CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.0 INTRODUCTION

This chapter would discuss the study which is concerned with the impact of

Nollywood movies on moral consciousness in the society. For the sake of clarity,

this chapter is divided into sub-units, such as background, purpose, statement,

significance, limitation and scope of the study, research methodology and

questions.

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The Nigeria entertainment industry has become a socio-economic driver in the

country. The impacts of some movies on the Nigerian society are the

manifestations of the issues that abound in the society. Considering the impact of

movies on social values and human behaviour, the quest for qualitative movies

production is inevitable.

Recently, Nollywood was ranked a multi-million dollar industry producing close

to(1000) one thousand movies a year coming in third behind Hollywood and

Bollywood. Most movies create a lot of thoughts in the minds of people on how

Nigerians can be so talented as to produce such movies which created awareness

and solved societal issues.

1
This research work is set out to find answers to the questions that are being asked

from the people about the relevance of home video in the society. Such questions

are-- Do home videos have any impact on people’s sense of moral? Is there a need

to improve the standard of home video in Nigeria? Can Nigerian home videos

serve as a platform for the promotion of cultural norms and heritage? and so on.

The impression is that all our movies are targeted at witches, nudity, bad mother-

in-law, crimes, rituals, money rituals and all sort of negative things. Questions will

be raised to know the usefulness of home video/Nollywood toward cultural, social

change, political orientation and human behaviour. ‘Arugba’ and ‘Saworoide’

produced by Tunde Kelani, would be used to analyse some of the profound

influence that Nollywood has brought about to the nation as a whole.

Arugba is set against the backdrop of a corrupt society that needs cleansing and

rebirth. It thrives on political intrigue. Through this video, people are able to know

about H.I.V. (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), how to check their H.I.V. status,

infected persons are able to cope with their problems through the prescriptions

given. People are also made to know about first aid medication, that is to be given

to a child who has lost strength (5 cubes of sugar, salt and warm water).

The play talked about the premium placed on virginity among ladies. Adetutu is

well respected in the society and this is because she is a virgin, which made it

possible for her to carry the sacrifice to the river of the cleansing of the land. It also

2
portrays the importance of indigenous and traditional language and also, the

culture of Yoruba society.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This project will look into the impact of Nigeria home videos and the moral

implications of the home videos on the society.

The impact and development of the Nigeria home videos would be examined with

a view to know its moral implications on the society.

1.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The main purpose of carrying out this research work is to investigate about the

impact of home video and its relevance to the Nigeria society. It also set out:

 To investigate about the growth of Nigeria home video.

 To find out the moral values and development in Nigeria home videos.

 To enlighten the people on how home videos serve as a means of education

and enlightenment.

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The significance of this project is to enable the people in the society to know more

about home video as a means to enhance moral values and a means of educating

and enlightening the society.

3
1.5. SCOPE OF THE STUDY

A lot of recent Nollywood movies today are enriched with imitable values which

will bring about positivity in our actions. However, for the purpose of this research

three movies will be used to analyse the social, historical and political issues in our

society.

1.6 JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY

The general conception in most quarters is that Nollywood movies encourage

illicit behaviour in viewers especially the youths in various aspects; violence, sex,

robbery, organized crime, prostitution, murder, occultism, treachery, ideality, etc.

while for some, Nollywood movies impact positively in minimal areas of culture,

triumph of good over evil, love, serves as a medium of talent development,

entertainment, communication and a few others. Thus, conducting this research

will establish that Nollywood movies contain projections which bringabout desired

attitudinal change on its viewers. The study also explored and reviewed the

societal-values as found in Nollywood movies.

1.7. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This section describes and explains the methodology deployed in this study and

what informed my choice of methods. The study is a qualitative research

conducted in order to explore the various societal values that are being projected in

4
Nollywood movies. This is with an intention to bring to the fore, the signi{cant

contributions of Nollywood to the developmental growth of our nation and Africa

at large.

This choice of research question is:

 Do home video of nowadays teach morals?

 Do home video and growth and development in the Nigerian society?

 Can Nollywood movies be used in eradicating moral decadence in the

society?

5
 CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 INTRODUCTION

The word change has so many meanings depending on the context in which it is

used. However, one major point that keeps reoccurring is the move from one state

to another. Change in a society refers to an alteration in the social order of the

society, it may include changes in nature, social institutions, social behaviours, or

social relations. Thus change can refer to any signi{cant alteration over a period of

time in behaviour patterns, cultural values and norms. The world today is changing

so fast economically, socially, politically and even physically. The argument

however is whether the change is for the better or for the worse. This change is

made rapid by the increasing new ways of communication especially the media

which has increased accessibility to knowledge. This has changed the ways

individuals, groups, and societies think, feel, behave, and interact.

