African Movies Show Our Inferiority Complex. Posted by The Reunion Black Family . African movies scream it al Oh! Inferiorized Africans Oh! Neocolonized Africansn Oh! Benighted Africans Oh! Enslaved Africans Africans without roots Africans accept anyone Anything non-African Anything except their own African movies is a mirror Our jaded mirror of hopelessness Of our dearth of inventiveness Copy, copy copy oh, oh Of always imitating others Those who deride us Those who neocolonize us Those who disempower us Those who otherize us Those who misrepresent us Those who ghettoized us Oh! Inferiorized Africans II. LIGHT-SKIN SYNDROME When film-makers parade stars They parade light-skin stars Biracial is the choice Light-skin tones are the norm Bleached skin tones Contradictory skin tones Bleached forehead area Opposing unbleached ears Light-skin is akin to heroism Dark-skin is akin to villainy Light-skin is upper-class Dark-skin is lower-class Light-skin offers advantages Dark-skin offers disadvantages III. WESTERN NAMES Film stars wear Western names Strange lackluster names Their badges of honor As a badge of Westernization As a badge of education As a badge of social class Westerners don’t use our names Don’t know our names Don’t care about our names Oh! Africans! Lost Africans In the crucible of neocolonialism In one African movie These strange names abound Not a single African name All these slave names: CLARA, TRISHA SIMON, PATRICK JAMES, PAUL THEODORA, BOND SILAS, VERA SYLVIA, ROSE EDWIN, ANN VALENTINE Where did African names go Amma, Memuna Afi, Adzo Yaa, Yawa Kofi, Kwasi Oh! Inferiorized Africans Oh! Neocolonized Africans Even in our postcolony We adore Westernisms IV. FASHION So we wear dog chains Big chains Chains of imitation Gangster-rap chains Chains of enslavement So we wear wigs Our women adorned Adorned in capitalist hair Manufactured hair pieces Pig hair, dog hair Horse hair, goat hair Blonde hair, brunette hair Our hairstyles are gone Oh! Africans Inferiorized Africans V. DEPRAVED MANNERISMS Foreign cultures Of violence Of gun-toting heroism Of depraved sex/sexuality Of drugs, alcohol Of gangsterism Of slanging gurl, gurl (girl) Of weddings Of greetings Of accents VI. EPILOGUE Oh! Inferiorized Africans Oh! Neocolonized Africans Oh! Benighted Africans Oh! Enslaved Africans Time to be proud as Africans Time to stop imitating others Time to showcase our cultures Champion our rich cultures Our vibrant rich cultures Listening to music with young children can be very embarrassing because you just never know what will be done next. Why is it that these days, dancers in music videos do not dance with their hands, legs and faces, but feature women shaking their backsides? At my home, I keep the television in my bedroom for one reason – I like to monitor what my children watch. But once in a while, I decide to give them a treat and bring it out into the sitting room. Imagine my shock one day when l came home to see my very young (pre-teenage) children watching porn. In the middle of the afternoon! Not that it would have been any better had it been in the middle of the night! Like a mad woman, I rushed to the TV and turned it off. “Oh mummy, why?” came their cries. “What do you mean why? What are you watching?” I demanded. “The new music DVD you bought for us,” they replied. “Really?” I asked myself. And to make sure my children were not deceiving me, I allowed them to put the DVD back on. Lo and behold, it was indeed the music DVD I personally had bought for them! My goodness, little did I know the shock I was in for when I decided to sit and watch the DVD with my children. I mean, was I watching music videos or porn with music? I really could not tell (well actually when I experimented and turned the volume off, some of the videos did indeed look like soft porn). From music videos featuring women seductively caressing themselves whilst sprawled across huge beds, to videos which portray the artist as the “don dada”/ “oga”/ “playa”/ “big boy” (call him what you will), coming out of a limousine or another luxury vehicle, sipping champagne, several scantily clad women by his side (all desiring him), where he’s smoking his cigar, tossing dollars in the air, on the girls… Then there is the dancing. Well I don’t know if I should actually call it dancing as in most cases it is nothing other than a woman’s backside twisting. I even watched a video in which we did not see the female dancers’ faces, only their backsides for the entire duration of the Now I like to think of myself as someone with a liberal mind. I strongly believe in freedom of expression. I believe in a woman’s right to dress in any way she chooses. Seriously. I have no issues with the Pamela Andersons of this world, you know, those who choose to dress in the skimpiest of clothes. It really is up to them. When it comes to dancing, once again, I have no problem if someone wants to dance wildly and erotically. I have even been known to shake my thang in a sexy way… what I mind is having a woman’s backside forced into my face when all I want to do is listen to a song and watch a video. I mean, what happened to good old- fashioned choreographed dances? Why is it that these days, dancers in music videos do not dance with their hands, legs and faces? Why does every single video feature women shaking their backsides? The worst part is that I am not even referring to music from American artists. As for them, we have long been used to their way of writing songs and producing videos. Women as sex objects, a hip-hop star wearing more diamonds than you would even find in a diamond mine, money being thrown about that has been the American rap/ hip hop video scene for a very long time. I did not like it then, and I certainly do not like it now that African artists seem to be going that way. I mean, why does a young man from Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania or indeed any African country think it is okay to wear their jeans to their knees. Why do music videos coming from poor