Diverging from the conceptual framework used up to this point in the chapter, the African elements will be divided and grouped into corresponding areas of resemblance in application and utilisation, in order to better elucidate their functions in the films. This subsection will thus constitute a stepping-stone to the more in-depth analyses which follows.
As has been previously explicated, they derive meaning from interpretive processes which implicate the spectator and the producers of the film. The makers of the film provide the signs (which transport their messages, which in turn are reflective of contemporaneous contexts) that guide the spectator’s readings according to the contexts alluded to.
Explanations of their employment will also overlap.
Summarised into two broad renderings, the African elements in some of the films can be seen to draw on both contemporary and historical facts pertaining to Africa and African American heritage for the purposes of demonstrating that such an engagement contributes to strengthened and empowered African American identities. In others, they fulfil the ignoble functions of contributing to the comedy of the narratives, and, by way of their overlap into references of supposed sexual natures of Africans, an even more controversial narrative duty.
To refresh, the African elements and their employment are expressed in six basic categorisations. With the purpose of accentuating their representations, I will first map them strictly by the forms they take. I then address them within the divisions that draw out their meanings, namely, in the contextualisations evinced in chapters two and three, as these are the sites in which they transcend their statuses as mere “signs.” The first of the six conceptual categories is noted in regard to the settings.
While it serves as the location from which John Shaft’s mission begins, parts of the narrative in Shaft in Africa are set in Ethiopia. A second use of diegetic locations filmed in contemporary African countries can be distinguished by the inclusion of Elmina, the fort in Cape Coast, Ghana, where Mona in Sankofa experiences her spiritual retrospection. The third representative mise-en-scène in this category is shown in Coming to America in the portrayal of the “African” kingdom of Zamunda.
The next category refers to the attire or costuming of characters, including hairstyle choices. As such, the concoction of diegetic African visualisation in Coming to America extends to the costuming of its African characters, which showcases the film’s incorporation of various examples of real and imagined African fashions as worn by all members of the Zamundan kingdom. In Barbershop, Dinka is always seen wearing his signature Nigerian fila
hat in combination with a leather necklace of the map of Africa, with a cowry shell at its centre. He also wears a beaded band around his wrist. He is clothed in these items again in the sequel, which was released two years later.
In order for John Shaft to pass as an Ethiopian in Shaft in Africa, as the other men in the rural setting, he is shown wearing white short breeches and a shirt, with a thin blanket thrown around his shoulders. He accessorises this outfit with a “fighting stick.” Osiat (Frank McRae) who is part of the Ethiopian delegation that hires Shaft, is also dressed in an all-white outfit, though with the distinction of a sarong, a Nehru-style jacket, completed with a necklace of large beads, a kufi cap and his “fighting stick.”
As featured in Sankofa, as with New Jack City and as such, keeping up with the Afrocentric fashions of the time, Mona is shown wearing outfits with the popular inclusion of kente-cloth print on her kufi cap, caftan and wrapper draped over her shoulders, as well as a yellow-coloured zebra-print bathing suit in the modelling scenes. Sankofa is in a white cloth which is wrapped around his body, and displays white-painted feet and ankles. He also holds a staff with a sculpture of the Sankofa spirit bird and wears a kufi cap. Mona’s hair is cropped and therefore “natural” while Shola’s is in cornrowed plaits. Similar in aesthetic intentions to the characters in Sankofa, the characters in Daughters of the Dust wear their hair in its natural state: Nana Peazant keeps her hair in dreadlocks, Eula’s is in twists and the others have simply let their hair grow out, tying it up in plaits or knots.
In The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Dan Freeman and some of the Cobras dress in African-print dashikis, while the Dahomey Queen (Paula Kelly) sports a short afro (which is sometimes tied in a head-wrap), in combination with flowing African-print caftans. New Jack City’s, Nino Brown has a leather pendent of the African continent, as does Scotty.
Furthermore, when Scotty is off-duty, he too wears a leather pendent, but adds to it a dashiki and/or tam hats (in order to accommodate his dreadlocked hair) adorned with kente-cloth print. The familiar use of kente-cloth print is also featured in Higher Learning, as seen worn by the black student in the lab where Remy reveals his emerging neo-Nazi leanings.
With regards to the third category, namely, that of décor and props, as is seen in Higher Learning, Deja and Malik choose to wear African masks for Halloween which conversely marks their (and the film’s) hybrid Black Power and Afrocentric politics. The flag with a map of Africa in Fudge’s living room, as well as the carved book divider, Ankh, masks and posters thus constitute the film’s decorative African elements. For The Spook, the masks and sculptures as well as their framing in the opening credits fulfil the film’s contribution to this category.
Carrying over into that of representations of African-based spiritualities, Daughters of the Dust presents a first example via the adorned river sculpture and diegetically-referred
“bottle” tree. These are featured alongside verbal references to the ancestors in the depiction of the Gullah Islanders’ African-based spirituality and religious practices. Another example is observable in Sankofa’s focus on the repeated images of the Sankofa spirit bird initiated and guided by the griot.
The performance and presentation of an “African,” or “Africans,” is employed extensively in Coming to America, given the setting and narrative outline and thus comprises the fifth category. Dinka in Barbershop, John Shaft and the Ethiopian delegation in Shaft in Africa (with the exception of the Mr Amafi’s side-kick, Wassa), and Bilal in Daughters of the Dust also signify “Africans” in their respective films. From Sankofa, I also include Nunu and Sankofa, for though the actors are African themselves, their ascribed roles insist on a performance which signifies to the audience, the mystical African typecast.
Finally, in terms of auditory signifiers which are synonymous with Africa, films like Daughters of the Dust and Sankofa abound with hand and percussive drumming, accompanying ululations, grioting, a-capella chorusing, or chanting throughout. This is further extended to the use of Twi, a Ghanaian language of the Akan linguistic group, in Sankofa. Hand-drumming accents the fight scenes in Shaft in Africa, Higher Learning and New Jack City. Added to these is the reliance on names to transport the idea of Africans or Africanness.
Coming to America also incorporates percussive aural signatures, occasionally accented by horns and trumpets to mark the presence of the king and queen. Dinka’s humming in Barbershop, is similar in rhythm and melody to the Mbube soundtrack heard in the opening sequences of Coming to America.
The onomatopoeically “African” or Muslim names (with African American pronunciations) in all the films also serve the function of producing an African aesthetic.87
As has been previously explicated, the cited African elements derive meaning from interpretive processes which implicate the spectator and the producers of the film. The makers of the film provide the signs that will guide the spectator to reading them based on the alluded contexts, which are usually contemporaneous or if historical, generally well-known.
On the matter of hair, as Grada Kilomba notes in Plantation Memories, “ . . . during the enslavement period . . . hair . . . became a symbol of ‘primitivity,’ disorder, inferiority and
87“Dinka” are a linguistically Nilotic people who make up the majority ethnicity of Southern Sudan.
un-civilisation” (75). Ownership of black hair in its natural state is thus not only a resistant stance against Eurocentric valuations of beauty and civility, it is an acknowledgement and a pride in that acknowledgement of the black body. It follows then that in narratives of African American empowerment, keeping ones hair in its natural state are an integral part of that defiance.