Film And Food: Exploring The Culture Of Food In Nollywood
2018 was a great year for movie lovers as we enjoyed some of the best commercial movies the global film industry has to offer, from Avengers: Infinity War to a few remarkable Nollywood flicks like King of Boys and Lionheart. Representation is important especially in this climate, and this was illustrated in a lot of the movie releases between 2018 and 2019.
For instance, Black Panther; a movie about Marvel’s first African superhero broke several records and became a cultural phenomenon in its representation of Africans in media. Another of such movies was Crazy Rich Asians, a rom-com that displayed a stupendous amount of wealth from a South Eastern/Eastern perspective.
One of the scenes that struck me from Crazy Rich Asians was the one that showcased a vibrant display of street food and its ties into Asian culture. In this scene, four people, three of whom were heirs to the largest empires in the city-state enjoyed delicious meals from street vendors. The different dishes were woven so beautifully into the story, that this nod to the eating culture was subtle but also impossible to miss.
This delicious food display also made me think about how the Nollywood incorporates food in movies and TV shows, and I don’t think I’ve quite seen food visually portrayed as it was in Crazy Rich Asians.
Nollywood has been around for a while: since the 1960s, and while it has since grown tremendously (especially in the past decade) into a $50 billion industry, the movie industry’s relationship with food has not evolved so much. In fact, it has remained the same in the sense that it is utilised as a plot driver, and not necessarily as a part of the culture or story being told.
A perfect example of this is the over flogged trope of food as a means of initiation into witchcraft or cults. Fuelled by Nollywood paranoia, our very religious parents constantly warned us not to eat food gifts from strangers, and even birthday party packs had to be doused in fiery verses from the Bible or Qur'an before consumption.
It didn’t help that the movies from Nollywood’s Golden Era mostly featured garish depictions of occultic children who upon consuming food from strangers suddenly transformed into monsters who spend more than half of the movie spreading mischief and committing senseless murder, at worst.
One of such movies which stood out greatly from my childhood was End Of The Wicked, which contained a scene where children who had eaten puff-puff from a classmate earlier in the day found were initiated into witchcraft.
The power dynamic between two characters in a film is crafted in such a way that determines who the audience should root for. As such, you could tell a villain from their interaction with their victims and their surroundings. However, in Nollywood, villains are typically established through stereotypes and cartoonish dialogue, as such, food is often employed by villains as a tool of destruction via death by poisoning.
Case in point: the countless movies we have seen where the villains (typically played by Patience Ozokwo, Chiwetalu Agu & others) would present a delectable meal doused with poison and proceed to watch their unsuspecting archenemies enjoy the meal that would kill them.
It is almost impossible to discuss food in media without touching on the many harmful stereotypes perpetrated against women. An example of this, in a case similar to the one mentioned above, is one where food is presented as a tool of mind control or even as a teaching point for women.
In this part of the world, cooking is deemed as an act of service to be provided by women always, and so, bad women are either depicted as the ones who reject cooking or as the dissatisfied femme fatale puppeteer who uses her kitchen skills to control and destroy men.
Interestingly, the art of cooking is also utilised as a comedy trope as in Ireti ‘Catering Practical’ in The Fuji House Of Commotion. She spent most of the episodes trying out different recipes which were hilariously bad and once gave the entire family food poisoning.
Nevertheless, I think it’s interesting how the eating culture in films casually depicts the class divide in Nigeria, as illustrated in scenes where wealthy families dress up to the nines to dine in their homes. A recent portrayal being Bolanle Austen-Peters’ The Bling Lagosians, where the female lead, Mopelola was seen wearing pearls at the dining table with her husband and children.
Juxtaposing Nigerian eating culture against that of the street food in Crazy Rich Asians further demonstrates how upper-middle-class Nigerians would rather have an appropriation of street food (e.g the Ewa Agoyin at Danfo Bistro) than try the actual street food hawked by Togolese women in their iron pots.
Image via The Bling Lagosians on Instagram
Nevertheless, the depiction of food in Nollywood is not completely unappealing. In classic epic flicks like Things Fall Apart and some others like Saworoide from the Yoruba section of Nollywood, the power of symbolic food items like the kola nut is explored through healing and divinity.
Kola nut also represents a history of cultural significance to the deities and the elders. On the other hand, alcoholic beverages like palm wine and Aromatic Schnapps also hold cultural relevance, where the elders bless the gods of the soil before passing the drink around.
While this is not to say that foreign movies portray the culture of food better or more effectively, after all, we know of many instances where the main character of a movie ignores a whole breakfast spread, picks up an apple while racing out the door, claiming to be late. However, there are several movies that have great food scenes, and even whole movies that focus on the greatness of food and as a people who revel in enjoyment and love of food, I think the Nigerian movie industry can weave this part of our culture more effectively into our films and not just have it as an afterthought in scenes.