The Comic Imagination in Modern African Literature and Cinema

A Poetics of Laughter

Maik Nwosu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317374916
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria africana

This book is a seminal study that significantly expands the interdisciplinary discourse on African literature and cinema by exploring Africa's under-visited carnivalesque poetics of laughter. Focusing on modern African literature as well as contemporary African cinema, particularly the direct-to-video Nigerian film industry known as Nollywood, the book examines the often-neglected aesthetics of the African comic imagination. In modern African literature, which sometimes creatively traces a path back to African folklore, and in Nollywood — with its aesthetic relationship to Onitsha Market Literature — the pertinent styles range from comic simplicitas to comic magnitude with the facilitation of language, characterization, and plot by a poetics of laughter or lightness as an important aspect of style. The poetics at work is substantially carnivalesque, a comic preference or tendency that is attributable, in different contexts, to a purposeful comic sensibility or an unstructured but ingrained or virtual comic mode. In the best instances of this comic vision, the characteristic laughter or lightness can facilitate a revaluation or reappreciation of the world, either because of the aesthetic structure of signification or the consequent chain of signification. This referentiality or progressive signification is an important aspect of the poetics of laughter as the African comic imagination variously reflects, across genres, both the festival character of comedy and its pedagogical value. This book marks an important contribution to African literature, postcolonial literature, world literature, comic imagination, poetics, critical theory, and African cinema.

1 The Flaming Masquerade and Comic Simplicitas

Nkem Nwankwo’s Danda

Published in 1964 by Andre Deutsch, Nkem Nwankwo’s Danda is set in Igboland, as is Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), and the two novels more or less traverse the same sociohistorical territory. A comparative examination, however, highlights the different sort of imagination that shaped the two texts. Nwankwo’s novel does not have the same sort of gravitas as Things Fall Apart. In his explanation of the role of the writer, Achebe speaks of the novelist as a teacher: “Perhaps what I write is applied art as distinct from pure. But who cares? Art is important but so is education of the kind I have in mind. And I don’t see that the two need be mutually exclusive” (Morning Yet on Creation Day 45). From an analytical point of view, Nwankwo’s mission is also didactic. But the similarity in objectives does not exclude a difference in methods. According to Nwankwo in his memoir, The Shadow of the Masquerade:

A favorite scene that I go back to often in my beloved Dickens, features the immortal Trabb’s boy in Great Expectations. Pip, a country bumpkin, had been lured to the city by great expectations. He returned to Hickville some years later suited up in fancy city togs and a false pride. It fell to Trabb’s boy, the embodiment of village good sense, to enforce the lessons of humility by making Pip the painful object of street theater; but Pip took the rebuke in good faith; it was his redeeming feature, his sense of humor; it erased the effect of the city posturing which was more than can be said for our African hero. (30–31)

This festival spirit—or “street theater” and “sense of humor”—is a dominant motif in Nwankwo’s novels, from Danda through My Mercedes Is Bigger than Yours (1975) to The Scapegoat (1984). Margaret Laurence aptly describes Nwankwo in Long Drums and Cannons: Nigerian Dramatists and Novelists as a novelist that “although he touches on themes that are serious, refuses to treat them seriously for more than a moment at a time. He relies instead on the portrayal of a genuinely comic character who, like all true clowns, is movingly and palpably human, never simply funny in a one-dimensional way” (184).

Where the comic tendency in Achebe’s novel, as is only tentatively suggested through the character of Unoka, is overshadowed by the overall tone and tragic mood of the novel, Nwankwo’s intent is clearly to laugh at the assumptions and pretensions of the era in which his novels are set. Consider, for example, this exchange in Things Fall Apart between Unoka and Chielo, the priestess, about Unoka’s poor harvest:

“Every year,” he [Unoka] said sadly, “before I put any crop in the earth, I sacrifice a cock to Ani, the owner of all land. It is the law of our fathers. I also kill a cock at the shrine of Ifejioku, the god of yams. I clear the bush and set fire to it when it is dry. I sow the yams when the first rain has fallen, and stake them when the young tendrils appear. I weed—”

“Hold your peace!” screamed the priestess, her voice terrible as it echoed through the dark void. “You have offended neither the gods nor your fathers. And when a man is at peace with his gods and his ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm. You, Unoka, are known in all the clan for the weakness of your machete and your hoe. When your neighbors go out with their ax to cut down virgin forests, you sow your yams on exhausted farms that take no labor to clear. They cross seven rivers to make their farms; you stay at home and offer sacrifices to a reluctant soil. Go home and work like a man.” (17–18)

The comic potential in this exchange, initiated by Unoka, is seriously parenthesized both by its location—at the Shrine of the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves—and by the priestess’s “terrible” characterization of Unoka. Unoka’s story about sacrificing to the gods and the priestess’s reference to people crossing “seven rivers” (the traditional boundary where the world of the living intersects with the land of the spirits) do not necessarily subvert the comic potential of the exchange. There is a structural irony or context redefinition involved in both cases: Unoka references sacrifice where labor is required; the crossing of seven rivers in this case refers to physical effort, not metaphysical geography. But when Unoka later falls gravely ill and is thrown into the evil forest and his ‘failure’ haunts his son (Okonkwo) relentlessly, the comic potential of his presence in the novel is subverted. He becomes more parabolic than comic.