2.1 Historical Analysis of Home Movies in Nigeria

This review will explore the history of home movies in Nigeria and also delve into

the Influences home movies viewing has on its audience, primarily with how the

content of home movies Influence attitudes and behaviours of students of tertiary

institutions.

6
Home movies in Nigeria started during the period when a colonial film unit was set

up in 1947, but until the 1960’s little more than documentaries were produced.

Then, came Nigeria’s first film production companies, Latola Film (1962) and

Calpeny Nigeria Ltd. In 1970, Kongi’s Harvest, based on Wole Soyika’s play, was

produced by Calpeny and directed by American Ossic Davies. This was the first

flowing of local film in the 1970s and 1980s. With foreign exchange problems and

the popularity of home movies on video, most indigenous film producers have now

turned to making videos, usually of poor acting, filming and production quality,

but which sell well. VHS copies are handled and marketed by distributor, who

make them widely available and affordable and with the current video boom has

left the film industry neglected. What is being contented with here is the fact that

the film industry in Nigeria is yet to emerge as an authentic cultural or economic

force capable of drawing to its self the attention of policy makers and as an integral

component of the national development effort.

2.2 Influences of Home Movies Viewing of societal value

Studies have re-examined the content of home movies and the Influence that

different types of content have on viewers, in terms of viewers’ academic, cultural,

and sociological perception.

7
Cultural.

Over the years, home-videos have come to be closely associated with the culture

industry. In Nigeria, such a role for the film industry is still evolving although

certain factors are altering the profile of what could be regarded as the country’s

culture, while the home-video industry itself is undergoing a crucial transition.

However, the immense potential of film was recognized even during colonial

times. The Federal Information apparatus early acknowledged film as the most

influenceive medium for internal and external publicity and by 1923, cinema

entertainment had become immensely popular in Lagos (Mgbejume, 1989:48). In

exploring the interface between culture and film and by extension, video films, this

work hopes to establish patterns which will provide a clearer basis for

understanding a development which strongly impacts on the future of the society.

Movie is a powerful tool for the transmission of cultural values. In an analysis of

how it could further the cause of cultural identity. As a propanganda tool, movies

remain a vehicle employed by governments and others interested in the art of

subtle diplomacy. Because of its popularity as an entertainment medium, it easily

becomes a means of relaying and reinforcing information meant to promote a

certain reality.

Film also plays the role of stereotype, helping to shape perspectives of people’s

culture. The impressions which viewers develop about a people and their cultural

values are greatly affected by movie portrayals.

8
As an educational medium, movie covers issues in the school curricula or things

about their country of origin which tell viewers about different countries and

peoples.

2.3 Sociological Influences

There has been a debate about the impact of home movies on society. A prominent

theme in these debates has been a concern about the adverse Influences on specific

types of movie content on children. The images and impressions conveyed through

movies eventually end up stimulating our young one into a culture of immorality

and violence- derailing the good and orderly development of our children.

As with most technological advances, social scientists have played a prominent

role in examining movies’ Influence on society. The question of what type of

youth is most affected by film is a recurrent theme in the scientific literature,

particularly since much cited conclusion that “for some children, under some

condition, television is harmful, for other children under the same condition’s or

for some children under other conditions, it may be beneficial”. Television in the

home is the greatest source of visual violence for children. The average child

watches 8,000 televised murders and 100,000 acts of violence before finishing

elementary school. That number more than doubles by the time he or she reaches

age 18. The youths are exposed to more violence than any generation in recent

memory. Defenders of television programs say that is not true. They contend that

television imagery doesn’t make people violent nor does it make people callous to

9
suffering. But if televised imagery doesn’t affect human behavior, then the TV

networks should refund billions of advertising money to TV sponsors.

In essence, while claiming that a televised 30-second commercial can influence

consumer behaviour, on the other hand, denying that a one-hour movie program

wrapped around the commercials can Influence social behavior.

Researchers have known for years that heavy television viewers are more likely to

experience difficulties in their social relationships and to perform poorly in

schools. Further studies have shown that people who are more aggressive tend to

be the ones most affected by watching violent content.

2.4 Home Movie Content: Gender and Racial Stereotyping

Seeking to understand the roots of racism, sexism and other form of

discrimination, many psychologists study the causes and Influence of stereotypes.

