My reference to ‘imperialism from below’ pays homage to what Robertson and White (2007) refer to as the distinction that emerged in the early 2000s between notions of globalization from above (the ‘enemy’) and globalization from below (the ‘good guys’). In this Inaugural Lecture, I argue that globalization from below merely represents re-enacted globalization from above, where the below now becomes sub-below and recast as new-above.
The instrument of
this recasting is media contra-flows which
create new centers of globalized connectivity which, to all intents and
purposes, since it is often riding piggy-back on economic mobility of goods and services, becomes a
new ‘imperial’ center, but without an empire, or what Nye (1990) refers
to as ‘soft power’. Data and arguments about the various
media flows both from West and non-Western media centers,
although with specific focus on motion pictures clearly supports a new re-negotiations of what constitutes ‘media’ or
‘cultural’ imperialism, especially in the face deconstruction of Hollywood as the source of ‘hard power’
of media products, and creation of new centers in Asia and Africa
that are both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ powers.
I weave in Agency (Giddens, 1984) as a factor in the deconstruction of both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ media flow to African Muslim communities of northern Nigeria. Based on this, and drawing heavily from representative analysis of contra-flows in Hausa film industry, I propose Transcultural Contra-Flow Theory as a media theory that explains post-imperialist horizontal media flow from non-Western centers of media cultural production to non-Western audiences, including their receptivity.
Imperialism
from Below: Media Contra-flows and the Emergence
of Metrosexual Hausa Visual Culture
Prof. Abdalla Uba
Adamu
Department of Mass
Communications
Bayero University,
Kano – Nigeria
(Vice-Chancellor of
the National Open University of Nigeria)
auadamu@yahoo.com
Cutting through
the morass of definitions (e.g. Fieldhouse, 1981; Hyam, 1990) that look at the concept from various angles and therefore
merely add to the melee of confusion,
Clayton (2009,
p. 373) looking at the concept from human
geographical perspective took a simple approach to defining imperialism as “an unequal human and territorial
relationship, usually in the form of an empire,
based on ideas of superiority and practices of dominance, and involving the
extension of authority and control of
one state or people over another.” This framework covers the series of conquests of the less fortunate by the
stronger, and consequently, imperial European powers, ranging from colonialism, slavery and economic domination even after independence from slavery and colonial clutches.
This is more as both imperialism and colonialism are “intrinsically geographical – and traumatic
– processes of expropriation, in which people,
wealth, resources and decision-making
power are relocated from distant lands and peoples to a metropolitan centre and elite (through a mixture of exploration,
conquest trade, resource extraction, settlement, rule and representation).”(ibid.).
With empires
crumbling, territorial independence sought, fought and won, the concept of imperialism takes on a new turn, which
Barbara Bush refers to as “informal imperialism” which “exists without colonialism”. (Bush, 2006, p. 46). Bush went on
to argue that the contentious nature of the concept
of informal imperialism is reflected in the polarized
debates in the postcolonial
era over the existence of neocolonialism and neo-imperialism, and cites
additional arguments that show how
generally imperialism ended with decolonization (as in Fieldhouse, 1999); although for third world countries,
as Samir Amin (1973) pointed out, informal imperial power relations were perpetuated by economic exploitation and
political domination. This is reflected
in so many ways – from preference to Western over non-Western (even Asian, and
by even Asians themselves) goods to
adoption of political models of governance resulting in series of coordinated chaos
in governance in many developing nations
since independence.
The concept
of imperialism, from whatever perspective, was closely followed
by “globalization”, another
term with as many meanings as “imperialism.” So many indeed that Roland Robertson (who first coined the
hybrid term “globalization” in 1995) and Kathleen White (2007) argued that the concept is contested, accusing writers
of simply coming up with their own understanding
of the term in various ways. This is more so “as has become increasingly
apparent in recent years, concern
with globalization in effect began many centuries ago.” (Robertson and White,
2007, p. 55). Incidentally, Robertson
and White did not provide
a clear singular
conception of globalization
either – which merely reiterate the contested nature of the term. This is
further emphasized by William
Robinson (2007, p. 126) who also argues that “there is no consensus on what has been going on in the world
denoted by the term “globalization”; competing definitions will give us distinct interpretations of social reality.” These ambiguities were, however, simplified by Tomlinson (2007, p. 352) who looked at globalization as
“a complex, accelerating, integrating process
of global connectivity. Understood in
this rather abstract, general way,
globalization refers to the rapidly developing and ever-densening network of
interconnections and interdependencies that characterize material,
social, economic and cultural life in the modern world”.
Tomlinson
continues to explain
that globalization describes these networks and their implications. Such globalization therefore
acknowledges the flows of capital,
commodities, people, knowledge, information and ideas,
crime, pollution, diseases,
fashions, beliefs, images
and so forth. Looked at from historical perspective, therefore,
globalization is as old as human
communities; for virtually all these factors
are part and parcel of movement of people across
borders, even when nations were not demarcated and deemed to exist.
Underlying all this connectivity, however,
“is the economic
sphere, the institution of the global capitalist market, that is the
crucial element, the sine qua non of global connectivity. This
is the dimension that dominates the imagination and the language of corporate
business, of politicians and of anti-globalization activists alike; it is the easy shorthand of the media
discourse which forms most ordinary people’s immediate understanding of
what globalization is all about” (Tomlinson, 2007, p. 353).
References
to connectivity bring
to forth the
blurring of
boundaries—or territories—through which
goods and services percolate. The most elegant concept for this
mobility—both visible and invisible—is the application of Gilles Deleuze
and Félix Guattari
(1983) term, “deterritorialziation”, which, together with “reterritorialization” explain
the process of translocational
connectivity. At its base meaning, deterritorialization is taking control away
from a land which is already
well-established, and subsequently reverse or even destroy existing structures. Reterritorialization follows
when new alien symbolisms replace those that have been “deterritorialized.”
Consequently, researchers like Tomlinson give the concept
of “deterritorialization” a significant
focus in works on global connectivity. Culture is no longer restricted to
particular location. Thus within
Tomlinson’s perception of globalization, connectivity reaches into local culture
and the localities of everyday life.
This Inaugural
Lecture explores the transformation of the media imperialism thesis through analysis of media contra-flows which
creates news sites of non-imperial, ‘soft power’ and yet equally subversive media domination and control.
Mediated Imperialism, Agency
and Structuration
Over the last decades media in all forms,
transnational flows of representative identities and the globalization of American entertainment ethos have combined to
create a climate of mistrust for either
globalization as a concept, or Americanization of entertainment ethos as a
process of entertainment in not only Muslim countries
and communities, but also in traditional societies. This is because of
“the development and extension of the processes of mediatization, migration and commodification which characterize
globalized modernity produce a considerable intensification of deterritorialization, understood as a proliferation of translocalized cultural
experiences” (Hernandez, 2006,
p. 92).
Thus what is of
further significance is the way media is used to construct identities and share these constructs with communities not
sharing these identities; in effect, “deterritorialization” which often dons the garb of “cultural
imperialism”. Obviously then, the usage of identity- construct kits from different communities may communicate different
conceptions of the communities
and consequently lead to misrepresentation of identities. And yet, the desire for globalized acceptance—even if the
“globalized” is localized to acceptance beyond the immediate community—leads to experimentation of various forms of acceptance of representational identities beyond the immediate localized communities. This is the scenario that creates issues
of the role of entertainment in such communities.
As
Blakely (2001)
points out,
academic responses
to various facets
of global entertainment
have changed
drastically over the last forty years, reflecting for the most part huge changes in technology, media infrastructure, and entertainment content.
This naturally led to development of theories
of imitation—with the view that availability of new communication technologies
would enable developing countries to imitate the West in a process of modernization.
Additionally, Park
& Curran (2000) argue that two contrasting attitudes towards globalization can be found. The first is expressed by cultural theorists who welcome
globalization as a means for the
reinforcement of international dialogue. It
enables minorities to gain attention beyond national
borders. An opposing point of view
stresses the threat that globalization poses to democracies and international politics, aiming at limiting the
influence of worldwide capitalism. Both
these views at least concur a certain degree of weakness in recipient systems
as a result of the transnational flow
of influences. What needs to be determined is the extent to which the recipient systems—I do not accept Part
& Curran’s term of “nation-state”; such entities are too complex
to be treated as single—are transformed.
Indeed Media and
Cultural Studies” theories of globalization tended to focus attention on the role of mass media in the society
(e.g. Beck, Sznaider
& Rainer, 2003,
Appadurai, 1996), how they are communicated and preserved in transnational context.
Another focus is on how people appropriate media, and which identities they create with the new transformed media (see particularly Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1996;
Schiller, 1976; and Boyd-Barrett, 1977).
Consequently, as
Patterson (1994) argues, industrialization and modernization both entail the spread of common sets of behaviors and attitudes within the context
of economic change. However,
the globalization of culture also takes place independent of whatever economic
changes are occurring in a
particular region or society. Traditionally, the transmission of culture across societies was facilitated by two main
media: migration and literacy. People learned about other cultures either through traveling themselves
or from travelers, or by reading about other cultures and adopting or adapting what they learned.
These traditional media could, under certain circumstances, be effective means for the
transmission of cultures across the globe. I will close this section by reiterating Tomlinson
(1991) and point out that the dominance
of Western multinational, and particularly American
media in the world is not in dispute, “what is doubted is the cultural
implications of this presence (p, 57).
Although Tomlinson
(1991) argues that the term “cultural imperialism” has no specific
universal meaning due to different interpretations of “imperialism” and “culture”, he nevertheless presented “four ways - actually, five, but we can dispose
of the first one quite briefly - to talk about cultural imperialism.” (Tomlinson, 1991, p.19). From a variety of perspectives, Tomlinson
argues that there is no
single accepted conception of cultural imperialism; there is, instead, a
variety of interpretations and
meanings of the terms that construct the concept. Despite this ambiguity, however, one of the varieties given by
Tomlinson dominates, i.e. media imperialism, which, as Schiller (1973) points out, pivots around the accusation that
Anglo-Western media products are consumed in non-Western societies, and thus suppressing local production and creating dependency on the Western
varieties—from popular culture,
to television programs
and newspapers and magazines.
In this argument, which again Schiller advanced much later, “media- cultural imperialism is a sub-set of the
general system of imperialism, since cultural outputs are also ideological and profit-oriented to the larger system.” (Schiller, 1991, p.14).
Various subsequent
studies would seem to support the view that the paucity of media products especially from Africa, and specifically
targeted at African audiences, thus with African appeal, created a vacuum in which non-African media products are readily
consumed by increasingly urbanized
African audiences—lending support to the theoretical perspectives that point
out the stifling of local media
creativity. Indeed the seeming affiliation to Western settings and filmic styles
in emergent African
video film (though
not “authentic” African
cinema) would lend support to
this, as evidenced by the urban dramas depicted in Nigerian Nollywood films
which have emerged as the central
reference points for “African” video dramas.
This view, however, needed to be revised in the light of
two major developments.
