Categories: Entertainment

The s3xualisation of Nigerian comedy and moral concerns

Many media followers of that time will remember the famous 1994 Wonderbra advert that featured Czech model, Eva Hezigova scantily dressed in black bra and underpants. It stirred much controversy and became the site of many road accidents, as male drivers often became distracted by the risqué billboard. It was iconic for its lewd effect and sparking debates over objectification of women. When criticised for the advert however, Eva Hezigova insisted that it was “empowering.”

Today’s concern is not about adverts and billboards, or the half-dressed models that feature in a media space that has become more welcoming to Eva Hezigova’s idea of ‘women empowerment.’ It is instead about the growing trend among Nigerian skit makers, comedians and content creators exploring sensuality in their art. Actually, there is nothing new about the trend. It is an age-long phenomenon among Nigerian stand-up comedians that has only now found numerous expressions through the Internet and social media.

In the heyday of Nigerian stand-up comedy, one pervading theme of the art was to joke about hypothetical sexual experiences between couples. Considering the context of their delivery (club houses, birthday parties, comedy shows, etc.) and their audience (singles of legal age, married couples), these jokes could not have been considered distasteful. They were rendered only to an audience willing to hear them and ready to receive them. Not so for skit makers and content creators of today, whose contents wriggle through the bars of parental guidance and get exposed to teenagers and children every now and then.

Another way by which skits and works of content creators contrast with the old Nigerian comedy shows is in their graphic nature. Stand-up comedians are known for their skill to deploy words that create humorous imagery and that their audience can relate with. In essence, even if a child gets exposed to the words of a comedian in a suggestive joke, the damage is not fully done as far as the child has no imagery to back up what he has heard. Not so for skit makers and content creators. By design, their art is made to act out a full representation of the written script.

Skit makers, I believe, have found a niche in the biological tendency of their ever-growing audience—the tendency for sexual pleasure, which they continually play to. Many of these skits now have a typical cast style of cleavage-revealing voluptuous women, sometimes unrelated to the plot. It appears the director has the instruction penned down in his script, to add a spice of sensuality to every plot. Let us not forget that these online content do not have a PG rating pinned to them most times. On the surface, they appear innocuous and children at times watch them unsupervised, “just for the laughs.”

For the time being, it may be sheer entertainment with no cause for alarm. But in the long run, we may start to suffer consequences of exposing the younger generation to sexually suggestive content and the idea of objectifying the female body. Whether we like it or not, they keep seeing how the female body is portrayed in skits, how the male cast in those skits respond to the phenomenon, how the display of nudity and sensuality appears celebrated in the mood of these skits, and how the on-screen players perpetually get away with their acts.

Another concern that flows from the theme of these sex-tinged skits is the portrayal of infidelity. It has been overplayed to the point of trivialising what ordinarily should be a social impropriety. One could even argue that the frequent portrayal of infidelity in a comic light has a desensitising effect that ends up making the act seem more celebrated than it is condemned. The round-belly agbada-wearing characters in those skits, who flaunt their wealth to luscious young ladies despite having a wife back at home, are a testament of this concern I speak of. If you could conjure the image without stress, you very likely have seen one of those skits before.

The many skits and their sexual overtones may pass freely in the mind of an adult. After all, many of the things they portray or joke about are not alien to the Nigerian society. They are everyday occurrences that adults have experienced in one shade or the other. We need to be more cautious for the younger generation however. The sexual nuances and elements of female objectification portrayed in Nigerian comedy may be undermining their long-term morality, while they have a good laugh at it.

Owojuyigbe Mayokun is a budding journalist, creative writer and a social commentator who writes freelance articles via owojuyigbem@gmail.com

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