Stereotyping is the application of a standaradized image or concept to members of

a certain group, usually based on limited information, (Baran, 2009:438). It is a

generalized belief that associate whole group of people with certain traits.

Stereotyping is wide spread and can be found in all societies. Because the media

cannot show all realities of all things, the choices media professionals make when

presenting specific people and group may well facilitate or encourage stereotyping.

Research shows that we naturally sort other people into social categories such as

race, gender, occupation, and economic class.

10
According to O’Rorke (2006:73) “The kinds of models presented in the mass

media have been of concern to the seeking social change, such as minorities and

women’s groups”. In Bandura’s own point of view as cited in O’Roke (2006), he

said that:

These groups have pointed out that movies,

television programs have typically depicted

women and people of colour in stereotyped

roles and may have affected their general sense

of self efficacy. Recently, many organizations

have been campaigning to the mass media to

offer new kinds of accurate models such as

minorities and women as educated, successful

professionals. Social learning theorists would

agree that this is an advantageous strategy to

employ in hope that social change would take

place.

Baran (2009:438) stated that “numerous studies have demonstrated that women

and people of colour are consistently under-represented in the media. Still

emphasizing on stereotyping, Daramola (2007:117) noted that “during the 1970’s

the media was always showing leading female characters in prime-time TV as

11
officers and house wives”. He went a step further to state that no other occupation

came close to these two in frequency portrayal.

To further clarify the Influence of viewing movie and stereotyping, more studies

were done and the results show that watching movies led to stereotypical

behaviour/attitudes and that audience with stereotypical attitude watched more TV,

(Wogu 2008:33).

2.5 Studies on Media Influence: An Overview

In all of communication researches, the area of media Influence appears to be the

most contentious. Several reasons account for this. For one, it is argued that, if the

media have no Influence on the society, is there any realistic justification for their

continued existence? For another, if the media do have Influences on the thought

process and attitude of mankind, should they take responsibility for the emergent

foibles and discomfitures of man in the society? (Defleur, 1976).

Some schools of thought hold that, the media cannot be completely impotent

because human existence itself is founded in parts, on communication. Any

wonder the communication maxim that man cannot not communicate. However,

the media cannot take sole responsibility for the vagaries of human attitude change

because that would deny the contributions of other influential variables in the

existential environment.

The above picture vividly underscores the quandary which media Influence

researchers mostly find themselves. As if to dismiss all skepticisms about media

12
Influence, Melvin de Fleur and Sandra Ball-Rokeach cited in Uwakwe (2010),

examined the controversy and declared the “only the terribly naïve would argue

that the mass media have no Influences upon people or upon people’s lives”. The

problem, however, remains that it is hard, if not impossible to set a standard

framework for measuring the nature and extent of media impacts.

In Influence, therefore, other variables would continually have to be recognized. In

a seemingly fit of exasperation on the inconclusiveness of the methodology for

measuring media Influences, R.G Meadwo cried out thus; “after four decades of

exploration, we are left with one answer to the question of media Influences-“it

depends.”

While the counter-echoes on media impact rage on, we shall, for the study on hand,

attempt an exclusionary outlay of the convoluted literature on media Influence

studies. This would enable us to utilize the advantages of the hindsight while

examining the possible Influence of home movies on the dress pattern of Nigerian

youths.

The concern on media Influence has led to the development of different

communication theories. In an attempt to explain the relationship between

communication message and their Influences on the respondent, the Reinforcement

and Social learning analysis will be examined.

Reinforcement as a paradigm in discussing media Influence was part of Joseph

Klapper’s findings (the Influence of mass communication) which he published in

13
1960 but was originally developed in 1949. He is of the opinion that the media

rarely have any direct Influence and are relatively powerless when compared with

social and psychological factors. His analysis assumes that mass mediated violence

simply reinforces existing aggressive inclinations that people bring to media

exposure. Wogu (2008:176) captures it this way:

Cultural norms/values, social roles,

personality features and family or peer

Influence are held up as factors

determining violent behaviour. However,

for people (especially children and youths)

who lack social stability and fruitful social

relationships, mass mediated violence may

provide a primary model for violent

behaviour.

Klapper by this analysis, wished to calm the fear of the people about television

especially. His idea is that even if the media have any Influence at all, it is in the

direction of reinforcement. The key assertion of his analysis, is that the primary

Influence of media is to reinforce (not to change) existing

attitudes and behaviours.

14
Instead of disrupting society and creating unexpected social change, Klapper

argues that media generally serve as agent of the status quo, giving people more

reason to believing and acting as they already do.

