NIGERIAN SCIENTIST WINS NOBEL PRIZE IN MEDICINE

THE GATHERING DUST: AMATORITSERO EDE AND THE NOLLYWOOD DEFAMATION SAGA PART 1

Amtoritsero Ede challenged me on my critique of the defamatory book on Nollywood in the production of  which Chris Abani.Zani-Saro Wiwa and photographer Pieter Hugo were key players.This is my response to his challenge which he presented on the group krazitivity.Amatsoritsero does not want his mails  from a particular group reproduced on groups different from where he originally posted them so I will quote and paraphrase him.I will present his rejoinder to this mail of mine and my own countering of that in the second part of this report.

The highlighted text constitute links to the TIME magazine photoessay on the book,the description of the book from the page of its publishers,Prestel International and the provision of an expanded set of images as well as an essay from the book at the website of the book's photographer Pieter Hugo.I am pointing this out beceause Amatsoritsero eventually argues that in my first essay on this book I presented only information from TIME magazine,a secondary source,omitting the fact that I also presented a link to the book's description on its publishers website.Here,I am adding a link to the images and text from the photographer's website as well.The information provided by the photographer and the publisher are primary sources beceause they represent the accounts of the book by those who created and are marketing it using online media.The publisher goes ahead to provide on one  of its pages on the book a link to the TIME photo essay,thereby justifying the photo essay from the magazine as a faithful representation   of the book's contents.This page from the publisher that gives the TIME link can be reached here .

Amatsoritsero,

In your last post on this issue which I have read on krazitivity, you mentioned something about my critique of the defamatory images on Nollywood as being  decontextualised. In the light of the point you have raised about contextualisation, and since you are keen that the various parties in the debate should engage with each other’s responses by permitting me to post material from WSS to krazitivity,I will post your judgement on this issue from krazitivity on this listerve and post this exchange between us on krazitivity.Since you are the moderator of krazitivity,it is up to you to decide if my post will be allowed to appear on krazitivity.
The focus of this judgement of yours is that my posting the critique  of the images from TIME which can be seen at  Nollywood book  and from the publishers which are at PrestelNollywood and from  Amazon about the Abani,Zani Saro-Wiwa book was that my posting was decontextualised.What preciesly do you mean here by that term "decontextualised"? You try to provide an interpretation of that in the following lines. The emphases are mine:

"When your post on nollywood came in it was decontextualised - in sense that we do not know its author, the circumstances of it production, beyond the content.

I sent the post in under my name.I did not attribute it to anyone else.I would expect anyone who is quoting material from a source different from their own  writing, must, ideally, indicate the source, a practice I have always followed. If  you have any proof that I have not always done that, please let us see it. In the light of those considerations, I cannot see why you assert that the author of the essay is unknown.

You also mentioned what you describe as the mystery of the circumstances of the  production of the essay.I will not pretend to grasp the logic of that. What mystery? I am responding to publicly available information which I  consider to be false and defamatory.I state at length why I consider the perspective the images and their accompanying texts,and by implication,the book,they come from,represent a false depiction of Nollywood by analysing all the images,except one, and their accompanying captions, in relation to my knowledge of Nollywood and the Nigerian imagination,which the images and text purport to characterise.

Is there a mystery there?

You further clarify the issue  of decontextualisation:

"We have not read the book on Nollywood itself as someone pointed out here. In short your original email on the matter was decontextualised, as such the responses to it are also decontextualised. Debate descend then to raw emotions. What you managed to achieve was whip up emotions and we cannot see this matter objectively as yet".

I made it clear in the essay that TIME presented its images as summative of the book, even though the images TIME presented are not the only ones in the book. TIME did this by describing the photographer’s approach to creating those images  as one of staging scenarios  that evoke the central aesthetic of Nollywood and key symbols of the Nigerian imagination, as distilled from what the book description at the publisher’s page describes as central foci of Nigerian experience, in which AIDS,violence and economic hardship are described as prominent.

I provided a link to the TIME photo essay and the book description on the publisher’s page that showed that the images and accompanying text sum up the thrust of the book. A contributor at WSS has gone further to provide a link to the section of the photographer’s website on the book: HugoNollywood, which verifies this assertion, since it contains even more images from the book , which, with the exception of two ,are in the same vein as the ones I described as false descriptions of Nollywood.

