VIDEOS IN MOTION - fasopo

From melodrama to the “melodramatic”: “Semantics” and “syntax” of Nigerian videos' filmlanguageNigerian videos' narrative structure has usually been defined by scholars as melodramatic. 112 It isimportant to consider, however, that within the field of film studies the notion of melodrama isparticularly disputed (cf. Langford 2005; Singer 2001; Vasudevan 2010). Thus, while a number ofattempts to define its specific articulation within the Nigerian context have been produced (e.g.Haynes 2000; Larkin 2008; Adejunmobi 2010), in my opinion an aura of indeterminacy stillsurrounds the meaning of the term melodrama when applied to Nigerian videos. As JonathanHaynes has emphasized, “more than most genres, melodrama takes different forms in differenttimes and places, and developing the term in this context would certainly not be to cram theNigerian videos into some precise preexisting model” (2000: 22-23). This is why, in this and thefollowing two sections of this chapter, I will try to define the specificity of Nigerian videomelodramatic attributes and their position in relation to foreign forms of melodrama. I will do thisby focusing on a specific corpus of videos that appeared during the first few years of the videophenomenon (1992 – 1998), because these videos directly participated in setting a series ofnarrative and aesthetic patterns that were later adopted, at least in their general aspects, by mostsouthern Nigerian productions.To be able to analyze the specificity of melodramatic attributes within the Nigerian context, it isimportant to define our theoretical approach to the study of film genre. This is in fact the theoreticalframework that grounds this analysis. In his influential article on film genre theory, Rick Altman(1984) made an appeal for the use of a multiform approach to the study of genres. In his opinion,film studies have usually defined genres according to two main diverging schools of thought, basedeither on semantic or syntactic criteria of analysis. Categorizations of the first kind privilegesformal similarities, while analysis of the second kind focuses on deeper structures of meaning.While the first has a stronger consideration for historical differentiations and diachronictransformations, the second inherits from structuralist theory a rather synchronic perspective. Thetwo approaches have different analytical value, which influences the level of inclusivity of thecategories that they produce:112 While scholars often use the term melodrama in their descriptions of Nigerian video genres, the term is hardly usedby local practitioners and audiences. As Jonathan Haynes has underscored, “melodrama is obviously the literary genremost relevant to the bulk of the videos, but while the word sometimes comes up in adjectival form, it is virtually neverused in Nigeria as a generic term to describe the video films” (2000: 22).149