First was granting of independence to many African
nations by colonial
powers in the 1960s— which therefore changes the focus of
media consumption; for while colonial officers reside in African cities, all media-entertainment would
invariably be from the West,
for the audience
is not the local African
audiences, but European residents.
Secondly, the
postcolonial States saw the entrenchment of what Anthony Giddens labeled “agency” in debates about postcolonial African mediated
entertainment forms. Giddens (1984) proposed
the idea of agency and structure in sociological theory to explain human
behavior. Agency generally
refers to micro-level, individual human actors,
but it can also refer to collectivities of that act. Structure usually
refers to large-scale social structures, but it can also refer
to micro structures, such as those involved in human
interaction.
Thus in what emerged
as “structuration theory” which focuses on the mutual constitution of structure and agency, Giddens argues that
structure and agency are a duality that cannot be conceived of apart from one another. Human practices are
recursive—that is, through their activities, individuals create both their consciousness and the structural conditions that make their activities possible. Because social
actors are reflexive and monitor the ongoing flow of activities and structural conditions, they adapt
their actions to their evolving understandings. As a result, social scientific knowledge of society
will actually change human activities. Giddens calls this dialectical relationship between social
scientific knowledge and human practices the double hermeneutic.
Consequently, actors
continually develop routines that give them a sense of security and that enable them to deal efficiently with their social lives. While their motives
provide the overall
plan of action, it is these
routine practices that determine what shape the action will take. Giddens emphasizes that actors have power to shape their own actions
but that the consequences of actions are often unintended. Structure is the
rules and resources that give similar social practices a systemic form. Only through the activities of human actors
can structure exist
It is this power to
shape actions—agency—that counterbalances the media imperialism theory in African media-mediated entertainment forms; for it reverses
the notion of passive absorption by African
audiences, and puts control into selection, acquisition and engagement of any
media product in the hands of
audiences.
Alternative
theories to
Gidden’s Structuration
Theory merely
reinforce the theory within certain
communities. For instance, Margaret Archer (1995) has criticized the
concept of structuration as analytically
insufficient. She argued that it is useful for social scientists to understand
structure and agency as independent,
because it makes it possible to analyze the interrelations between the two sides—what she calls a “morphogenetic
sequence”. Thus Archer believes that Giddens
underplays the relative
autonomy of culture
from both structure
and agency. Yet even in Gidden’s theory
culture is reflected
in structure—for structures as he described are not isolated
concepts but the very foundation of society. Indeed
this is reflected in Muslim communities in which Islam provides a readily
acceptable behavioral framework
for linking structure and agency.
In
Muslim societies,
which their
deliberate focus of forming an identity that is uniquely
Islamic, the social
structuration is provided by the Islamic State machinery in all forms. Thus
Islam provides the Muslim
African with both a structure (Islamic viewpoint) and agency (Islamic
purity) as bulwarks against mediated imperialism.
Thus I argue in this presentation, that agency and structure, as counterpoints to media imperialism generate a new conception of
media imperialism which passes through structure, agency, exits through
the same structure, emerges as contraflow and re-enters back into structure.
The Imperialist Trans-Eastern
Express
As
my main focus
on the transformation
of media imperialism thesis—particularly moving
images and sound—my
starting point is the source
of the media imperialism theory:
Hollywood.
The Hollywood film industry, from whatever cultural
perspectives, provided the first early
role model for other film industries to copy, even in the early stages
of binary oppositions between the intellectualizing European cinema (pioneered by the French)
and the commercial focus of American
cinema. As Teo (2010, p. 413) argues,
it achieved this status “by setting up studios, implementing the star system, and making films that employ conventional formulas”. Consequently, almost every other commercial cinema—whether
“actual” celluloid cinema of Asian
countries, or “video film” dramas of latter day African filmmakers—employs this
strategy of telling, and selling,
stories. This power of Hollywood to sell is reflected, for instance, in the global
film market which in 2006 and 2007 in which 64% of worldwide box-office gross was from Hollywood films (Motion Picture Association of America, 2007).
Hollywood became
successful because it is “a commodity, a craft, and a social force” (Jacobs, 1939, p. 21) which account for its
meteoric rise from 1910s. To this day, Hollywood reigns supreme in its glossy packaging, superiority of craftsmanship,
availability of a vast array of imaginative
technologies, and the simple power to keep audiences glued to their seats as
they watch drama produced by a large
number of talented stars, directors and producers. It is this success
that created the capacity to influence others.
Based on these arguments, Teo (2010, p. 416) argues therefore that “Hollywood is
therefore a paradox. On the one hand, it is looked up to as a model and
on the other hand, it is put down as a corrupting influence.”
It is this perception
of global and “corrupting influence” of Hollywood that lies at the base of all the arguments
and counter-arguments on cultural/media imperialism. The technical superiority of Hollywood productions is seen as supplanting “local”
media entertainment forms which lead to local filmmakers to begin to “lose”
themselves and adopt Hollywood ethos as their creative templates at the expense of their local circumstances and
creativity. Yet at the beginning of cinema’s
history, the reverse indeed was the case. Without specific artistic style to
itself—if one can dispense with its
capitalist orientation—Hollywood cinema started to look towards group styles, specifically German Expressionism,
Soviet montage cinema, and the French New Wave
(Bordwell, 1985).
Early Soviet cinema,
for instance, did not derive its inspiration from Hollywood, but rather from French art films, with the first Russian feature appearing in 1908. The
filmic focus was therefore on
historical epics, and the adaptations of Russian literary classics. As
Youngblood (1992, p. 2) pointed
out,
“sensational love stories (often based on
popular novels) and lurid melodramas also attracted a large movie- going public, drawn from the lower urban
classes, especially the petty-bourgeoisie…This public demanded a rather remarkable level of violence
and catastrophe in its entertainment films: romance was better thwarted, especially if ending
in death—whether by murder, suicide,
or some other tragedy. Multiple
deaths were best of all”.
Russian cinema therefore developed two
strands—high art and commercial low art. The high art actually influenced aspects of Hollywood cinema, especially the
montage process; whereas the commercial low art was in turn influenced by Hollywood, and later, Indian
cinema, or Bollywood. Co-operation between Hollywood and Russian cinema became
necessary at one point because “film was regarded partly
as a way of promoting greater understanding between
the two countries as well
as a means of exporting Soviet
ideological values” (Teo 2010, p. 41). Thus while the globalization of Hollywood is seen as subversive to importing
cultures, at one stage the Soviet union was also contemplating “contaminating” American
cinema audiences. The years after World War II created a Soviet desire to learn
from the American experience, which further led to a growing sense of competition. However, all rapprochement ended
with the emergence of Cold War (1947-1991). This was a sustained state of
political and military tension between Western
Bloc countries represented by the United States and its NATO allies) and
Eastern Bloc countries represented by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw
Pact allies). As Teo (2010,
p. 46) pointed out, “as part
of this process Soviet cinema quite deliberately tried to distance itself from
the Hollywood model” and reverted back to its classical literary heritage.
Filmmaking in India
did not receive its technical antecedents from Hollywood, but through Paris when on 28th December
1895 Maurice Sestier,
part of the French Lumiere
brothers credited with
initiating commercial cinema,
on his way to Australia, stopped briefly in Bombay and seeing an opportunity to showcase the new filmic
medium he was advocating, arranged
a screening of the some of the Lumiere brothers
films on 7 July 1896. As Bose (2006: p. 41) analyzed,
“It was the turn of the century, there were
urban masses eager for mass entertainment and the cinema with its direct visual impact, easy
accessibility and its relatively straightforward themes seemed “the natural answer”.
The new medium attracted the attention of local entrepreneur, Harischandra Sakharam Bhatvadeka, who was a photographer and
found it easy to order motion picture cameras and start shooting short, non-feature films up to 1907 when he retired
from filmmaking after some seven short years in the business.
As a British colony,
India was officially laid open to British and Western filmmakers to exhibit their products in the Indian market without any fiscal
hindrance. As Bose (2006) pointed
out, “from the beginning the Indian film scene was
extremely international. France…was the leading source but America, Italy, England, Denmark, and Germany were
competing for a share of the Indian market.”
(Bose, 2006, p. 47). Despite this early international – almost always from the
“imperial” nations, the first Indian
feature film affirmed
the identity of the Hindu nation.
Dhundiraj Govind
Phalke (also referred to as Dadasaheb Phalke) was widely accredited with being the “father”
of Hindi cinema
(Vāṭave, 2004; Ganti,
2004; Vilanilam, 2005)
– at least giving it its early identity of obsession with Hindu religion
and ideology. He was inspired
in this direction when at a Christmas cinema show in 1911 in Bombay he saw The Birth,
the Life and the Death of Christ (dir. Alice Guy, 1906). As
the images of Christ flashed before his eyes, he mentally visualized the Hindu gods Krishna and Ram and spent a restless night
imagining bringing them to the screen. He achieved this feat when on
21st April 1913 he screened Raja
Harishchandra, the first feature film by an Indian in India.
Subsequent early
Indian filmmakers, while using a global medium to express themselves, fell back on classical Sanskrit theatre and
traditional folk drama to engender a hybridized narrative technique that has survived the ravages of
time even as it has kept the threat of foreign cultural domination largely at bay. As Chatterjee (2003, p. 13) pointed out, “the most significant of these influences is the obligatory interpolation of songs, dances, and sequences of comic relief,
ingredients that can be found in
classic Sanskrit plays…of…the 5th century.”
Despite this
“attachment to spiritual nation”, however, Hollywood provided a ready-made template for non-spiritual Indian cinema.
This was hardly surprising considering that well over 80% of the films screened in India in the early decades of the
20th century were from Hollywood (Chatterjee 2003);
for as Chapman (2003, p. 327)
reported,
“There is no prejudice against western films,
which are much enjoyed and appreciated. There are certain types of western films which appeal
to all classes and communities. The spectacular super-films and the films
featuring Douglas Fairbanks, Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin
have a universal appeal. A film in which any of these world-famous figures
of the screen appears can be sure of an enthusiastic reception
in any cinema in India”.
While overwhelming academic focus on Indian
cinema tended to see the Indian film industry as “national”, it only became so after the Indian independence in
1947. Prior to this, there were regional
film production centers producing films in Pune, Madras, Bombay, Calcutta and
Lahore (now in Pakistan) producing
films in various regional dialects. When the Hindi language became India’s “official” language
after independence, Bombay,
producing films in Hindi language, found itself elevated as the “national” film production
center.
The 1930s saw a
fascination for social themes and, subsequently, interplay of tradition with modernism that included questioning
aspects of the feudal patriarchy (Gokulsing & Dissanayake, 1998). This created a new template for
the export of Hindi films outside of India. Perhaps one of the most significant Hindi film to
kick-start the “Indian” invasion of international cinemas was Awaara,
directed by Raj Kapoor in 1951. As Gopal and Moorti (2008, p. 15) noted, “any
account of the global travels of
Hindi film music must commence with Raj Kapoor’s Awaara”. The film portrays a rebellious, daring
and at the same time, vulnerable youth.
