I don’t know where I first heard the phrase “milking it for all its worth.” What I do know is that the expression thoroughly captures the state of African storytelling today.
This trend is akin to an exhibition of artifacts where the audience continues to be wowed by the artistry while the capitalist curators make a handsome profit.
African myths and histories seem to be something of a joke to some these days- a spectacle propped up for the highest bidder, used only for its commercial opportunity rather than any intrinsic value.
Call it gatekeeping, if you will, but there’s a certain measure of discontent to be permitted when a story written based on a historical event or mythical lore fails the authenticity test.
One of the current problems in Black African literature is that African stories continue to be told out of context, with storytellers introducing misconceptions that water down the essence of the experience.
Grossly misspelled names, unnecessary italicizing, and significant contextual errors have already found their way into several published books. This damage is magnified a thousandfold under the powerful lenses of movie adaptations.
On the big screens, the results and motivations start to become obvious when the context is thrown out of the window, and Indigenous languages, lore, and place are slowly choked and murdered with ropes of silk and velvet.
Here’s a list of a few of the cultural elements being distorted in these trending book and movie adaptations:
The expectations of local audiences continue to matter not. But whose stories are being told in the first place?
For decades, several aspects of African culture were dismissed as substandard, its art in particular stereotyped as backward, fetish, and outlandish.
Today, the entertainment industry is lapping up the overflowing contents of what it once looked down on, profiting off the uniqueness and awesomeness of Africa’s rich and diverse history and culture.
In publishing and movie-making, African Mytho-Fantasy has fast become a leading source of story material, with authors and scriptwriters drawing inspiration from oral traditions and history in different parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Works like Blood Scion, Woman King, and Black Panther, based on themes of the slave trade, African prehistory, and Afro-Futurism, have brought to the fore other previously unexplored core aspects of African myths, few of which stand out more keenly than Yoruba mythology.
Yoruba mythology makes up so much of any retelling of African fantasy in books and movies that the uninitiated would be forgiven for thinking that the Yoruba are the only African tribe.
Still, the inherent focus on Yoruba mythology is not without reason.
Lagos, the undisputed seat of art and culture in Africa, is dominated by the Yoruba. A former national capital and the most economically productive component of Nigeria, Lagos is where the seeds of colonialism first took root in the country.
In a country where the period of colonial conquests is the earliest that people know of their chronological and historical existence, and the subject of history is barely given thought, Lagos has continued to stand out due to its uniquely Nigerian experience, slowly becoming the brightest beacon of national history and art heritage.
Whether by fate or luck, the Yoruba, so well-placed and primed for the resulting acculturation, have latched on the opportunity, the fertile landscape providing dizzying rich source material and inspirations to multidisciplinary art.
First, books, then comics, animation, music, games, and now movies are being positioned as forerunners in their respective industries.
The material source? Oh, it’s only just the Yoruba pantheon, oral tradition, and cosmology.
From comics and novels to folklore, myths, arcane rites, and other sources of history, the giant wheels of the West continue to spin threads of gold, capturing audiences as the race to make the best adaptation gets underway.
The Yoruba are far from the only ones whose art heritage resources are now being exploited by the West, often without any respect to context or meaning. The land once named the Dark Continent has become an incredible source of illuminating historical retellings and adaptations.
What’s more, the art sells.
It sells because, like much of what is African, it is unique. Whether it’s the Igbo Ukwu bronzes, the australopithecine Lucy, Great Zimbabwe, Songhai, or Ghana, the sources are overflowing, ripe for the picking for movie producers, scriptwriters, poets, novelists and digital artists.
Woman King was a success, grossing almost $100 million at the box office despite subverting many elements of culture in its adaptation, with perceived unfaithfulness to the real historical accounts.
Meanwhile, Wakanda Forever, a pioneering African Speculative fiction screenplay, reached $859M at the global box office.
While the commercialization of African stories may not necessarily be viewed as bad, the main worry is the opportunity cost—the distorted meanings conveyed to audiences.
With Netflix leading the way, Hollywood is finally getting in on the act in the African storytelling scene through various partnerships with local motion picture production studios.
The choice to star Idris Elba as Okonkwo in arguably the most significant story to ever come out of Africa drew more than raised eyebrows for expectant fans who would have expected a different type of casting.
Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone is the stuff of dreams, the raring kind of success that invites applause from fans of fantasy, romantasy and young adult. But is it just as popular among the very audiences the books are loosely based on?
In books and movies centered around African history and myth, it is clear that many novelists and scriptwriters have not done the necessary research to ensure faithful adaptations.
From pantheons to geography, culture, and urban society, these adaptations, while entertaining in their own right, fail to answer critical questions about the African experience:
There are a billion unanswered questions about Africa, and the latest set of history and fantasy movie and book adaptations, by virtue of their genre, hold the key to restoring decades of brainwashing and the poor global outlook that Africa suffers today.
As Africans, we see the partial consequences of infusing such errors into our stories without context when the rest of the world displays blatant ignorance of our demographics, politics, and aspects of our very existence.
Book and movie adaptations can be a tool for the revival of Africa. But first, their stories must strive for authenticity. Authentic African stories convey the unique context of what it means to be black and what African culture and science can give the world.
Through movies and books, African Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, and Historical Fantasy can be the keys that unlock Africa to the world.
This is achieved by treating the global appeal of African art and culture not only as a means of commercial opportunity but also as a weapon to combat prejudice and misconceptions about Africa.