Africans living on the continent feature the artists in luxury vehicles, sipping champagne or seductively sprinkling money on a half-naked woman? If American artists are doing this, it is because for most of them, this is the norm. Believe me, it is real for 50 Cent to sip champagne every day if he wants, or for R Kelly to hire a limousine and fill it up with girls for his pleasure, if he so desires. It is real because they can afford this lifestyle. The African artists who are producing music videos like this are just aping somebody’s life. It is so far removed from their reality; l wonder why they would even want to go there? I guess they want to be “with it” and have international appeal. But do they not feel stupid when at the end of the day, they live in ghettos and do not even own a bicycle let alone a luxury fourwheel- drive vehicle. Most of the artists coming out of Africa are from poor backgrounds. They don’t live in mansions or maintain the champagne lifestyle, so it seems really silly to portray this in our music videos. African artists should be using music and videos to tell stories about their people. I am not saying for one moment we should go tribal, wear only loincloths and start throwing spears about (unfortunately, when people think of producing “African” videos, this is the only way they seem to go!). Maybe it is old age, but these days, I don’t enjoy listening to music on the radio because when I try, I just get offended by the noise and lyrics such as “I wanna hit on your bootie” or “I wanna ride her like a Range Rover.” How about “like a dollar bill, I had to unfold her”! Music is so graphic and disgusting these days I wonder what is going on. I also think music is having a negative influence on how young men and women perceive and enter into relationships. Today, it is all about sex, sex, sex, and more sex. Men are singing it. Women are singing it (they will tell you they have been “empowered”. Actually, I should say boys and girls are singing it because really most of these artists are still babies! Don’t get me wrong, I know people have always sung about sex. But it is the way it is done in this day and age. Look, when Marvin Gaye sings “Let’s Get It On”, he is asking for the same thing Usher is when he sings “make love in this club”. They are both purely asking for sex. But look at the way in which Marvin Gaye does it. Romantic, sexy. Non-offensive. Marvin says “if you believe in love, let’s get it on”. These days, songs are about doing it in the club, here and now. Gone is the romance. Because really if you are doing it in a club, it is not love-making but some quick bang, probably against a dirty toilet door! Even female artists are jumping on the bandwagon with people like Khia singing the filthiest song of them all, “lick it good”. What the hell is going on? Don’t for one moment think I am being prudish or hypocritical. Yes we all indulge in sex. But do we have to sing it out loud so crudely? Listening to music with young children can be very, very embarrassing these days because you just never know what will be said next. Currently, there is a song doing the rounds that has the words “I wanna be on you”. On first hearing it, you may be forgiven for thinking the man is singing “I wanna pee on you”. After explaining to my then seven-year-old son that it is “be” and not “pee”, he wanted further explanations as to why the man would want to “be on you”. What do you say to that? Am I the only one who thinks music, dance and videos should be entertaining ways of telling stories? I cannot recall any Michael Jackson video featuring sexy girls wriggling all over him, yet his were some of the most wonderful and truly creative videos. One of the best videos I ever saw is Will Smith’s “Summertime”. Now that is a video. Like a good video should be, it tells a beautiful story from beginning to end. It does it successfully without showing a single half-naked woman These days? All we see in music videos is minutes of backsides. I would not even mind if these backsides were interlaced with other scenes. But what do we see? Backsides dancing in the studio. Backsides dancing in the artist’s face. Backsides dancing in a club. Artists have even written songs to glorify a woman’s backside and to sing about what they would like to do to it. All the music videos are beginning to look the same. It is monotonous, uncreative and demeaning to women. It is time young African artists stopped blindly copying their American counterparts. African artists have to be true to themselves and tell our stories, not stories about gunshots in the hood! They have to be trendsetters who create new dances and fashion to go with their music. Dances, fashion and music which American artists should rather be copying. Continental Africans have such an advantage! We have different languages. We play musical instruments that the Western world may not even have heard of. We can make sounds with our tongues that those in the West cannot. These are unique features that African artists should be exploring. Take the Haitian artist. Wyclef Jean. He does not follow anybody. Wyclef always creates new beats and sounds that others follow. African artists must be more like Wyclef and invent new music. Copying hip hop or rap but doing it in our own language is really not creative. Nor is it creative to produce a music video featuring half-naked girls wriggling their backsides. But hey, these are just the reflections of an ordinary African woman .African Movies Show Our Inferiority Complex.Oh! Inferiorized Africans Oh! Neocolonized Africans Oh! Benighted Africans http:// www.reunionblackfamily.com/apps/blog/show/7079351-african- movies-show-our-inferiority-complex-oh-inferiorized-africans- oh-neocolonized-africans-oh-benighted-africans#.VxF09gdmn5B .twitter

I don't understanding this write up.

Very true. Africans should adopt originality. The West is intentionally teaching the world to be reckless, rebellious and shameless. They serve their own purpose, let's not follow blindly.