Kapoor sees himself
as the
Indian Charlie Chaplin, the “little man” at
odds with a world in he survives by his wits and hides the pain in his heart behind
a smiling face.
He copied Chaplin’s gestures, facial expressions, and movements and crated a screen persona that was a reflection of
both himself and of the average Indian that he sought to construct, matching
his “Raju” to Chaplin’s “Charlie”
(Chakravarty, 1993, p. 134).
Released at the height of the “golden
era” of the Indian film, the film and
its one of its accompanying songs, “Main awaara
hoon” was massively successful in India and beyond,
finding its way to captive
audiences in Middle East, Africa, Soviet Union, China, Iran, Turkey, amongst others.
In the Soviet Union it was released
as Bradyaga in 1954. Consequently, post-independence Indian cinema became,
“a tension between modernity and tradition,
westernization and indigeniety, evolved in the cinematic imagination. Out of these dialectical tensions emerged a particular notion
of the Indian identity. Through
the 1950s and 1960s,
directors like Raj Kapoor and Bimal Roy made films that portrayed the world of underprivileged, and marginalized, and
which represented the Indian society as iniquitous and inequitable” (Rao 2007, pp. 58-59).
This ideological, almost socialist cinema of
India gradually gave way to “global” forces in Hindi cinema leading to the emergence
of new templates that radically
differ from the idealistic mythology-driven Hindi cinema of the “golden era” of Raj Kapoor. This is because
if Raj Kapoor epitomized the
“golden era” of Hindi cinema, then Amitabh Bachchan epitomizes its global re- incarnation. This came in 1973 with the release of his major film, Zanjeer (dir. Prakash Mehra) which
created for Bachchan the trademark of the “angry young man”, which spawned a
genre of Hindi films with “an urban figure
both wronged and rejected by society, often from childhood. He had to suffer incredible hardship, often including public humiliation and physical violence”
(Varia, 2012, p. 98).
Amitabh Bachchan
spearheaded a new Hindi cinema tradition not based exclusively on Indian mythology—although paying homage to it;
and borrowing heavily from American
gangster films—which started
appealing to post-imperialist nations. The latter term was popularized by Herbert Schiller (1991) who held on to the
view of the perceived pervasive and destructive influence of media products on non-Western audiences especially
by media corporate America. Schiller thus devised two layers of imperialism: ‘hard power’ which means using force to impose; and ‘soft power’ (after Nye, 1990), a more persuasive way of getting desired
results through the use of non-material resources
such as culture. Yet this new perspective on the flavors
of imperialism did not take into account
the acquisition of new Hindi
film audiences outside
of India. This
is because the Hindi film era of the ‘angry young man’ enabled Hindi films to acquire newer
audiences outside of India. Companion genre films to Zanjeer such as Deewar (dir. Yash Chopra, 1975) and Sholay (dir. Ramesh Sippy, 1975) created the pathways to non-Indian
pockets and hearts. As Rao (2007, p. 59) noted,
“The changes precipitated by liberalization
of the Indian economy throughout the 1990s facilitated the growing internationalization of the
production and distribution of Hindi films. With the entry of satellite television, Indian filmmakers began
operating in a new media landscape, where a vast range of options, including
easy access to Bollywood and Hollywood films,
were available to viewers at home”.
Thus since early late 1980s, some of the most
popular Hindi films featured westernized themes, foreign locations, actors and singers,
and liberal use of English
in the dialogues. Examples of post- 2000 film with heavy accent on these features include
Kal Ho Naa Ho (dir. Nikhil
Advani, 2003), Dhoom
(dir. Sanjay Gadhvi, 2004) and Salaam
Namaste (dir. Siddharth Anand, 2005). It is these westernized Hindi films that provided the lightening rod to
sparking off interest in the spread of Hindi films.
Ironically, Tyrrell (2000,
p. 317) was to argue that “within
Indian popular culture,
the commercial
success of Indian cinema has become emblematic of India’s resistance to the
West, and Bollywood stars have become figureheads in what is now viewed as a battle against
Westernization.” What makes this argument ironic is the massive way
Indian popular culture not only use
Hollywood films as creative templates, but also indeed directly appropriate many Hollywood films and
convert them into Hindi films. This is more so as
“In the era of globalization, Hindi cinema’s
increasing desire for world-wide appeal and its attempts to reel- in Indian diasporic audiences can been considered primary
catalysts for the cinema’s increased
modernisation and experimentation” (Wright, 2009, p. 199).
Indian filmmakers see this experimentation and modernization in the form of directly
appropriating Hollywood films in order to increase the Hindi version’s
international appeal, particularly to non-Western audiences. In effect, serving
as new centers of “media
imperialism” in which Hindi films now combine two
post-imperialist cultural baggage of both Hollywood and India. In a critique of this process which Wright labels
“reverse colonialism” (ibid.), the very notion of Indian identity
seems to collapse, a process that is “symptomatic of the recent
impact of postmodernism, globalization, modernization, Westernization and internationalization in India and its
film industry” (Wright, 2010, p. 122). The end product is that “non-Indian
audiences, as well as Western
critics, have often found Bollywood’s attempts to mimic Hollywood’s American coolness difficult to
accept, often rejecting them as cringe-worthy and unconvincing” (ibid. p. 165).
Part of the new
Indian cinema’s “coolness” aesthetics incorporates Western metrosexual mindset, which, as Gehlawat (2012, p. 62)
points out, was prompted by “a growing shift
towards a neo-liberal middle class culture
in India, one celebrating and promoting both a feel-good ideology and a focus on the self.”
Coined
in 1994 by the British journalist Mark Simpson, the term “metrosexual” has come reflect a new ultimate urban male obsessed
with looking and feeling good, demonstrated in
expensive fashion and accessories, hair care, sports cars and exquisite
and exotic dining out. The typical Western metrosexual male was
modeled on the footballer (soccer) David Beckham. As originally articulated by Mark Simpson on his website which
echoes the original article in The Independent (UK) in its 15th November 1994 online
edition:
“Metrosexual man, the single young man with a
high disposable income, living or working in the city (because that’s where all the best shops are), is perhaps the
most promising consumer market of the decade…He’s everywhere and he’s going shopping. Metrosexual man wears Davidoff
“Cool Water” after-shave (the one with the naked body-builder on the beach),
Paul Smith jackets
(Ryan Giggs wears them), corduroy shirts (Elvis wore them),
chinos (Steve McQueen wore them), motorcycle boots (Marlon Brando wore them), Calvin Klein under-wear (Marky
Mark wears nothing else). Metrosexual man is a commodity fetishist: a collector of fantasies about the male sold to him by advertising”.
Metrosexuality enters the Hindi film lexicon
through acquisition, or at least reaffirming, another metrosexual attribute: dancing;
for dancing brings
out the fitness freak in the metrosexual man and further accentuates his sophistication.
Indian film stars such as Hrithik Roshan became the
poster boy of the Indian
metrosexual star, as shown in his “skilled dancing, as well as built (and, more often than not, bare) body [in films such
as] Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, Dhoom 2, and
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara” (Gehlawat,
2012, p. 66). Gehlawat adds that it is Rohan’s physique that becomes the object of consumption. Roshan
therefore becomes a metrosexual commodity. In this vein, metrosexual stars do not engage in onscreen violence,
preferring to display their muscles so that
they can be admired, particularly in song and dance sequences using
non-threatening voices in their
miming. Thus massively successful metrosexual films such as Kal Ho Naa Ho provide a template
to what constitute the “cool” in new Hindi
cinema—reflect a paradigmatic departure from the cinema
of both Raj Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan.
Wright (2010) adds that the Indian appropriation of American “coolness” would appear unflattering and puts off potential non-Indian Western spectator. This, however, is not so. As I will further
demonstrate, it is this “metrosexual cool” that is to provide
a vehicle to the clear
demonstration of imperialism from below, through
the process of entertainment contra-flows.
Contra-flows of
Hindi films as Global Movements
I now come to the central core engine of the Trans-cultural Contra-flow Theory, where I trace
how the emergence of new
metrosexualized Hindi cinema created a new model in global connectivity particularly for non-Western countries.
Media influences. It is perhaps an irony of political economy that the Motion Picture
Association of America
(MPAA), the agency
that distributes the main
films produced by the main Hollywood studios does not have any distribution
plan in Sub- Saharan Africa.
Only South Africa
seems to receive
official copies of American blockbuster films for official
screening. Yet latest Hollywood films are available at traffic light markets
throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa for less than $2, as well as via torrent site downloads that telephony
services seem incapable or unwilling to block. The absence of formal trade in commercial film distribution, therefore, would seem to absolve Hollywood from blames of cultural
contamination—any pirated copies
of any film seen by anyone would seem to be at their own risk. Piracy and free-to-air Satellite TV,
particularly from particularly the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC)—cheaply available in most of
sub-Saharan Africa—provide a subversive gateway to Hollywood through dedicated channels
such as MBC2 (solid diet of Hollywood
films) MBC4
(US soap operas)
and Zee Aflam (exclusively Hindi films).
The MBC Group is the
first private free-to-air satellite broadcasting company in the Arab World. It was launched in London in 1991
and later moved to its headquarters in Dubai in 2002. MBC is part of the larger network of ArabSat and Nilesat
broadcasting systems. It was however, the MBC with its Hollywood and Indian cinema
orientation that serves
as the main attraction point
to audiences in Africa who do not have Hindu cinemas legitimate access
to both Hollywood and Hindi films.
ArabSat, Nilesat
and MBC therefore provide starting
points for “re-broadcasting” of transnational
programs that filter their way to other un-intended audiences. In this regard,
Daya Kishan Thussu (2007) noted that
this is an evidence that global media traffic is not just one way, even though it is disproportionately towards non-Western directions. Thus new networks
from the Southern
urban creative centers
of Cairo, Hong Kong and Mumbai represent
what could be called “subaltern flows”. (Thussu, 2007, p. 18).
Such global traffic therefore leads to the emergence of counter, or contra-flows of media influences, often absorbed by audiences sharing
the same, what I
call, “virtual cultural resonance”—for often such sharing is not seamless as it
is disconnected from both historical
factors or notions of nationality. Thus “in the era of globalisation, the one- way vertical
flow has given
way to multiple and horizontal flows, as subaltern [contra-flow] media content
providers have emerged
to service an ever growing
geo-cultural market” (Thussu
2007, p. 18).
The very concept of
contra-flow was articulated by Anandam P. Kavoori (2007, p. 44) who offers “the
following definition of media contra-flows:
“Media contra-flows are the semantic and
imaginative referents for the institutional, cultural and political matrix of a world framed by processes of
global cultural power and local negotiation: a world experienced through the identity politics of nations,
individuals and cultures and negotiated through contestations of locality,
nationality and global
citizenship”.
