Time to sanitise the movie industry

By Doreen Hammond
Almost on a daily basis, Ghanaian producers are coming out with what they want us to believe are movies. Just watching the excerpts of these movies as adverts on our television sets tells us what to expect and watching them confirms it.
Almost all of them are about witchcraft, sex, insults, profanity, occultism and wickedness; sometimes for no reason. It is either a mother-in-law dislikes her daughter-in-law so much that she continuously destroys the babies in her womb or someone disliking another person so much that he puts poison in his food to cause death or spiritually gives him an “everlasting sore”.
One of these movies recently released is a combination of little parts of several western movies. I could simply not believe my eyes! What happened to originality? A person gets assaulted or even murdered in these movies and the Police is nowhere in sight. A child is physically or mentally abused in this modern day and all the movie makes us believe is that it will take a ghost to stop the abuse. And by the time this ghost appears too much harm has been done!
This trend is indeed worrisome. It is worrisome because the arts are one of the most powerful tools that shape the consciousness of any society. It mobilises people for national development in the direction they want to go as a people. Is this really the way we want to go? Watch an American movie and you are inspired by the roles played by those representing Americans in these movies. They are always the strong and strong-willed, smartest, determined and witty. The Indians display their dancing and singing skills and tell their stories without going obscene even if the sound which follows their blows is too loud for a human being to possibly survive!
In contrast, our movies are so steeped in spiritualism, occultism and outright profanity to the extent of losing reason. Is it, therefore, surprising that we still have people who will bypass the health facility and head for the shrine at the slightest headache and still be surrounded by filth and be surprised that cholera is killing us? When science has proven that it is filth and the eating of faecal matter that causes cholera and headaches are no strange diseases in the hospital?
Usually, there is no clear-cut story line, plot or any moral lessons to be learnt from these movies and they seem to go on and on and on with no substance. It is as if the actors go on location to decide what to do and once it is recorded, there is no review or editing. Even the entertainment value of these movies is questionable as witchcraft and the powers of the underworld are continuously hyped. We don’t even have an image of our own sasabonsam but the computer generated images of creatures we find in Sinbad.
The titles of most of these movies indicate that the producers never have any international audience in mind. Examples are Animguasie, Bantama Aware, King Kong, Eno Samanpa, Heaven Akwantuo, Nsohwe mu Nsohwe and Nebuchadnezzar. Most of them have no less than two parts with some, like Kyeiwaa, running into many parts . It leaves one wondering whether those movies go through any scrutiny at all.
Even in the days of old when technology was less advanced, we used what we had to entertain and educate ourselves as a people. We could learn practical lessons from watching Osofo Dadzie, Obra and a few others and also entertain ourselves, even if they were on black and white screens. Why not now? We are too busy copying others that we now see Ghanaians dressed in lace with big headgear in the kitchen or just relaxing at home. But that is not real, for you and I know that Ghanaian women hardly dress like that at home! Even the Nigerians whom we may be copying are gradually discarding those kind of movies which we are busily embracing now. If they were giving the kind of titles we are giving now, I doubt if they could have broken into our market. A movie is set in a pre–colonial era , in some forest yet you find an actress wearing clothes made from jute (kotoku), but wearing acrylic nails!
Tell me what will attract a Nigerian or a Sierra-Leonean or a South African to watch a movie titled Bantama Aware. Even when we attempt to give English subtitles to these movies it is a great struggle; the translated English is so bad grammatically, and the spellings are funny.
Over the years, I think one of the challenges of our artists and entrepreneurs in general has been our inability to see beyond Ghana as a market. But the market in our globalised world is at least, West Africa, if not Africa and the world at large. Tell me, where outside Ghana can you promote a song like “Okraman Funu Ba” to an international audience?
In this age when technology has advanced and most societies are moving forward, we are still allowing the things which held our forefathers back to affect us. How can we build a vibrant and positive society when our music is mostly melancholic with hard work being seen as suffering and our movies are all about witchcraft and superstition? If we really want to develop as a people then we cannot leave such an important institution like the movie industry to the dictates of demand and supply and greedy entrepreneurs whose only motive is to smile to the bank, damn all of us.
This is even more so in a society where more than half of the population are not literate . A large number of the populace seem gullible as far as these things are concerned.
Governments exist not only for the physical security of the citizenry but also their psychological security. I think the government should come in to ensure some sanity in the movie industry, and move fast. Will that constitute censorship? Then who will sanitise the movie industry?

Writer’s email: aamakai@hotmail.com