In contrast, the comic intent in Danda is evident in the overall texture of the narrative—especially through characterization and systemic contrast—and in Nwankwo’s fusion of the comic and the parabolic. In many respects, the texture of Nwankwo’s novel exemplifies the characteristic quality of the African comic novel. Characterization is particularly important, and the comic imagination is evident in several details. On a typical morning, the phenomenon of Danda trying to get out of bed is narrated interestingly:

Danda yawned again and slowly slid his right leg down the raised mud which served him as a bed. Then mentally he dared the other leg to follow. This limb declined to. The first leg hesitated, gave in and returned to its partner. Danda cradled his head more comfortably with his cloak and sighed cozily. It had rained the previous night and the morning was cool and leaden. Danda went back to sleep. (69)

While the overall tone is comical, Danda’s struggle to rise above his slothful or ease-loving self, a struggle that many people can relate to in this case, also humanizes him. He is not simply an abstract idea or concept that Nwankwo is trying to dress up or pass off as a character. Later that morning, Araba complains: “I was to go to the farm this morning with Danda […] But after morning food he disappeared” (74). This trend is characteristic. About the only time Danda rouses himself to struggle for anything is when he is sent away from his father’s house. He lives away from the village during this period. On a dark night, he literally has to struggle with the wind by countering it with his breath in order to keep the only fire he had from going out: “Danda was afraid. For if the fire went out there was no other means of making a fresh one; the village was far away and besides was cut off by the vibrating darkness” (85). So, ultimately it is fear—fear of elemental forces—that propels Danda to a struggle, not an absent fear of a tradition that had become manipulable to him. The relative absence of fear in fact or in part explains or contextualizes Danda’s rascality.

In Nwankwo’s novel, Danda’s character or comic self is established quite early and becomes the pivot on which the novel turns. Danda does not have the hubris or the self-doubt of the classic tragic character. Instead, his self-positioning is as a daring man of the people whose aim is to deconstruct in his own fashion (even if momentarily) the social codes (both local and foreign) that impede his lustful appreciation of life. His nickname, “Rain,” is telling. Danda is the colorful and ‘natural’ event that irrigates the hearts of the people, particularly the lower class. The result is not a plenitude of crops but a surfeit of laughter and a re-appreciation of certain ways of being. Danda’s aim can be said to be a new semiosis or meaning-making process without hard boundaries. This aim is helped by what Emmanuel Obiechina discusses in Culture, Tradition and Society in the West African Novel as the fraying of traditional institutions: “As soon as traditional society loses its collective outlook and the social forces which held it together, social non-conformism and rebels begin to appear. Thus Aniocha produces Danda, who, for all his poetic imagination and apparent light-hearted attitude, is at heart a rebel” (242). If Danda can be described as a rebel, then he is a rebel by being. Danda’s main purpose is to enjoy life as he sees it, not to fundamentally or dialectically engage with the larger issues in his society. But his enjoyment of life sometimes clashes with certain social codes, thus causing what may qualify as a self-centered rebellion. As Danda asks, after hearing about how Jesus Christ suffered for the world: “Why suffer for the world?” (52). Danda claims to speak or act on behalf of no one else but himself. He is like a mobile comic whose actions are capable of inspiring social protest but who does not principally or even consciously direct his actions toward that goal, which may explain why they never achieve any such social significance.