Thus as Kavoori (2007) further explained,
media contra-flows are usually seen through the ciruclation of national frames which included Hindi cinema,
Brazilian telenovelas, etc. These in fact
creat the locus of contestations of locality of non-Western films to
non-Western audiences. I will therefore
explore this media contra-flow from the analysis
of how commercial Hindi language
cinema spread and became new models of media entertainment among
principally non-Western audiences.
Brian Larkin (2003)
has observed that despite the successful dislodging of Hollywood in the global arena, there have little studies on
why Indian films achieved such success. Hindi films outside India are absorbed in two ways: the first was by
audiences who simply prefer them to Western
films; and the second was by popular culture purveyors, especially filmmakers,
who appropriate Hindi films as local variants—using the same storyline
structure as well as cinematographic styles.
Studies done in the
area of re-enactments of Hindi films outside India and especially by non- Indian
audiences would seem to indicate
three countries where such practices were previously prevalent: Pakistan
(Khan 2005), Indonesia (Khan 2003), Turkey
(Gürata 2009) and in the case of Hindi film music, Greece,
(Abadzi, 2004) Indonesia
(David 2008) and Egypt (Armbrust
2008).
The travels of Hindi
films were initially mediated by migrations of Indians across the globe, where the films played a role in producing
“diaspora belonging, cultural knowledge, and even language training” (Larkin, 2003, p. 173). The Indian diasporic attachment to Hindi films as a form of
reconnecting back to India provides their host communities with opportunities
to partake in Hindi film
fantasies—either at entertainment level as just another form of “other”
entertainment, or in severe cases,
provide templates for domestications to host popular culture. Thus Hindi films are patronized on a global scale by what
Athique (2006) defined as “non-resident” audiences. In this regard, an audience might be considered “resident” under
conditions where viewers perceive what
is on- screen (in terms of either fantastic or “realist” representation) as
coterminous with the society in which they live. When a media
artifact operates outside
of an environment where it can claim to present a social imagination
“about here and about us” (Athique, 2006, p. 191), then the artifact
and the audiences it addresses
have a non-resident relationship
The spectacular
nature of the Hindi film seems to have influence on the entertainment ecology of many parts of the world—both in where
Indians constitute a percentage of the population, to where there were few Indians both as residents as well as
entrepreneurs. Perhaps the first and natural
direct influence of Hindi cinema was in Pakistan which established its own film
industry in about 1929 and which
subsequently came to be referred to as Lollywood. Pakistan’s first indigenous film was Teri Yaad (dir. Daud Chand, 1948). The power and influence of Hindi
films in the region provided the Pakistani
filmmakers with a template to imitate either Hindi films or their techniques. Thus, according to Omar
Khan (2005), more and more Lollywood producers
found that plagiarism was the easiest and most effective way of making a
fortune and thus when the import of
Indian films was stopped in the 1950s, the copycats simply went wild churning
out carbon copy remakes of popular
Indian films and releasing them shamelessly as “original” work in Pakistan (Khan
2005).
“Considering the bitter acrimony
that ensured in the separation of India into what eventually became Pakistan and Bangladesh, it was surprising that the
emotional grammar of Hindi films was spoken and understood in Muslim Pakistan. This is more as the
Hindi film genre is inevitably tied to the Hindu religion. According to Amitabh
Bachchan, perhaps the most visible
Hindi modern film performer, most Hindi film stories revolved
around the epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the main epic
sources of Hindu religion, which explains why there is so much idolization” (Bachchan, 2005).
Thus while
Islam does not feature too strongly in Pakistani cinema,
the emotional grammar
of the classic domestic conflict
reflective of Hindi family dramas provided strong fodder for domestic conflict enactment and resolution. It is significant that early Lollywood
films contain strong
ideological messages about nationhood and independence, with strong “anti-Western” messaging. In
Greece, as in Pakistan, Hindi films of 1945-1965 were extremely popular in a
society dealing with economic
devastation, “illiteracy, limited
life expectancy, and low status
for women.” (Abadzi
2004). In such depressed circumstances, Hindi films provided
an escape, especially as the plots of the movies resonated
with the wounded
Greek psyche. Suffering
women, street children
who had to drop out of school,
jealous sisters-in-law, vengeful
mothers-in-law, interdependencies,
betrayals,
and frequent unhappy
ends
“resonated with the difficult choices of poorly
educated Greek people
subsisting in large cities. In particular, the characters appealed to poor women.
The maidservants and factory workers saw themselves depicted on the movie screen, hoping for deliverance. Maybe the rich young man would marry the poor beautiful girl
who worked at his house. Maybe lost relatives
would appear to take care of the abandoned street child who sang so beautifully” (Abadzi
2004).
The appeal of Hindi films to Greek audiences
was such that the producers eventually ended up imitating Hindi success recipes. The result was Greek films with
8-12 songs (mainly set in bouzouki night-club scenes) and tragic plots and titles. To lure the audiences of Hindi films,
Greek titles were sometimes
almost indistinguishable. The Hindi-to-Greek film technique, however, focused more attention on the musical
elements, creating a new genre of Greek popular music called Indoprepi (Hindi-style). The Greek intellectual class,
with centuries of inherited critical tradition
did not take kindly to the plagiarization of Hindi popular culture, and serious
backlash ensured against such
practice. As noted by a critic, “the drawn-out and bothersome Indian music which accompanies these sad creations also
tends to become our national music..
It is not permissible, when we fight to stand in the geographical space of Europe to have become a spiritual colony of India”
(Abadzi 2004).
South-East Asia can
be considered “Indian-belt” with cultures and religions cutting across the borders. Making the border leap was the
unstoppable Hindi film, for as Sonia Trikha indicated, Hindi films are the “rage in Indonesia” where songs from Hindi films are dubbed
in local language, Bahasa Indonesia (Trikha
2001). This is not surprising because most Indonesians, especially those who live in the island of Java (about 60%
of Indonesian population lived there), have a Hindu background. Their culture,
dances, language (based
on Sanskrit), philosophy, and their traditional ceremonies, all reflect this Hindu influence in their lives
which has come to be a mix between Hinduism and most especially Sufi Islam (Khan 2003). A convergence of cultures therefore
favors the presence of Hindi
films in Indonesia which subsequently had a long history of showing Hindi films.
Further acculturative
influences of the Hindi cinema is in Malaysia, which can be considered part of Muslim Asia. Malaysia, with a
large concentration of ethnic Indian residents who were attracted to Hindi films also falls into the same cinematic mold
as Indonesian audiences. In discussing
this, Manik Mehta (2003) observes the firm grip of Hindi films on Malaysian
cinema- goers, evidenced by the
fact that although the “average Malaysians.. do not understand Hindi (though
subtitles help them)..
they can very well relate
to the films and their
characters”.
In
Egypt, Hindi
films, though
not massively
popular with elite class, nevertheless were accepted mass culture due to similarities in the customs
and traditions of the two peoples such as honor and protectiveness towards women.
Consequently, the “secret to the success of Indian films in Egypt is that they portray a common life of both the Indian and the Egyptian, with only trivial
differences attributable to environmental factors.” (Armbrust, 2008, p. 212).
Despite these views,
however, Walter Armbrust analyzes that India has had a long, though not always welcome, presence in Egyptian film culture. Egyptian
filmmakers and most elites disparage
Indian cinema, and “this is consistent with the more generalized attitude
about things Indian. “Hindi” in
everyday language labels things that are strange, silly, or just plain
dumb”(Armbrust, 2008, p. 201).
In Tibet, Ann Morcom
notes that although Hindi cinema, especially its music is far from standard fare in Tibetan nightclubs, there
is however, an increasing interest in reproducing Hindi film dances and Hindi songs which were sometimes performed in
groups by the staff dancing troupes at nightclubs (nangma
bars), who usually
learn from VCDs, imitating dance moves. These
troupes perform very much in the style of Tibetan dance created by the
state and spread from the 1950s, now
rearticulated with meanings of desirable modernity. They almost invariably
perform Hindi cinema with a similar body language, which
“results in a performance that is stiff, unsensual and
overly modest compared to original Bollywood. They also tend to have dead-pan
facial expressions” (Morcom, 2009,
pp. 155-156)
We have seen how Hindi films became popular
in the old Soviet Union, even though
audiences were aware that the
entertainment philosophy of Hindi films was steeped in the Hindu religious culture, this did not deter Soviet
audiences, essentially because the early Hindi films in Soviet Union, especially in Moscow, in the 1950s
were seen as socialist messaging. India was a newly independent nation with socialist leanings;
Russia was in the grip of the cold war, closed off from the West and the two countries began
diplomatic and trade relations. The early Hindi films, with their nominally socialist outlook were very alluring to audiences raised
on diets of official socialist realism. Subsequently Hindi films became the most popular
cultural export between the two countries,
starting, as I earlier indicated, with Raj Kapoor’s Awaara (1951), which was dubbed in
Russian as Brojyaga.
The popularity of
Kapoor’s filmmaking technique in the Soviet Union also led to Shree 420
(1955), and an Indo-Soviet co-production, Pardesi (1957) by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and Russian director Vasili Pronin. By the time
Kapoor did Mera Naam Joker in 1970,
interest was beginning to fade, accelerated by the end of the Cold War in November
1990. Nevertheless, Hindi film stars
remained popular in Russia, as attested by Amitabh Bachchan
who told an interviewer:
“when
I first went to Moscow for the first time, I was received by Russian female
fans, who were actually dressed in our Indian
dress and wore the bindi and the jewelry and everything, and spoke Hindi,
which is our language.
And said that they were going to university to study the language so that they
could follow our films. Remarkable. Very astonishing”(Bachchan 2005).
Thus Hindi cinema
still retains its appeal in the Russia that emerged out of the Soviet Union after 1990, with stars such as Shahrukh Khan appealing to both young and older audiences. For instance, Elena
Igorevna Doroshenko notes
that Indian cinema
in Russia, even after the long period
of “silence,” still holds promise
and has a future as cultural and political ties between India and Russia grow closer
again with Indian
films playing a significant role.
For example, when the Russian
president, Dmitry Medvedev, visited Mumbai at the end of December
2010, he met Shahrukh Khan and mentioned the first Indian
film he had ever seen back in the 1970s (Doroshenko, 2012).
Turkey also became smitten with Hindi films through Awaara. The film was released in February 1955 in Istanbul
and became an instant it, leading to repeated releases
of the same print. Due to this success, Gürata (2010) notes that over 100 Hindi films were shown in Istanbul between
1952 and 1962. Awaara was successful in Turkey not only due to its melodramatic cinematic appeal, but also due to the title song “Awaara hoon” and which
was played throughout Turkey as a top selling record, “and was performed by a number of Turkish singers who circulated it as a Turkish record
in music markets”
(Gürata, 2010, p. 83) making
it part of Turkish folk culture, played
with traditional instruments at weddings and other ceremonies, including official functions.
“Prior to the massive
importation of Hindi films in Turkey, the Egyptian cinema was in vogue. The liberalization of the trade process which
enabled more Indian films to be imported into Turkey was encouraged as “distributors
perceived these as substitutes for Egyptian films,
whose influence officials
were anxious to curtail” (Gürata,
2010, p. 69).
