Shout-Out to the Interwebs: Looking for Article by C.P. Orie (2008)
Shout-out to the Interwebs: I am very much looking for
the following article:
C.P. Orie (2008): 'James Hadley Chase in the Nigerian Thriller Film: An Adaptation of Want to Stay Alive? Into Django.' In: Film Nigeria: An International Journal of Nigerian Film. Vol. 1. No. 1. Aba: Leadership and Literacy Achievers Series, Abia Polytechnic, Aba, 2008. 37-41.
So, dear reader, I'd be very grateful if you shared
that request with your friends and maybe eventually it will reach somebody who
does have a copy of the article, a camera or scanner to digitise it and an
email account to send it to my address (bajamushiya @ gmail [dot] com). You'd
have my gratitude.
Why, am I looking for this article, you ask?
Well.
Yesterday, sat in the library over a draft, I found
myself recalling Lancelot Oduwa Imaseun's two-parter Django (2005)
[links
to Part 1 on Youtube] and one of its theme songs kept running through my head.
Django is meaner than mean,harder than hard.(Choir) harder than hard,I said meaner than mean,harder than hard,(Choir) harder than hard.
My curiosity about the film had been initially raised
by its (surprise, surprise, I know) title that seemed to promise a Nigerian
take on cowboy films. Obviously, Imaseun's Django is nothing of that
kind. Instead, it is based on James Hadley Chase's (1971) novel Want to Stay Alive?
Chase's books books appear to have been rather popular
among certain Nigerian readers – Graham Furniss (1996: 54-55), for example, quoted
them as an important influence on Hausa soyayya literature (alongside Mills
and Boons). [1]
But, Chase wrote gangster than cowboy fiction
and so I quickly lost interest again.
Now, however, one of the film's theme songs is back on
my mind. It’s the song that is first played about 34 minutes into the film and
then while the credits run. I think it goes something like this.*
Django is meaner than mean,harder than hard.(Choir) harder than hard,I said meaner than mean,harder than hard,(Choir) harder than hard.Police are everywhere,Looking for man they don't know,Everybody lives in fear,And is afraid of Django,He walks around with a gun,The bullets on his chest,He is a very dangerous killer,That the police cannot arrest.Django is meaner than mean,harder than hard.(Choir) harder than hard,I said meaner than mean,harder than hard,(Choir) harder than hard.If you play games with,You are living dangerously,If you don't pay the money,He will kill you, you see [?],If you look at his face,Don't look above his shirt [?],If you play games with him,You make a dangerous mistake.Django is meaner than mean,harder than hard(Choir) harder than hard,I said meaner than mean,harder than hard,(Choir) harder than hard.
(*my transcript, question marks - obviously - indicate
where I'm not quite sure I heard that right, corrections welcome)
I cannot quite put my finger on the reason why the
film and in particular the song have come to my mind yesterday. But, the more I
think about it the more I wonder whether the film and the song are the logical
conclusion of developments that displaced 'the cowboy' in the imagination of
youth in Nigeria and elsewhere with 'the gangster.' Here, all that remains of
'the cowboy,' of the hero of Sergio Leone's eponymous Italo-Westerns (and
numerous unlicensed sequels) is his name, Django. In fact, the film's
(anti-) hero does not even introduce himself as Django but as Diggers
(which is also the name under which the cast roll lists him) and is better
known as The Executioner.
So, here I am interested again. And, it seems I am not
alone in that. C.P. Orie (2008) seems to have written an article on the
relationship between James Hadley Chase's novel and Lancelot Oduwa Imaseun's
films. I am intrigued but I can't seem to find it. Therefore my shout-out
to folks on the net hoping that they can help to get my hands on a copy of the
article.
Edit, 20 February 2017:
(1) So, some German … well, what we call Denglish
crept into my transcription of the lyrics above. Chor is German for choir.
So, unthinkingly I put Chorus where is should have read choir. Sorry oh.
Anyway, that's now corrected.
(2) Inserted a footnote and a link to an article on reading (or rather not reading)
James Hadley Chase in Nigeria by Okey Ndibe. I should possibly add
that I don't quite share Ndibe's disdain for Chase and his novels. I think one
can perfectly well read and enjoy (imported) pulp fiction AND Chinua Achebe's
writing. That said, I do understand perfectly well that Ndibe writes with
regard to a context in which Chase's novels came as part of a broader package
of 'cultural imperialism,' to steal Edward Said's term. Still, im my reading
his commentary also reflects a certain kind of cultural snobbery, what Saheed
Aderinto has termed 'selective modernism,' the notion that colonial and
post-colonial Nigerian elites should act as gate keepers deciding which aspects
of colonial and later other foreign cultural imports were worth adapting and
which should be rejected. But, that's by the by here, let it not distract us
from the important point (for my own context here) that he made about the
popularity of Chase's fiction in Nigeria. Also, note there's a whole thread on Nairaland dedicated to Chase's
novels.
[1] By the way
(too lazy for another edit) regarding the influence of James Hadley Chase in
Nigeria: There's an article on Sahara Reporters dating from 2014 on that. Its
entitled ' How Achebe Saved Me FromJames Hadley Chase' by
Okay Ndibe
'In my secondary school days, I told the audience, many
of my schoolmates took to reading books by James Hadley Chase and Barbara
Cartland. Chase’s books, I recall, carried such titillating titles as Do Me A
Favor: Drop Dead and The Way The Cookie Crumbles. I remember a particular
classmate, a fanatical aficionado, who had “consumed” more than 50 titles by
Chase. One day, he asked me why I was content to read “bush” novels, a
reference to the fact that some of the fiction I relished reading were set, in
part at least, in Africa’s pre-colonial rural communities. He fancied himself a
scion of Enlightenment, engaged not with machetes but guns, not with elders
with their proverb-rich speech but with jacket wearing, gun-wielding mobsters
dripping with “gonna” and “wanna”.
I never read even a single book by Chase. The reason:
I was fortunate to read Achebe’s Things Fall Apart quite early. The book left
me entranced, seduced me, filled me with an insatiable appetite for other
writers who articulated the African experience. Once Achebe had set the hunger,
I went searching for other African writers.'
(my emphasis)
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