mdembrow@pcc.edu

Like filmmakers in the West, African directors frequently choose to tell stories set in the past or in mythical locales. In the West, certainly in Hollywood, this decision is fueled by the public’s desire for escape, exotic locales, and big-budget special effects. Also, we Westerners are impelled to try to understand the past through the filter of our contemporary psychology and world-view (a kind of temporal colonialism). In Africa, on the other hand, historical or mythical dramas nearly always function largely as allegories.

Allegory has always been a powerful impulse in the African oral tradition embodied in the West African griot, who served (and continues to serve) simultaneously as performance artist, chronicler, bard, teacher, and ethical philosopher. By setting his stories in the hazy, timeless realm in which myth and history intermingle, the griot offers a framework against which his audience can judge their present-day situation and dilemma. His social role is akin to that of the Sankofa bird. In the iconography of the Akan people of Ghana, the sankofa is a two-headed bird gazing simultaneously ahead and behind. It conveys the powerful cultural value of keeping the past omnipresent; it signals a recurring process of returning to the past in order to recover what has been lost, then moving forward.

The griot’s narratives, even when they appear on the surface to be straightforward chronicles or mythic tales, frequently serve as disguised critiques of current repressive regimes or reminders that contemporary cultural and social practices have veered away from the traditional ideals of balance with and harmony within the natural world, the ancestral world, and the communal world.

The griots would serve kings or nobles as walking archives, holding in their memory the important decisions made by the present king's ancestors. (Niane vii) It was against this standard that the king's present conduct and decision-making would be evaluated. Griots could at times find themselves in the position of critic with respect to the noble, particularly when they were connected to the noble family by long-standing birth-ties. In performance, through metaphor and ambiguous language, they could easily cause audiences to doubt the legitimacy of the noble, perhaps by an implicit contrast with a much greater forebear.

There are, Dorothea Schultz tells us, "oral accounts of griots taking on the role of 'mouthpiece' on behalf of the people and reminding the chief, in an indirect yet clearly understandable fashion, that he could rule thanks to his hereditary rights, but on the condition that people accepted him." The griot would thus be in the ambiguous and potentially volatile position of being both an "image manager" for the noble and a spokesperson for the people. The two were not mutually exclusive. The life of the griot was a constant process of negotiating among conflicting roles and demands.

Allegory thus becomes a self-protective device for the griot. Rather than come right out and criticize the authority figure (which in any case would have violated traditional norms of hospitality and proper social relations), at substantial risk to his life, he can rely on allegory to drive home his point. In this respect, he performs a role that is in many ways analogous to that of the Medieval "King’s Fool" or the traditional "Holy Fool."

It was thus the griot’s job to tell the authority figure, or the people at large, when their conduct is out of balance with the traditional ideals of respect for nature, for ancestors, for community. This imbalance is often registered allegorically through stories of families that have lost their balance—brothers in conflict with one another, brothers who brutalize their sisters, fathers and sons between whom the traditional bonds of respect no longer hold. Family dramas become emblems of larger conflicts, and become vehicles for talking about larger conflicts and transgressions.

Filmmakers in contemporary Africa have taken on many of the duties of traditional griots, so it is not surprising to see film directors making use of such allegory in their films to explore larger ethical issues. In the words of the great Ousmane Sembène, who is generally recognized as "The Father of African Film," "The African filmmaker is like the griot, who is similar to the European medieval minstrel: a man of learning and common sense who is the historian, the raconteur, the living memory and the conscience of his people. The filmmaker must live within his society and say what goes wrong within his society." (Pfaff, "Uniqueness," 15).

For some time I’ve been interested in the way that many contemporary African directors employ strategies taken from the oral tradition in order to structure their work. I’ve wanted to look particularly at the role played by allegory in specific films set in the past or in mythical times. Fortunately, CCHA04 has given me the vehicle to begin this inquiry, with its focus on "Exploring Ecologies." Ecology is all about maintaining harmony and balance over time. Contemporary Africa is of course experiencing an ecological crisis in the obvious environmental sense; but under the disruptive pressure of global culture and the global economy it is also losing its balance in a larger cultural sense, with the values of long-term harmony and connectedness being displaced by the values of individualism, competition, and short-term thinking. I began to search for examples of filmmakers who have chosen to confront this issue in the indirect, allegorical manner of the griots, a search which led me to this paper.

