FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Discover what to read next through the Amazon Book Review. DetailsAllah is Not Obliged FREE Shipping on orders over . DetailsThe Belly of the Atlantic FREE Shipping on orders over . Text: English, French (translation) Sembene Ousmane is from Senegal. He is the author of Xala, Black Docker, Niiwam and Taaw and The Money Order with White Genesis. Publisher: Chicago Review Press (August 1, 1997) 5.5 x 0.3 x 8.5 inches Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies) #337,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) 5 star46%4 star36%3 star18%See all verified purchase reviewsTop Customer ReviewsBeautifully incendiary|One of the greatest novels to date|Read this for school|Expose of West African social elites provides learning for us all.Simple but Worthwhile African Story Jump to: navigation, search Xala is a 1973 novel by Ousmane Sembène, that was later translated and published in English in 1976 as part of the influential Heinemann African Writers Series.
It is about El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye, a businessman who is struck by impotence on the night of his wedding to his third wife. It was adapted into a movie, also called Xala (1975) and directed by Sembene. Xala (pronounced [ˈxala], Wolof for "temporary sexual impotence"[1]) is a 1975 Senegalese film directed by Ousmane Sembène. It is an adaptation of Sembène's 1973 novel of the same name. The film depicts El Hadji, a businessman in Senegal, who is cursed with crippling erectile dysfunction upon the day of his marriage to his third wife. The film satirizes the corruption in African post-independence governments; El Hadji's impotence symbolizes the failure of such governments to be useful at all. El Hadji Abdoukader Beye, a Senegalese businessman, takes on a third wife, thereby demonstrating his social and economic success. On the wedding night he discovers that he is incapable of consummating the marriage; he has become impotent. At the beginning, he suspects that one or both of his first two wives have put the spell on him, without realizing that he walks by the true guilty party every day (beggars and people he stole from).
The film criticizes the African leaders' attitude after Independence, underlining their greed and their inability to step away from foreign influences. Scholar Aaron Mushengyezi writes: "I posit that in Xala, he evokes two problematic binary oppositions: between the corruption and decadence of foreign influence and the purity and morality of African tradition, the former represented as 'corrupting' and the latter 'redemptive'; and between strong, revolutionary 'masculine' women and villainous, weak, 'feminine' men." Another scholarly perspective is from Harriet D. Lyons: "I shall argue that in Sembene's work the "covertness" of the folk material takes the form of suppression of detail combined with the retention of essential values. Sembene is thereby able to use folk elements in such a way as to give the work political implications that go well beyond the preservation and/or revival of a local tradition. One can, therefore, examine the folk elements of Xala without fear of consigning yet another expression of African creativity to the museum of primitive art."
The film was entered into the 9th Moscow International Film Festival. Festival Internacional de Cine de Karlovy Vary 1976 The film ranked #83 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.FREE Delivery in the UK.DetailsGod's Bits of Wood (Heinemann African Writers Series) FREE Delivery in the UK. DetailsSo Long a Letter (Heinemann African Writers Series: Classics) FREE Delivery on orders over . I’d like to read this book on Kindle Publisher: Chicago Review Press (1 Nov. 1983) 14 x 0.7 x 21.6 cm 941,791 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) in Books > Fiction God's Bits of Wood (Heinemann African Writers Series) See the customer review to see all 10 reviews Were these reviews helpful? The event has already taken place. You can enjoy this archived content, but you can no longer book tickets. Senegal/1974/123mins/12a/subs. Dir: Ousmane Sembène With: Thierno Leye, Myriam Niang, Seune Samb A businessman is struck with impotence and his attempts at a cure prove disastrous.
In this fierce satire, Ousmane Sembène lashes the bourgeoisie of an unnamed, newly independent, African state for their slavish imitation of their past colonial masters, down to their corruption and conspicuous consumption. "The jokes and details are delightful, yet there's real anger behind them, and it bursts spectacularly into view in the concluding frames" Not a member yet?We hope to build an archive of reviews of classic films in African cinema to build a resource, but also to help readers learn more about the history of different film cultures on the African continent. Where possible, we’ll link to where you can watch/rent/see them, in a bid to get more people to see the films. If you have any suggestions, please comment below this review. We’ll start with a bang: Ousmane Sembène’s “Xala.” Before we begin, here’s the entire film on YouTube: “Xala” (1974) is a powerful political narrative. At times edging toward the surreal, at others an acute depiction of the complexity of the freshly independent Senegal, the film has become famous for its striking comment on the impotence of the new political bourgeoisie.
