ABSTRACT
The Nigerian film industry has witnessed tremendous growth, and its products have received a wide welcome across Africa and beyond (for example, see Cartelli 2007; Ugochukwu 2009; Kerr 2011; Waliaula 2014). (The industry is widely referred to as Nollywood. However, the term is used here with the understanding that it is restrictive in its scope of reference since, properly speaking, it only refers to that aspect of the Nigerian film production that has its main center in Lagos.) It is widely accepted that the Nigerian filmmakers have captured the popular imagination of peoples across Africa, thereby succeeding where so many others have failed (for a broader discussion of African cinema and the discourses around “pioneers” and “firsts,” see Anne Ciecko’s essay in this volume). The reasons for this welcome development can be traced largely to the fact that the audience involved feels identified with characters and narratives they encounter in the video films. Thanks to the “proximity of Nollywood to everyday stories” (Green-Simms 2012: 60), the consumers see the stories of the Nollywood-produced films as theirs. And this popularity has been an essential factor for the growth and success of the industry. The great strength of the industry, according to Haynes (2007), lies precisely in this
“proximity to popular imagination” (31). The filmmakers have often claimed that their films respond to the needs of their audience by showing the people what they want to see. Nevertheless, the films have often been criticized for their content, and the filmmakers have been accused of corrupting their audience by an undue focus on issues of witchcraft, fetishism, violence, greed, and sex. But this, according to the filmmakers, is what the audiences want to see, and they point to their booming sales as an indication that the viewers enjoy and accept their content (Abah 2008). Audience analyses such as those carried out by Adejunmobi (2002), Akpabio (2007), Okome (2007), and Esan (2008) support, to a large extent, the notion that there is proximity between the films and their audience. Thus, the Nollywood film has been said to be
a material production of the people in both senses of representing the existential realities of the populace as well as being itself a product of this reality [and] it reflects the people the way they are and the way they aspire to be.
