Prayers, Guns and Ritual Murder.
Popular Cinema and Its New Figures of Power and Success[0]  

English translation of the French published text
Birgit Meyer, Research Centre Religion and Society, University of Amsterdam

When J.J. Rawlings took power in Ghana in 1979, and again in 1981, he instigated a `housecleaning’ exercise against kalabule. Thriving on the manipulation of state structures or by evading official controls, kalabule had its own typical figures of power and success: merchants, contractors, senior managers of state corporations, lawyers and judges, and their entourage of  young women conspicuously driving a VW-golf, the new status symbol.[1] Echoing ordinary people’s outrage about this parasitic appropriation of state resources, Rawlings revolutionary PNDC government set out to knock down the structures that had brought forth these figures of success who appeared to capitalize at the expense of  the ‘people’. New figures of power and success emerged. On the one hand, there were those close to the state - the military, the chairperson’s of  the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, and, gradually, again business elites profiting from the closeness to government officials. On the other hand, in the shadow of state structures there emerged a new type of successful figure: the Pentecostal pastor driving a Merecedez Benz, a true exponent of the Prosperity Gospel preached by the increasingly popular Pentecostal-charismatic churches. After 1992, when Ghana returned to a democratic constitution, this figure remained prominent, occasional misgivings about so-called fake pastors notwithstanding. If the pastor and his faithful prosperous entourage of believing housewives and faithful businessmen feature as positive role models,  there also exist negatively valued  figures of power and success, reminiscent of the times of  kalabule, who apparently make it in the neoliberal economy to which Ghana has been openend up, sometimes by appropriating state resources, but more often by successfully engaging in global trade, often at the edge of illegality. What all these figures have in common is a prosperous material culture featuring icons of pride such as a fenced mansion in the new residential areas at the outskirts of the big cities, elegant African and Western fashion, and a Benz or Four-Wheel-Drive as well as a deliberately individual ethos, emphasizing personal accumulation.

Such figures of power and success, with their distinct ethos and life style, not only embody what counts as ‘good life’ at a particular time, but also capture the imagination of  those who stay behind. As much as these figures may be cherished as carriers of  new views and desires, they also evoke questions concerning the morality and immorality of power and may be prone to rigid moralization, and even violent rejection. Rather than investigating such figures per se, this article focuses on shifts in their popular imagination by investigating a prominent site of image production: the flourishing videofilm industry which draws inspiriation from and feeds into the urban imaginaire.

This film industry, which emerged in the course of the last fifteen years, was instigated by independent, selftrained cultural entrepreneurs at a time when the state-sponsored film industry had broken down.[2]After having been approved by the Film Censorship Board,  videofilms are screened with beamers in the big cinemas, thereby offering a viable, be it less prestigious alternative to celluloid; later they are sold as home videos. A similar videofilm industry, though much bigger in scale, emerged in Nigeria,[3] and these films are also marketed in Ghana. Recently, the first Nigerian-Ghanaian co-productions emerged. As independent  videofilm makers, in order to stay in the business, fully depend on the approval of their urban audiences, videofilms zoom in on the desires and horrors of ordinary people. Far from taking up colonial and post-colonial, statist modes of  film making, which regarded film as a medium par excellance for the enlightenment and education of the general public, the new video movies are above all  concerned with visualizing what resonates with the structures of feeling of their audiences.

            The videofilm industry is part of  a new public sphere which emerged as a result of the liberalization and commercialisation of the media. Until 1992, the state regarded film and television as privileged means to create a particular, favourable image of itself. Following  Nkrumahist ideas about the contribution of  these media for creating national unity and pride,  film and television were run by civil servants, more or less loyal to these statist premises. When the first private radio station came up in 1994, and the first private TV station in 1996, it was clear that the forces of commercialisation had opened up public space for the expression of  hitherto less visible popular views. A crucial case in point was the sale of the formerly state-owned Ghana Films Industry Corporation (GFIC) to a Malaysian television company (TV3). Eager to transform ‘Nkrumah’s propaganda machine’ into a viable, popular TV-station, the chief executive of TV3 commissioned films which would do well in the market, rather than reproducing the educative mode of earlier government-controlled productions. Although the state sought to balance the liberalization and democratization of  radio and TV through  censorship and a National Film and Video Policy,  it could no longer govern the production and circulation of images in public arenas as before.

