The ornamentalization of masculinity in selected Nollywood films

Abstract

The study evaluates the spatial politics of ornamental masculinity in Nigerian movies and how representation contributes to a culture that harms gender. Highlighting how creative content and language demonstrate power, the study explores the complex realities shaping narrative experiences and how patriarchal prescripts of normative behaviour evolve in a conservative space. Based on findings culled from visual research and dramaturgical analysis, the paper explores how three Nigerian movies, Sobe Umeh’s Backup Wife, Biodun Stephen’s Let Karma, and Paschal Amanfo’s Celebrity Marriage, pioneer social change through stories of privileged male protagonists. The research establishes the link between creative performance, masculinity, and the consequences of a social process that perpetually frames minorities as auxiliaries of a dominant gender. The paper applies Connell’s gender order theory which advocates that masculinities vary across periods and cultures with characteristics presumed to be absolute and fixed in nature. Arguing that such masculinities, like gender and sexuality, are products of human classification and interpretation shaped by cultural contexts, the study finds that sexist behaviour is concealed in movies through a language of discourse that marks the female gender negatively while projecting masculinity as a shield.