Skip to content
1981
Volume 11, Issue 3
  • ISSN: 1754-9221
  • E-ISSN: 1754-923X

Abstract

Abstract

In this article, I am concerned principally with (Oriahi, 2015), (Taylaur, 2015), (Patrick, 2016), (Olaitan, 2016) as well as (Taylaur, 2017). These films are characterized as much by the depiction of clever criminals as the cultivation of a cynical disposition from which transgressions of this sort appear stylish and violence is rendered 'cool'. Almost all of them turn on a scheme to dupe others of a large sum of money, and are punctuated by backstabbing partners in crime, tables turning by chance, edgy armed standoffs and a surprising number of bodies in car trunks. Given the dark portrait of Lagos these films present, one might be inclined to read the genre cycle as a reiteration of the role Lagos has historically played as embodiment of popular anxieties concerning insecurity, material inequality and social breakdown. And yet, in recent years, conditions within the city have markedly improved over those of the deepest point of urban crisis in the 1990s when Lagos was, indeed, paralysed by a generalized condition of insecurity and dysfunction. New Nollywood's repertoire of film styles has expanded to include international film cycles and genres such as romantic comedies, psychological thrillers, police procedurals, among others. This raises important questions about the nature of correspondences between cinema and the city, such as whether New Nollywood genre films tell us anything about social, cultural or historical circumstances in Lagos, or the place the city occupies in the popular imagination, for instance. Recent upmarket film noirs speak, instead, to the evolution of Lagos as a media capital. I examine the different kinds of work genre performs in New and Old Nollywood films and propose a number of ways to critically interpret genre's various registers.

© Intellect Ltd
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/jac_00022_1
2019-12-01
2026-04-12