When we first see Danda, he is the only one who is not content enough to only admire the “land-boat” of his kinsman. Instead, he gets into the car, somewhat vicariously actualizing the fantasy of the admiring onlookers, and dares anyone to evict him. When the owner threatens to do so, Danda challenges him: “You are not fit to” (8). Not surprisingly, the crowd supports Danda. Nwankwo suggests Danda’s understanding of crowd psychology and situational dramatics. When the driver of the “land-boat” orders him to get out—“Come out,” roared the driver (6)—Danda invites the sympathy of the crowd by appealing to them: “People of our land, […] but for my bowing to your eyes I would break this boy’s head” (6). At this point, some people in the crowd intervene. Danda’s attribution of his restraint to his respect for the crowd had achieved the intention that he evidently wanted. This audience involvement is characteristic of oral performance. It is not incidental that Danda’s entrance is usually marked by a characteristic greeting, “Kliklikli” (9), which sounds like a performer’s entry signature. Danda’s sense of himself as a performer and his unrestrained lust for life are signal aspects of his characterization. When he arrives in Ndulue’s home, Danda does not wait in the shed like others because he is “one [who] had never recognized the demarcation” (9) between the lower and the upper classes. Once inside Ndulue’s home, Danda attempts to inspirit the gathering with his joie de vivre or rain mystique, but this particular audience does not properly appreciate him:

‘Oi! Oi! Oi!’ cried Danda, moved to ecstasy by his own fluting. Then he drew an impudent finale and waited for the type of applause he was used to. There was none. Danda burst.

‘Why are we so solemn? Why are we dressed up? Have we forgotten how to stand on our heads?’ Danda stood on his head. And waved his legs in the air. (13)

As Danda later tells his friend, Nnoli Nwego: “I have eaten the world” (14)—an interesting encapsulation of his vision of himself and his goal. In Nwankwo’s novel, this recurrent motif or aspiration to “eat” the world, with all the joyous (not cannibalistic) abandon that this purposely culinary verb is capable of evoking, is often realized through moments of comic performance such as Danda’s trip to Ndulue’s house.

Danda’s itinerancy, his bridging as well as exploitation of (class) contrast, and his robust lust for life (not the tragic hero’s pursuit of glory) are important characterization factors. Danda’s mobility is evident not only in his constant physical movements but also in his ability to adopt whatever persona seems to suit his purpose. When he exits Ndulue’s house, he says to the gaping or admiring crowd clapping their hands: “Thank you […] And farewell. Stay on the ground and eat sand. Danda is flying to the land of the spirits on the wings of the eagle” (8). First, he thanks the crowd, a gesture of appreciation that suggests the importance and agency of the crowd. There is no sense of exaltation. Danda’s sense of himself, his “I,” seems to be an “i” elevated into an “I” by the agency of the crowd. But then he metaphorically soars above the crowd on the wings of an imaginary eagle. There is a performative quality to that delivery that does not signal derision for the crowd but a moment of euphoria for Danda that should be celebrated or recognized rather than begrudged. This is an aspect of Danda’s character, his elusive solidification as a character, that explains his description later in the novel by an Uwadiegwu ozo: “You cannot get a hold on what Danda says. What Rain says has neither head nor tail” (31).

It is not that Danda’s intelligence is in question, but he is so adaptable to the moment that he can be a rather unstable and confusing character. When he joins the church, for instance, and even stays long enough to be baptized, he appears to modulate his behavior—even though he never entirely understands the significance of his new commitment. His new membership does not, however, stop him from fraternizing with ‘non-believers.’ In doing so, he blurs the lines of religious division, almost in the same manner as he troubles social hierarchies and lines of demarcation. When the catechist asks him why he is “drinking with spirit-worshippers,” his old self reasserts itself: “What is wrong with that?” (63). In Victorian Lagos: Aspects of Nineteenth Century Lagos Life, Michael J. C. Echeruo cites this caution in the Weekly Record of May 21, 1904: “The attempt to develop Africa on European lines can only end in failure. It is like rearing a bird in a cage with the result of vitiated instinct and a gradual pining away which end in death” (49). Danda is not one to pine away. His performance as a Christian has obviously not erased his old self. But that performative mobility has also created questions, even for Danda himself, about his true identity. As Danda muses: “Some people say that Danda is a tortoise, others that he is mad. I am not mad, people of our land, but I am not sure that I am sane” (63). This uncertainty (a single plurality or a dual singularity)—attributable in this context to Danda’s agwu, the deity that bestows creativity as well as madness—explains Danda’s existence in the interstices of the communal imagination. He is not considered mad enough to be restrained, but he is also not seen as sane enough to be dealt with using the full force of the traditional judicial system. So, Danda exists as a boundary figure with uncommon privileges—mainly his “prerogative as the Aniocha village Akalogholi (nonconformist and good-for-nothing)” (Obiechina, Culture, Tradition, and Society 84). This sort of location/non-location is relatable to Robert Pelton’s discussion of the “ambiguity” of the trickster (27): the “multiformity [that] accounts for both … [his] comic value and his mythic importance. He is both a schemer and a thief, a lecher and an ingrate, yet he is, proto-typically, ‘wonderful’” (28). C. W. Spinks also attributes to the ambivalence of the trickster “the energies which allow him to serve human cultural purposes” and “the source of his complexity, for out of it arises an immense amount of laughter and social satire” (180–81).

