Abstract

This essay examines the increasing display of female sexuality in Yoruba video film. The investigation focuses on this development especially because these sexualized female images have now become an integral part of a video film tradition that emphasizes moral discipline alongside entertainment. The images and motif of discipline tend to constitute two seemingly parallel discourses and it is this apparent contradiction, in relation to spectatorship, that this essay explores. As a result of the liberal deployment of female sexuality in Yoruba video film, almost all the genres are suitable for this investigation. However, Omotara Johnson I, II, III, Eye E, and Iwajowa have been selected for analysis not only for presenting the female body, but also for interrogating the filmic process. These video films are examined within the contexts of objectification and gender theories, including the Yoruba notion of “good character.” Crucial observations that emerge from the research include the discovery that eroticized female body functions as a component of the film’s didactic motif, obliterating possible contradictions between the images and instructional goals of the narratives. In other words, female objectification becomes justified through its centrality to the development of the film’s instructional machinery. The implication of eliminating the opposition between female objectification and didacticism is the creation of a unique spectatorship, which is male and heterosexual. This spectatorship supplants the previous undifferentiated one, because until about ten years ago, Yoruba video film was more preoccupied by dialogue and narrative than capturing the female body. Objectification of the female form and the emergence of specifically male and heterosexual audience are recent phenomena in the development of Yoruba video film.

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