You continue on the subject of contextualisation and go further into issues of just representation:

"I am not saying the authors are right or wrong. But even in a law court an accused is innocent until proven guilty. And in cases where careers, public image, are involved, you need to be contextualise what you post - especially when the those concerned are not members of the one thousand forums where you send such posts.


How is abani, the Wiwa lady, or the any one else involved supposed to respond to fora where they are not members."

The central point you seem to be making here is that it is not fair to post a criticism of the book by Abani,Zina Saro-Wiwa and Hugo on public fora to which they do not belong because they have no chance to defend themselves in those fora. The glaring problem with your argument is that we are not talking here about a "private conversation", about a domestic issue, about a non-public affair, but about a PUBLISHED, PUBLICLY DISTRIBUTED  BOOK  and  a  PHOTO-ESSAY THAT SUMS UP THE BOOK IN ONE OF THE WORLD'S BEST CIRCULATED MAGAZINES,TIME MAGAZINE, available online and in print. The fact of publication of this book,and the further publicity given it by TIME,implies that the work of Abani,Zina Saro-Wiwa and Hugo on Nollywood will be discussed in fora all over he world to which the creators of the book  cannot possibly belong. Such scope of dissemination is the purpose of publishing in the first place, a purpose reinforced by the books contents being available in at least four  media: online and in print, in words and pictures, and in a number of formats: the online and print format of TIME, Hugo's website pages page on the book and the online  publisher’s page on the book and the print format of the book.

In the light of that consideration about scope of dissemination which is the goal of the creators of the book in the first place, I cant see why you should argue that posting comments on the book in a few online fora,which are, moreover,  centred on a relatively small demographic in relation to the global and temporal possibilities of the book and its multiplicity of presentation formats, represents unjust presentation of the authors.

I will go ahead and send all comments from various groups on this subject to krazitivity and WSS .Whether you choose to let this appear on krazitivity  is again up to you as krazivity moderator.

Also,you tried to indicate a circumscription of krazitivity content and suggested my being out of place there by stating that:

“While krazitivity should be open to all kinds of discourse, it is mainly a writers group meant for literary discussions and the workshopping of our writings. I have not read any literary posts from the material you have being placing here, which are originally generated elsewhere.

 How did you come to the  conclusion that my posts are “generated elsewhere”? On the purpose of krazitivity, you have left out the following from the krazitivity house rules online, the very first assertion about the purpose of the group,which is most pertinent to the current debate which describes krazitivity as a forum for "writers,artists and thinkers of Nigerian affiliation" to explore issues related to Africa's relationship with the world. :

There is no statement in the entirety of the krazivity house rules that the group is  “mainly a writers group meant for literary discussions and the workshopping of our writings” as you assert in yourjudgement.If I am mistaken please point us to the relevant link to educate us.

Why are you insisting on fighting this battle with the weak weapons you have invoked? Why are you fighting  on behalf of people who have thrown down the gauntlet globally by their actions? With the kind of weak, easily punctured arguments you are invoking, the sharp difference in tone between this summary judgement of yours which seeks to discredit the justified criticism of the false images of Nollywood and Nigeria represented by increasingly  now infamous book on Nollywood and your earlier responses on this debate,your efforts to prevent krazivity from receiving my posts which I normally post simultaneously to various groups at the same time, with your permission to include krazitivity, one needs to question why? Why the eagerness to rebrand krazitivity in defiance of its description in its own house rules, publicly available online, and thereby discredit my presence in the group? You might want to step back and re-examine the dangers to your own  reputation and career from the precipitate manner you are handling this issue.

I see that Chris Abani,whom you describe as being on krazitivity, has not responded to the criticism of the book the publishers credit him as taking part in  creating. Even if he did not get the input from the various online fora where people are responding to the book, at least he has seen the initial critique I posted on krazitivity and the responses of group members there to the images and text from the book he collaborated on.Is that not enough for him to respond to? He would also need to join WSS and other groups for them to read his response, unless he gets someone to courier his response to those groups.

Other posts on this subject from Amatoritsero show him urging me to post the responses to my critique of the defamtory Nollywood book from the Wole Soyinka Society to krazivity,where Abani is a member so that Abani can respond.When he does not get a quick message from me he threatens that if if fail to comply I will not be permitted to post anything from other sources to krazitivity.Here is my response.

