268 african appropriations
Debates about video filmmaking in Kano and Dar es Salaam are replete
with talk about a so-called copycat syndrome. This is shorthand for criti-
cizing the filmmakers for a perceived lack of originality and as copiers of
foreign ideas. In critical Kany wood parlance, Hausa remakes of Indian
films, which are not true remakes in a conventional sense, as my discus-
sion in chapter 4 shows, are called wankiya. This is a colloquial expression
for “deception.” As a label for a type of film that hides its relationship to a
foreign template, the term wankiya refers to the deception of the audience
who is left in the dark about the film’s true nature. W hat is interesting
about this debate is that it is not so much concerned with the creativity and
originality of the director-auteur (as European debates about imitating
in the arts would have it) but with making viewers believe they are being
presented with representations of local life as it is, or ought to be. Debates
about wankiya are not so much concerned with the genius of filmmakers
as with their social integrity and the cultural authenticity of their films.
Kany wood debates are haunted by the Platonic doubt of mimesis as de-
ception turned on its head. W hile Plato criticizes mimesis because like a
mirror it produces only reflections of things (devoid of essence and lack-
ing truth), the critics of Kany wood scold Hausa videos precisely because
they do not reflect the right “things.” W hat Hausa videos are lacking in the
eyes of their critics is the representation of an imagined ideal of a genuine
Hausa Muslim self whose religious and cultural integrity is untainted by
immoral influences from the outside.
In Tanzania, the elitist critique of Bongo movies, though less vehe-
ment, is based on similar premises. Unlike Kano, however, religious over-
tones are absent in the critical debates of Dar es Salaam, where national-
ist overtones run high. Bongo movies are criticized for misrepresenting
Tanzanian ways of doing things and for lacking anything distinctively
Tanzanian beyond the fact that they are produced in the national language
Swahili. Copy ing from Nigerian Nolly wood fi lms is almost equated w ith
a lack of national commitment on the part of the filmmakers. In Kano
and Dar es Salaam, fears of the dangerous effects of imitation mix with
anxieties about the loss of cultural integrity. In the eyes of their critics,
Hausa videos and Bongo movies are capable of producing cultural mim-
ic s. However, u n l i ke t he “m i m ic men” often quoted i n postcolon ia l t heor y,
who are thought to imitate the European colonizers,^2 t hose fea red by loca l