In Zanzibar, fans stressed the educative potential of Hindi films,
which “opened their
eyes” to new ways of thinking about life’s possibilities as well as new strategies for coping with life’s heartbreaks and constraints (Fair, 2009, p. 60). Further
acceptance of Hindi films was also because
such films developed
themes and issues in ways that were far more relevant to East African life than those dreamed up by Hollywood. Thus “the lessons
on love that people took from Hindi
films were.. far more resonant
with local social life”(ibid.).
In Ghana, audiences
of Hindi films perceive India as a spiritual space or a sacred land, “full of magical, occult, and esoteric forces” (Wuaku,
2009, p. 128). These views were reinforced by Hindi cinema, for as Albert Wuaku further
explained, the appeal of Hinduism in Ghana can in part be explained by the fact that India, its
birthplace is an “outside” world. But this appeal is also strong because
of the influence of narratives of Ghanaian people’s
actual encounters with powerful Hindu
spirits, gods and esoteric truths
in India. Indian films, popular
theatre, and Western
texts on Hindu
mysticism that found their way to Ghana, reinforced the narratives. The
result was the belief that there must be something
very spiritual or magical about India and its religions
and people curious
and eager to explore these easily turn to Hindu religious traditions
(Wuaku, 2009). The power of the
imagery in Hindi films, coupled with returnee Ghanaian WWII soldiers who served
in the British Army in Asia served
to create an African Hindu Ministry in Southern Ghana.
Younger and more
contemporary Ghanaian audiences prefer a different path. The musician, Sony Achiba, for instance, entered into
African music history by creating first High-life/ Hindi film music fusion, a genre he calls Hip-Dia, and performed in rap form on two individual CDs, Indian
Ocean 1&2, Indian Ocean 3 (Achiba,
2006). Accompanying these CD releases were YouTube
video clips of Sony Achiba and dancers performing songs from the CDs wearing
full Indian costumes. Even his name is a homage to transnational media and show business: “Sony” is taken from the Sony Corporation, while
“Achiba” stands for Action, Compassion, Humble or Honest, Irresistible, Blessed and, Achiever (Achiba
2012). He has refused to reveal his actual given
name, preferring the media nomenclature he created for himself.
In Senegal, a
“francophone country without an Indian expatriate community” Gwenda Vander Steene
(2008, p. 118) records that obsession with Hindi cinema by the local
population (or “Indophiles” as she
refers to them) who prefer Hindi films was because of values which are, according
to some Indophiles, highly regarded
in Senegalese society
and can also be found in such films:
such as respect for elders and marriage, piousness, and respect for women. The
importance of family networks and
living in an extended family is also mentioned as a strong similarity. The appreciation of values such as respect
for elders or the extended
family also relates
to a preference for older films. More recent films
are often criticized (especially by older
Indophiles) for imitating Hollywood and for their “deteriorating” values. The fact that
Senegalese appreciate this aspect of Hindi
cinema shows how they actually would like to see themselves: it is a Senegalese
ideal projected in Hindi film (Steene, 2008,
p. 121)—a recurrent argument and rationale
for identifying with Hindi films in African
communities.
In all these cases of audience
rapture and often internalization of Hindi film and Hindu
identity, it should be pointed
out that the main focus was on their popularity as entertainment from another country, and in some cases, their cultural
resonance with the local audiences. The large numbers of Non-Resident Indians
(NRI) living in many countries
ensured the continuous presence of Hindi
films which often arouse the curiosity of non-Indians. Further, in the
cases of the popularity of Hindi films
indicated above, some common elements
seem to be discernible between
the countries and India itself. Thus the Hindi films
exported and made popular in other countries were either steeped in ideological bondage (Greece and Soviet Union),
artistic inclinations (Egypt)
or cultural affinity
(Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia) with India. Further,
collaborations, as they were, were focused on exploring areas of artistic cinematic representations.
The non-Hollywod
media audiences were not restricted to Hindi cinema. Beside Hindi cinema providing a post-imperialist media contra-flows to non-Western audiences,
televisions programs across
the world from South America to Japan have also provided non-Hollywood media
contra- flows. As Ana Lopez (1991, p. 597) noted,
“In Latin America, the melodramatic has been
important not only as the most popular form of narrative entertainment (with roots in older oral traditions), but also as a form that is particularly well suited to represent the sociopolitical conditions of modern Latin America from the
position of the dominant classes”.
The most vivid example was the massive
world-wide popularity of Brazilian telenovela which challenged the traditional debate over cultural imperialism and
the North-South flow of media products
(Rego and La Pastina 2007). This contra-flow of media products is further
illustrated by the export
potentials of the telenovela to Egypt, Russia, China, Africa, as well as
throughout Europe (Benavides 2008). For instance, as Thussu (2007, pp. 23-24)
argued,
“The
success of
telenovelas outside the “geo-linguistic market”
of Spanish and Portuguese consumers, shows the complexity
of media consumption patterns. Such telenovelas as The Rich Also Cry were very successful in Russia in the 1990s, while Sony developed its first
telenovela in 2003—Poor Anastasia for
the Russian network, CTC…The genre
has become popular even in Western Europe: a German company has produced their own telenovela, Bianca: Road to Happiness, shown in 2004 on the public channel
ZDF. In India,
Sony has successfully adapted the popular
Colombian telenovela, Betty la Fea into
Hindi as Jassi Jaissi
Koi Nahin, which became one of the most popular
programmes on Indian television…The transnationalisation of telenovelas is an indication of contra-flow in television content”.
Further media contra-flow influences are
reflected in the popularity of “Hallyu Korean wave” - the significant increase
in the popularity of South Korean entertainment and culture starting
in the 1990s. As Martin
Roll (2006, p. 38) noted,
“South Korean pop culture “Hallyu” –
embracing fashion, music and film – is rapidly becoming an export success for South Korea. The rise in
popularity of Korean pop culture led the Chinese media to call it the “Korean wave” in 2001. The wave or Hallyu
has spread to Southeast Asia and lately to Japan where it has had a strong
impact”.
The arrival of Hallyu as media contra-flow from Korea to Philippines since 2003 through
“Koreanovela” (Kwon, 2007; Tuk, 2012) prompted an international conference
on the impact of Hallyu on the
Philippines, such that the term seems to connote the influence of Korean social
and cultural aspects such as clothes, fashion,
and technological goods among the Asian countries.(Kwon, 2007, p. 258). The export of Korean popular media contents has
continually expanded even to
Singapore, Vietnam and Mongolia, which is beyond East Asia to South East Asia.
Yet regional
studies of media influences indicate
that a cultural resonance is often created
from a media-rich country to
another country sharing similar norms and values, and it is certainly cultural resonance at play in the spread
and acceptance of the Hallyu.
For instance, the phenomenal Taiwanese soap opera hit Meteor Garden in 2003 has transformed the face of Philippine programming. It paved the way for the
influx of Asian dramas from Taiwan, Korea and Japan. Dubbed in Filipino (the local language), these chinovelas (a play of words from the
words Chino meaning Chinese
and telenovela, derived from the soap opera format
of Latin American
countries) is common fare on
Philippine television, with about one or two of them occupying the primetime schedules of the top networks and some
appearing in non- prime time slots like daytime and weekend timeslots
(Vinculado, 2006).
This “Asian media
invasion” was welcomed by Vinculado’s respondents, for as she further reported, in terms of cultural affinity,
respondents feel that they can relate to the physical characteristics of the characters, being
Asian and exposed to the physicality of the actors in their everyday
lives. Since some Filipinos look like the characters, they are not alien to them compared
to the Caucasian-looking characters in the Latin telenovelas.
Respondents also feel a cultural connection
to the settings used in the programs and not in the way we expect (Vincludo,
2006, p. 238).
However, “cultural
affinity” soon translates into “cultural proximity” in explaining the inter- regional spread of Korean media products
especially to China and Taiwan. Dong Hwan Kwon
quotes studies that analyzed the contents of widely accepted
Korean television dramas
among East Asian countries for commonalities of
acceptance. The analysis revealed that “Korean dramas that have been widely
accepted in Asia contain the Confucian values
that are close to Chinese
culture” (Kwon, 2006, p.
262). This was premised on common culture and value systems between Korean and Chinese.
Similar trends were
noted with regards to the popularity of Japanese drama series in Taiwan. For instance, Koichi Iwabuchi (2002)
reported that most of respondents in a survey indicated that they emotionally engaged more with
Japanese dramas than they did with Western or Taiwanese dramas. Further, his respondents explained that that the ways of
expressing love in Japanese dramas which are delicate and elegant are much more culturally acceptable than those of American dramas, and human relations between
family and lovers also look more culturally proximate to Taiwan. This proximity allows
Taiwan audiences to relate to Japanese dramas more easily.
Thus countries
sharing common cultural proximity find it easier to provide “oppositional resistance” to media programming from
non-proximity sources. This is further facilitated by the inclusion of linguistic commonalities even
within linguistic clusters and groups.(see for instance arguments given by Straubhaar 1991). Interestingly enough,
colonized countries often feel they share
the same linguistic—and therefore cultural—spaces with the metropolitan
countries, thus partaking in the
latter’s transnational programs. This is illustrated, for instance, by African Francophone countries where, as Mytton,
Teer-Tomaselli and Tudesq noted that the rapid and successful development of the more popular and successful
francophone transnational television stations
in Africa has resulted from France’s own political and cultural approach, which
among other things seeks to extend
and strengthen co-operation between countries that have the French language
in common. Mytton,
Teer-Tomaselli & Tudesq, 2005,
p. 101).
A final transnational
horizontal post-imperialist visual culture is the Nigerian film industry. Before I look at its horizonal impact,
I would first briefly look at the generalized picture
of African filmmaking.
A central
characterteristic of mainstream African cinema is its focus on social and
political themes rather than any
commercial interests, played out through an exploration of the conflicts between
the traditional past and modern
times. The creative
medium in African
cinema harks back at the griot oral nature of narrative structures in African folktales.
Discussions and discourses on transnational flows
of media have always ignored
African media products—which, for the most part were only shown in Western
universities dealing with ‘African films’. Further, ‘Africa’ in discourses
of African filmmaking tended to be racialized—virtually ignoring North African Arab filmmaking, as that is usually
categorized under the more general rubric of ‘Arab cinema’.
Discussions
of African film
makers (see,
for instance,
Ukadike, 1994; Gugler, 2003; Thackway, 2003; Ames, 2006; and Armes,
2008) tended to focus on prolific, predominantly West African directors such as Ousmane
Sembène, Djibril Diop Mambéty (Senegal), Idrissa Ouedraogo, Gaston
Kaboré (Burkina Faso), Mahamat Saleh Haroun (Chad), Souleymane Cissé,
Manthia Diawara (Mali), Ola Balogun,
Hubert Ogunde (Nigeria). The
dominance of Franchophe African film directors arose because, as Armes (2006, p. 38)
noted,
“In most francophone African countries the government has at some time or another offered
financial support for at least some filmmakers, and in certain
states the list of government-supported films is virtually
the total list of films
produced”.
