Nollywood does not merely reflect beliefs about witches, occult powers, emere, ogbanje, spiritual spouses and demonic manipulation; through repeated representation, it also helps produce, reinforce and legitimise those beliefs.
A few years ago, we spent a pleasant evening with some friends, all Nigerians. At some point, the conversation turned to so-called “African power”: the activities of witches, emere, ogbanje, and similar beliefs. A couple of us were sceptical.
Then came an argument that genuinely shocked me. Someone said, “If these things are not real, Baba Bamiloye would not be making all those films about them.”
It was one of those statements that left me speechless, not simply because of what was said, but because of who said it. This was someone with two university degrees, one in a highly respected profession, and membership of two reputable professional bodies. Yet their contribution to the discussion amounted to this: because Mike Bamiloye has spent much of his life producing films about witches, demons, spiritual attacks and supernatural powers, these things must therefore correspond to reality.
I was thoroughly disappointed.
But the incident also made me think more seriously about the power of cultural production. Both Christian and secular Nollywood have, for decades, helped to sustain and reinforce supernatural beliefs by giving them recurring characters, narratives and visual forms. Films do not merely reflect beliefs already present in society; they can also reproduce them, strengthen them and make them seem familiar, plausible and real.
Repeated often enough on screen, fiction can begin to acquire the appearance of evidence.
For many people who have no direct experience of the phenomena being portrayed, the films themselves become part of the evidence that such things are real. The cultural representation reinforces the belief, while the pre-existing belief makes the representation appear credible. Each feeds the other.
That is why we should pay closer attention not only to what Nollywood entertains us with, but also to the kinds of realities it continually teaches us to imagine, and, in doing so, helps bring into belief.
Do you belief in the supernatural? Of course I do. That does not change the fact that many who have never encountered a witch believe in witchcraft thanks to the Christian and Secular Nollywood.
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