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I have not posted  the rejoinders because I was waiting for a your response to a question I asked you when you asked me to post the responses from Wole Soyinka Society to Krazitivity.I reproduce the mail below:

from toyin adepoju <toyin.adepoju@googlemail.com> to WoleSoyinkaSociety@yahoogroups.com date 5 October 2009 01:02 subject Re: [WoleSoyinkaSociety] Burn Hollywood Burn mailed-by googlemail.com

hide details 5 Oct (2 days ago)

thanks amatoritsero.what do you think  about also posting rejoinders on this topic from other listserves  on krazitivity?the other responses are also   quite rich


I have checked my mail to see if this question of mine reached the WSS group.I cant see it right now so I wonder if it did.

Secondly,in response to your question from your WSS mail of 10/05.09 which can be seen below,that:

"why are you refusing to post the responses on the above matter to krazitivity as is your wont on all other matters?"

I would remind you that I dont post responses to issues I raise to krazitivity beceause you have explicitly instructed me on the krazitivity listserve,which you moderate,that I should not do so.I can produce the mail where you stated that.You permitted me to post only my original posts to krazitivity but not to include the responses and I have done exactly that.You stated that you want to keep krazitivity as a "private conversation"-in your own words. So it is not true,as you state in your mail,that  I post responses on issues to krazitivity.If you have examples of that you should let us see them.

TREACHERY ON A STAGE OF LIES:CHRIS ABANI,ZINA SARO-WIWA,COLLABORATE WITH PRESTEL PUBLISHING, PHOTOGRAPHER PIETER HUGO AND TIME MAGAZINE TO DENIGRATE AND FALSIFY NOLLYWOOD AND NIGERIA

Chris Abani,Zina Saro-Wiwa and photographer Pieter Hugo collaborate in an evil and untruthful book about Nollywood that depicts Nollywood as a house of horrors,reflecting the dysfunctional and crisis ridden social existence that they see as dominating the Nigerian imagination.

The photographer staged scenarios,which according to TIME magazine which presented an uncritical photo essay of the book,and Prestel International the publisher,are representative of the symbols and central aesthetic of Nollywood.Chris Abani is described as providing the text and Zani Saro-Wiwa,Saro-Wiwa's daughter,as writing an essay in the book on what Nollywood means to Nigerians.

These staged scenarios that are described as emblematising Nollywood's recurrent symbols and motifs,as embodying its central aesthetic,are all images of horror.The accompanying captions,most likely from the book,describe the industry as feeding on pain,as creating and disseminating images of the suffering that engulfs the entire society.The limited budgets and short time frame in which Nollywood production often takes place are also highlighted but little  reference is made in the captions to the creativity of the filmmakers,to their creation of an entire industry out of almost nothing in the name of a support structure,moving on to becoming  the world's third largest film industry.

Abani and Zina Saro-Wiwa are Africans and, I expect, both Nigerians.They should know better than to collaborate on a project that presents a reality of African life in an untruthful manner.The Black people who allowed themselves to be photographed in such gory compositions are also responsible for participating in yet another falsely denigrative discourse about Black people.These images are not representative of Nollywood film.If anybody thinks otherwise I would like them to prove it to me with a brief survey of Nollywood film from the earliest time to the present.

I cannot post the images here even though someone else has already done so.They are too horrible,involving children,adults, animals and semi-clothed women in tragic circumstances,depicted in terms of appearances and image compositions that are  even worse than those that came out of the Nazi concentration camps after World War 2,where the Nazis  worked hard for years to dehumanise and exterminate Jews .

The images are here at this link to TIME

This is the  link to the  Prestel page on the book

Another Prestel link to the book,linking the book to the TIME photoessay.http://prestel.txt.de/
 

The link to photographer Pieter Hugo's pages on the book:

http://www.pieterhugo.com/selected-work/nollywood/nollywoodescort.jpg/

The highlighted text constitute links to the TIME magazine photoessay on the book,the description of the book from the page of its publishers,Prestel International and the provision of an expanded set of images as well as an essay from the book at the website of the book's photographer Pieter Hugo.I am adding a link to the images and text from the photographer's website as well.The information provided by the photographer and the publisher are primary sources beceause they represent the accounts of the book by those who created and are marketing it using online media.The publisher goes ahead to provide on one  of its pages on the book a link to the TIME photo essay,thereby justifying the photo essay from the magazine as a faithful representation   of the book's contents.


