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- [00:02]
A
By the year 2050, one in four people on the planet will be African. The choices that we make now across Africa will shape the world's collective future. Welcome to the Youth Bloom, where we explore the stories, the trends, and the issues we face in the present that will define the coming decades. I'm your host, Katherine N. Suzuki. African movies and TV have seen tremendous growth in the global North. From reality TV like Young, Famous and African, to movies like Lionheart, platforms like Netflix have seen exponential growth in African content. But what do we lose in terms of authenticity when we tailor African media to appeal to Africa's elites, the Afropolitans, and a global audience? To unpack this question and more, I'm joined today by Wunpini.
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B
Hi, I'm Dr. Wunpini Fatimata Mohammad, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University.
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A
She is the author of a great paper, afropolitanizing the How Cultural Imperialism is Rewriting the Narratives of Africa Entertainment Industries. Welcome.
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B
Thank you so much, Catherine. It's nice to be here today.
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A
Thank you. So, just to start off, can you please set the scene for us? You know, what's behind this rapid growth of Nigerian and Ghanaian content on Netflix, especially over the last few years?
- [01:48]
B
There are several reasons for the rapid growth of Nigerian and Ghanaian content on Netflix. And I should say that it's not just Netflix, but we're seeing Amazon Prime Video also coming into play, but specifically with Netflix, as you know, Netflix is an American company, and the commercial imperative is what drives Netflix. So they're all about the business and all about revenue generation. And so they started here in the U.S. you know, we can go into the history of Netflix as the platform being like a video library and all of that, but we'll just stick to the more recent history. So when they started off, they created a market where audiences in America could have have media on demand rather than wait to watch it on television at set times. Right. So that's one of the things that Netflix did to revolutionize television by way of streaming. And so by doing that, they were able to get a lot of people to sign on. So within the US Context, they got people subscribing, and as time went on, they realized that they had reached saturation within the US Context. Right. So the market growth within the US Context was not as they would like, you know, eventually, because there was saturation, and they had reached the maximum number of people they could subscribe within the U.S. context. And so they began to think of expanding to other parts of the world. So looking to Europe and Latin America, Israel, and all of these other parts of the world, and more recently, Africa. So one of the reasons why specifically that Africa is popular or is sort of a hub or a new thing for Netflix, there are many reasons. So you asked the question about Ghana and Nigeria. So Ghana and Nigeria, the reason is specifically because of what global media scholars call Anglo American dominance. So Anglo American dominance is when we think about the ways in which English and American cultures dominate the world stage as far as pop culture is concerned. And you can connect that directly to colonialism and neo colonialism. You can connect that directly to English as the language of commerce and other things, pop culture across the world. Right. So that's one of the reasons why, for example, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, and lately Kenya are the markets or sort of are seeing some interest from Netflix and not Senegal and other francophone Lusophone countries on the continent. So that's one of the things that I want to say. I also want to say that there's another reason for this interest in Africa. So I believe that the African diaspora has done tremendous work in the global north to bring attention to African cultures by, for example, inviting African artists to perform in places like Atlanta and the UK and, you know, other places across the global north and beyond African music. We can also think about the food and so many other cultural things that have contributed to this growth. And I will even go as far as say that media organizations such as UK Africa have done tremendous work to bring attention to African cultures within the American space. So there are so many reasons for that. But I'll say that the three main reasons that I'll talk about would be the diasporas in the global north and the way that they have contributed to the growth of an interest in African cultures. I'll also say the globalization of African content with the introduction or the advent of social and digital media platforms like YouTube and Instagram and TikTok. And I'll also say that, you know, globe American dominance plays a role. So that's why we are seeing more content from Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, lately Kenya, than we are seeing from francophone countries such as Senegal, which is also a cultural power as far as pop culture and media is concerned. Right. So those are the three main reasons that I'll share for this interest or growth in African media on the global scale.
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A
Yeah. And, you know, maybe just zooming in into Nollywood, you made this really important distinction in your paper between old Nollywood, generally, you know, content that appeals to the African masses, and a new Nollywood or, you know, content that's being shaped by the desire to market the film to a global audience. I'd love to hear more about this distinction and how Old Nollywood and New Nollywood have been shaped by the globalization of media and I guess, increasing access to streaming platforms like Netflix.
