African Appropriations

Matthias Krings

Description

Why would a Hollywood film become a Nigerian video remake, a Tanzanian comic book, or a Congolese music video? Matthias Krings explores the myriad ways Africans respond to the relentless onslaught of global culture. He seeks out places where they have adapted pervasive cultural forms to their own purposes as photo novels, comic books, songs, posters, and even scam letters. These African appropriations reveal the broad scope of cultural mediation that is characteristic of our hyperlinked age. Krings argues that there is no longer an "original" or "faithful copy," but only endless transformations that thrive in the fertile ground of African popular culture.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Major Wicked: Embodying Cultural Difference

2. Lance Spearman: An African James Bond

3. Black Titanic: Pirating the White Star Liner

4. Vice and Videos: Kanywood under Duress

5. Dar 2 Lagos: Nollywood in Tanzania

6. Branding bin Laden: The Global "War on Terror" on a Local Stage

7. Master and Mugu: Orientalist Mimicry and Cybercrime

8. "Crazy White Men": Un/doing Difference in African Popular Music

Coda: Mimesis and Media in Africa

Notes

References

Films

Index

Sujets

• African Studies
• Media Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Película fotográfica
• General officer
• Documentary film
• General
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780253016409
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

AFRICAN APPROPRIATIONS
AFRICAN EXPRESSIVE CULTURES
Patrick McNaughton, editor
Associate editors
Catherine M. Cole
Barbara G. Hoffman
Eileen Julien
Kassim Kon
D. A. Masolo
Elisha Renne
Zo Strother
AFRICAN APPROPRIATIONS
CULTURAL DIFFERENCE, MIMESIS, and MEDIA