Ridiculously false captions from the photo essay:

"The narratives are almost always overdramatic, with no happy endings".

This statement about few or no happy endings in Nollywood films is a  complete lie.I dont know enough to comment on the issue of melodrama.

This  caption quoted above is placed under a particularly depressing image that evokes not only a most unglorious image of a family,it depicts the family group of a man a woman and a  small child in terms of the kind of images reserved for  depicting zombies  in  films,wearing clothes that seem to be decaying from long burial under the earth,covered in mould,with their entire bodies covered  in a terrible, dull whitish matter as they stand listlessly against an ugly unplastered  and unpainted  brick wall with the small child sitting on one of the dreary looking drums that dominates the foreground.I find it difficult to evoke the sense of gloom,decay and despair embodied by this image.Only God knows where on earth such a conception of this image as representative of Nollywood  comes from.

"The production companies have extremely limited budgets and only the most basic scripts".

The second part of this assertion is untrue as a characterisation of Nollywood films in general.

The caption is placed under an image of a grimacing woman whose discoloured teeth rhyme with her disheveled  hair,partially undone bra and what look like bloodshot eyes,as she sites in front of a dull,uncoloured wall,an image that  evokes at once both agony and rage, and possibly, despair.The woman's deep brown skin  is marked by striations of dark colour,looking like some deeply incised tatoos or a discoloration of the flesh.

"The preferred aesthetic is loud, violent and excessive".

I beg to differ on this as a summation of Nollywood aesthetic.

The caption quoted and highlighted in black above  is placed under an image of man in a suit and tie ,standing on top of the carcass of a slaughtered  cow,its blood spilling into the street as the man holds what looks like the cow's  bloody heart,against a background of dimly glimpsed animal  carcasses  and withered vegetation.

It is true  that Nollywood does  depict gory situations but the depiction of gory scenes is not a staple  of Nollywood. and such a nasty image as this one is not representative of any form  of African or Nigerian art.

Caption that emphasise the film's portrayal of negative social issues:

"Plots revolve around situations familiar to the audience and include witchcraft, bribery and prostitution, in addition to romance and comedy".

This caption is placed with an image of three dirty and desolate looking women,chained together by their necks and hands,wearing something that looks like rough brown sacks that cover them from their waits to their knees,and out of which is cut some material that covers their breasts;otherwise the rest of their bodies  are  uncovered,as they stand barefoot om bare earth in what looks like a scrapyard,with dilapidated cars and a lone tree in the background.

Accurate comments negated by juxtaposition with images that generate a conception of a twisted collective Nigerian imagination and social life:

"Both the photographs and movie scenes they draw from are deeply rooted in the local collective imagination".

This caption is placed underneath an image of a tender looking woman,elegantly dressed in buba and wrapper,her red handbag resting  daintily on the concrete bench on which she sits,sitting companionably with a grotesque looking man,naked from the waist up,dressed in only a dirty looking wrapper,with something like a hideous skin rash on his shoulders,his body gruesomely dark with horns protruding from his head.The caption suggests that this image is representative of the contents of the collective Nigerian imagination and of Nollywood imagery and visual symbolism.That is a wickedly false assertion.Even if such an image might appear in a Nollywood film as depicting a Christian conception of the demonic inner being of someone whose true nature is unsuspected by others,it is not representative of  Nollywood  and is certainly not representative of the collective Nigerian imagination.

"It is estimated that Nollywood generates from $250 million to $500 million annually"

This statement,which indicates the economic scope of the industry,is placed underneath a sad picture of man  dressed in a military uniform, decorated with medals.The man's had is in a sling as  he looks soulfully out of the image.The dark and dull colours of the uniform and that of the  image background give it a sombre and sad quality.Why must a sad image of an injured man  be correlated with a statement about the inescapable fact of the economic success of the Nigerian film industry?The fact that ALL the images in  the TIME photo essay are uniformly negative indicates that the TIME magazine editors either chose  to use only  such images or that the entire book is composed of such images.Such painful  images are not representative of Nolllywood.

"Many of the movies are produced and marketed within the space of a week".

