Inside the Current Issue

A Populist Movement: The Free Market Nigerian Movie Industry

Roderick Graham

A scene from 2 Faced. The ostentatious displays of wealth are a common theme in the Nollywood movies. In this scene the female character discusses with her fiancee how her father is financing her stay in Paris.

Scene from the film Devil's Nest. The lead male character's spirit is being called to the village elders for punishment. He will be punished for allowing his wife to commit adultery and thus disgrace the village.

Though it is not yet on the world's radar screen - but will soon be - a unique cultural phenomenon has developed in the West African country of Nigeria. Centered in the commercial capital of Lagos (the official capital is Abuja), is a burgeoning movie industry informally known as Nollywood. No mere commercial venture, it is also one of the strongest populist movements in the world today.

In 1992 an enterprising filmmaker, Kenneth Nnebue, used his own money to write and produce a movie entitled Living in Bondage, about a man who makes a Faustian pact with a cult to become rich. This movie, shot on video and mass produced on VHS, was an instant hit. This movie marked the unofficial beginning of the movie industry in Nigeria.

While Nollywood is similar in many ways to the Los Angeles and Bombay markets, it is in other ways wholly different. This is an industry built literally from the ground up, employing ingenious strategies to circumvent capital restraints. In the earliest days of the industry (the mid 80's), even before Living in Bondage, movies were made by troupes of traveling stage performers who wanted to capture their performances on video and sell them to villagers. In a novel form of tit for tat, an actor turned producer would ask his other actor friends to work in his move for free, with the promise that when they wished to make a film he would do the same for them. This strategy worked so well that actors were clamoring to appear in their friend's movies for free so that they could employ them for free later! This strategy kept costs low and allowed movies to appear on the market, in a sense priming the Nigerian audience for the eventual success of Living in Bondage.

While the tit-for-tat strategy may not be as necessary anymore, Nigerian film makers still must produce in an environment where there is little capital and little government regulation. They are not shot on traditional celluloid (the medium used in most films), but instead are shot with digital video camera on a breakneck schedule of a few weeks with budgets ranging from $8,000 to $12,000 US. Movie are usually about three hours long, but are broken up and sold in two parts. Again, this seems to be out of necessity - it doesn't cost more to make a three hour movie than a ninety minute movie - but there is potential for higher sales returns for two installments. These videos are then sold to distributors who usually pay for the rights of the movie and take on the gamble of making a profit by selling it to the masses. The videos are sold cheap - they have to be - because the Nigerian government has not yet been able curb piracy. Thus, a distributor must always keep his prices low enough to compete with cheaper, but lower quality, copies. A Nigerian video film can cost $3 US dollars on the market.

But production is only one side of the equation: there must be enough consumers willing and able to support the industry. Indeed, in Nigeria, as in most African countries, there is a growing newly urbanized proletariat removed from their traditional rural underpinnings (Nigeria's cities are some of the fastest growing in the world, and Lagos has a population of over 8 million). Also, there are few movie theatres in Nigeria, and the few still in operation are often near-empty - they are seen as places for prostitution and vice. Since DVD and videocassette players are becoming more and more affordable, the Nollywood film industry has high growth potential.

But it is the masses that matter, and the masses have voted with their Naira (Nigerian currency) on what works and what does not. Thus, films are often tailored for the poor and working class, similar in many ways to the telenovellas of Latin America. The characters in these movies are usually rich, and there is an ostentatious celebration of money in these films.

Thus Nollywood. Thus the phenomenon. More than 500 movies are licensed per year. Just browsing www.allafricanmovies.com will clue you in to the variety. The most successful videos consistently sell over 200,000 units, but most sell at least 20,000. By most accounts, Nollywood is the third largest movie industry in the world behind that of the US and India. It was only a matter of time.

Indeed, the factors I listed above may have the air of constraints, but, really, they are enablers. The lack of capital and the wild west atmosphere of the industry scared away investors both foreign and domestic, allowing for creators on the ground floor to produce a populist, proletarian form of mass media that is quickly becoming one of the most important cultural exports of the country (the adjective cultural must be used...because nothing will take the place of its main export of oil). These gritty, low budget productions dripping with violence, religion, or overdone sentiment probably will not strike a chord with westernized viewers (for the same reasons Nigerian elites are slow to patronize these films). I must confess, in fact, that I do not like these movies so much. I cannot get past what I see as bad acting, bad quality, and predictable plots. But then, I am not a member of the Nigerian populace, who may find their lives filled with bad actors (politicians are exemplars of this species), bad quality (bad movie quality is a trifle compared to other things), and predictable plots (it is a safe bet that most of the poor who watch these movies will die poor).

I see the Nollywood phenomenon as a cultural marker. Indeed, for Nigeria specifically and Africa generally, where the party line for so many years for so many nations has been "African Socialism," the idea of embracing free market capitalism is a populist movement. In situations like some African, Latin American, and Asian countries where crackpot dictators and their cronies - all elites - control the country through the veil of the state, populist movements imply the reverse: a relaxation of state power, the lifting of market regulation, and the breaking up of many state owned industries.

Free markets create growth - admittedly at the top initially, but this growth is inherently democratic, and the common people will enjoy the fruits of this growth as well (China is easily the most prominent case). I am certainly not in favor of the privatization of all industries or services (as in the ridiculous case of water privatization in Bolivia), just sensible ones. For example, there is a state owned movie production company in Nigeria. It is not beholden to the market. It does not have to make a profit. It produces less than four movies a year. And no one watches them.

But for the Nigerian people, the entrepreneurial free market Nollywood that is forced to cater to their whims, works unequivocally. Nollywood evokes the principles of democratic consumption - and the populace of Nigeria endorses these principles loudly with their patronage. When they see ethnic characters devoid of titles and living lives of consumption and leisure, a symbolic distance between the worlds they live in and the world they dream of is shortened just a little bit. They have hope. When they see characters using religion or the occult to garner riches, they may recognize that they too have access to religious practices, and that they too can achieve success. Nollywood evokes the principles of democratic consumption - and the Nigerian masses endorse these principles loudly with their patronage.

In time, when academics finish writing their ethnographies and doing their surveys, the historical significance of Nollywood will be better understood. When feminists begin to imply that Nollywood is an inherently 'feminine' industry because of its emphasis on emotional domestic affairs, when Marxists and neo-Marxists decry the films because they divert the masses from the real cause of their misery, the historical meaning of Nollywood will grow to embrace many different perspective (read: ideology). The producers will be seen as "artists" struggling to present their representation of the world in the midst of an oppressive regime and the initial impetus of profit motive will be forgotten. Or, maybe the films themselves will be analyzed for some "subversive" content (I see none, but my guess is that Nigerians do). My hope is that despite my interpretation of the phenomenon of Nigeria as a populist movement in favor of free market capitalism, we will not lose sight of that which seems apparent now: (1) a form of popular culture created by the Nigerian business man cum film producer who wanted to make a buck, and (2) the masses of Nigerian consumers who wanted some entertainment that spoke to their needs.

Roderick Graham is a PhD student in the Sociology department.