Signs of Femininity, Symptoms of Malaise: Contextualizing Figurations of “Woman” in Nollywood

Nollywood, emerging in spectacular fashion in the 1990s to dominate the cultural scene in Nigeria, is intricately enmeshed in the semiotic web of Nigerian popular (and literary) arts of the preceding decades. My purpose here is to place the feminine-as-sign in Nollywood—which encompasses but is not limited to its representation of actual women—within a broader historical context of constructions of femininity in Nigerian popular culture and literature. Different styles of feminism favor different labels, but the controversy surrounding both “images of women” and “constructions of femininity” is an intrinsic aspect of culture itself. I am especially concerned with critical theorizations that shape our responses to and perceptions of gender roles and femininity. I see my intervention as part of an on-going dialogue between feminist and conservative/cultural nationalist commentators around the representation and role of women in literary and popular culture. I want to trace some of the contours of this dialogue so as to demonstrate the way familiar arguments keep recurring; and I want to suggest an alternative approach to what Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi calls the “mirror-image” or “either/or” paradigm that largely defines the argument as it is conducted in the public sphere.