I will be focusing on examples of such cinematic allegory in two fascinating films from Mali. The first, Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s 1999 film, Genesis, transposes several Old Testament stories (including the conflict between Jacob and Esau, sons of the Patriarch Isaac) to an African context. The second is Souleymane Cissé’s remarkable Yeelen/Brightness (1987), an African variation on the Oedipal myth, in which a powerful magician strives to rid himself of the son who is fated to kill him. Focusing on particular examples from these films, I will examine processes of disruption and expiation within the family and within the larger social/global context, processes that are intertextual, intercultural, and deeply humanistic.

My aim has been to return Africa to the center of consciousness and events, to build bridges between the concerns of Africans and of other people. Because La Génese associates universal themes with a profound anchorage in African reality, I believe it constitutes a new stage in our cinema. –Cheick Oumar Sissoko

In his FESPACO-winning film Guimba the Tyrant, Malian director Cheick Oumar Sissoko told the story of the mythical ruler Guimba, who is led to extremes of cruelty, despotism, foolishness, and ultimate self-destruction; Guimba’s story allows Sissoko to create an allegory for the misdirection that he sees in many contemporary African rulers. Sissoko in effect uses the story of this Macbeth-like tyrant to describe one of the major challenges faced by post-colonial Africa , the proliferation of self-serving dictators and oligarchs. Most Malians would recognize their own history in the story of Guimba. Sissoko has himself acknowledged parallels between Guimba and Moussa Traore, the soldier who seized power in 1969 and maintained it for 23 years through careful suppression of any opposition. Moussa Traore had won the support of France and the United States through his opposition to socialism, but began to lose that suppport with the end of the Cold War and the disaffection of the Mitterand government in France. By 1991 the opposition (which included Cheick Oumar Sissoko) had become increasingly bold and openly called for change. Moussa Traore responded with brutal force, and during four days of intense anti-government rioting at the end of March, hundred were shot and killed by government forces. Finally, the military had had enough, and on March 26 Moussa Traore was deposed and arrested. Sissoko would later comment, "Guimba is a political film, a fable about power, its atrocities and its absurdities. I was personally influenced by what I experienced not long ago in Mali, but the ravages of power are, unfortunately, universal" (Guimba).

In his next film, Genesis, Sissoko broadened his scope, turning to the Old Testament, which is sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (the dominant religion of Mali), specifically to the Book of Genesis and the conflicts between Jacob, Esau, and their Canaanite neighbors. In so doing, he uses the griot technique of allegory in order to comment on the terrible internecine violence that has caused so many Africans to suffer in recent years.

The opening titles in French set the Biblical setting for the film: Three hundred years after the Great Flood, two clans are destroying each other. The clan of the pastoralist Jacob and his sons, and the clan of the agriculturalists, whose leader is Hamor. A third clan, the hunters led by Esau, prepares for revenge. Esau has borne a mortal hatred for Jacob, his younger brother, ever since Jacob tricked him of his birthright. Secluded in his camp, Jacob mourns for his son Joseph, whom he believes dead--but whom his jealous brothers have actually sold into slavery in Egypt.

As the film opens, we are introduced to Esau, the elder brother scorned by history, the outcast wandering with his band of hunters, observing everything that goes on from his hiding places, burning with desire for vengeance, plotting the day he will have his revenge. He is played with passion and grace by the great Malian singer Salif Keita. Everywhere they go, Esau and his sons carry with them an ancient tortoise, supposedly a survivor of the Great Flood (which God released upon a wicked world in order to wipe out all life save Noah, his family, and selected animals). For Esau, the tortoise appears to be an ever-present symbol of memory, of his inability to forget the wrong that was done to him by his younger brother. In his extreme bitterness, he sees no difference between the wickedness of humans in antediluvian times and their lack of virtue today.

We quickly move into the central story of the film, taken from Genesis 34, the story of the rape of Dinah. Dinah is the daughter of the patriarch Jacob and his first wife, Leah. According to the biblical account, Dinah goes out one day with some of the other maidens and is spied upon by Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of this area to which Jacob and his family have recently moved. Shechem desires her, seizes her, carries her away, and rapes her. He consequently falls in love with her and wants to marry her. He begs his father to allow him to marry the young woman, and Hamor at last agrees to go to Jacob to ask for his daughter’s hand for his son.

Jacob has heard about the violation, but has chosen to hold his tongue until his sons have returned from caring for his herds of cattle. By the time Hamor arrives, Jacob’s sons have returned and are furious at this affront to their sister by the gentile prince. Hamor asks them to forego their anger and forge an alliance with him, allowing his son to keep Dinah, offering his own daughters in exchange, and encouraging intermarriage and alliances between them.

