Media Portrayal of African Indigenous Healers

Description

This book is the culmination of a study located at the intersection of religion, modernity and popular culture. As a contribution to the bourgeoning field of Nollywood studies, this book examines the broad topic of electronic media and the social construction, mediation and remediation of the images of reality. It assesses how the media’s elective collaboration with neo-charismatic Pentecostal Christianity creates and disseminates a postmodernist culture in which the African indigenous healer has become irrelevant in contemporary Nigerian society. Nollywood’s obsession with the profit imperative and its co-option by neo-Charismatic Pentecostalism has made it a neo-imperialist Pentecostal evangelical tool that partakes in the demonisation of African indigenous spirituality. Consequently, it perpetuates the longstanding legacy of the negative portrayal of African indigenous healers.