In the use of repetitive visual symbols, Sembène creates a wicked juxtaposition of the traditional and the modern in Senegal. The briefcase – the garb of business and efficiency, takes on a surreal, almost voodoo status. Sembène drives it to a comic extreme; French officials banished from the Chamber of Commerce carry nearly four each, their hands straining to hold onto the mass of shiny black nothingness, while members of the newly instated Senegalese cabinet sit in their new chamber, smiling with glee at cases farcically stuffed with cash.That the film is an adaptation of sorts is important to address. The book was published only a year before the film’s release. In questioning Sembène’s audiences, Josef Gugler and Oumar Cherif Diop (who wrote this article about Xala) make clear that the different mediums reflect different aspects in the concern of the narrative; the book addresses the complexities of kinship – it plays more with El Hadji’s decision to take a third wife, whereas the film focuses on the political climate and interrogates the new political order instated after independence.
Why did Sembène adapt his literary work into this new visual language? In adaptation, Sembène is able to forefront different narrative considerations. His book would have reached a small Senegalese readership, however Sembène theorized that a film circulates in a completely different sphere. In the film’s interchange between French and Wolof – a powerful statement on the colonialisation of langugage – Sembène utilizes the power of the cinematic to jump between different social circumstances in a way his book was unable to do.Through these jumps in language, Sembène questions the possibility of reclamation of an independent Senegalese identity. Rama, El Hadji’s hip activist daughter refuses to speak French, against her father’s wishes. She brings alive notions of a synthesis of the traditional and the modern, and its possible cultural counterpoint in the future. Her relationship to her mother, Adja, who Sembène casts on the side of the traditional, indicates Rama’s power – it seems she is a vehicle for Sembène’s slight glimmer of optimism.
Both versions of “Xala” remain within a naturalist genre. This is appropriate for his didactic aims – Sembene’s filmmaking was always political and focused on notions of political enlightenment. But at moments in Xala, he moves into a surreal register to make a pertinent point as to the (in)stability of the post-colonial order. The opening scene shows members of the new cabinet removing neoclassical busts of Marianne, a symbol of France. It’s a clear statement of his cynicism toward the ‘independence’ of the state. As Gugler and Diop write, it suggests ‘the ejection of those symbols, and indeed of the colonial masters, is not for real’ (Gugler & Diop 1998: 152). He signifies, through the instalment into office of the politician who has earlier been seen robbing a beggar – that neglect, exploitation and ambivalence is the status quo of the new political economy.Another point worth making is the paradox of language – cinematic, literary and political. In contrast to his literary version, Sembène consciously attempts to alienate the foreign viewer in the film from some of the more idiosyncratic symbols and practices of the characters.
The best example of this is of the un-subtitled Wolof songs, which act as a co-text for the Senegalese viewer, and yet are inaccessible anyone who doesn’t speak Wolof. In his text, this alienation does not occur to the same degree as Sembène explains cultural intricacies to the reader. For the Senegalese audience, the message of this co-text sharpens the political message of the film. We can see how Sembène plays with these different languages – his film is a more audacious portrayal of the world of the “Xala”, weaving intricate tensions by using French and Wolof, while the language of the cinema instigates comparison, frustration, and critique through the accompanying visuals.The viewer cannot escape Sembène’s sardonic wit; the shot of El Hadji driving to his wedding, squeezed between his first two wives – the African Bardot and Mama Africa casts him as caught in-between, in a cultural limbo. He’s the epitome of a new kind of political impotent – vulnerable, gormless and pitiful, neither proud of his heritage nor capable of existing in the new political state.
The tautology of the film shows how his sexual vulnerability – at first in his inability to consummate his marriage however clothed he is in ‘potent’ European props (which all fail him and in the end) but which ends in his complete degradation, naked and covered in spit. He is subject to the ritual humiliation and salvation of the traditional (Mulvey, Fetishism and Curiosity, 1996: 123), a cruel ending after Sembène has so blatantly shown El Hadji’s ambivalence toward it.“Xala” is a riveting commentary of the tension of the postcolonial reality. Taking his audience further into a political critique than he did in his book, Sembène’s obviously socialist politics permeate his of a new political class who fail to fulfil their productive function in both a basic human way, and in an abstracted, political way. Sembène has masterfully exploited the hieroglyphic possibility of film language – wrapping images in symbols and associations available or unavailable to different audiences;