Jacob’s sons appear to accept the offer, but only on condition that Hamor and his sons agree to be circumcised (as are all of Jacob’s people). Hamor agrees to this condition and convinces his people to go along with it, promising them that they will eventually gain control of the cattle and wealth of Jacob’s people. They allow themselves to be subjected to this painful procedure and find themselves debilitated and incapacitated. Two of Jacob’s sons, Simon and Levi, take advantage of their condition and kill Hamor and Shechem, freeing their sister. The other sons then destroy Hamor’s city, killing most of the males and seizing their women, cattle, and goods.

Jacob criticizes his sons’ actions, for he knows that they will set the other inhabitants of the region against them, but the sons argue that Hamor and his people got what they deserved for treating their sister like a whore. Nevertheless, Jacob and his people are forced to leave the area out of fear of reprisals.

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The film remains close to the biblical version of the story, yet differs in several significant ways. In the film there is a strong contrast between the weary wisdom of the older generation (represented by Hamor, Jacob, and eventually Esau) and the bloodthirsty cunning and foolishness of the men in their prime (Jacob’s son Judah and his brothers, as well as the surviving Hivites). In this version, Hamor is not put to death by Jacob’s sons; a figure of reconciliation, he is thus able to call a "Council of Nations" in order to sort out the aftershocks of the massacre committed by Jacob’s sons, and to keep the world from slipping back to those earlier times before the flood, "when enmity was everywhere, and droughts, and quarrels." Another change involves the timing of Joseph’s disappearance: in the Bible it happens after the rape of Dinah, whereas in the film it is moved to a period before the rape; thus, Jacob here becomes from the beginning a figure of sorrow and loss.

At the Council, Jacob’s sons advocate a policy of "ethnic separation" as the only possible antidote to ongoing violence. The film demonstrates the absurdity of such a strategy for people living in such close quarters, with frequent inter-marriage and children of mixed blood. Indeed, the Council of Nations becomes a kind of theater in which various "marginalized" figures (various women; a gender-bending slave; and Dinah, whose sanity has been seriously compromised by the violence that has been perpetrated ostensibly on her behalf) undercut the smug patriarchal prerogatives of Jacob’s sons. The solution will not be found in proud, macho bluster. Their hypocrisy is made manifest in a number of vignettes taken from other tales from the first book of the Old Testament.

In Sissoko’s version, Jacob’s sons, and Jacob himself, become in turn the victims of treachery—first at the hands of the Hivites, then by Esau and his sons, who have at last appeared to claim their due. Yet it is here that a miracle of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation is allowed to take place--between the Israelites and the Hivites, between Jacob and Esau, between Joseph and the other sons of Jacob, between Jacob and the Lord. This reconciliation is in fact initiated by mad Dinah herself—she is in the end able to forgive and accept her father, a gesture that inspires Esau and allows the final reconciliation of the two brothers.

This is in many ways a remarkable film. The Biblical setting—transposed from the Near East to this arid region of West Africa (the barren pleateaus of northeastern Mali, near Mt. Hombori Tondo)—is entirely believable here. In this meditation on violence and reconciliation, Sissoko uses these tales from the Old Testament to observe the invidious processes at work in Africa and around the world (e.g., Rwanda, Liberia, and the Sudan, of course, but also the Balkans). Though we normally think of the Old Testament as the repository of implacable judgment and revenge ("An eye for an eye"), Sissoko looks beyond the Old Testament stories themselves to the ethical messages that lie behind them—in this case, the importance of forgiveness and reconciliation. His Old Testament story is the same cautionary tale that could have become a model for Desmond Tutu and the South African Truth and Reconciliation process.

Certainly we can and must explore the socio-political underpinnings of such strife, but ultimately, Sissoko tells us in his allegory, we must look within ourselves for the moral underpinnings to resist the poisonous allure of retribution. Otherwise, the cycle of perpetual violence and revenge will never be broken; families, and the larger societies that they exemplify, will continue to be out of balance, with the potential for violence and misery present at every moment.

In Genesis, the ethos of the older generation prevailed in the end, with the young hotheads ultimately giving way to the representatives of traditional wisdom, balance, and restraint in the older generation. This is not to say, however, that African film always equates elders with wisdom, or the traditional with the good. In film as in life, the guardians of tradition can often be agents of a repression that is meant to be critiqued. Souleymane Cissé’s Yeelen, among the best known of African films in the West, exemplifies this position.

