"You can completely upstage yourself with nudity; people don't
hear a thing you're saying for at least ten seconds when they see
breasts …if you're doing something important, why would you
upstage yourself with your own body?"
-Susan Sarandon
The Cineaste Interviews II: On the Art and Politics of the Cinema.

Prior to her Oscar in 1996 for her acting in Dead Man Walking, Susan, a plainspoken, liberated and politically aware woman had been neck-deep in humanist activities with a variedness that includes anti-violence campaigns, medical volunteerism, bias-related crime issues, and outspoken fights for basic freedoms and abortion rights.
I propose deference to her authority and accept her hypothesis since she lives some realities that most of us quite simply do not.

Pertinently, the quote above was actually an allegorized response examining the interplay of sexism (in a stereotyping sense) and liberality in the film industry. The deduction makes it clear that the normal women issues in real life are also present, even as a universal experience, in the make-believe world.

If you have not been distracted, to whatever direction, by that mammary reference then you would have caught an instructive substance in the statement admitting that even the essence of the popularity of Film as a potent mass communication medium, can be negated, -just like that, by a mere gender-dissimilarity.
That forms a rationale why this discourse may pick out and subgroup women as a unit level, -why the topic is not Men in Movies.

Having agreed that film is the medium, and communication being the transfer of meaning as understood by one mind to another, then we can safely say that the topic, Women in Movies, also implies the portrayal of women in movies.
Rightly, what would immediately occur to most is an assessment of how honestly women's lives and the interplay of factors that define their realities are portrayed in film, and to do that, I think it is only proper we identify those minds responsible for the meaning that ultimately gets to audiences.
At this point, it is only appropriate that cultural differentials necessitate that we stay within our milieu and spotlight only the Nigerian motion picture industry.

The Story/Scriptwriter presents creative material to Administration that may or may not accept, and if (they) do, material gets to a Director who may or may not treat it the way a storywriter intends and Director, (he most of the time) personifies the various points of view in Characters, who, more than all else, Audiences relate to.

Be it feminist stories or general stories, with women as lead or supporting, our stories almost always give the woman's impetus a passing treatment. This begs questions as to what extent most of our movie-writers understand or are involved in the subject, and by extension, what kind of stories they usually tell about women.
Maybe we should let them (writers) be, because as long as the status quo in terms of film financing and administration remains, we probably would never be able to appraise our writers on many issues like. Our sad reality hence remains in the majorly flimsy offerings that lack any in-depth treatment.

As a result, even when these stories explore extremes in revolts, they seldom offer nothing more than comical and absurdist exhibitions that, (as in one form; Somoru E by Sunday Soyinka) find expression for women's emancipation only in brazen wantonness and extremely wicked acts towards men.
There is absolutely no gainsaying the inclinations of most producers and financiers in this context. Their supremely apathetic positioning is evident in the recursive nature of their preferred stories, the bandwagon nature of their operations, their self-limiting mode of exhibition, and the crassness of their promo materials.

Directors, responsible for not only the forms but also the contents of a film are so strategically placed that, if they did their jobs, even this write-up would not be necessary.
The works of Tunde Kelani (Thunderbolt) and Jimi Odumosu (The Mourning After) in character presentations (particularly female) thankfully stand as beacons to the generality of our Directors who (mostly from a naturalist orientation) find triumph for womanhood, -whenever it confronts them, only in materialist senses.

As for the talents that interpret characters' points of view, -and we refer only to women here, for what would it benefit a desperate male actor to get distracted with the social concerns of evidently more desperate female colleagues.

The positioning of female-actors vis-à-vis the portrayal of women in movies only presents a paradox in their culpability, which is far beyond the other players. They (contemporary female actors particularly), quite simply carry on as if they are completely unaware, (maybe they even are) of the impact of film as a phenomenon, on womanhood.

They are largely to blame for their own unwitting compartmentalization. Mostly encaged in the 'more glamorous' acting sector, they have no options when suddenly they find out they cannot refuse to do parts that are demeaning, and things go gradually till the only roles we see them do is the antisocial.
Of course, there is the damoclean check in the big question of the proficiency, or talent even, of the majority of them, which is actually a prerequisite to empower them and sustain advocacies on any platform.

At this phase of the industry, general audiences of course have absolutely no influence on movie exhibition materials. This has factors in the release methods of distributors and the prevalent economic situation that leaves no room for any idealistic tendencies on viewers' part; poor folks, so long as there is money there, those queens (in movies and music videos) can do no wrong.

Most tragic, there are however audiences in individuals and groups who, though are already on the front in social advocacies, seem to have a rather-you-than-me attitude to many instances of debasements to womanhood. Let us assure them that in the rapidly developing Nigerian film medium, they have a formidable mechanism capable of churning out, daily, processed antithetical messages.
No hope is lost however, if we all take a pointer in the suggestion that, we should realize that the industry is still very much in its infancy and there is room for many standpoints.
This developmental phase of the Nigerian film industry is the time when women, for instance, can take positions and concessions granted them without the fear of upsetting any complex bureaucracy rather than continually upstaging their own selves.

Kila Odunayo Olakunle