The forces of religion, especially Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity,  thrive through the new developments. This brand of Christianity, organized in a plethora of different churches ,[4] not only commands a mass following, but also eagerly articulates its views in public. In contrast to statist modes of representing cultural and religious traditions in terms of  ‘heritage’, Pentecostalism demonises these traditions and propagates `a complete break with the past’[5] - not only in church,  but also in manifold  TV and radio programmes. Interestingly, videofilm producers have adopted  Pentecostal forms of representation. Deliberately taking up the views and concerns of Pentecostal-charismatic churches, the videofilm industry thereby contributes to the emergence of  a pentecostally infused - or better: pentecostalite - public culture, that is, an arena hosting a plethora of cultural expressions channelled through different media that follow Pentecostal styles of representation.

The link between videofilms and everyday life is complicated. It is important to realize that these products are not ‘auteur’ films, conveying the particular perspective of its producer or director, as would be the case in artistic genres. Many directors told me that they did not necessarily believe in the narrative structure and message of their films, and complained that one could only make a profitable film if one echoed concerns from the street and above all, as one filmmaker put it: ‘all this Pentecostal crab’, thereby foregoing the chance of being celebrated at prestigious African film festivals such as FESPACO. Because of this closeness to audience expectations, videofilm makers can safely be regarded as  mediators of popular views. Fixing and visualizing rumours, videofilms refashion stories circulating in society by adopting a particular narrative form. Therefore the videofilm industry is a fascinating site for cultural analysis. While it has to be kept in mind that films neither directly mirror ordinary people’s views and experiences, nor immediately reflect the phenomena they portray, it is important to avoid the pitfall of  approaching them as mere fictions opposed to a reality out there. Much in line with Luise White’s seminal analysis of vampire stories, I suggest that, given that people ‘speak with stories that circulate to explain what happened’, [6] these films could be regarded as ways to talk about things, and to generate more talk. They offer a particular discourse to address matters of  concern in everyday life.

This article is devoted to an analysis of that part of this discourse which addresses the question of the (im)morality of power through different figures of power and success. As mediators of  pentecostalite views, these films thrive on a dualism of God and Satan and reveal the operations of ‘the powers of darkness’. This is even more marked in Nigerian videofilms, which depict  instances of ritual murder and extreme violence much more excessively than Ghanaian productions, which have concentrated on domestic issues. Examining visualizations of  figures of power and success in Ghanaian and Nigerian films and recent coproductions, I will show that power and success are increasingly imagined as being achieved by  violence, meanness and engagement with occult powers. There is a remarkable shift from the celebration of Pentecostal pastors, zealous housewives and born again business men to a-moral figures of power and success. The imagination of the new ‘big men’ draws on a dialectics of transgression into excessive wealth and brutality and a moralizing assertion of  difference and moral superiority. I will argue that this shift is facilitated by the liberalization and commercialisation of the media as a result of which the spectres of  the urban popular imaginaire gain increasing visibility on public screens such as TV and cinema. At the same time, the shift also expresses actual misgivings and fears about the capacity of the new democratic state to create a safe urban environment. 

Video movies appeared to be extremely successful and able to create new audiences eager to spend part of their leisure time in cinemas, video-theatres and in front of domestic TV/VCR-sets. They cannot easily be pinned down to a distinct social category. We are here concerned with a mass phenomenon encompassing the urban lower and (aspiring) middle classes, and - as the main language spoken in most films is English - cutting across ethnic divisions, yet assuming a certain level of education and basic proficiency in English. Watching videofilms is more popular among the young than among older people, and especially appeals to those who have some, be it loose, affinity with Pentecostal views. Many viewers experience financial hardships and dream of good life. While different types of films appeal to different groups of viewers, one recurrent pattern is easily discernible: the instigation watch a certain film often comes from women, who persuade their boyfriend or husband to come along. Producers always keep this mind.

Many viewers told me that next to being entertained, they expect  Ghanaian films to `reveal what is going on in our own society' and `teach morals', rather than justifying a-moral, foreign patterns of behavior. The expectation to be ‘educated’ through film and receive a ‘moral message’ can  be traced back to the colonial representation of  the medium of film as a means of enlightenment apt to reveal superior knowledge and morality. The expectation of a moral message also resonates with Ghanaian cultural traditions and the guidelines of the censorship board. In the process of watching, viewers  usually insult the evildoers and pity their victims. Watching a film triggers moral engagement and generates a temporal feeling of moral superiority, while at the same being enabled to peep voyeuristically at the ‘powers of darkness’. A good film, moreover, is supposed to evoke debate among the viewers even after the show is finished.  