Having received his professional training in the Soviet Union, Cissé established his reputation as a political filmmaker, making films with a strong element of social critique. This created difficulties for him with the government of Moussa Traore, then in its last years of decline. These difficulties were partly the reason for him to adopt a very different strategy for his next film, which would be a critique of the government of the aging leader, but not directly so. In an interview with Frank Ukadike, Cissé explained that sometimes it is necessary for an African director to shift tactics in order to make his points: "As my own experiences have shown, what you narrate may also put you into trouble. Sometimes, in order to survive a hostile environment one is forced, not necessarily to disarm, but to construct a narrative that is not too political nor devoid of pungent criticism of the system" (Ukadike 21). This film would be Yeelen (1987).

Yeelen is set in the mythical, timeless period preceding the introduction of Islam into the empire of Mali in the 13^th Century. It opens in the land of the Bambara people. Niankoro Diarra is a young Bambara, son of the great magician Soma Diarra, adept in the secret society of the Komo ritual, descendent of a long line of powerful magicians. His mother too is a woman of great power. While he was still in his mother’s womb, his father had a vision that he would die at the hands of his son. From that moment onwards, Soma, determined to see that this does not happen, does all in his considerable power to bring about his son’s demise. The mother spirits her newborn away and keeps him hidden until he reaches manhood. It is at that point that the film begins.

The mother gives her son a magic talisman to protect him, along with a pyramid-shaped crystal imbued with tremendous power, the Eye of the Koré. She then sends him away to find his father’s twin brother, Djigui, who resides in the land of the Peul (Fulani) people. This is a very painful moment for them both, as they clearly regard each other with great tenderness and mutual respect. Niankoro has never before been far from his mother, and it seems clear that they will never see each other again.

He manages to escape Bambaraland just as his father and his father’s compliant younger brother Bafing are about to close in on him, guided by a magic pylon. He meets a spirit in the form of a hyena-man, who encourages him with a prophecy, "Your road will be good, your destination happy, your future is grand, your life radiant, your death luminous." The forests and rivers of the Bambara have given way now to the parched, scrub Sahel desert of the Peul people. Finding this stranger in their midst, a group of Peul warriors capture the young man, bind him, and take him to Rouma Boll, their king.

At this point the story cuts briefly back to the mother, who is bathing in a swamp, her upper torso naked. A number of bowls, filled with milk, are floating in the water. She pours bowl after bowl of milk over her head and keels in the water, calling out to her guardian spirit: "Do you hear this, forlorn creator, goddess of the swamp, mother of mothers? Save my son. Save this land from ruin. Don’t allow weeds to overcome land of Diarra." For the first time, we realize that the fate of the Bambara and their land is tied up with the fate of Niankoro and his father. It is a remarkable image—rivulets of white milk flowing over the ancient jet-black torso and grizzled hair of the mother—beautiful, and charged with symbolism (maternal sustenance, wisdom, and identification with nature). It comes in marked contrast to the arid sterility of the Peul landscape where Niankoro stands imprisoned (the contrast emphasized when we cut back to Niankoro and see the young Peul warriors drinking milk, refusing to share it with their thirsty captive).

Once he is before the king, the young magician—perhaps newly empowered by his mother’s supplication to the gods—has no difficulty in casting off his bonds and paralyzing all who oppose him. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the land of the Peul, an invading army is contesting the main army of Rouma Boll. The champions of the two armies engage in a duel, which is won by the champion of the invaders. Nothing now stands between the invaders and the destruction of the Peul but the considerable powers of Niankoro. The king promises the young man countless rewards and his choice of Peul maidens if he will conquer this enemy. Niankoro agrees, and defeats them with fire and swarms of bees.

Before Niankoro can take his leave, the king asks him for one last favor: his youngest wife, Attou, is barren, and he wants Niankoro to use his power to help her become pregnant. After Attou gives the young man a bowl of fresh milk, the two go off and Niankoro succeeds in making her pregnant—but it is his own son that she will bear, as they are overcome by the magic of passion. They confess to the king that they lost control and betrayed his confidence, and Niankoro offers his life in penance. Instead, revealing his essential good nature, the king sends them away together, banishing them to the land of the Dogon, where his uncle Djigui can be found.

After a fascinating sequence in which we see Soma and his fellow elderly Komo adepts engaged in a ritual ceremony that culminates in the cursing of his son, Niankoro and Attou arrive in the beautiful land of the Dogon, a rich, mountainous area adjacent to the vast plain. The Dogon people live in caves cut into the mountainside. Niankoro asks permission to visit their land, and is told that he and Attou must bathe in the purifying waters of the holy Bongo spring. They are then at last taken to his blind uncle Djigui.