- [05:55]
B
Yeah, so I mean Nollywood or old Nollywood. Even before I talk about the distinctions, several scholars of Nollywood have brought attention to these distinctions or they evolution in the industry to what is now known as New Nollywood. And I believe that Old Nollywood is what a lot of us grew up watching. So movies like Karishika, Lars Burial, Glamour Girls or Sophia in London, Aki Na ukwa. So many of these movies are old Nollywood movies. And what made them different from new Nollywood movies is that old Nollywood movies centered African audiences, specifically Nigerian audiences. So Nigerians were the primary audiences of Nollywood. And when they were sort of exported to other African countries, other African communities found them relatable and enjoyable. And so the Nigerian market expanded in that way. So the primary goal of filmmakers at this time was to reflect Nigerian cultures and identities back to Nigerian audiences, which by extension were interesting to other African audiences. But today, New Nollywood is sort of this new iteration of Nollywood that is external facing, where that is interested in globalizing Nollywood content sometimes, and very often to the detriment of the needs of African and Nigerian audiences or West African audiences, where there is a particular sort of representation templates that is presented to Nigerian filmmakers who want to get their films on Netflix. So one of the things in that template is high production value. So the movie has to have good picture quality. And it's not just the production value sometimes to write down to the content where when you watch new Nollywood movies, the accents or the Nigerian accents that are used in these new Nollywood movies are almost unrecognizable to Nigerians in Nigeria because again, they are sort of packaging Nigeria as a commodity for an external cosmopolitan, global elite audience rather than for African audiences on the continent. And even though, you know, these distinctions have been made, it's also important to note that they are not that clear cut as there are movies that sort of in a way, pay homage to old Nollywood but still have some of the new Nollywood elements. So I'll say movies like Funke Akindele Is A Tribe Called Judah explores themes that Nigerian audiences are interested in, but that West African audiences are also interested in. But that also got the movie to get on streaming platforms like Prime Video. So the main argument that I make in the paper is that that it's possible for filmmakers to make movies that are relatable to African audiences and that can still be relatable or enjoyed by non African audiences. But with the new iterations of Nollywood that we are seeing, they are making movies thinking first of non African audiences and their needs, which means that they are stripping these stories of their essence. So, you know, growing up and watching Nollywood and studying Nollywood, most Nollywood movies, no matter the genre, have an element of comedy in them. But with new Nollywood, we are seeing discarding more and more of this coming element. And there's also this fact that old Nollywood movies were more interested in the quality of the story that were told. And at that time, too, because of the lack of access to resources to support high production values in these films, audiences loved them. You know, audiences were like, you're doing your best. We are enjoying these films. They reflect our realities. But today, ironically, even though some of the people who get their movies on Netflix through New Nollywoods have access or are able to make movies to meet those high Hollywood style standards, they often have to strip these movies of their essence so that they are palatable to a white Western audience or they are relatable to a white Western audience. And one of the arguments that I make in my paper, again, is that even though Netflix as a company thinks that this is what American audiences like to see, that is really not the case. Because I have taught classes for the last four years within the US In a Southern university where I found that students did not enjoy these new Nollywood movies as much as, you know, Nollywood hoped that they would. And by stripping these movies of their cultures and, you know, the essence of the Nigerian ness or African ness of these movies, they are not only losing their local audiences, they are not appealing to the global audiences that they think that they are appealing to.
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A
Yeah, it's almost like the same principle of, like, this is such a bad example, but, like, I find that the most popular Afrobeats or Amapiano songs in the west actually tend to be the songs that people enjoy the most at home. And so, like Selena Gomez jumping on a Rema song or Justin Bieber jumping on, like a Tem's Whiz Kid song, people at home are like, oh, okay, I don't think I like that. I almost wonder if there is an innate ability that people have to sense what is authentic. Which brings me actually to your main argument. And I want to dive deeper because you have a very interesting way of looking at New Nollywood as an example. Right. And you argue in this paper that New Nollywood content cannot be extracted from cultural imperialism, from elitism, and by exclusionary politics. Can you tell us more about this? And I would love to hear how you viewed New Nollywood through the lens of Afropolitan logics as well.
