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HAUSA ‘FIM’ STILL AN ISSUE
By
Madiha Zarruk
No.
135 Magarbi Street, Area B.Z Samaru Main Campus, Ahmadu Bello
University, Zaria
Entertainment programs in the media are designed to bring about
pleasure to the audience, be it electronic or print, there are
programs for sport lovers, adventure, music, science lovers, fantasy
and fictions, nature and the likes. Movies as tools for
entertainment provide all form of pleasure to children, youth and
adults. As these services are provided for, the providers try to
maintain as much as possible some decency in what they give to their
audience and the same time doing themselves justice by safe guarding
their wears.
But are
the Hausa movies makers aware of such an issue and do they really
care about the viewers? As the entertainment industry is vast and
cannot really estimate it viewers, it has to device a means of
protecting its consumers.
Therefore censorship and copyright protection are the mechanism that
can protect both the consumer and the producer. And as the saying
goes “variety are the spice of life” but do Hausa film makers add
those spices to their game and the main question here, does Hausa
entertainment industry care about this, if they care, how can we
actualize and justify it?
Talking
about censorship in the Kannywood business, then it is a no,
censorship in the sense of Age Tags on their movies. Historically,
at the stage when film making was booming, and cinema was growing in
the west i.e. around 1906, there was a constant problem that existed
between the film makers and the local authorities on how to regulate
the categories of viewers going to the cinemas to watch. To
eliminate this, the film industry had to set up its own voluntary
censorship organization, and film producers were expected to comply
with its standards. One may come to understand that in cinema, using
bad language, obscenity and the likes are very common. Though in the
Hausa films obscenity might not be an issue but the use of market
language is the order of the day. We know that there is a body that
censors films in Nigeria before they are released into the market;
therefore, this responsibility is saddled upon then to tackle this
problem. The viewers want movies that will make them feel safe and
guaranty in preserving what is deem right for the society in which
they live. The question here is, our Nollywood counterparts have and
are still doing so, why not Kannywood? The Nigerian English Movies
that come from the southern and eastern part of the country however,
you will see that these have with them movies with official tags for
the age category that are supposed to be watching those materials.
For instance you see the tag ‘18’ meaning 18 years and above are
only allowed to watch. And in the tag ‘PG’ mean Parental Guidance
which means that the viewer if young are to be guarded also to
safeguard the children against obscenity and the use bad language,
the tag ‘U’ meaning Universal which is considered suitable for the
whole population and ‘15’ when the film is not suitable for people
under the age 15 years. Though not all these mentioned are
applicable to Nollywood, but at least some are, and that is a way
forward to them, but what about us?
On the
other hand, copyright protection warnings appears on every CD, video
cassettes of Hausa film you pick from the stall because they don’t
want to be cheated out of their pennies. But, that doesn’t mean they
(the Hausa film) have any respect for such warnings, because
translated Western and Indian movies, copied songs and lyrics still
appear on our T.V. screens. The Hausa film makers also believe they
have that authority to do so to the originators of such material
despite the warning on those same materials they copy from
Of
course Variety, as we all know is the spice of life, but our local
entertainers hardly provide us with that, in fact sometimes they
make one thinks that these movies are like reading M&B novels all
romance and the same problem always emanate. The only difference if
any, are the scenarios and characters. The Hausa film makers hardly
produce movies that are motivational or children movies for
entertainment, though there are lot of comedies and a little bit of
horrors here and there, but majority are love stories, I think it is
high time that the film makers do something about this very issue so
that we can have all the fun, or is that not what these movies are
meant for?
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