112 african appropriations
negative-film images that show a running film projector intercut with the
sight of a spectator sitting in front of a movie screen. In combination with
the underlying sound—a windlike roaring that rises and ebbs, accom-
panied by a woman’s screams—these images make cinema appear as an
enchanting technology somehow associated with the spiritual realm. The
prelude ends with a cut to a running film projector in full color, and we
are shown an African audience watching Cameron’s Titanic. Hard-copied
footage from Cameron’s film is cut into the clip in a fashion similar to the
Nigerian remake. Here, however, it is combined with images of a young
boy who first sits among the audience and then leaves the cinema at the
d ra mat ic cl i ma x of t he fi l m—when t he sh ip brea k s apa r t. A s i f i n a t ra nce,
he goes to a mansion with a swimming pool. Film-image flashbacks—
intercut footage from Cameron’s movie—persistently haunt him. He folds
a paper boat, sets it afloat in the pool, and then unexpectedly dives into
the water, as if chasing after it. A last flashback of a drowning passenger
from Cameron’s Titanic seems to foreshadow the boy’s fate. The intro ends
with a hard cut to Titanic’s roaring horn, which pulls the viewer into the
music video itself.
The intro serves as paratext to the music video insofar as it reflects on
both the medium of film in general and the African audience watching
James Cameron’s movie in particular. Global media may have unexpected
effects on local audiences, and the story of the drowning boy may, at first
glance, appear as part of a discourse on the dangers, moral and otherwise,
of cinema, which supposedly causes young moviegoers to identify with
characters and situations in the film that might put the spectators them-
selves at risk. Along with the music video itself, however, I suggest that
the intro’s allusion to film as a spiritual technology and to water as the
substance that constitutes a type of boundary, separating the realm of the
living from that of the dead in Congolese cosmology (MacGaffey 1983:
126–127), are key to understanding the intro. In this light, the projection of
Cameron’s film can be interpreted as a call by spiritual forces belonging to
a parallel “other” world. Access to this world is through water, and the boy
who is drawn into the water enters this world through the pool. The abys-
ma l waters c ross-fade on a n u nder water shot of a d row n i ng pa ssenger f rom
Cameron’s movie. The music video following this intro is an illustration of