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B
Yeah, those are very good questions. So, of course, Afropolitanism was popularized by Taye Selassie, Ghanaian Nigerian writer. And in the logics of Afropolitanism, it often thinks of the African. This an identity category that often is associated with the elite African with multiple passports or multiple Global north passports that makes them feel comfortable in any part of the world and that also creates. Creates access for them to be able to navigate the world in ways that Africans with African passports are not able to. Right. And a lot of the times, Afropolitanism focuses more on the aesthetics of African identities rather than the substance and the experiences of Africans on the continent. And Afropolitanism, when I say it focuses on aesthetics, it's more interested in the fun parts of African culture rather than the everyday lives of Africans, which include fun parts and also struggles and all of that. So I critique Afropolitanism in the essay because I believe that it's not an identity category that majority of Africans can relate to, both on the continent and even in the diaspora. Because again, we do have working class Africans in the diaspora. Right. And so it looks like. Because in New Nollywood we are seeing a shift toward telling stories that not only represent the experiences of the elite class in these countries, but that also have this sort of aspirational tone to it and also this performative tone where I'm constantly seeing this online on Twitter. It's been years and it's still happening where whenever Africa comes up and demeaning images of Africa are presented, you see Afropolitans presenting what they believe are positive images of Africa by showing, here are our skyscrapers. We also have McDonald's, we also have KFC. We also have all of these, you.
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A
Know, the Africa you don't see.
- [12:36]
B
Exactly. The Africa you don't see. Right. And I think that that is a very reactionary way to live or to move through the world. Africa is very complex, much like any other part of the world. America also has terrible things, just, you know, I mean, there are a lot of horrible within the American space as far as even aesthetics are concerned, you know, they also have poverties in America. There's hunger, you know, all of these other things that are often associated with Africa. So for me, my critique of this mode of portraying Africanness says that in our bid to basically project the positive aspects of Africa, which is not necessarily bad, we also tend to react rather than even spend time talking about the, you know, things that African communities are sort of experiencing. And one of the things that I tell friends and colleagues, especially in my work, is that I'm tired of trying to react. So they say you don't have a history. Then you come as an African to prove that you have a history. They say you don't have a culture. Then you come and prove that you have a culture. Especially in our scholarship, you spend more time refuting things than actually building for your community or building knowledge about your community. And that's why I resist this sort of Afropolitan approach to things, because it also freezes you into a space where you are constantly performing for an external gaze, which can be very exhausting and also very colonial in the way that it manifests. And I like the example that you gave earlier about how it seems like people have an innate sense of what is authentic. I agree with you because, again, I would present certain old Nollywood and new Nollywood movies to my students, some of whom were aspiring to become filmmakers, and then they would say that, you know, the new Nollywood looks posh and glossy, but it doesn't feel like the stories have essence. But then with old Nollywood, even though they may not necessarily understand Nigerian pidgin English, they may not necessarily understand the indigenous languages that are infused in these movies. They understand the story and they enjoy it, and they can, you know, sort of get to see what the essence of these communities are. And again, another reason why we constantly see this happening without much on the Netflix front to address it is that the American media space is notorious for not doing audience research. I mean, they'll do audience research when it comes to, for example, PR companies will do audience research for companies about brands and all of that. But Hollywood and Netflix are not very good at trying to understand their audiences and to develop content that the audiences want. They just assume what the audiences want. And. And that is why we have the issue that we have today.
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A
Yeah. Even as you're talking, I was just thinking about, have you seen those memes over the last two years of, like, I'm just a Costa Rican dude, there's a movie, it's Old Nollywood, where a man has come back now from Costa Rica and can only eat, like, certain foods. Anyways, my roommate and I just quoted back and forth, but I was thinking about it recently and I was like, in a way, you had a portrayal of a man who at once seems inauthentic to his people back home and inauthentic to Costa Ricans. And it's a whole story about, like, I think, scamming or whatever. But long story short, that story has better captured the essence, I guess, of the diaspora or the person who's returning with an authenticity than even what we are being given today. And so, yeah, you know, when I was reading this, cause I loved this paper. My first, like, my initial knee jerk reaction was, oh, good. You know, African filmmakers are, you know, getting the bag, like, let them get their bag in the west, whatever. But you caution against this, like, uncritical engagement with African content on Netflix or, you know, this new genre or new crop of African content that is geared towards really a Western audience. Can you tell us more about why we need to engage critically with this art?
