vice and videos 139will rescue you on the very day when you enter the hereafter looking like
the English or the Germans? It befits everyone to follow the traditions of
his/her own people!” The girls reply in English again, saying, “Thank you,
Auntie!” and giggle carelessly when she leaves.
This is the last of three admonitions the girls receive from different
people during the first ten minutes of the film. They do not accept the
advice, however, and Amira is made to pay the price for this. With her re-
vealing clothes, Amira unknowingly arouses the desire of her elder sister’s
husband, who plans to kill his wife in order to marry Amira. In pointing to
Amira and her seductive style of dress as the root of all evil, Gidauniya is in
l ine w it h t he m isog y n ist tendenc y of ma ny K a ny wood fi l ms. On t he level
of its plot, the film seems to teach morals and caution against the social
dangers of clothes that reveal too much of the female body. On the vi-
sual level, however, this ver y dev iance is celebrated through camera work
and acting style. This discrepancy of textual and visual messages consti-
tutes a double bind. It comes as no surprise that films such as Gidauniya
prompted even more complaints about the nature of Kany wood movies.
In March 2005, the directorate of the Kano state governor’s “Program
for Societal Reorientation,” founded in September 2004 under the label
A Daidaita Sahu (Let’s Realign Our Steps), addressed the film-viewing
public through an open letter in Fim magazine. In this letter, Bala A. Mu-
hammad (2005), director general of A Daidaita Sahu, commends the many
complaints his office receives from people who voice their discontent with
the “dresses the woman who appear in such films are wearing,” the “lack of
meaningful messages of some films,” and the song and dance “absolutely
unknown to Hausa traditions.” He continues:
The office of A Daidaita Sahu is equally concerned about these things and
tries its best to work toward a change of such matters by interrogating
those government agencies that are burdened with the task of enforc-
ing change. But before one will be able to say that everything has been
remedied, the first step we should undertake to remedy this matter is to
shun this type of film and to evade all those who prepare them. (3; my
translation)The double moral standard typical of the discourse about Hausa films at
the time was certainly not lost on the director of Kano state’s new “Pro-
gram for Societal Reorientation.” Although his office began to investigate