Such financing inevitably invites censorship.
Anglophone countries such as Nigeria and Ghana
tended to rely virtually on market forces to sell their films, and
therefore tended to be more commercial,
less artistic, than Francophone films. With no State funding and illusions of
oil economy—illusion excellently
supported by institutionalized corruption in governance (see, for instance,
Smith, 2007), budding
filmmakers in Nigeria
turn to the then popoular
VHS video system
and created a video film industry, which Norimitsu Onishi labeled
‘Nollywood’ in article for the New York Times in 2002.
The industry
that emerged established a new ‘soft power’ locus of production, distribution and consumption that actually competed with Hindi
cinema in Africa. Nollywood would seem to be
what African post-Imperialist, and what I call NRAD (Non Resident
Africans in Diaspora) visual audiences were waiting for. As
Okome (2007, p. 2) observed,
“Nollywood is commercially-savvy. It values
the entertainment of its clientele. The entertainment bit is primary to the mode of representation in
the industry, yet in that pursuit, one cannot forget its sense of mission, which is to produce culture from
the bottom of the street, so to speak.. Nollywood provides the imaginary for certain marginal
sections of the society where it operates. It is the poorer part of its postcolonial base, which is no longer restricted to
Nigeria. This marginal clientele is now found among people on the continent
and in the black diaspora
where such postcolonial conditions prevail”.
As purely commercial ‘cinema’ which sought to
‘decolonize’ African enterainment, Nollywood
aims to supplant the Western and Easter offerings for African Audiences
with distinctly African offering. As Okome
further noted,
“it is its acute notation of locality that
gives it an unprecedented acceptability as the
local cinematic expression in
Nigeria and indeed in Africa. With the emergence of video film, the discourse
of African cinema will need to be rephrased
in very radical ways. While the wholesale adoption of video technology by practitioners in Nollywood has been an unqualified local
success, it is the spirit
to defy the economic malaise
of the cinema industry in Nigeria that led to the adoption
of this “new” technology” (Okome
2007, p. 3).
The phenomena of Nollywood is captured in the interest
shown in what it generated
and referred to as ‘Nollywood Studies’ in collections such as Haynes
(2000), Saul &
Austen (2010), and Krings &
Okome (2013). In many of the studies,
the popularity of Nollywood among African audiences
both in Africa
and diaspora is carefully recorded,
by for instance Ajibade, 2007 (Cameroon), Cartelli, 2007 (Caribbean), Jedlowski, 2012 (Italy) and Ugochukwu 2013 (France), among others. However, while most of these studies
deal with the political economy of an alternative African film industry, perhaps
the most clear example of the transcultural and catalytic nature
of Nigerian Nollywood
on an African audience was in Tanzania,
where consumption lead to ‘re-scripting’ in which basic
elements of successful Nollywood video films are re-worked in Kiswahili, as Krings (2010, p. 75) reports:
“New local forms of media production in
Tanzania have used Nigerian video films as “scripts,” drawing on them in varying degrees. Earlier forms,
such as the remediation as photonovel (based on screen shots with Kiswahili
in balloons), or the audio
dubbing into Kiswahili
on VHS cassettes, were attempts
to provide some form
of intercultural translation and thus to localize Nigerian video films for
Tanzanian audiences. Current forms of localization, such as can be observed
within some part of the local Kiswahili video film production itself, rather aim at appropriating, what, for want of a better term, could be referred to as the aura of Nigerian video”.
This comes about certainly because Nollywood
cinema is devoid of Hollywood spectacular and
Hindi film melodramatic storylines embelished with long song and dance
sequences. It is a realist
cinema based on African
realities such as
“infertility
or childlessness, the problems of polygamy, child
abandonment or desertion, legacy or inheritance issues, prostitution, sibling
rivalry, philandering, wife or husband
snatching, problem of in-laws, house helps, bonding
and oath-taking” (Okome
2010, p. 29).
One might add: corruption, gang warfare,
questioning/alternative sexuality, witchcraft and magic (thanks to pre-set digital effects libraries that accompanies
most film editing software), a dash of supernatural horror
and ballistic urbanism
expressed through outrageous conspicous consumption and opulent set props. It is these
social, community and personal episodes that link Nollywood audiences
to a collective lived memory,
and racialize it in way Hollywood and Hindi cinema
could not.
From Contamination to Transformation
While Hollywood was accused of dominance by
the media imperialism theory (e.g. Schiller.
1991), Hindi filmmakers have a different perception; for Hollywood and
its blockbuster films provide a perfect template
for appropriation by Hindi filmmakers, rather than cultural
substitution. As Thussu
(2008, p. 107) noted, “it is not unusual to see Indian filmmakers adapting
Hollywood plots to Indian tastes, in
the process of refiguring the Hollywood hegemony in a hybridized product”.
This product, a direct appropriation of Hollywood blockbuster films by Hindi filmmakers
has been well studied by Orfall (2009) and Wright (2010). For instance, Blair
Orfall reproduced an interview with
an Indian film producer who claimed that “easily 60 percent of movies—almost one film that releases every week—is either
blatantly copied or inspired by some fairly big American film. In addition to
that, I’m going to stick my neck out and say a good 10 to 15 percent are borrowed from non-American
sources. And maybe 25 percent – I’m not even
comfortable saying 25 percent – is original” (Orfall, 2009, p. 91).
Thus Hindi filmmakers
openly admit appropriating Hollywood in their films, for according to the columnist Vikramdeep Johal, “the floodgates, so to speak,
opened in the 1970s, when our film- makers
began to steal Hollywood stories with gay abandon. The Godfather became
Dharmatma, The Magnificent Seven was turned into Khotey Sikkey, The Exorcist into
Jadu Tona, Some Like it Hot became Rafoo Chakkar
etc.. Today, most filmmakers openly
acknowledge the sources
of their films and consider it a matter of great pride to be involved with the rehash of a famous film, thereby uniquely
combining “inspiration “ with
“perspiration” (Johal, 1998, online).
Subsequently, in a closer
reading of the Hindi film appropiration of 142 Hollywood films were appropriated into Hindi films, Wright (2010) shows that the predominant emphasis of the appropriations was on Hollywood
films with international appeal that were commercially successful. Table 1 shows a sample
of the Hollywood films appropriated into Hindi cinema.
Table 1: Indian
Appropriation of Hollywood Films
Original Hollywood Film |
Hindi Film Remake |
Shawshank Redemption |
3 Deewarein |
Silence of the Lambs |
Sangharsh |
Harry Potter
and the Philosopher's Stone |
Aabra Ka Daabra |
Point Break The Fast and
the Furious |
Dhoom |
Man On Fire |
Ek Ajnabee
– A Man Apart |
Mission Impossible The Matrix |
Main Hoon Na |
Indiana Jones &
the Temple of Doom |
Mr. India |
Memento |
Ghajini |
“Crocodile” Dundee |
Jo Bole So Nihaal |
Source: After Wright, 2010, pp. 201-203
Hollywood films such as Point Break, Mission: Impossible, The Fast and the Furious, The Matrix
all created ultra-cool metrosexual characters that are larger than life, and reflect
a radical departure from the melodramatic narratives of Hindi cinema. The array of
choreagraphed singing and dancing in most of the appropriations—absent in the originals—added the metrosexual garnishing to the remakes
without being encumbered with the necessity
of artistic homage.
Guns, explosions, fast cars and bikes, sleek women,
ultra-urbanism is the message of these remakes; not artistic commentaries. They became Indian postmodernist commentaries from a traditional society.
Having seen how
Hollywood became domesticated in postmodernist Hindi cinema, I will now turn my attention to a post-Imperialist
media phenomena rarely documented in both discourses of media/cultural imperialism or general film studies. This was
how Hindi cinema—both localized and
trans-border appropriations—in turn become templates for the transformation of
national or semi-national cinemas.
Two locations provide
my case study examples: Turkey and Kano,
northern Nigeria.
In both of these
locations Indian cinema, more than Hollywood created what I call nexus of connectivity between contamination and
transformation of political economy of film production. Interestingly, despite Turkish overwhelming preference for Hindi
cinema (see Gürata 2010), yet as Smith (2008) indicated, the first attempt
at appropriation of a film from a major world industry in Turkey was not
sourced from India, but from Hollywood.
The Turkish first
foray into transcultural filmmaking was the appropriation of the popular American TV series, Star Trek. The Turkish version was a feature film called Turist Omer Uzay. The story of the film recyled plots from two Star Trek episodes,
The Man Trap and Amok Time, retold within
the comedic backstory of a Turkish
bridegroom beamed aboard the Star Trek’s Enterprise space ship during his wedding feast (Mitchell, 2001; Smith
2008).
Thus
in Turkey, appropriation
of various sources
into a
singular Turkish film was very common.
According to Gürata (2006), in 1972 Turkey ranked third among major
film-producing countries, with 301
films. Yet almost 90 per cent of these films were remakes, adaptations or
spin-offs: in other words, they were
based on novels, plays, films and even film reviews or publicity materials of foreign origin.
As he further stated,
“The notion of plagiarism in Turkey is not identical
with that prevalent
in the West. Furthermore, the appropriation of material whose sources (filmic or non-filmic) are almost impossible to identify, rendered proper legal procedures unnecessary for the filmmakers” (Gürata, 2006, p. 242).
The
most significant
source of
the appropriations,
however, were from Hindi cinema, with Awaara being
the biggest all-time favorite. Some of the Hindi films appropriated into
Turkish cinema are indicated in Table 2.
Table 2: Turkish Appropriation of Hindi Films
Hindi Original |
Turkish Remakes |
Aah |
Ah
Bu Dünya (Nuri
Ergün, 1965) |
Sangam |
Arkadaşımın Aşkısın (T. İnanoğlu, 1968) |
Mother India |
Toprak Ana (Memduh Ün,
1973) |
Awaara |
Turksih versions of Awaara |
|
Berduş (Osman Seden, 1957) |
|
Gençlik Hülyaları (Halit Refiğ, 1962) |
|
Avare (Semih Evin, 1964) |
|
Ağla Gözlerim (Mehmet Dinler,
1968) |
|
Berduş (Hulki
Saner, 1969) |
|
Avare (Remzi Jöntürk,1970) |
|
Avare Aşık (Hulki Saner,1970) |
|
Kader Bu (Fate) (Çetin
İnanç, 1976) |
|
Avare (Remzi Jöntürk, 1978) |
After Gürata (2009)
Awaara was so popular that
it was remade nine times at various years by Turkish filmmakers. Indian films were modified and adapted
into the local context by the local distributors, exhibitors or censorship bodies. These
modifications took the form of various programming and translation methods from trimming to dubbing.
Furthermore, certain scenes were removed or in some cases performances or acts featuring local stars were inserted into the original
prints (Gürata, 2006).