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B
Yeah, I mean, again, we live in a world where America has tremendous power in global geopolitics, whether it be in politics, the economics, pop culture. And so getting African content on Netflix means that the rest of the world views Africa through the lens of Netflix. So if the African identities that are being presented on Netflix are diluted in the ways that they are, it means that Netflix, in essence, is rewriting narratives about African identities in ways that are not intelligible to Africans both at home and in the diaspora. And that means that the way that people will engage Africans, a lot of the time, people engage people from countries they've never been to based on the media that they have seen or consumed from those countries. Right. And so it's really important that we move away from uncritically celebrating the fact that we have our media content on these platforms and more toward thinking of ways in which we can institute policies that will ensure that artists are not exploited by multinational companies in the ways that they are. So there are artists who do great work, who still get to globalize their media, who have sidestepped the entire Netflix model, and who often can, you know, put their foot down about specific things in their movies. So for example, Funki Akindele in Her Tribe Called Judah introduced an interesting model of marketing and distribution that even Netflix in Africa wish did could replicate. And so I believe that model earned the movie the Billionaire status in Nigeria, one of the highest grossing movies in the country. And it was not because she was following a Netflix model or she was using Netflix marketing strategies. She understood the context that she was working with and looked to see what the local dynamics were and used that, you know, leverage that to understand her market in order to distribute within the West African content. Right. And she also made sure that her movie did not go straight to a streaming platform so that she could maximize revenue as much as she could from screenings in cinemas across West Africa and maybe even the rest of the continent, before she got the movie on Prime Video the following year. So the movie was released in December, I believe in 2023, and then it came on Amazon Prime Video some months later. So that way she was able to recoup revenue for that movie before it went into the streaming platform for Western audiences to consume. There are also others who have a model. So, for example, Moni oboli uses the YouTube model, which seems to have worked great for her. So that means that these artists are able to maintain. Maintain artistic autonomy and also, I will say, representational integrity in the work that they are producing. So when you look at the work that they produce versus what you see on Netflix, there is a vast difference. That's not to say that all of the movies that you see on Netflix are not representative of Nigeria. I mean, many of them are representative of Nigeria. It's just that they skew toward a particular orientation which is representing the experiences of the elite class, which basically disrupts what we think of Nollywood to be, because Nollywood was for the masses, made by everyday people who were interested in, you know, marketing their work to the masses. But today we are seeing that in new Nollywood, there is a lot of blandification of the way that these stories are told, which means that certain elements that would make them traditionally Nollywood movies are sort of stripped away. And so you watch it and you don't enjoy it. So, for example, in Lionheart, when Nke Mowo sort of appeared in the scene, we all expected something to happen because we've seen him traditionally in specific roles or typecast in specific roles in Nollywood, but then in the movie, he was someone else. And I remember discourses on Twitter, people were mad because were like, why did you bring him in if he wasn't going to be funny and do all these things that we often see him do? I want to say that it's imperative not to put all of this on individual filmmakers. One of the issues is because of the structural factors that filmmakers have to do. But it Also looks like there are others who are holding on to their artistic autonomy, like Omoni Obole and Funke Akindele, who are doing what they can to make sure that they are telling stories in the ways that are intelligible to Nigerians while also trying to get their stories across, across the world. So Monyoboli, in one of her not so recent movies, Wives on Strike, I think she did have screenings of that movie in Europe and also in Canada. Right. And that was before Netflix was even sort of disinterested in Nigeria. And so it's. There are other avenues through which this can be done. And I also feel like another way that Nigerian artists or African artists can push for artistic autonomy is to work together. Because if more and more artists are working together and refusing to dilute their work for a Western palace, it could go a long way to addressing this trend that we are seeing more and more of. And if I'm being honest, I haven't watched a Netflix movie in a while. I think I'm more recently watching movies on YouTube because I'm like, that's where the more authentic. I don't like to use the word authentic, but the movies that are intelligible to the African masses are. And it's really interesting because when I watch Nollywood movies on Netflix here in the US And I go home and I'm watching Nollywood movies on television with my mother, there is a vast difference. Like she has no idea what I'm talking about when I talk about a particular movie on Netflix. And other authors have also studied Nollywood audiences, both at home and abroad. So there was a. I forget