active audiences of nollywood video-films: an experience with a Bukusu audience community in Chwele market of Western Kenya aBStraCtThis article explores the distinctively heuristic approach to Nollywood video-films used by a Bukusu-speaking audience community in Chwele Market, Western Kenya. As this audience views video-films on witchcraft in particular -which tend to be very popular -the reception process becomes remarkably dialogic. The process illuminates the audience's adaptation of the video-films into their sociocultural world. Most important is that this audience seems to not only relish, but speak back to, representations of magical power, especially as it is symbolized by snakes and women. I have argued that as they speak back to the visual images and narrative representations they not only reflect on and 'speak back' to critical aspects of their society and culture but also illuminate the cultural assumptions and ideological positions informing the iconography and social imagination of the video-films. Furthermore, this 'speaking back' takes the form of storytelling, in which the audience spontaneously generates oral narratives that sometimes diverge from and other times converge with the video-film's content. I have further argued that the reception KeyWordS story-telling dialogism social myths heuristic audiences public sphere viewing parlour
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