I will now focus on
Nigeria. The film culture of the Muslim Hausa of northern Nigeria could not be categorized under the rubric of Nigerian
‘Nollywood’ simply because
of religious differences: Nollywood is predominantly
southern Nigerian and Christian, reflecting Christian ethos. The perenial mutual distrust between nothern Nigerian
Muslim culture and the southern Nigerian
Christian culture, which resulted in a civil war between 1967-1970 (see for
instance, Falola, 1999) certainly
prevented the formation of a singular national cultural mindset.
However, just like
their southern Nigerian counterparts, northern Nigerian filmmakers cut off from what I call ‘celluloid cell’ of early
Hausa films and embraced the video film format— necessistated by lack of government funding and personal
capital; but motivated by amateurish enthusiasm
backed by years of watching endless screenings of popular Hindi films on TV, mediated
by various drama clubs formed
in the city of Kano, the most significant commercial hub in the north.
Thus in March 1990
the Hausa video film industry was born with the release of a VHS tape of Turmin
Danya (The Draw, dir. Salisu Galadanchi) by Tumbin Giwa Drama group. For
the next few years after this
release, Hausa video film production was moderated by the various drama groups. Quick commercial success—coupled
with instant fame and stardom—lead to internecine feuds, mutual mistrust and what I
can ‘ninanci’ (self-aggrandizement, rather than focus on the emergent
industry) lead to break-away producers, directors, actors, and others forming
independent filmmaking studios,
often run from their bedrooms.
Turmin Danya was hugely successful on many fronts.
First, it gave birth to an industry.
Second it introduced the idea
of re-packaging Hausa folktale into a new non-TV format, although using the same cinematic conventions as the TV
series most of the actors were part of. It was a conflict in a Hausa traditional ruling house
about succession to the throne, with romance thrown in for good measure. The overt-screen romance
tallies with the Hindi film mindset the actors, producers and directors of the new industry were weaned on (see Adamu 2007 for details of this).
In the years
following this release, a whole industry has emerged patterned on the Hindi
film industry star system. In August
1999 the industry was tagged “Kanywood” in a Hausa language magazine created to cater for the
industry—the magazine, Tauraruwa (Star)
was itself patterned on the Hindi film magazine, Stardust. It is instructive to note that this is the first
labeling of a video film industry in Africa. This is because
the larger Nigerian
film industry, ‘Nollywood’ was coined by Norimitsu Onishi, a newspaper
columnist for the New York Times in
his column of 16th September 2002 (Onishi 2009).
Kanywood films are based on three sub-plot elements:
forced marriage, gender
rivalry, singing and dancing. These elements characterize,
by and large, Hindi commercial cinema. The first theater of Hausa youth cinema was an inevitable rebellion
against auren dole—the romanticized forced
marriage scenario. This is a theme well played-out in thousands of Hindi films. The second
formulaic structure of the Hausa video film is a refinement of the auren dole theme—a love triangle where either two girls love the
same boy, or two boys love the same girl, with parents or guardians opposing. Both these formulaic
patterns, are of course, adopted from Hindi cinema, which is why Hausa video film makers latch on them due to what
they perceive as cultural similarities.
The third defining characteristic of the Hausa video film is the song and
dance, especially from 2000 to 2008.
This became a necessary vehicle for the expression of the love, conflict (and often violence as a means of
conflict resolution or enforcement of turf territoriality, with the
turf often always being a girl as
an object of desire).
Considering the
historical antecedent preference for Hindi films among the Hausa, it was not surprising therefore that the Hausa video
film industry sought its creative templates from Hindi film culture. The transformation of the Hausa video film to a
Hindi film clone started from 1995 with
Mr. USA Galadima’s Soyayya Kunar Zuci (Pains
of Love), produced under the auspices of the
Nigerian Film Corporation, Jos. The video film was based on the Hindi film, Mujhe Insaaf Chahiye (dir. Rama Rao Tatineni, 1983). Before its cinema
release, it was premiered to a select private
audience in a video store in Kano in 1996, and the overwhelming audience
response was that it was too Hindi and too adult
to be accepted in a Hausa culture
as a video film; more so since it was also the first Hausa video film with body contacts between
genders. This was probably what informed
the decision not to release it commercially, and restricting its viewing to
cinema showings only.
However, in 1999 Sarauniya Films in Kano released the trailer of a new video film,
Sangaya (My Lover, dir. Aminu Muhammad
Sabo). It contained
catchy tunes, and most importantly a tightly controlled
choreography which heightened anticipation for the film which was to be released
in early 2000.
Noting the anticipation for Sangaya, raised
by the trailer, Almah Films in Jos decided to pipe it at
the post by immediately releasing Hanzari
(Haste, dir. Magaji Mijinyawa) a video based on Hindi comedy film Do
Jasoos (dir. Naresh Kumar, Dimple Films, 1975). The significance of this video was not that it was the second
direct Hindi-to-Hausa adaptation, but its mimicking of the Sangaya dance routines with 15 dancers -
10 male and five female in a choreography that echoes the original Hindi
film Do Jasoos.
The race then, had
started. In the stampede that followed, no one was focusing attention too much on serious storylines or drama with
Nigerian appeal or even African; the focus was on creating video films for Hausa-speaking audience that clone the
Hindi films which the audience was already
addicted to. In many interviews with popular culture
press, the producers claimed that they were trying to wean away Hausa
audiences from their addiction to Hindi films by providing readily digestible alternatives that frame
the same Hindi central storylines, but within a more African setting. Yet they were merely reinforcing their focus on
Hindi cinema by couching it as ‘African’.
Subsequently each
producer was attempting to upstage the other in the appropriation game, trying
to prove that his video film could
produce a better
Hindi adaptation than others. Thus HRB Studios in Kano released Abin Sirri Ne (Mystery, dir. Tijjani
Ibrahim) in 1999, based on Judwaa (dir. David Dhawan, 1997). This was
followed by Tijjani Ibrahim’s Dijengala (female
nickname) in 1999 which entered the
Hausa entertainment history as the first Australian-to-Hindi-to-Hausa appropriation. Dijengala was based on Hindi film Khoon Bhari Maang (dir. Rakesh Roshan, 1988), which itself was based on Australian mini-TV
series soap opera,
Return to Eden (dirs. Karen Arthur and Kevin
James Dobson, 1983).
The three studios
(Almah Productions in Jos with Hanzari; and in Kano, HRB with Abin Sirri
Ne and HB with Dijengala) that spearheaded the Hindi-to-Hausa adaptation technique were merely
sustaining the tradition
of direct copying
initiated in the industry by well- respected directors such as the late Tijjani Ibrahim
who favored not only direct
Hindi-to-Hausa conversion, exemplified by his Mujadala (Pious Woman, based on Dillagi, dir. Sunny Deol, 1999) and Badali (Transformation, based on Hum Hai Rahi Pyar Ki, dir. Mahesh Bhatt,
1993) but also Hindi motifs
(especially romantic storylines).
Hausa film director
Tijjani Ibrahim’s open endorsement of the Hindi makeover, using then young up-and-coming stars to appeal to Hausa housewives and schoolgirls confirmed
on the genre a degree of
respectability. In 2000 Ibrahimawa Studios in Kano released Akasi (Opposite, dir. Ishaq Sidi Ishaq). It was based on one of
the most popular Hindi films to Hausa audience. Subsequently, a market
suddenly opened in using Hindi film themes
and storylines in Hausa video films.
The Sangaya revolution provided a perfect opportunity for endorsing this
because of the availability of a multi-instrument sound synthesizer which made it possible
to re-enact the complex soundtrack along Hindi film soundtrack lines.
Thus the main
creative mechanism adopted by the new wave of Hausa video filmmakers is to appropriate Hindi films, remaking them
into Hausa copies, often complete with storylines, or appropriating songs and choreography from various Hindi films.
In the few cases where the producers
come up with original scripts, they nevertheless rely on Hindi film motifs—both
in the storylines and in the
production process—to increase the appeal of their films to Hausa audience already fed on Hindi films leading to what is called “Indiyanci” (the process of appropriating Hindi
films by filmmakers) to reflect the main mechanism
of this cluster of young,
and essentially urban,
metrosexual Hausa filmmakers. Their metrosexuality is reflected in
opulent stage sets, squeaky- clean
groomed actors wearing expensive ‘swagger’ gear of designer jeans and American
hip-hop jerseys; and if in African
costumes, starched brocade dressing. In almost every video film, there has to be a complement of the obligatory
song and dance routine, with full Hindi film style choreography.
The
industry itself
refers to
such appropriations
as “wankiya” (lit.
washing off, but used to mean duping
or deception; i.e. passing off a copy as if it were the original). Thus the
Hausa video films that started
to emerge from 2000 were often collages
of about three
or four Hindi films, essentially done to mask the
identity of the actual Hindi films appropriated. My intertextual survey of
Hausa video films released to the market from 2001 to 2003 indicates that some 124 were appropriations of one Hindi him or
other in various formations. A sample
of 12 is shown in Table 3.
Table 3: Hausa video film Hindi film Inspirations/Appropriations
Original Hindi
Film |
Hausa Remake |
Element Remade |
Agni Shakshi |
Izaya |
Storyline |
Azaad |
Jirwaye |
Scenes |
Bhoot |
Almuru |
Storyline |
Chandni |
Ayaah |
Storyline |
Chori Chori
Chupke… |
Furuci |
Storyline |
Jurm |
Jumurda |
Storyline |
Judwa |
Abin Sirri
Ne |
Storyline |
Major Saab |
Kasaita |
Song |
Dillagi |
Mujadala |
Scenes |
Hum Aapke
Hain Kaun |
Kudiri |
Scenes |
Sanam Bewafa |
Akasi |
Scenes |
Yaraana |
Hakuri |
Scenes |
Source: Adamu (in press)
This table is based on the entire range of
intertextual relationships between Indian films and the corresponding Hausa video films; some were shot-by-shot remakes,
others used the Hindi songs and
thematically re-arranged them using Hausa lyrics, or borrowed scenes here and
there; yet others used artwork (poster
and editing techniques) from Hindi films,
and finally, some use similar
special effects
to create similar
scenes from Indian
films. An analysis
of the main list of 124 shows
that 77 of the Hausa video films were directly based on the storylines
of a corresponding Hindi film, while
30 adapted the songs, 17 used various scenes and one simply used the title of
the equivalent Hindi film.
Further, both young emergent, and established Hausa video film stars started
bearing names of their perceived Hindi cinema star equivalents—with the monikers often
given by their fans. These
included Fatima S. Abubakar (Karisma Kapoor), Fati Mohammed (Indiyar
Hausa, Indian Hausa), Tahir Fage
(Sunny Deol), Danladi Shehu (Akshay Kumar), Rabi Landiyo (Sridevi). In a
bizarre name change, a Hausa actress,
Farida Abubakar, changed her name to Farida Jalal—to mirror the equivalence of a Hindi film star with the same name.
