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Opposition as Counter-Terrorism in an Unjust Leadership: Lessons from “The Tyrant” (1998). https://doi.org/10.31920/2516-2713/2019/2n1a1
Gloria Chimeziem Ernest-Samuel9
The majority of African nations are battling with gross violation of human and civil rights. African leaders provided with the constitutional rights to govern these nations assume absolute powers which endanger the citizens and violate the constitution of the nations, thus violating the rights of the citizens. Using Mac Collins Chidebe’s movie titled, The Tyrant as a case study, this paper makes two arguments: one, that tyranny and unjust leadership in Africa, particularly as witnessed in military and unjust democratic administrations is terrorism, providing reasons why tyranny should be considered as terrorism. Two, that opposition is the only means of countering such terrorism. The paper adopts a content analysis method in its analytical discourse and argument, using the film narrative. It adopts John Locke social contract theory in its analysis and interpretation of such development in examining the relationship between citizens and the state; and the significance of social contract and constitutions in leadership of nations. It thus recommends a resort to opposition as a strategy for countering such unjust leaderships.
The Nigerian film industry, more popularly known as Nollywood, is replete with movies which depict the African traditional religion as evil and backward. The Yoruba Ifa corpus has repeatedly been a victim of this malaise, as it is almost always used to depict evil or inexplicable negative magic at its best. It is observed that most Nollywood movies fail to explore the endless divine wisdom embedded in the Yoruba Ifa and traditional folklore to communicate positive values. In this sea of controversial films, Tunde Kelani’s Agogo Eewo is one of the very few films which stand out, appropriately employing Yoruba folklore and projecting the Yoruba Ifa Corpus in its true light. This study demystifies the ancient wisdom in the Yoruba folklore, and the esoteric qualities of the narratives in the Ifa verses used in Agogo Eewo. The study finds that the Yoruba folkloric system as projected in the film is an embodiment of knowledge, wisdom, philosophies and divine messages, capable of providing national caution and proffering lasting solutions to the various socio-cultural, economic and political calamities which have besieged Nigeria as a nation. The study recommends, as exemplified by Tunde Kelani, the exploration of the enormous potentials of the Yoruba folkloric arts for the development, sustenance, and promotion of authentic African cultural value system in Nollywood films.
The Nigerian film industry has gone a long way since its beginnings in the early 1990s, improving technically, widening the array of themes treated and moving from local productions to coproductions that opened Nigeria to the international scene. Yet, all along, these films, described as a mix of education and entertainment, have kept to the didactic bent which made their success and which endeared them to their Nigerian audiences. This didactic heritage of Nigerian films will be considered here in the film Ije the Journey (2010), a 35mm film on the theme of rape and domestic violence in the context of migration.
The film The Forgotten Kingdom (TFK) exploits the relationship between geographical, and human environments of urban and rural spaces in Lesotho and South Africa to depict social realities of the people occupying these spaces. The depiction is mediated by the filmmaker’s gaze which is in turn influenced by cultural references which frame his understanding of the world observed. The story of the film unfolds through the experiences of the protagonist, a young Mosotho man who migrated to South Africa and returns to the native land to bury his father, also a migrant in South Africa. The protagonist’s outsider-perspective is framed by the filmmaker. It is an outsider perspective to the cultural group being explored. The film is inherently an intercultural encounter inextricably linked to processes of othering. Through the concept of othering/otherness, this work analyses the layers of meaning conveyed by the filmmaker as he discovers and interprets the lives of Basotho and South Africans. The analysis bears in mind that the primary audience of the film is the American viewership. The paper explores the possible influences of an audience-centered perspective on the content and the messages of the film.
Nigeria, today, has the second largest film industry in the world after the Indian Bollywood. A contestable statistic describes the industry, tagged Nollywood, as the second major employer after Agriculture. Many critics, however, argue that the name, which is still less than 30 years old, lumps together several distinct, independent and burgeoning film industries within the country’s North and South regions. Kannywood, the Hausa cinema in the North, produces movies in a mostly different language, culture, mode and focus from its southern counterparts. Notwithstanding, Kannywood remains in the footnote in the realm of Nigerian films while its personnel struggle is with a series of controversies surrounding socio-cultural and ethnoreligious issues. This paper, therefore, intends to explore this debate. It shall also proffer recommendations for a possible revaluation and expansion of the embattled, marginalised industry.
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