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African Movies Show Our Inferiority Complex - The Reunion Black Family by MrBenSun: 8:31pm On Apr 16, 2016 |
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
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Re: African Movies Show Our Inferiority Complex - The Reunion Black Family by Flexherbal(m): 8:33pm On Apr 16, 2016 |
I don't understanding this write up. 1 Like |
Re: African Movies Show Our Inferiority Complex - The Reunion Black Family by Nobody: 4:19am On Apr 17, 2016 |
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. |
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