Djigui, who has the gift of prophecy, tells his nephew that Attou is pregnant with his son, and that his son is "destined to be a bright star." He goes on to extend his prophecy to the entire Bambara people: "What I foresee is nothing good for the Bambara. The country’s future hangs by a thread." His family’s fate is emblematic of the fate of the Bambara: "Since the dawn of time, the Diarras have been the placenta and the umbilical cord of the Bambara." He has a vision of the future in which his people’s descendents will become slaves and will come to deny their heritage and their religion. Outsiders will come to dominate their land. But ultimately, following this suffering and this spiritual banishment, a cycle of renewal will follow. "All upheavals are full of hope. . . . Life and death are like scales, laid one upon another."

Djigui then explains the reason that he is blind, which is the same reason that he lives apart from his twin. When he was a young man, he asked their father to reveal the secrets of Komo to everyone, so that everyone could share in its power. His father, outraged at the notion that the powers of the Diarra would be dissipated in this way, used the unleashed the power of the Koré Wing upon him, and he was immediately blinded and banished. He took with him the Wing of the Koré, presumably his legacy, but bereft of its powerful Eye, which was given to his twin. Now that Niankoro has come to him with the Eye (which his mother had spirited away from her husband), the power of the Wing is restored, and given to the young man.

Niankoro confronts his father at last, asking to be recognized and allowed to die like a true Diarra. His father sees nothing but the object of his hatred, and the two magicians duel, taking on the forms of different animals and finally unleashing the full powers of their fetishes, so powerful that both are destroyed and the land is turned into desert.

The film then concludes in an epilogue imbued with an opaque ritualism. A boy (presumably the son of Niankoro and Attou) digs one of two huge eggs (presumably all that remains of Niankoro and his father) from a sandbank in which the Wing of Koré is placed. He carries it to Attou, who has been wearing Niankoro’s cloak. She removes the cloak and gives it to the boy in exchange for the egg, then carries it back to the Wing and reburies it. She picks up the Wing, gives it to her son, and they walk off together. We are left with a mysterious, but deeply satisfying sense of a circling-round, of rebirth, of both continuity and a new direction following the apocalypse.

This is a very rich film, open to interpretation on a number of different levels. Cissé himself has argued this point, conceding that many viewers will never be able to fully comprehend all of the film’s arcane narrative:

Along with this spiritual dimension that underlies the film’s allegory, there does exist an equally important and vital political dimension. Soma and the "men of power" that surround him and support him are clearly emblematic of an aged ruling class that is incapable of relinquishing power to the next generation. (In other African films, such as Idrissa Ouedraogo’s Tilaï or Ousmane Sembène’s Xala, this tendency takes the form of old men acquiring much younger second or third wives, beautiful young women who ought to be matched with young men.)

Tramping (and trampling) through the countryside with his magic piller and obedient slaves, immolating chickens and other sacrificial victims in order to work his will, refusing to control his passions and his desires, Soma continually violates the natural order of the world. A proper respect for the natural order requires one to patiently submit to the natural cycles of aging and succession. Soma’s power, on the contrary, derives from the deliberate, willed deviation from the natural order, harnessing the power released by this unnatural transgression.

Of course, that’s not to say that the film sets up a simplistic dichotomy between young and old. The film’s two most positive figures are Niankoro’s mother and his uncle Djigui. They both serve as founts of ancient wisdom and advocates for connection and spiritual generosity. Young Niankoro inherits the wise tendencies of the "good twin," tendencies that are nurtured by his mother in his father’s (fortunate) absence.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Niankoro represents the young men and women in the last days of the Traore regime who were willing to risk their lives for positive change. Looking within the tradition, taking guidance from those elders whose connection with the positive aspects of the tradition remains intact, they are attempting a synthesis of tradition and the modern. These are people who know how to listen to the song of the Sankofa bird--those who heed the values of the past in order to proceed to a moral, community-building vision of the future. From the vantage point of 1987, the film predicts the violent upheavals of 1991 that would produce many sacrifices, but ultimately new hope for the generations to come.

As we can see in these two films, allegory becomes a way for African filmmakers to mine events from the past, or from the mythico-religious tradition in order to speak to contemporary audiences about contemporary realities. It is a way to maintain the ethical and spiritual links that bind past, present, and future. Although there are lessons to be derived from these films, that is not to say that they are simply didactic vehicles. Needless to say, these directors are very much interested in their films as works of art, as expressive cinematic texts, but their texts are not intended to exist in isolation. If they are vehicles, they are vehicles for communication, for contact and connection between film artist and audience, sharing messages that are rich, complex, and often inspiring.

Niane, D. T. Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, London: Longmans, 1965.