Hollywood Does Not Know Nigeria...and we don’t give a damn!

Often times, Hollywood gets it. And we gobble it all up like the addicts that we all are; hooked on Hollywood movies. Hollywood knows how to feed our addiction. They churn out electrifying stories and masterpieces that keep us glued to silver screen or rushing off to the big screens with popcorn and sodas in hand.

As far as movie making goes, Hollywood is no doubt at the top of their game. They set the trend, dictate the pace and then surpass it again, constantly raising the bar with awe-inspiring flicks that leave the film industries in other climes struggling to catch their breath. The depth of interpretation, cinematography techniques and directorial skill we have in Hollywood is profound, no doubt.

However, when it comes to depicting the Nigeria situation, Hollywood fails abysmally. For a country as big as Nigeria, one is totally dismayed at how Hollywood frequently misses the target when portraying Nigeria or telling stories about Nigeria. The apparent lack of interest in authenticity is baffling. You can chalk a litany of movies where Hollywood has been off mark with regard to its depiction of the Nigerian society, people and culture.

Let’s start with Bourne Identity, the first movie in the Bourne franchise that cemented Matt Damon as an A-list bona fide. Of course in the original Robert Ludlum novel, Nigeria was never part of the telling. Hollywood, however, decided to pluck an idea from headlines across Africa and ultimately wove Nigeria into the tread.

Ordinarily, that is commendable. However, it is common sense that if you’re going to portray a foreign culture or society in a movie, you should at least research that culture to a reasonable extent. Hollywood directors ought to know this. But they decide to do a shoddy job.

For instance, it’s ridiculously baffling that in the movie in question, Hollywood casted a Nigerian actor, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as a disgraced Nigerian dictator but could not speak proper Yoruba. And as if that blunder wasn’t enough, the name of the character he played in the movie, Nykwana Wombosi, is not even a Nigerian name! How unpardonable!

Moving forward; in the 2005 movie, Sahara, starring Matthew McConaughey, there’s a particularly nauseating scene where all the dramatis personae converge on the Nigerian/Mali border. Seriously? Does Nigeria share a border with Mali?

A quick research would have shown that Nigeria does not have common border with Mali. Insignificant as this may seem it’s enough to question the seriousness of the story teller and earn the disgust of those countries you are trying to depict.

Then there was Tears Of The Sun, which starred Bruce Willis. In the 2003 movie, a U.S, Navy SEAL team goes on a rescue mission amidst the civil war in Nigera. Lt. A.K. Waters (Bruce Willis) was in command of the team sent to rescue U.S. citizen, Dr. Lena Fiore Kendricks (Monica Bellucci), from the civil war en route to her jungle hospital.

It is despicable that this movie does not come close to a decent portrayal of Nigeria. While the local extras in the movie were all South Africans, the language they spoke was anything but Igbo.

Then in the fifth episode of The Brave, season one, the team of American Special Forces team on a protection detail in Nigeria, happened on a hostage situation in a shopping mall. A group of terrorists had stormed a mall, where the wife of the American Ambassador was shopping.

In this movie, Hollywood humoured us with Nigerian-American actor, D.K. Uzoukwu, playing Emmanuel Ade, a terrorist. Everything seems to be going well as the actions unfold, until Emmanuel Ade and his band of terrorists tried to speak Yoruba. It was like a kick in the guts. The sour feeling this bit of blunder created would last in the mouth for a while.

Even though Yoruba is one of the most widely spoken Africa languages in the world, Hollywood fails each time it tries to establish Yoruba as a language in a film. Perhaps we should state this for the record; there’re loads of amazing Yoruba actors all over the place! If you need to shoot a movie with anything Yoruba in it, it would be wise to get a Yoruba actor, or at least someone who is fluent in the language, to deliver the role perfectly.

The problem as I see it, is not lack of resources to properly research a story but rather a lack regard and disdain for a people, not caring whether you present a true representation of the people and her culture.

As a thriving movie industry, albeit with all its imperfections and short comings, Nigeria’s Nollywood, has a lot to offer Hollywood in terms local knowledge and resources. Over the years Hollywood has failed to tap into the growing movie industry that started in Nigeria, spreading across the West Africa community, even as far Europe and America.

Instead, Hollywood is content to tell African stories using desk top research and perfunctory enquiry. That’s okay.

As long as others continue to tell our stories it will be told from their point of view. And the world will listen, watch, believing that is the only point of view.

We can continue to pretend that we don’t give a damn…!

                                                                                                       dave chukwuji

Lagos, NIGERIA