S3xual Contents in Nollywood: The Need for Alternatives -By Akotipopo Elizabeth Titilayo

Sexual content can be regarded as any sexual act, from passionate kissing all the way to intercourse. Any action that shows the act of intimate touching, explicit sexual intercourse, kissing, necking, talking about sex and nudity can be referred to as a sexual contents. Synonyms for sexual content include, sexual images and sexual materials.

According to Huston, Wartella and Donnerstein (1998) sexual content can be defined “as verbal references to sexual activity, innuendo (an indirect intimation about a person or thing), implied sexual activity and visual presentation of sexual activity.

It all began on September 30, 2022, shortly after thousands of movie lovers watched the much talked about Nollywood movie, ‘Anikulapo’ on Netflix. The movie was greeted with uproar, as those who had watched it warned of sex, nudity and violence scenes. Many persons quickly went on social media to vent their anger and disappointment over what they called needless explicit ‘sex scenes’ between the lead actors, Saro Alaso Ofi Lati Ilu Gbongan and the delectable Olori Arolake.

However, while the lamentation against the film directed by one of Nigeria’s leading fimmakers, Kunle Afolayan, continued on one hand, because of the claim it erodes the Yoruba culture and runs foul of ethical values; guess what? The movie ranked no 1 globally on Netflix, with over 8 million views in less than a week, perhaps, because of many who purposely renewed their account in order to watch the movie on account of the controversy generated by it.

In less than six months, the streaming platform released another sponsored Nigerian series “Shanty Town” on Friday, January 20, 2023 to rave reviews especially on social media. Surprisingly, many of us have also watched this same movie that contains ‘few’ sex and nude scenes like Anikulapo, in less than 24 hours! Unsurprisingly, it’s the same complaint; the unnecessary sexual scenes!

Well, their agitations and concerns are quite understandable, after all, customers are always right, so says the popular axiom. “But what about the other customers who derive joy in those scenes? What about those who purposely wanted to the see the movie because of obscenities? Don’t they have their own rights?, After all, the movies aren’t for kids!”, many will likely ask. This is sadly the reality of the industry today! Criticisms or not, movies with sexual scenes pull more viewership than those without it. Before the coming of Netflix, there has always been nudity and sexual scenes in Nollywood movies and it’s probably going to continue, except and until the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) urgently does something about it.

For instance, a study recently showed that Nigeria is the highest porn-watching country in the world. So, one might argue to say it’s of lesser evil to watch 1, 2 sexual scenes on Netflix, or even skip it, than watching porn, with outright disregard for human dignity. After all, they’re not careless enough to show it all, like in the case of porn!
 
Some may argue that those nude and sexual scenes might not be real after all, claiming movies are make-believes, meaning there are cases where they use special body suits or prosthetics makeups, like the case of Anikulapo, based on the statement attributed to the effect guru, Hakeem the Magic.
 
Others in the entertainment industry may also argue that these scenes might be necessary to illustrate and understand the plot and character development, as captured by Afolayan in the case of Saro and Arolake in ‘Anikulapo’, and the case of the sex-driven Elesin Oba, who couldn’t sacrifice himself to serve his ruler in the afterlife due to his sexual desires in late Biyi Bandele’s Elesin Oba.
 
There are other times filmmakers who use body double for sexual scenes. Body double is a person who stands in for an actor in a particular scene, usually for shot that purportedly show the actor’s nudity or specific body parts, such as the back legs and chest. Although this is common in most foreign movies, few Nigerian big budget movies, such as Shanty Town 2023 movie produced by Chichi Nworah, adopting if for Nancy Isime. The scene which shows her unclad went viral on fans sparked debates online on whether or not that was the real nude of the actress or not. 
 
Many filmmakers have also argued that making a scene to indicate sexual activities taking place is utterly impossible without nude and sexual scenes, real or imagined; saying, “apart from the actors playing lovers on set, there are countless of other crews in the room, teaching them how to make it real! So, they aren’t alone, and it’s not real”, so goes the argument.
 
 The examples are endless but one thing is certain, Nollywood is a multi-billion dollars industry that is commerically driven, with different business interests, which has disregard for morality. Why do we think some born-again Christians and conscious Muslims left the industry? It’s either you join them or you quit! We all know some great guys that had to quit despite their passion and forgo their acting prowess! This is quite sad, shameful, but the reality!

In a nutshell, the government and regulatory bodies have a major role to play. Film agencies such as the NFVCB should make sure they not only screen movies and place them into the right rating but should also do a follow up to ensure that producers do not play pranks by inserting clips that were not originally shown to them back into the movie to enable them sell.

The Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) should also endeavour that all its laws and
regulations especially those that relate to obscenity and airing of movies with sexual contents must be obeyed by broadcast stations and when they are not followed they should be sanctioned.

Parents are also urged to counsel and discipline their children to view only movies within their viewing category and if they must have access to these films, they should be view it wisely.