In “Tricksters Don’t Walk the Dogma: Nkem Nwankwo’s Danda,” Thomas Lynn argues that

the main reason that a perfect analogy cannot be drawn between a trickster of folklore and Danda is that, unlike such a trickster, Danda is a developed human character, with a range of nuanced responses, in a fairly realistic novel. This distinction between the folk trickster and a modern fictional character is made in an essay by Ralph Ellison, who declares in one passage (and in accord with Mikhail Bakhtin’s approach to the novel as a genre) that “archetypes are timeless, novels are time-haunted” (221). Yet, especially in connection with those works (and there are many) in which the author leaves no doubt that the trickster archetype is one of the models for the fictional character, analyses of the relationship between the folk trickster and the modern character can be illuminating. (5)

Nwankwo indeed suggests at several points in the narrative that the tortoise is the trickster archetype on which Danda is based. In one scene, Okelekwu tells Danda that there is “only a little” palm wine left in the calabash. Danda responds: “Let’s have it then. The Tortoise once came into a friend’s house. The friend had just finished his food. But he said to Tortoise: ‘You meet me as I am just about to finish my meal.’ ‘Let’s have the little that remains,’ said Tortoise” (29). Here, Danda structurally equates himself to the tortoise, the classic trickster figure in Igbo folklore. In another case, he references that equivalency or relationship as something uncertain but not necessarily invalid: “Some people say that Danda is a tortoise, others that he is mad. I am not mad, people of our land, but I am not sure that I am sane” (63). The choice of the tortoise (as an analytical sign in relation to Danda’s character) is not surprising. The tortoise motif is well established in the Igbo literary tradition with a broad corpus of tortoise stories in which the wily animal often defeats the odds in the picaresque manner of the ingrained trickster.

The performative drive that propels Danda’s character seems explained by the fact that he cannot bear inactivity. He apparently dreads moments that compel meditation. For instance, during his visit to Ndulue’s house, he delivers a surprising welcoming speech. After greeting Ndulue’s visitors “in the usual way,” he then says to them: “Welcome strangers, […] Aniocha is safe for you. The man who comes to visit should not bring in evil, neither should he carry evil away” (9). This speech (more fitting from the host) is rather unexpected from a character who had more or less bulldozed his way inside. When there is “a lull in the conversation,” Danda, “who couldn’t bear silence dispelled it” by singing “in a husky-sweet voice shaking his head from side to side and occasionally stopping to bawl: ‘Ewe ewe ewe! That’s the way we do it’” (12). One of the effects of this tendency is that Danda is often presented in action or in motion. In the balance of exteriority/interiority that the characterization of a major figure in a novel often navigates, Danda’s exterior dimension is more commonly on display. As Booth argues in The Rhetoric of Fiction, “narrators who provide inside views differ in the depth and the axis of their plunge” (163). But Danda, in the tradition of the typical comic novel, is more about the ripples (than the depth) of the plunge. It is not that the reader is never presented with or given a sense of the mind of Danda, but that is not the focal axis of the novel or the one on which its overall characterization rests.

Seen from that exterior perspective, Danda’s character is defined by excess, especially an excessive lust for life. The name “Danda” reminds the reader of the English word, dandy, which in a sense describes Danda’s attention to his appearance and full-figured self (as he describes himself). The name is also possibly traceable to an Igbo song (reproduced in Things Fall Apart) that references the crowning of a figure named Danda in a land where the sand dances (Achebe 60), the sort of dreamland that Nwankwo’s Danda constantly evokes or longs for. Either way, the figure of Danda as a vain lover of pleasure is notable. As his father (Araba) complains to his friend, Okelekwu: “He flutes from the cry of the cock to the time the chicken return to roost” (26). This occupation is quite interesting. Like Unoka, Danda is an artist—both characters are in fact flutists—in a world dominated or determined by farmers and in which well-being is measured in material terms: the number of a man’s wife, the extent of his farms and barns, and other such considerations. As wily as he apparently is, Unoka never manages to establish the terms of his being or recognition within this world, so he never becomes more than a (potentially) comic interlude in a tragic narrative. Danda fares better. Not only does he flute at every possible interval, even his speech mannerism—with his constant chants of “God created the world” (13), “My father bore me well” (15)—signal his exuberant spirit. He is also a talented escape artist, someone who has apparently mastered the art of flight whenever he deems it necessary for his own preservation.

To flee without shame or compunction or to live to fight another day is a characteristic more associable with the comic than the tragic character. Araba recounts how as a child Danda used to accept the clothes and sweetmeats given to lure children t...