Kannywood and moral decadence in Hausa land

I’ve never been angrier with Kannywood film stars and their nonsensical movies. This is because of their seeming acceptance of their incompetence and inability to portray, to a minimum satisfactory level, our culture, religion and the searing political climate of our society. Similarly, because of their refusal to accept whatever correction they were helped with […]

I’ve never been angrier with Kannywood film stars and their nonsensical movies. This is because of their seeming acceptance of their incompetence and inability to portray, to a minimum satisfactory level, our culture, religion and the searing political climate of our society. Similarly, because of their refusal to accept whatever correction they were helped with by professors and those who patronise them, I, for more than seven years now, stopped watching them for they, without doubt, crossed over to anti-Islamic, anti-Hausa cultural and anti-intellectual practices.
Having set the ball rolling, I think I have to hit the nail on the head. Yesterday I saw some filthy pictures of Ali Nuhu who is believed to be one of the successful film stars in Kannywood. Successful or unsuccessful? I believe the latter adjective is a better description of his pathetic self. My reader can reason with me that this star is spiritually declining and tilting towards filmic suicide. This is because, the moment he is hated by his audience he is dead, buried and forgotten. And now he has risked his fame by going overboard on his filming calling. He chooses to shamelessly act in obscene scenes that deflate his popularity. My greatest worry however is that, the frequent appearance of such vulgar pictures and scenes may silently decriminalise pornographic scenes in Kannywood films. But one may argue that the pictures I saw are not from a Kannywood movie. Be that as it may, the actor is from the “wood” under discussion and, also, known to be a representative of the industry. Therefore, his biological, cultural and religious attachments with Kannywood Film Industry are all that matter. His audience cannot, undeniably, think of him as somebody else from, say, Hollywood or Bollywood. So his fame is in death throes.
Moreover, this hasn’t started yesterday. The history goes back to Maryam Hiyana incident down to Sani Danger’s. No doubt that these good-for-nothing people bring nothing but calamity upon us. The level of moral decadence brought about by their films is unimaginable. In terms of dressing, Abida, in her famous movie, Kauna, breaks, not opens indeed, the door of scanty dressing in our midst. Today we have girls and women going about half naked and boys going with half their ass open. Girls are crazy and shameless today in showing their backs, their hips and bosom. In fact there is no part in their body they are shame or afraid of exposing. This bad culture is really calamitous as it opens the eyes of once shy Hausa people. It brings out women from the culture of purdah and drives them crazily out on the streets. Now women raise their voices, clap and walk like men on the streets.
Similarly, our cultural Hausa dialect has been ruined. New anti-cultural words and expressions are, on daily basis, added to the language. They teach rudeness in talking back to people. They change our polite way of addressing elders, change our polite style of greeting (e.g. ya kake/ ya kike?) and they teach all sorts of vulgar expressions as in “ka fishi Iya hakan rijiya”. Now, many kids pick such bad expressions, whether they know the connotation or not, alarmingly. Primary school teachers complain of vulgar language of their pupils and, as such, some irresponsible and lecherous teachers use that to their advantage to discuss sex issues with the kids and finally practice it whenever they get the chance.
Conclusively, I call on parents to stop watching these people, at least, with their kids for it is no more a secured entertainment. May be this is the way out so long as we want to bring up better children.
Mubarak Ibrahim Lawal, Kano