar hehe
Oh! Say that again! A.K.A Tyler Perry.
Even when we talk about something else that has o do with Africa, Tyler Perry has to always appear somewhere?
But maybe, you folks would immediately realize that the majority of us black folk like the religious undertones to our stories… we like that, we support that and it shdn’t be a problem.
The thing is when they make their Harry Porter, people flock to it, when they make their Lord of The Rings, people flock to see it — when they make those stupid Vampire/Ware-wolf stuff like Twilight, they have those humongous batch of people following.
But when Africans or the Tyler Perrys make something Christian and black people flock to it, then these so-called ‘liberals’ take offense. It is a double standard I fail to understand.
It’s not about making something Christian or Cult-like, it’s about making good movies. Twilight, Lord Of The Rings and even Avatar are good movies, Madea’s Big Happy Family, Why did I get Married (Too) and those Nollywood flicks are horrible! It is as simple as that?
Movies are supposed to be entertaining. What can be more entertaining than Voodoo against Christianity, Black vs White, evil vs good?
But that is the whole point. It must be entertaining. But even within Christianity, there’s good and evil?
Within African religions, there’s good and evil too! The problem is when African religions is painted as all evil and Christianity as all good.
Exactly the point! And within white people, there are bad ones and good ones, within western culture there are bad things and good thing. Need we say more?
I wonder why the focus has changed from our grandparents generation to our parents generation. It’s still clear when I talk to my grandparents from West Africa that the emphasis on story is more secular than the emphasis I get from my parents generation. It is true that for some reason, the younger generation is constantly critical of West African culture and religion and invest a great deal of effort to painting Christianity as the Savior of Africa.
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