Who runs the world Nollywood?

Before you start reading this article, I'd like for you to think of five top 
nollywood actors (male or female) right off the top of your head and post it as 
a comment, GO!

1, 2, 3 … Action! Pan to the female actress tied up by the male villain. He’s laughing, she’s screaming “help! help!!”, he laughs harder “no one can save you now!”. Pan out. The wall shatters as the male hero zooms in and zip zap zip the female lead is released and laying in his arms, Clark-Kent-Lois-Lane style, and she looks into his eyes and says…. “YOU SAVED ME!”

This is the depiction of women that foreign cinemas traditionally deliver. It has almost always been females in the background and knight-in-shining-armor saves damsel-in-distress. We don’t think about it too much, males and females alike, because it is not some sort of a visibly oppressive system (at least not to those of us who just flip channels and rent DVDs). No one minds as long as there is a damsel role to be cast so female actresses are getting roles and there is a hero role to be cast so male actors are getting roles. So everyone’s happy right?

However, in recent times, in the American movie and even the Indian movie industry, there’s been this recent increase in the importance of females in movies (that decided to wait up till the 2010’s – oh how modern we are). If you pay attention to other industry headlines you notice the sometimes subtle message, and other times adamantly clear message, that “this movie did great in the box office and critically but what’s most surprising is that the movie was led by a woman”!

…the fact that it worked was some magical act that defied some scientific rule.

It’s not so brand new, per se, to the 2010s considering older movies like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill (2003), Angelina Jolie’ in “Lara Croft” (2001), Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City (1999), Sandra Bullock in “Miss Congeniality” (2000), Julia Roberts in mostly anything Julia Roberts has been in. There’s always been movies led by female actors in the past and everytime it worked in the past there’s always been “oohs” and “aahs” like the fact that it worked was some magical act that defied some scientific rule.

Come to the 2010s and we have movies like Maleficent, Frozen and Blue Jasmine (and I hesitate to mention ‘The Hunger Games’ lest someone argue that the strength of the movie was based on the fan culture from the books) that have done so well at the box office and critically that more people are now talking about female led movies and movies where movies actually have a tangible role.

Most of our typical movies fail the bechdel test, which for those who don’t know is a test to gauge the importance of female characters in movies. To pass the test a movie must answer yes to all these questions: 1) there must be at least two women in the movie, 2) who talk to each other, 3) about something besides a man. It seems so simple yet in every given year in Hollywood, more than 50% of the highest grossing movies do not pass this test.

What does that mean? It means we are making movies without women in them or making movies where women are solely added as accessories for the male leads.

We are…making movies where women are solely added as accessories for the male leads.

Now moving to India. In an industry like Bollywood we would be more likely to expect this, forgive my bluntness, but when you think of a traditional Indian movie you think boy loves girl but they can’t marry because of status (wealth, caste, skin color, political ambitions, etc.). In modern Bollywood, however, the reality is much different. There are more diverse storylines now yet when a female led movie like “The Dirty Picture”, “Queen”, or “Kahani” happens and does well at the box office there is still the general “oohing” and “aahing” that happens again like this is some magical act that defies a scientific rule.

But all this is not the point of this article.

The general point of this article is that we Nigerians and Nollywoodians have something to be proud of in this regard. This is because even though our society appears as one that is generally repressive to females, our industry is run by females. Remember the list you came up with at the beginning of this article – how many were females? If you think like the average individual your list is my case in point.

Let’s just kick “Living in Bondage” to the side for a minute, from our inception days with movies like Nneka the pretty serpent, Domitila, Glamor Girls, and Most Wanted, nollywood has generally been an industry that favors the female actress. Granted, some of the movies still used female characters as tools for the male characters but most of these movies are still generally about the women.

our #1 leading actress has been acting since she was 19 and is currently 35

In other industries there is talk of female actresses having short life spans in front of the camera with an average mortality of about 10 years (we aren’t talking about Meryl Streep… calm down) after which, they fade and the demand becomes for the newest and youngest actresses. Then there is Nollywood where our #1 leading actress has been acting since she was 19 and is currently 35 and will outsell any contemporary 20-something-year-old actress even without promotions.

In other industries females come and go whilst the male leads are constant, in Nollywood males come and go (sorry guys). If you look at a top 10 list of Nigerian actresses from 10 years ago you will probably spot Omotola, Genevieve, Rita Dominic, Mercy Johnson, Uche Jombo etc etc. If you look at that list today you will probably still spot the exact same people. However, if you look at a top 10 list of Nigerian actors from 10 years ago you will probably spot Ramsey Nouah, Pat Attah, Desmond Elliot, RMD, Osita Iheme, Chinedu Ikedieze, Nonso Diobi, Jim Iyke, Emeka Ike, Emeka Enyiocha etc.. If that list was to be done today only about half of those people would still be as relevant and you’d have new names like O.C Ukeje, Blossom Chukwujekwu, Mike Ezuruonye, Joseph Benjamin, Majid Michel (yes Ghana, we adopt him!) etc.

Fact is that we Nigerian women have an upper hand on the west in this regard and this entire post was just a bragging piece.

The featured image is gotten from a brilliant article by Kelly Thompson at CBR