This statement,which I expect suggests the frenzy of actual production in Nollywood,though I dont have detailed information on that ,is paired with an image of a man in a dynamic pose holding what looks like a Kalashkinov rifle  but with his body seemingly burnt from head to toe and his clothes charred to rags.Behind him is a group of children,some fully dressed some not,behind whom is an unpainted wall topped by a row of broken bottle.

Where in hell did this  kind of image come from as as a representation of Nollywood?With the plethora of films coming out daily from Nollywood it is only the images from a hellish imagination that the photographer was able to stage as representing the film industry. It is interesting that the images are not drawn from particular Nollywwod films but are imaginative creations of what the creators or creators understand  as what Nollywodd represents.This suggests to me an effort to persist in the imagery of Africans as savages,a tradition grounded in denigrating African achievements.

"Nigeria's film business, a.k.a. Nollywood, is the third largest in the world. Its filmmakers produce as many as 1,000 movies each year for the home-video market".

This caption accompanies an image of what, from its face,has the alert  intelligence and features of a man,but the body of which is closer to that of a malnourished ape.The creature holds a lonely bottle of coke in a place of bare tables,empty chairs and a desolate looking tree.The dull colors of the setting and the dark hairiness of the unfortunate looking creature make it a scene out of a demented nightmare.This not quintessential Nollywood or representative of the Nigerian imagination.The horrible image effectively contributes to making nonsense of the accompanying caption describing the achievements of the industry.

"To create these images, photographer Hugo asked teams of actors and assistants to re-create Nollywood myths and symbols as if they were on movie sets".

This caption is paired with an image of a man in a bland mask,with very large costume ears,a  black bowler hat, under a black jacket that covers him from shoulders to ankles while slightly revealing his bare chest,as he stands bare foot holding an axe, in a street with the blur of cars in the background,along with an ugly bare billboard ,and a large dull coloured sotry building in the background.

Why is this dreadfully comic figure holding an axe?Is muder a staple of Nollywood the way sex is a staple of Hollywood? As far as I know that is not true of Nollywood.Its films are not often haunted by comic evil characters like this sad,impoverished and dangerous looking and  ridiculous figure.

"Nollywood represents the first time that Africa's rich oral and written storytelling has found a voice in mass media".

This statement presents a perspective on Nollywood that tries to be positive without recognising,that,at least in my view,Nollywood is not representative of Africa's rich oral and written storytelling tradition beceause its themes,plots and informing ideas  are significantly divorced from the worlds of Classical African culture and of modern African writing in European languages,being instead a third cultural strand,a form of modernity that integrates a religiosity that is largely denigrative of the cosmological values of the Classical African culture,appropriating only aspects of its social  values,and is not sensitive to the ideational,imaginative and linguistic sophistication of modern African literature.Is it also not true that that African oral traditions represented a mass medium before they were overtaken by the forced introduction of  written literacy?

Whatever might be the value of the assertion in the caption quoted and highlighted above,that value is significantly diluted,if not twisted and negated by the image that accompanies it.It is an image of three children,in a desolate  landscape,wearing drab boxers-underwear shorts,naked from the waist up,and covered in a white chalk like substance from head to toes.These visual forms,along with their skinny appearance,one of them having  a distended stomach,gives them the appearance of refugees from a spiritual  holocaust.They look like wretched,underfed ghosts wandering between worlds.

Is this emblematic of Nollywood imagery?Of the Nigerian collective imagination? For images of spirit worlds in Nigerian literature go to Amos Tutuola,D.O.Fagunwa and Ben Okri,as well as to the oral traditions.The New Sacred Art Movement in Nigeria which was centred on the spirit world has a different aesthetic from what is  presented in this account of Nollywood.What is the source of these macabre visualisations?A conception of what Nigerians   really look like  as different from what is evident to the naked eye?How well do the makers of this book know Nollywood?The TIME editors do not know it at all if not they might have presented this book differently.

From the Prestel and Amazon description of the book: "Nigerian films often deal with the moral dilemmas facing modern Africans today and tell stories familiar to African families: of religion, violence, AIDS, and economic hardship."

Moral dilemmas ,true.But what percentage of Nollywood movies are centred on "violence,AIDS and economic hardship"?

I should like to learn more about these issues  from those who know more about Nollywood than I do,.