vice and videos 123of religious and cultural purity associated with the religious reversion
project. Videos were said to pollute “Hausa culture” and to “poison” their
viewers, who were conceptualized as passive recipients and easy prey to
the manipulative potential of video images. “Before Hausa films arrived,”
writes a concerned school headmaster in a letter to Fim magazine, “we
didn’t see our children and siblings wear American and Western dresses.
Girls always copy the dresses of the film stars. These films destroy our
children’s moral upbringing, and they prevent our children from attending
school” (quoted in Adamu 2007: 89).
Following the official introduction of sharia law in Kano state in De-
cember 2000, filmmakers faced a difficult and uncertain situation: a po-
tential ban on video production. A total ban—as called for by funda-
mentalist clerics—would have meant the loss of income for thousands
of young men and women employed in the industry. Such a move would
certainly have given rise to a severe political crisis. Therefore, the Kano
state government, together with liberal religious scholars and leading
video filmmakers, advocated an Islamic reorientation through censor-
ship (Abdulkareem Mohammed, president of the Motion Pictures Prac-
titioners Association of Nigeria, personal interview, March 17, 2003; Ali
Bature, Kano State History and Culture Bureau, personal interview,
March 19, 2003). Pending the implementation of a new censorship law
and the subsequent establishment of the Kano State Censorship Board
in March 2001, video production and distribution were banned for four
months. W hen the board came up with its guidelines, it became clear
that the censors would closely scrutinize particularly mixed gender song-
and-dance sequences as well as female bodily comportment. Although
these sequences were produced as spectacular “showstoppers” (Rubin
1993)—that is, interruptions of the narrative that serve to demonstrate
characters’ dreams and desires—local critics maintained that women and
men dancing together and singing about their love and longing for one
another would be inappropriate in “Hausa culture.” Another argument
that surfaced hinted at the roots of Bolly wood ’s song-and-dance routines
in Hindu religious worship, which according to the critics turned Hausa
filmmakers who “copied” these routines into advocates of idolatry. The
then executive secretary of the Kano State Censorship Board, Abdulka-
dir A. Kurawa, explains as follows: