Stephanie Okereke: Colour Nollywood Black

Posted by admin Headlines, Nollywood (Film Industry), On The Lighter Side Saturday, September 10th, 2011

If one begins to analyse the concept of “black” against the historical accounts of its misuse and abuse, it would seem as if Africans are unforgiving of the errors of the slave trade merchants of the western world. Still, the grave consequences of the gross inhumanity have left deep imprints on the African temperament.

There is really no way of psychoanalysing the situation without blaming the colonisers in part for such indelible mark left on our soil, namely white supremacy. It begins with the way the colonisers view the black skin colour. For them, the skin colour was abominable, evil, contemptuous and everything thing else that translates to evil.

Some advanced cultural researchers have also blamed religion for associating “white” with holiness, leaving our imagination to figure out what blackness suggests. Well, slave trade is gone for good. But the legacy lives on with a great abode built in Nollywood.

Turn your eyes around local video stores and see a Nigerian film poster. Heavily made-up faces of fair-skinned women assail your vision. The industry apparently favours fair-skinned women. Perhaps, it is the closest they can get to whiteness.

The effect is quite appalling. Dark-skinned actresses struggle to lighten up the skin. They cannot afford to be too dark since our producers make little investment in good lighting equipments. Or the reasons are not just technical, maybe sensual?

Whatever the logic driving skin colour preference in Nollywood is, one fact remains incontrovertible: Africans are black, irrespective of their skin colour or tone. Anywhere in the world, the African model is often dark-skinned, sometimes very black.

There is nothing wrong with the black skin except we choose to see it through the tainted spectacles of the colonisers. While some Nollywood producers may favour fair-skinned actresses, they must also remember that the strong societal bias against blackness originates from the warped African post-colonial perspectives.

To illustrate, Wole Soyinka’s Telephone Conversation gives a fair idea of the way the black skin was perceived in the peak period of racism. If you recall the landlady in the poem was asking to know if the narrator was light or very dark. So, the acceptance of his being African hinges on his skin colour. What is wrong with being dark-skinned?

If a foreign movie producer makes a movie based on an African theme, they opt for dark-skinned actors and actresses to play the black characters. So many dark-skinned foreign actors have taken up the challenge of learning to speak in the African accent to blend the real-life character with the fictitious.

But, the reverse is the case in Nollywood. Our actresses make us tolerate their seemingly ubiquitous fair skin, worsened by the Nigerian-made cockney. We should be proud of the African tongue. Foreign actors invest time and sweat to earn it.

A popular example is that of the American-born actor Forrest Whitaker. His 2006 portrayal of Idi Amin in the film, The Last King of Scotland earned him positive reviews by critics as well as multiple awards and honours. For that role, Whitaker learned Swahili and acquired Idi Amin’s East African accent.

His performance earned him the 2007 Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, making him the fourth African-American actor in history to do so, joining the ranks of Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, and Jamie Foxx. For the same role, he also earned a Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award, BAFTA Award, and accolades from the New York Film Critics Circle.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the National Board of Review, and the Broadcast Film Critics Association among others. If he had murdered the African essence in his delivery, critics would have stripped him of honour at the movie’s premiere. Actors Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio have also had to mimic the South African accent for artistic purpose.

If being articulate is one of the characteristics of a good diction, then why should the Nigerian actor or actress be so desperate to “de-black” the tongue? Few trips abroad, more often Dubai and the result is a twisted tongue, sometimes twisted sense. Twisted sense in the sense that they misplace their identity in their failed attempt to assume sophistication.

It is important that Nollywood retains its African form and content to be able to stand tall amidst competitors. The African content in film production is not and should not limited to wearing beads, weaving the hair, wearing wrappers, setting films in villages, reciting incantations and painting the lips black.

That would only mean paying lip-service to the African heritage. Our accent should remain unadulterated, proudly African. Our skin tone should be alluring. After all, we have what some white men aim at getting when they sit under the scorching sun in the name of sun-tan.

Nollywood moviemakers need to watch movies from Kenya and South Africa to see how the black content is treated. South Africans, by virtue of their climate, have lighter skin tones than most dark-skinned Nigerians.

But, their actors are often easy to identify with the characteristic African nose and the unmistakable African accent. For their indigenous movies, no hair wigs for the actresses. No black-blonde.

We hope to see a new era where dark-skinned actors dominate the Nollywood movie posters. This is a call on movie producers to discover dark-skinned talents for our screen to add to the list of Genevieve Nnaji, Stephanie Okereke, Kate Henshaw and Mercy Johnson. Black is beautiful.wp_posts