his name, this scholar who showed the photos of new Nollywood actors who often are on Netflix. And then old Nollywood actors who you can see on regular television in Nigeria and Ghana, he showed them to African audiences in Africa and also African audiences in the diaspora. So with the African audiences on the continent, for example, in Nigeria, like the people who are part of the mass audiences, some of them didn't know these new Nollywood actors. And I think the other experiment that he did was in Italy, where he looked the African diasporic audiences of like a working class orientation, where he showed them these images and they were like, oh, they know all these old Nollywood actors and they don't know who these new Nollywood actors are. And when I say old versus new, I don't mean that in the literal sense, because there are newer actors in old Nollywood that you are not Seeing in the new Nollywoods, they are all in the same fields concurrently, but they are not running in the same circuits as far as the films and distributions are concerned. So it helped him make his argument that a lot of new Nollywood movies are often catered to a global, cosmopolitan elite class. And so that's why if you showed photos of the most famous actors and new Nollywood films to Nigerians in Italy or the UK who are from working class background, they would not identify them because they don't have a Netflix account. And another thing that I also want to add is that a lot of the times, these identities that are represented or these movies that are represented on Netflix, even though there are some a handful of Nigerians or like a small percentage of Nigerians who have access to Netflix, there is a huge portion of Nigerians and Africans who don't have access to Netflix because of the digital divide. I would even go on to say that they probably have more access to YouTube than Netflix because you don't need a credit card to subscribe to YouTube, but you do need a credit card to be able to subscribe to Netflix across the world. And so these are some of the markets that definitely make Netflix a sort of elite platform within the African space compared to in the American space where it was framed or presented as an alternative media platform that was disrupting elitist politics. Politics in Hollywood.
- [23:14]
A
Yeah. When I started this podcast, I used to share links to Spotify and Apple podcasts. And then I realized people who listen from Africa are all just listening on YouTube. And I was like, oh, right, right, right, duh, right. You need a subscription for Spotify, Apple podcasts. You need an iPhone. I wonder. And this is, you know, I'm sort of bringing Twitter discourse onto this. But I wonder what you would say to the argument that Africans too can produce mediocre, sloppy, po represented stuff too. Or like the argument that Africans can also produce terrible Netflix slop too. Almost like the right to mediocrity, the right to terrible media. What would you say to that?
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B
I mean, of course every community has a right to mediocrity, you know, and I love that you use Twitter discourse. There's this running joke on Twitter saying that people saying, I support women's wrongs and rights and women's rights, which I fully support. Yeah. So I mean, of course African artists have a right to mediocrity. And that is not to say that all old Nollywood did not have mediocrity. Mediocre movies, definitely there were mediocre movies. And I'm pretty sure there were directors whose movies certain people did not want to watch because they were like, this is, you know, not so good. But when the trend becomes that there is a template that everyone wants to follow, it almost feels like they're making the same movie over and over again. And I wouldn't even necessarily say that the movies that are made by African artists that get on Netflix are mediocre. I wouldn't necessarily say that. I just think that they don't have the, you know, representational sort of integrity that you would expect, because for many African filmmakers and even African audiences, mediocrity, they can often reduce mediocrity to the picture quality rather than the content of the story. So a lot of the celebration of African movies on Netflix is that they are making content that has the aesthetic appeal that a Hollywood movie would have. So they are focusing more on the aesthetics, on the fact that, you know, people are driving flashy cars and all of that, which is all well and good, than the actual story. So sometimes you can watch a movie and you don't know what the point of the story was. Again, it's fine for movies like that to exist, but if that becomes a trend on a global platform like Netflix that people across the world watch to get representations or stories about Africa, that reduces the continent to this single story that we are always trying to push against. So I think that our critique, or my critique of Netflix, is that it's presenting a homogeneous view of Africa that centers the experiences of the elite class to the detriment of the everyday masses, who are the foundation of Nollywood, who are the people who made Nollywood what it is today. So I think. I think that for me and for some scholars, we feel that current iteration of Nollywood is something of a betrayal to everyday African audiences on the continent who do not relate to any of what is happening on these platforms and who do not even sometimes have access to these stories that are told. So I'm going to use the Azerli as an example. The Azerli movie, which is a Ghanaian movie, was made about a community in. I'm from northern Ghana. I'm at Taguana, and the movie was made about my community, and it betrayed my community in so many ways, as far as the language is concerned, first