Male Hausa who, in
the absence of locally-flavored cinema, saw these Hindi films closely approximating their own social space. The
effect was even more electrifying on house-bound young housewives who had no opportunity to go to cinema and
therefore rely solely on the television programming. The elaborate song and dance routines characteristic of commercial Hindi cinema available in northern Nigeria
captivated urbanized Hausa so deeply
that many of them can recite
the Hindi-language songs word for word, from the beginning to the end. The
outcome of these “Hindunese” cinema language is
obsession with Hindi cinema motif.
Further, the flowing
saris of the actresses, and the macho posturing of the actors, coupled with an obsession with love triangles—an
obsession shared by the Hausa marital spaces—made Hindi films immediately acceptable, and rapidly enough, Northern
Nigeria became the biggest market for Hindi films in Nigeria.
Hausa
video film producers argue that the Indian society
is “just” like the Hausa society, at least in its approach to marriage—the main obsession of young Hausa video film producers. Thus Hausa video film makers who seek their inspiration from Hindi commercial film sources focus on the
visual similarities between Hausa culture and
what they perceive as Hindi culture, as shown in films, rather than their divergences. Brian Larkin (1997,
pp. 412-413), working
in the city of Kano in
the 1990s analyzed the Muslim Hausa affinity for Indian cinema, when he
observes that the popularity of the films was because of the
“many
visual affinities between Indian and Hausa culture. Men in Indian films, for
instance, often dress in long kaftans
similar to the Hausa dogon riga, over
which they wear long waistcoats, much like the Hausa palmaran. Women are
also dressed in long saris and scarves which veil their heads and accord with
Hausa ideas of feminine
decorum. The iconography of Indian ‘tradition’, such as marriage
celebrations, food, village
life and so on, even when different from Hausa culture, provides a
similar cultural background that is frequently in opposition to the spread of ‘westernisation’. Indian films place
family and kinship
at the centre of narrative
tension as a key stimulus
for characters’ motivation to a degree rare occurs in Western
films”.
These observations were complemented by
similar perceptions of the reason for the popularity of Indian films by the Hausa video filmmakers, as for instance
explained by Abubakar ‘Baballe’ Hayatu (2002, p. 47):
“our
culture (Muslim Hausa) is similar to Indian culture, the difference being in
fashion and make-up only. We used to watch the films
and note the things we should change
such that when a typical
Hausa person can relate to it as his culture,
rather than shunning
it. Thus we adapt what we can to suit our culture
and religion. If any scene
is neutral on these two issues, we leave it as it is.”
(Hayatu, 2002, p. 47).
A
vibrant youth
entertainment film and music
industry thus became
established in northern
Nigeria and which released
hundreds of video films consumed locally and in the neighboring Niger Republic.
Fig. 1 shows the official
number of Hausa video
films available to 2008.
Fig. 1.
Production of Hausa video films over the years
Source: Adamu (2007)
The figures from 1980 to 1997 were seen as
“unofficial” (based on claims by producers of their existence) because these films were not regulated through the
official channels; but this was because
official censoring of video films in Nigeria started in 1996. While many
factors can be attributed to the fluctuations in the productions, yet the sharp drop in 2006 can mostly be attributed to
a scandal involving a popular Hausa film actress, Maryama “Hiyana” Usman which
affected film production, such that
in its coverage of the scandal, Fim [sic]
magazine of September 2007 devoted an
entire issue to the detailing how “Maryam Hiyana has killed the Hausa video
film industry.”
By
2011 with
a new, far
more liberal political regime in Kano, the Hausa video film has become more metrosexual, emphasizing the
sexuality and ‘ultra-coolness’ of its particularly male stars. A typical example is the video film, Nas (nickname, from Nasir, dir. Adam A.
Zango, 2013). This was an ultra-violent character
story of a drug baron,
complete with private
jets, 10 choreographed body guards, all with dark suits and glasses, moving
about in SUVs kidnapping young girls, raping
them and dumping them, and quite simply blowing away rival drug
lords—and throwing in the odd song and dance
on a well-kept lawn. Films such as these became the new contra-flow in Hausa diaspora
in West Africa.
In the first exploratory study of the Hausa
video films in the early 1990s when the video films started acquiring their transnational characteristics, Brian
Larkin advocated a concept of parallel modernities
to explain the Hausa-Hindi links in the Hausa popular culture. This framework
was used to refer to “co-existence in space and time of multiple economic,
religious and cultural
flows that are often
subsumed within the term “modernity” (Larkin 1997: 407).
Larkin’s use of
parallel modernities as an explanation for the Hausa video film development is premised upon the application of theories
of media effects, particularly television programming, on Hausa viewers. Thus in seeing the Hausa film makers’ imitative
absorption of Hindi film cinema
technique in Hausa popular literature, Larkin assumes that Hausa filmmakers and
their audience “participate in the imagined realities of other cultures
as part of their daily lives”. (Larkin
1997: 407). Yet this presumes a cultural entertainment vacuum among the
Hausa, and this is not the case.
Hausa popular culture had always had strong dosage of drama, miming, singing
and dancing, long before contact
with non-African popular
culture. When Hindi cinema brought
these elements to the visual medium, they merely reaffirmed
a visual cultural
lineage.
Similarly, Hausa
society had had to deal with the embedded issues of auren dole, or what I prefer
as soyayyar dole (forced love), again
long before the intrusion of Hindi cinema in urban northern Nigeria. Hausa film makers
merely reproduce Western
cinematic techniques in telling the same
old stories from their communities. The Hindi film contra-flow, therefore,
transcends visual mimicry; but
reflects a sharing of cultural commonalities and memory facilitated by common religious subscription packaged in various
forms of popular culture—Indians’ shared Islamic culture and the Muslim Hausa mindset. With the exception of
Ghanaian Hindu worship a process that actually
waned— other centers
of Hindi film contra-flow influences latch on social dynamics of family life and structures and readily
absorb their resonance, rather than the gamut of Indian social realities. Significantly, when Hindi films jettisoned
their traditional family-drama structure and
became more Westernized and metrosexual, they lost their contra-flow appeal to
Southern nations because these same
nations had access to the Western media products; same as the Indian entertainers. Metrosexuality therefore
had multiple entry points into non-Imperialist popular culture; for the Hausa filmmakers, though, it came via
appropriation of Hindi filmic styles and techniques to appeal to African urban
audiences.
For the rest of Africa, though, the Nigerian
English-language film industry, Nollywood, provides
a ready substitute to both Hollywood and Hindi cinemas. This video cinema
represented a wake-up call not only for African audiences,
but also for African diaspora who readily see the
reflection
of the African and Black
realities—rather than Hindi romantic fantasies—they deal with on a constant basis. Nollywood therefore
becomes a new contra-flow center of cinematic gravity that pulls—and energizes—other Southern nations, especially in Africa. The influence of Nollywood became
more globalized with its availability as Nollywood TV on various
satellite TV services.
I want to therefore
contribute to the media imperialism debate by suggesting Transcultural Contra-flow Theory to explain the behavior of Muslim Hausa video filmmakers in
their use of Hindi film motif in
their video films. Both Hausa and Hindi filmmakers are subject to the same social antecedents rooted in Islamicate
societies. In this, I argue that conceptions of modernities did not take into consideration the
violent intrusion of small media technologies that helped to create media identities—rather than social identities divorced from the religious, political, economic and transnational lived-in experiences of Hindi film
audiences. Before the Hausa youth acquired these new technologies, they relied on Hindi films to reproduce
their realities. When they acquired
the technologies, they started telling
the same stories
- in their own cinematic languages. Using the mechanism of cultural Agency
(after Giddens, 1984) they appropriate elements of Hindi cinema that enables
them—just like the Turkish did—to
recast similar stories
in different locations, in a clear demonstration of transcultural contra-flow.
Yet the ‘cultural’
could only go far. As we have seen, the allusion to ‘similarity of cultures’ between
Indians depicted in Hindi films and Hausa social mores brings ‘distance closeness’—with Agency
acting as barrier; for just as Turkish (Gürata, 2010), Greek (Eleftheriotis,
2006) and Egyptian (Armbrust 2008)
public cultures derided the intrusion of Hindi cinema and its music within the entertainment motif of these
countries, so does the Hausa societies. It is this derision from the Hausa public culture that served
as the Agency limiting the extent of ‘soft imperialism’ of Hindi films among the Hausa. Hausa filmmakers point out that
their appropriation of Hindi films
does not extend to their cultural lives—their food, their clothing, their
customs and their beliefs still
remain rooted in their ancestral memories and not in the on-screen sociology of
Hindi films, whether native to
India, or appropriated from Hollywood. This therefore recasts the whole cultural/media imperialism in a new light,
for it reveals what I call ‘transparent engagement’ with whatever media culture they come
in contact with.
Thus constant global
circulation of the media clearly shows that the traditional patterns and flows have charted new directions. It is
no longer sufficient to discuss the flow of media from the West to “less-West” audiences. The
development of media mediated popular culture has seen a paradigm shift in the flow of media in Asia,
Middle East and Africa, and enabled the development of new horizontal networks (within the
third world nations) of media influences, rather than the traditional vertical networks (from developed to developing nations).
Based on this
circulation of imageries and imaginations, I would therefore like to propose a Transcultural Contra-Flow Theory that captures
and explains the mechanisms of these circulations. This theory can therefore be defined as:
The circulation, audience consumption, and often creative
appropriation of visual imageries among
culturally resonant and
horizontal, i.e. non-Western, entertainment cultures through the mechanism of
Agency that propels a wilful adoptive
behavior leading to domestication of convergent resonant
media narratives.
Perhaps one of the drawbacks of this theory
is the fact of the catalytic influence of Hollywood on the subsequent development of cinemas in non-Western
countries; for admittedly, other modern cinemas
developed after Hollywood’s spread.
Indeed the massive appropriation of Hollywood
films by Indian cinema, and occasionally Nollywood
video film industry;
as well as the similar appropriation of
Hindi films by Kanywood video filmmakers clearly underscores the significance of Hollywood as primary sources of
inspiration. However, it did not substitute, destroy or replace indigenous cinemas. It provided
indigenous filmmakers with the ability—through Agency—to either accept, appropriate, or simply ignore, but use the
structure as a template to their own storytelling.
Further, the development of Black Afrocentric cinema narratives of Ousmane Sembène,
Idrissa Ouedraogo, Mahamat
Saleh Haroun, Souleymane Cissé, Abderrahmane Sissako, Ola Balogun, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Gaston Kaboré and
others are clear testimonies of Black African cinema, rooted in African
realities. This is because of their focus
on social and political themes
rather than any commercial interests, and often on an
exploration of the conflicts between the traditional past and modern times. The lack of diffusion of this cinema across Africa, and the
adoption of the Hollywood cinema’s
glitz, glamor and commercial focus therefore does hint at echoes of ‘imperialism from above’.
However, the
appropriation of cinema from Hollywood, as well as creation of new narratives that conform to social realities of
horizontal cultural networks is an indication of both ability to absorb, and at the same time, turn-around,
cinematic messages to suit newer audiences. This creates visual contra-flows in a source different from the ‘normal’
flow of Hollywood, or ‘imperialism from above’.
References
Contact the author.
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