It was great seeing so many people whose work I admire in one movie, and seeing Osuofia cast in a role that is atypical for him ( a benevolent, understanding uncle), and heading all the different dialects of Igbo spoken in one movie.

Awesome! One of my relatives with whom I’ve clashed on gender issues ( he’s a ‘typical’ Igbo man who believes that though women should work and contribute to the family income, they must remain subservient to men) sent me a text the same day to ask if I’d seen it and to say that if I hadn’t , that I should and to announce that he had seen it multiple times and was intending to watch it again.

His text got me thinking about what it was about this movie ( which showcases a strong female protagonist) that did not bring up the chauvinist in him.

Professor Obioma Nnaemeka , one of our foremost African academics in the US, coined the term nego-feminism in  the early 2000s in theorizing the sort of feminism that thrives in African communities . Nego-feminism, according to her is negotiative feminism and no ego feminism , what I believe Emecheta meant when she referred to herself as a feminist with small letter ‘f’. And what Nwaka  would have called herself.

Adaeze is a nego-feminist : she does not try to dismantle patriarchy ( which her mother implies is a battle she cannot /should not engage in/with) but negotiates within that space to her own benefit.

She constantly compromises ( even when she doesn’t want to) and seeks her uncle’s help ( even when we feel that her seeking of it is performative and that she could handle whatever situation she is asking him to intervene in very well).

Perhaps it is this quality that makes her strength palatable to even hardcore chauvinists.

She never suggests that her career is more important than a relationship ( in fact she doesn’t contradict her uncle when he says that she shouldn’t be so cautious as to take herself completely off the ‘market.’ I can imagine my relative nodding and agreeing with the uncle.

She’s strong but not too strong. She wears the pants but knows when to give them up.

This is not in any way a suggestion that the movie falls short in its presentation of a a strong female protagonist, it’s just an observation brought on by the fact that my otherwise ‘women shouldn’t wear the pants’ relative found Genevieve’s character not to be in anyway threatening , the way he would have found her in Okwo’s 30 Days, for example.  I also keep thinking of Juliet’s soft power comment.

Perhaps more is achieved by negotiating than by rattling tables. Perhaps there are times when tables should be rattled and shattered. Perhaps there is a case to be made for a marriage of both. Maybe that’s the message of the movie after all.

Maybe I’m just overthinking the movie and my relative’s text and life and everything in between.

I enjoyed Lionheart. Long live Ndi Igbo , long live the renaissance

Source: anonymous