of all. So they brought in actors from the south of Ghana who don't speak Dagwani, which is the language of the film. It's like imagine, you know, you invited me to do this podcast with You. And I was like, oh, I can only speak Italian, so you'd have to ask me the questions in Italian. Like, so imagine that you don't speak Italian, and then now you have to read Italian to me. Like, Italians would be mad, right? So. And I, when I watched it, I was so angry because. And honestly, I couldn't watch the whole movie at once. I had to. Like, I think I was traveling. So first of all, when the movie was made, and I think I came on Facebook to talk about it, people from my community were like, we don't even know that that movie exists. But the movie was about my community, right? And so I watched it on a flight. So that also tells you who the audience was. So I watched it on a flight from D.C. to South Africa. That was how I knew it existed. And so I talked about it, and people were like, oh, we didn't even know it existed. And so when it got on Netflix, people who had access to Netflix in the diaspora watched it and they all had the same reaction where they said they couldn't watch it, like, fully because it was just grating to listen to people who didn't know what they were saying speak a language that they didn't understand. And the movie was about this community of people who speak Jagrani, but it was set in another community. So imagine it's about people who speak, like Swana or Ndebele, and it's set in Kenya. It doesn't even make any sense.
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A
Right, right.
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B
So I think that the movie was a betrayal to the community in the fact that it did not have linguistic integrity. Represent integrity was not good, but the quality was great. The story was fine. It was telling an important story about an important issue that, you know, I believe that story needed to be told. And the reason why that happened was, you know, I'll just say that this movie replicated what Hollywood usually does, where they make a movie about Africa. The lead actors are black actors from Europe or North America, if you are lucky, they are African diasporic actors. If you're not, they are African American actors who come and, you know, play these roles. So take Half of a Yellow sun, for example, where African, for example. Jennifer Vivin Naji, one of the biggest artists, you know, actors out of Africa, was in a supporting role in this movie. Right. So that's what they did with Azali, where they brought in big name actors from the south of Ghana and used the local film industry, which built the foundations for this movie to even be sort of conceptualized to be made because if they didn't have people in the industry doing the work for decades, you would not be able to even use them as secondary cast. So one of my issues with these Afropolitanist sort of logics around narratives is that we reproduce coloniality. So the way that the global north or the west treats sometimes it's how African filmmakers will treat other African film industries within the nation state. Right. So regional film industry. So there's this hierarchy that is represented which can also contribute not only to diluting the richness of the story, but also disrespecting the community in some way. Because, again, when I talk to people from my community about this movie, a lot of them were angry and they were like, I couldn't sit through it. And I personally had to watch half of it on my flight to South Africa and watch the other half on my way back because it was just painful to watch, you know, and so there's. I mean, I think that you can tell stories about communities and still respect the communities. That is, if the community are the people that you are hoping to represent and are the people that are like the first audience of that text. So what I'm saying here is that if you're going to make a movie about a community, you should think of them also as audiences, but not just as a community that you extract from to sell to the west, which is much like the relationship between Africa and the west, where they come and steal our gold and cocoa and natural resources, and then they take them there, process them, and then they sell them at very expensive rates. It's literally the same with Netflix, where they come and take our stories, extract them, make them into movies that are not so good, and then sell them back to us, you know, through our Netflix subscriptions.
- [30:02]
A
I mean, brilliantly put. I read this paper about a month ago, and my co worker, Hasai, we've spent a lot of time talking and I've spent a lot of time reflecting on, you know, a point that you make throughout this paper, but basically the idea of authenticity. I've really been grappling with the arguments that you put forward in this paper because I think I. I initially took for granted, or I tended to operate under the assumption that if it's bi Africans, it has a level of authenticity. But I think what this paper forced me to come to terms with is the fact that just because something is made by Africans does not innately make it authentic. Like, I've really been struggling. I think maybe what I was assuming before when I said something is made by Africans is that it would carry a level of responsibility, a level of respect, a level of introspection. But that is not guaranteed. And I think my last sort of reflection is just that I think there's authenticity in identity politics. They're all linked here. Identity politics in the sense that the sort of liberal, centrist politics of today assume that if you have. I mean, Obama is the best example of this. Right? Okay. Obama is here. Therefore, we have solved race. Halas finish it.