But the Social learning analysis seems to contradict the standpoint of

reinforcement. As Albert Bandura argues in his ananlysis, people are likely to learn

aggression from the mass media and to pattern their behaviour after the dramatis

persone, (Wogu, 2008:175).

2.6 Theoretical Framework

A theory, essentially, is a functional scaffold on whose platform various research

problems can be explained. Though, there is a paucity of functional

communication theories, for the purpose of the study at hand, the cultivation

analysis, the social cognitive theory and the selective perception theories will be

very useful.

Cultivation Theory

The Cultivation theory (sometimes referred to as the cultivation analysis) was used

to study whether and how watching television may affect viewers’ ideas of what

everyday world is like. Cultivation theorists argue that television (movies) have

long term influences which are small, gradual, indirect but cumulative and

significant (Baran, 2009).

15
This theory argues that the mass media cultivate attitudes and values which are

already present in a culture: the media maintain and propagate these values

amongst members of a culture, thus, binding it together.

Cultivation research looks at the mass media as a socializing agent and investigates

whether movie viewers come to believe the movie version of reality the more they

watch it. The research contends that movie has small but significant influence on

the attitude, beliefs and judgment of viewers concerning the social world. This

theory focuses on “heavy viewers”. People who watch a lot of movie are likely to

be more affected by the ways in which the world is formed by the media than are

individuals who watch less, especially regarding topics of which the viewer has

little firsthand experience.

This theorist sees movie as a cultural arm of the established industrial order and as

such serves primarily to maintain, stabilize and reinforce rather than to alter,

threaten or weaken conventional beliefs and behaviours’. Movie is not a force for

change so much as it is a force for stability (Wogu, 2008:91).

This basic assumption of the cultivation analysis is that the more time people spend

watching movies, the more their world view will be like those spread by the media.

According to this theory, heavy television viewers would tend to take the social

reality portrayed by television as the same as real life. If light viewers and heavy

viewers were asked questions about any aspect of life constantly portrayed on

16
television, heavy viewers would give television answers to those questions of life,

implying that they have adopted the television portrayal of life as reality.

As research has shown, one of the implications of this is that, heavy viewers will

tend to over-estimate such matters as the rate of crime and violence in real life and

the chances of the viewers becoming a victim of crime. Critics of the cultivation

theory insist that many research findings have failed to replicate the theory, others

point at the mythological inconsistencies and both external and internal validity as

some of the weakness of the theory has stood the test of critical verification over

long period of time The relevance of this theory to this study is that home movies

provide a prism through which students of tertiary institution Abia State, perceive

the dress culture.

2.7 Social Cognitive Theory

This theory holds the assumption that people learn through observation especially

through television when applied to mass media. Social cognitive theory argues that

people model (copy) the behaviour they see and this occurs in two ways: through

imitation and identification. Baran, (2009) sees it as imitation- the direct

replication of an observed behaviour.

Mass communication theorists who study television impact find value in the idea

of identification. Every one admits that people can imitate what they see on

television, but not all do. Social cognitive theorists demonstrated that imitation and

17
identification are products of three processes: observational learning, inhibitory

influences and disinhibitory Influences (Baran, 2009).

By observational learning, social cognitive theorists posit that observers can

acquire (learn) new behaviours simply by seeing those behaviours performed.

Inhibitory Influences entail seeing a model, a movie character for example

punished for a behavior, reduces the likelihood that the observer will perform that

behaviour. In the media we see good Samaritans sued for trying to help someone,

and it reduce our willingness to help in similar situations that behaviour is inhibit

by what we have seen (Baran, 2009).

Disinhibitory, seeing a model rewarded for inhibited or threatening behaviour,

increase the likelihood that the observer will perform that behaviour. This is the

complain, against the glorification crime and drug in movies for instance (Baran,

2009). This theory is relevant to this study because it shows how students are

affected in their dress pattern by what they students observe in home movies.

Selective Perception Processes theory

Selective Exposure

Selective exposure dwells on the process through which mass media audience

decide to expose themselves to a particular mass media content in preference to

another or even one mass media instead of another. For instance, a particular

audience member of the broadcast media in Nigeria might decide to listen to news

18
on the world services of the BBC than listen to Radio Nigeria news, or a viewing

audience in Nigeria might decide to settle for foreign movies than home movies.

This selective process is adopted by the audience in their exposure to the media by

their active nature which is manifest in their personal taste, need, desire,

expectations and judgment.

19