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Adejunmobi, Moradewun. (2011);, 'Nollywood, globalization, and regional media corporations in Africa'. , Popular Communications, 9:2, pp. 67-78.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Adejunmobi, Moradewun. (2015);, 'Neoliberal Rationalities in Old and New Nollywood'. , African Studies Review, 58:3, pp. 31-53.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Adesokan, Akin. (2004);, 'Loud in Lagos: Nollywood videos'. , Wasafiri, 19, pp. 45-49.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Agbola, Tunde. (1997), Architecture of Fear: Urban Design and Construction Response to Urban Violence in Lagos, Nigeria, Ibadan:: Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique;.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Bouillon, Sophie. (2018);, 'Social realism and a new voice in Nigerian cinema'. , Agence France-Presse, 8 July, http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/sunday-finance/social-realism-and-a-new-voice-in-nigerian-cinema_137550?profile=1442. Accessed 7 June 2019 .
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Brunsdon, Charlotte. (2010);, 'Towards a history of empty spaces'. , in R. Koeck, and L. Roberts. (eds), The City and the Moving Image, New York:: Palgrave;, pp. 91-103.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Brunsdon, Charlotte. (2012);, 'The attractions of the cinematic city'. , Screen, 53:5, pp. 209-27.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Castellote, Jess, and Okwuosa, Tobenna. (2019);, 'Lagos art world: The emergence of an artistic hub on the global periphery'. , African Studies Review, 62:1, pp. 1-27.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Desser, David. ([2002] 2003);, 'Global noir: Genre film in the age of transnationalism'. , in B. K. Grant. (ed.), Film Genre Reader III, Austin:: University of Texas Press;, pp. 516-36.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Elsaesser, Thomas. (2005);, 'Cinephilia or the uses of disenchantment'. , in M. Valck, and M. Hagener. (eds), Cinephilia: Movies, Love and Memory, Amsterdam:: Amsterdam University Press;, pp. 27-44.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Fay, Jennifer, and Nieland, Justus. (2010), Film Noir: Hard-boiled Modernity and the Cultures of Globalization, New York:: Routledge;.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Friedberg, Anne. (1993), Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern, Berkeley:: University of California Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Ganti, Tejaswini. (2012);, 'Sentiments of disdain and practices of distinction: Boundary-work, subjectivity and value in the Hindi film industry'. , Anthropological Quarterly, 85:1, pp. 5-44.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Gopalan, Lalitha. (2013);, 'Bombay noir'. , in A. Spicer, and H. Hanson. (eds), A Companion to Film Noir, Oxford:: Blackwell;, pp. 496-511.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Green-Simms, Lindsay. (2012);, 'Occult melodrama: Spectral affect and West African video-film'. , Camera Obscura, 27:2, pp. 25-59.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Haynes, Jonathan. (2007);, 'Nollywood in Lagos, Lagos in Nollywood films'. , Africa Today, 54:2, pp. 130-50.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Haynes, Jonathan. (2015);, 'Neoliberalism, Nollywood and Lagos'. , in J. Andersson, and L. Webb. (eds), Global Cinematic Cities: New Landscapes of Film and Media, New York:: Columbia Univesity Press;, pp. 59-75.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Haynes, Jonathan. (2016), Nollywood: The Creation of Nigerian Film Genres, Chicago:: Chicago University Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Haynes, Jonathan. (2018);, 'Keeping up: The corporatization of Nollywood's economy and paradigms for studying African screen media'. , Africa Today, 64:4, pp. 2-29.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Ihonvbere, Julius O.. (1996);, 'Are things falling apart? The military and the crisis of democratisation in Nigeria'. , Journal of Modern African Studies, 34:2, pp. 193-225.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Jedlowski, Alessandro., (2017); 'African media and the corporate takeover: Video film circulation in the age of neoliberal transformations'. , African Affairs, 116:465, pp. 671-91.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Larkin, Brian. (2008), Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria, Durham, NC:: Duke University Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Mazumdar, Ranjani. (2010);, 'Friction, collision, and the grotesque: The dystopic fragments of Bombay cinema'. , in G. Prakash. (ed.), Noir Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City, Princeton:: Princeton University Press;, pp. 150-86.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Meyer, Birgit. (2004);, '"Praise the Lord": Popular cinema and pentecostalite style in Ghana's new public sphere'. , American Ethnologist, 31:1, pp. 92-110.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Miller, Jade. (2016), Nollywood Central, London:: Palgrave on behalf of British Film Institute;.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Mitter, Siddhartha. (2019);, 'Lagos, city of hustle, builds an art "ecosystem"'. , New York Times, 8 February, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/arts/design/lagos-nigeria-art-x-art.html. Accessed 6 June 2019 .
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Oha, Obododimma. (2001);, 'The visual rhetoric of the ambivalent city in Nigerian video films'. , in M. Shiel, and T. Fitzmaurice. (eds), Cinema and the City, Oxford:: Blackwell;, pp. 195-205.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Okome, Onoookome. (1997);, 'Loud in Lagos'. , Glendora: African Quarterly of the Arts, 2:1, pp. 75-83.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Okome, Onoookome. (2003);, 'Writing the anxious city: Images of Lagos in Nigerian home video films'. , Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, 5:2, pp. 65-75.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Prado, Ignacio Sanchez. (2014), Screening Neoliberalism: Transforming Mexican Cinema, 1988-2012, Nashville:: Vanderbilt University Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Ryan, Connor. (2015);, 'New Nollywood: A sketch of Nollywood's metropolitan new style'. , African Studies Review, 58:3, pp. 55-76.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Ryan, Connor. (forthcoming);, 'Media globalization and its malcontents: Lagos and Nollywood Noir'. , in R. Dube. (ed.), Global Cinematic Cityscapes, Lincoln, NE:: Nebraska University Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Shiel, Mark. (2001);, 'Cinema and the city in history and theory'. , in M. Shiel, and T. Fitzmaurice. (eds), Cinema and the City, Oxford:: Blackwell;, pp. 1-18.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Singer, Ben. (2001), Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and its Contexts, New York:: Columbia University Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Ward, Janet. (2001), Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany, Berkeley:: University of California Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Ryan, Connor. (2019);, 'Dark and gritty/slick and glossy: Genre, Nollywood and Lagos'. , Journal of African Cinemas, 11:3, pp. 295-313, doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00022_1
     [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/jac_00022_1
Loading
Dark and gritty/slick and glossy: Genre, Nollywood and Lagos
Journal of African Cinemas 11, 295 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00022_1
/content/journals/10.1386/jac_00022_1
/content/journals/10.1386/jac_00022_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): affective socialization; cinephilia; corporatization; creative industries; genre; Lagos; Nollywood

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test