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B
Solved.
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A
Right. But like, no, no. That people from the community also be harmful to that community. And yeah, it's been a lot to sit with and, like, unpack, but I would love to hear, like, what you think of what I've just said. It wasn't the clearest thought, but I've been grappling with this for a bit.
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B
I absolutely agree with everything that you said. I'll call it an African American proverb. Not all skin folk are kin folk. Right? So. And I mean, there are also other factors. There are people who have internalized racism, who reproduce racist dynamics in the work that they do. There are also others. For example, some might even argue that the movement the Gods Must be Crazy was made by an African. But it's a very racist movie.
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A
Extremely racist.
- [31:58]
B
Extremely racist movie. Right. So there are so many factors involved so people can internalize coloniality. So in one of my papers, I call it the everydayness of colonialism, where it's really implicated in the way that we see the world, the way that we move through the world, but it's so banal that we don't even realize when we are replicating those dynamics. Right. And so that's one thing that we need to think about. But there's also another thing as well, especially within this specific context of Netflix in Africa, where there are gatekeepers who are some of the people that are shaping the way that African stories are told, who are making or who have requirements of filmmakers to follow, otherwise their movies will not go on Netflix. So I. I've heard from some of my fellow scholars in the field that there are filmmakers who make movies for Netflix and also make movies for everyday Nigerians or Ghanaians. Right? So when they make the movies for Netflix, they know that this is what is expected. And so they give away their artistic freedoms in those ways just so they can their stuff on Netflix for global audiences. But when they are making it for African audiences, they're able to assess their artistic sort of freedoms in ways that they are not able to do when they go on Netflix. So, of course, we can boil it down to the individual, but there are also more so structural factors that shape this. And even with the internalized sort of coloniality or racism or anti blackness that we see not just in Africa, but also in the African diaspora can be connected to the way that colonialism is. Is an intricate part of our lives. The way that colonialism is built into our institutions across the world, like so our educational institutions, health institutions, political institutions. Right. And so as we try to understand why these things are the way that they are, it's important to understand that certain individual filmmakers are operating under structures where they feel that they have to, you know, move a particular way in order to gain a particular kind of visibility. But then there's also hope in the fact that there are some filmmakers who resist, you know, towing a particular line in order to get their movies to be put on a global platform, but are rather creating spaces for their work to reach the masses while also reaching global audiences. Like the Omonioboli example I gave, the Funke Akindele example I gave. So I think that these are some of the filmmakers that are, you know, charting parts that haven't been well traveled yet and are showing us that you can tell stories that Nigerian market women will enjoy and Nigerian Afropolitans can enjoy too, you know, in the uk, in New York City or wherever. So the important thing is that you're telling stories that are relatable. For me, I argue that the stories should be relatable to the people that the stories are about first before you even think to globalize it to the rest of the world.
- [34:41]
A
Yeah, I love Parasite. Oh my God. How do you say his name?
- [34:44]
B
Boon Jong Hoang Joon Ho.
- [34:46]
A
Yeah, because it like Koreans loved him before we even knew about it.
- [34:50]
B
Right.
- [34:50]
A
Like South Koreans were like, no. To use the Gen Z slang. This guy is. And I think it is just such an everlasting movie because you can feel that it's telling an authentic story about a working class family in Korea. But in the neoliberal, you know, economies that we all live in, we can all relate to it. I want to just actually finish on the positive note that you started. This podcast is focused on like Africa's youth and the quote, unquote, youth boom. I like to call it a bloom just to be more positive. And you know, we're going to have a billion more Africans between now and 2050. And so what kind of content, what kind of changes would you like to see? Maybe in our domestic film industries? That would mean that the current, like, rich Tapestry of lives and the ever burgeoning tapestry is well represented and doesn't displace, you know, your everyday person.
