Since the mid 1990s, Nigerian movies have become part of the entertainment media across Africa and beyond. In this article I assess the popularity of Nigerian movies as reflected in the weekly TV programming in Uganda, and in recent years, its dominance in ‘video halls’. Nollywood’s popularity has continued despite competing TV serials and soaps from Latin America, the Philippines and Hollywood. The comparative popularity of this genre, in the context of Uganda, is due to the interventions of the video jockeys (VJs), who appropriate and ‘rewrite’ the films as they simultaneously translate them into local languages for the benefit of non-English-speaking audiences in specific contexts of viewing the movies. As I analyse the reasons for the continued longevity and popularity of Nollywood, I focus on the demographic features of the audiences. Focus group discussions and keynote interviews were used to understand the popularity patterns among the various social groups. Participant observation was also crucial in my interpretation of audience viewing strategies. Notwithstanding competition from other genres, Nigerian movies continue to strike a strong cord with Ugandan audiences, especially among the lower income brackets. These committed audiences have appropriated and ‘owned’ Nollywood enough to challenge it to get better to ensure their continued adherence to it. I use, in synergy, the ‘active audience’ idea espoused in Uses and Gratifications theory, Alessandro Jedlowski’s concept of Nollywood as a dynamic hybrid between cinema and television and Joseph Straubhaar’s idea of cultural proximity as one of the principles guiding audience’s preference of media.
The 'mother' is a distinct female category that is prevalent in African folklore and art forms. Her prominence is mostly related to her centrality in the family-the basic cell of society. Because of her indelible connection to the children, she is consequently at the centre of the economy and spirituality of the family/community. The body and soul of the family rests in the mother's hand. This large space she occupies is evident in proverbs and sayings about her role in African society. Using selected proverbs across Africa, this paper examines how life is organised around the mother even if Africa is, today, predominantly referred to as a patriarchal society. The theoretical thoughts of Africanist scholars like Cheik Anta Diop and Ifi Amadiume, whose scholarships show traces of Africa's matriarchal and matrilineal pastbefore the force of patriarchy eroded them underpin my analysis. Folklore, and particularly proverbs are repositories of a community's memory that bear traces of older cultures that may still be discernible in contemporary culture. My analysis of proverbs as pointers to the matriarchal traces of African communities draws from Heide Goettner-Abendroth's research on matriarchal societies around the world. The research findings indicate that both from the perspective of proverbs, symbolic expressions of culture and observances from everyday lived experiences, Africa's matriarchal origin is undeniable.
This study analyses the concept of motherhood as that which transcends particular cultures in order to gain deeper understanding of it. It focuses on one familiar folktale that is diffused among ethnicities in Uganda and East Africa. This is the story of “Hare, Elephant and their Mothers”. Trickster Hare, in this story, proposes to his friend, a fellow bachelor, that it would be better to kill their old mothers in order to capture the attention of marriageable young women. The problem the story navigates is the position of a mother in the life of her son. To engage this story, I use the psychoanalytical perspective of Julia Kristeva, particularly as articulated in two of her articles, “Stabat Mater” and Narcissus: The New Insanity”. This perspective opens a fresh appreciation of the fascinating relationship between mother and child – particularly the son – that transcends cultures. As shown in both the theory and the folktale, the mother’s relationship with the son is characterised by entanglement with the ‘other’ self that she cannot be extricated from. To kill one’s mother can only be a trickster’s distasteful joke, for the line between mother and child is often blurred, as seen in Tales of Love (1987), where Kristeva theorises the child as an extension of the mother.
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