Abstract

Perhaps in nowhere than in public discourses and perceptions of Nollywood[i] are the methodological inadequacies that characterise accounts of globalization of culture more apparent. This paper argues for a conceptualization of the industry’s products as a global culture. It further proposes a relational and cross cultural comparison approach in which Nollywood and Hollywood films will be analysed on the same matrix. The paper employed critical discourse analysis to offer a reading of Hollywood’s Problem Child1 and Nollywood’s Daddy’s Girl. It concludes by proposing that a more nuanced and productive view of Nollywood’s role in the current phase of cultural globalization is one of a cultural contestant rather than a cultural copycat.

Key words: Nollywood, Popular Culture, Globalization, Critical Discourse

                     Analysis

^JCMRJournal of Communication and Media Research, Vol. 4, No. 1, April 2012, 189 - 200 

© Delmas Communications Ltd.      

About the authors

*Dr. Ogochukwu C. Ekwenchi is a Lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, Nigeria

**Dr. Allen N. Adum is a Lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, Nigeria

Full Article

Words: 7,030; Pages: 12

[i]Nollywood is the video film industry which in many accounts of the industry is believed to have been inaugurated with the release in 1992 of Living in Bondage, a video film produced by Kenneth Nnebue in the Igbo language with English subtitles. Nnebue’s Living in Bondage1, as the first commercially successful feature video film, also became the film which, as Obiaga (2008: 3) has pointed out, ‘established the market as well as what would become the common themes for commercially produced Nigerian video films.’ Dramatic productions on video, especially those by producers in Southern Nigeria, have generally come to be known as Nollywood films.