- [35:44]
B
I think we can follow the module of, for example, South Africa, and I hate to use this example, but also Europe, Europe, for obvious reasons. And I, I do use Europe as an example when I teach my students. So. And this is something that I didn't get to touch on a little bit in this podcast. I'll just talk about quickly before I answer your question. So when we talk about cultural imperialism, we often focus on the global south, right? So we're thinking, thinking about Africa and how America is influencing Africa, but we also don't think about how America influences Europe. So in the Europe example, you. The European Union, especially with the relationship that it has with the individual European nations, has a quota system where, for example, certain percentage of movies that are on Netflix or television shows that are on Netflix must emanate from the EU context or from the national context. So that means that you can't just decide. And even beyond that, they also have deals where you have to produce within these spaces. So that means that the jobs will stay home because you can go and shoot a couple of scenes somewhere and go elsewhere and do everything else where the story is about that community, but the resources go to another community altogether. So it's part of the reason, for example, why we have TV shows like Lupin, which focuses on France and it is filmed in France, because there are policies in place to ensure that local talent is hired and also the revenue stays local. Right? And in South Africa they have a quota system. So that's one of the reasons why we have a lot more South African content on Netflix than we do, maybe even Nigerian or other content on Netflix, because they have a quota system where a certain percentage of content has to be produced by, from, of, you know, the South African context. So that means that they are making sure that there is room for excellent South African stories to be told and mediocre South African stories to be told. That's really what we are fighting for, right? For the rights to mediocrity and excellence. Not either. Or so again, the rest of the continent could learn from this model where we really put our foot down as far as representation is concerned and as far as policy is concerned, institute policies that protect our artists, that protect them from being exploited by multinational companies. So if they know that they are protected in that way, they are not sort of forced to make movies that they cannot fully stand by. We then create the conditions for the diversity of African Stories to be told. Great. Excellent. Average. While promoting the art and also keeping the revenue within the African context. Right. So I do think that more policies need to be instituted and implemented because, you know, you can have beautiful policies, you know, if they're not implemented, then what's the point? Right. So for the youth or the next generation to come and build on what is happening now, we need to be build the foundations. And the foundations means that we need to put structures in place for African stories to be told autonomously by Africans that capture the full diversity and the, you know, nuanced complexities of these communities without betraying the basic things when it comes to representation. Stories that mirror African societies, that African communities can stand by and can confidently be proud of.
- [38:52]
A
Oh, brilliant. If you are listening and you're like, I just want to hear all of Bumpini's thoughts. A new book coming out called Media Culture and Rewriting the Subaltern Histories of Ghana. And it's available for pre order at the Rutgers University Press website and I will link it in the show notes. You are so cool. You're so brilliant. You're so funny. Thank you so much for joining me on this podcast. I've really enjoyed and I will link this paper as well. I have really enjoyed reading it and rereading it. And just as somebody who's based in the West, I'm Tanzanian. I was born and raised on the continent. But now that I'm here, I think this paper really had me grapple with the position I occupy. And just because I'm African doesn't mean that the work I could do is innately authentic. Right. That there's a responsibility. And I think this paper just. It's obviously like an idea that's come up in different ways for me, but this paper just really helped me introspect deeply. So thank you.
- [39:50]
B
You're welcome. And I just want to say that you are doing amazing work. I told you earlier that I listened to one of the episodes of the podcast and I'm so proud of the approach that you took because very often people are interested in sharing the positive stories about Africa without grappling with power politics and how those can reproduce sort of marginality within the African context. So thank you so much. And I do know Nelson, so thank you for platforming Nelson. C.J. i mean, we're. Isn't he so cool? Yeah, he's cool. We're mutuals on Twitter. We've never actually met, but it was so refreshing to see you talk about this topic that everyone seems to tiptoe around and that doesn't get enough coverage even in national media in Ghana. Thank you.
- [40:26]
A
Oh, no, thank you.
- [40:27]
B
That's so cool.
- [40:28]
A
And yes. Oh my God. Dream Podcast. You and Nelson on and just a yap session for like an hour.
- [40:34]
B
I would love that. I would love that very much.
- [40:38]
A
Thanks for tuning in. This podcast is produced by Gina Kim and our music is by Wonder Child. If you have any suggestions for future topics, you can find me on X and Instagram at Catherine Zuki Underscore.