Are We Still Entertained?

According to Chimamanda Adichie, “Nollywood is the best of example of Nigerians consuming what they produce”.

I am drawn to this, and can pride in the fact that I am one person with a huge interest in Nigerian entertainment – be it movies, theater or music. In the early days of what we now know as Nollywood, we had Thespians who separated their make-believe craft and the life they lead off the stage. Today, the case is not the same.

There is a crisis of identity ravaging the movie industry. I have met a couple of new industry players, and those I consider the “second generation” of movie practitioners in Nigeria. Much as I am tempted to call names, I am restrained by the fact that it means less to a generation of “netizens” and “cyberlings” whose definition of publicity bothers around the scandalous. A generation of people “older than shame”.

How it is that Nigerian Actors strive to live out the very vice they supposedly act against remains some kind of dramatic irony. You find a rancourous character with some inglorious denouement in a movie, being exactly same, if not worse than the said character in real life terms.

The question I keep asking myself when I see today’s Nollywood movies is, “are we still entertained?”

— Mazi Ejimofor Opara writes from Awka, Anambra State.