MATTHIAS KRINGS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2015 by Matthias Krings
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-01625-6 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-253-01629-4 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-253-01640-9 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments and Preface
Introduction
1. The Wicked Major: Embodying Cultural Difference
2. Lance Spearman: The African James Bond
3. Black Titanic: Pirating the White Star Liner
4. Vice and Videos: Kanywood under Duress
5. Dar 2 Lagos: Nollywood in Tanzania
6. Branding bin Laden: The Global War on Terror on a Local Stage
7. Master and Mugu: Orientalist Mimicry and Cybercrime
8. Crazy White Men : (Un)doing Difference in African Popular Music
Coda
Notes
References
Films
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND PREFACE
THIS BOOK presents material I gathered during the past twenty years spent doing research in and out of Africa. The first chapter goes back to what in retrospect looks like the initial spark of my academic career-a year spent in northern Nigeria from 1992 to 1993. At the time, I was a graduate student of anthropology and African languages and had intended to study abroad for two semesters at Bayero University Kano. When the university went on strike only two months after my arrival, I began to develop a research project of my own and ended up studying bori , the Hausa cult of spirit possession. I became particularly interested in the Babule spirits, who when embodied by their human mediums in ritual performances, represented mimetical interpretations of European alterity. During the first nine months of 1993 and another three months in 1994, Usman Mohammed Dakata, Husseini Gandu, Saminu dan Jan Dutse, and the late Lawan na Kawari introduced me to the world of bori spirit possession. Husseini and Lawan also kept me up to date on bori matters in subsequent years (1998-2001), when I stopped over in Kano en route to my new fieldwork site in Borno state, where I conducted research for my Ph.D. project (not presented in this book). In Kano, I enjoyed the hospitality of Aminu Shariff Baffa and his family, who was my host in the Sabuwar K ofa neighborhood, where I found numerous friends among the bachelors of the quarter who kept me company, helped me improve my Hausa, and assisted me in so many other ways. I cannot name all here, but I mention Usman Aliyu Abdulmalik, Ibrahim Shariff Baffa, Abdulhamid Yusuf Jigawa, Abdulkadir Maje, and Kabiru Maje. In this neighborhood, I was in no way the only Bature , as Europeans are called in northern Nigeria. In fact, I shared this field full of researchers -as Katja Werthmann, among them, once called it in retrospect-with numerous others, including Douglas Anthony, Conerly Casey, Rudi Gaudio, Jan-Patrick Hei , Alaine Hutson, Tae-Sang Jang, Brian Larkin, Esther Morgenthal, and Jonathan Reynolds. I thank all of them for the many lively discussions we had which enriched my more general knowledge of Nigeria and Hausaland in particular.
In 2003, I returned to Kano for a research project on Hausa video film, which I carried out under the auspices of the Forschungskolleg Medien und Kulturelle Kommunikation at the University of Cologne. During my fieldwork on Kanywood, Ahmed S. Alkanawy assisted me in many ways, most notably by connecting me to his numerous friends and acquaintances in the Hausa movie industry. Among them, I am especially indebted to Abdulkareem Mohammed, chairman of the Moving Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria ( MOPPAN ), and to the filmmakers Dan Azumi Baba, Ishaq Sidi Ishaq, Hamisu Lamido Iyan-Tama, and Ibrahim Mandawari. Shu aibu Idris Lilisco and Aminu Bizi taught me what it s like to act in front of a camera by casting me in minor roles in their movies Salam Salam and Jinjirai 99 , respectively. Abdalla Uba Adamu inspired me through his own research and prolific writing on Hausa films, and his generous sharing of information helped me to keep track of the latest developments in Kanywood in subsequent years. The same holds true for Ibrahim Sheme and Carmen McCain, without whose blogs I would never have been able to follow up on the censorship crisis after 2007.
I am also indebted to Brian Larkin, whose work on media in northern Nigeria has inspired my own and who was kind enough to share his knowledge and experiences with me on several occasions. In Cologne, colleagues at the Forschungskolleg facilitated my initiation into the world of film and media studies-among them Friedrich Balke, Ilka Becker, Gereon Blaseio, Michael Cuntz, Cornelia Epping-J ger, Gisela Fehrmann, Erika Linz, Frank Thomas Meyer, Jens Ruchatz, Gabriele Schabacher, Leander Scholz, Erhard Sch ttpelz, and Brigitte Weingart.
My research on the appropriation of foreign media in Tanzania began in 2006, when I visited Dar es Salaam for the first time during a short reconnaissance trip. I returned for longer stays in 2007 and 2009, and eventually headed a project researching the negotiation of culture through video movies and Bongo flava music in Tanzania from 2009 to 2011. I thank the team of researchers-Claudia B hme, Gabriel Hacke, and Uta Reuster-Jahn-who made this project a success and from whose work, insights, and friendship I profited enormously. In Tanzania, we were affiliated with the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Dar es Salaam. I am very grateful for the kind assistance of its staff on numerous occasions and thank its consecutive directors, Amandina Lihamba, Herbert Makoye, Frowin Nyoni, and Imani Sanga. Vicensia Shule was always ready to share her knowledge of Tanzanian theater and media culture with me and also facilitated my research in multiple other ways. Deoglace Komba introduced me to various aspects of life and work in Dar es Salaam and assisted me as an interpreter. I also owe a great many thanks to Rose Nyerere, who put me up in her house in 2007 and one day took me along to visit her late father s residence on the shores of the Indian Ocean, which I always will remember as an almost mystical experience.
Mtitu Game was always ready to talk about Swahili movie production and his latest projects; Captain Derek Gaspar Mukandala, aka Lufufu, introduced me to the translation of foreign films during a number of practical dubbing lessons and subsequent conversations. I thank both of them. Special thanks are due to Amandus Mtani, who allowed me to appropriate the cover of his Titanic graphic novel for the cover of this book. My research into the history of African Film , the 1960s photo-novel magazine featuring the adventures of Lance Spearman, also began in Tanzania, where I was able to buy used copies of the magazine and interview several of its former readers, including Simon Chupa, Athumani Hamisi, Mike Mande, Chahya Mtiro, Joseph Mwamunyange, Hashim Nakanoga, Richard Ndunguru, and Abdul Sawe. Accessing more issues of African Film magazine was made possible with the help of Randall W. Scott of Michigan State University Library, East Lansing, and Toyin Alade from Lagos, both of whom swapped copies with me; James Orao was kind enough to retrieve several issues from the Kenyan National Archives for me.
The last two chapters of this book, which focus on internet-related phenomena, afforded a certain amount of technical finesse and a new methodological tool kit. I acknowledge the help of Jan Beek, who joined me during the initial steps of my exploration of cybercrime in 2008 and whose clever reading of scam letters inspired my own. I am also grateful to Jan Budniok, who gave me a crash course in Facebook, making it much easier for me to navigate the Facebook pages of the three musicians whose work I discuss in chapter 8 . Special thanks are due to Espen S rensen, aka Mzungu Kichaa, and Eric Sell, aka EES, who were generous enough to meet me for interviews in 2013 in Hamburg and Cologne, respectively.
I also express my gratitude to the conveners of several conferences, panels, and seminars where I presented part of my work at various stages of completion and from the discussion of which I gained a lot: In 2005 and 2006, Birgit Meyer invited me to participate in two wonderful conferences as part of the Pioneer Project in Mass Media and the Imagination of Religious Communities that she ran at the University of Amsterdam; Carmen Birkle and Nicole Waller encouraged me to develop a first version of the Black Titanic paper for their seminar series on transatlantic encounters at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 2006; and Mahir aul and Ralph Austen convened the African Film conference, which took place at the University of Illinois in 2007 and where I