For a long time, two main types of movies dominated  the videofilm scene: `family drama' and  ‘occult forces’. Films of the latter type depict how people get power and money by a pact with occult powers. A very popular example is Diabolo I – IV (Worldwide Motion Pictures, 1991-1995), a series of films about a man who perversely misused prostitutes by entering their vagina in the shape of a snake in order to make her vomit money. Another film, Nkrabea-My Destiny (Amahilbee Productions, 1992) , depicts the ‘true story’ of a chief  called Nana Addae in Sefwi-Bekwai, who has a secret room, devoted to a violent, bloodthirsty spirit who converts human blood into money and power. Like Diabolo, Nana Addae lives in a beautiful mansion, easily gets new girlfriends and is held in high esteem in society. In the film, he gives a fascinating speech about the power of money in which he explains how a rich man will be virtually worshipped in society whereas a poor man has no friends and does not command respect (ibid.: 21). There are also some instances of women’s involvement with occult forces. For example in Women in Love (Movie Africa Productions, 1996), a female shop-owner becomes rich through her spiritual marriage with Mami Water, the fair-skinned white or Indian goddess at the bottom of the ocean – held to be the cradle of consumer capitalism.

Resonating with rumours, all these stories thrive on the notion of an illicit exchange of  human life for money. These films, often framed as ‘confessions’, have been incredibly popular among the audiences who were thrilled to see the otherwise invisible work of the Devil on screen. At the same time these films were criticized, or at least looked down upon, by filmmakers trained at the state-controlled National Television Institute (NAFTI) because of the emphasis placed on superstition and the negative depiction of  religious traditions.  In their striving to be respected by the artistic elites (and, in some cases, to gain the approval of the government), a number of  self-trained producers therefore opted for a more moderate depiction of  occult forces and concentrated on the genre of  ‘family drama’ – a situation which endured until the massive arrival of Nigerian films.

While modernity as such is presented as a context of life, not an option to adopt or reject,  most ‘family drama’ films assert the need to adopt a Christian version of modernity. They offer an idealized image of the nuclear family, Christian marriage and family life, and prosperity. The setting is the upper middle class, featuring a fenced, well-furnished mansion with a car park, domestic servants, and nicely dressed adults and kids. The heroes are the Pentecostal pastor and the Christian housewife and mother, who combine a God-fearing, caring attitude with deep faith against all odds and zealous prayers: ultimate models of the moral subject promoted by Pentecostalism who combines a meticulous observation of the self (reminiscent of Weber’s Protestant ethic) with a consumerist attitude. In a great deal of such films, the wife suffers because of her weak husband, often a businessman who became well-to-do thanks to the financial help of his wife. Once he has reached a certain status, he cannot control his libido and gives himself over to young, loose girls searching for quick money. Often these girls also make use of love magic derived from a traditional priest in the bush or a Mallam in the suburbs, or rely on witchcraft. Problems start once a girl is pregnant, her attempted abortion may cause her death and expose her lover. Other plots feature a mother who controls her married son so much that his wife is in sheer despair. A recurrent theme is the problem of reproduction – a problem the mother-in-law simply attributes to the wife without any medical evidence– and usually the husband ends up sleeping with the wrong woman (a witch). The wife, by contrast, attends a Pentecostal church and gets spiritual support from her pastor and prayer group and will eventually be redeemed  and have a baby.

In such films, a prosperous way of life is depicted as beautiful and desirable, yet dangerous because of the seductions which come with power and success. Especially well-to-do businessmen are apt to fall prone to them, for once they have a bit of success, they indulge in hedonistic pleasures without taking any responsibility, thereby becoming subject to manipulation by occult forces. At the height of their power and success, they appear too weak to exert self-control and  loose everything. Clearly, the films teach that modern life as such is dangerous and ambivalent, and that there is need for Pentecostal religion in order to guide a person in engaging with modernity in a disciplined way. If only the husband would believe in God and control himself, these films suggest, life would be marvelous. For God will bless with prosperity those who believe in him and keep on praying. No wonder that young and married women regarded such films as suitable educational devices for their boy-friends or husbands whom they sought to drag along to the movies.

While films about ‘occult forces’ problematize the immoral acquisition of money and power, films of the ‘family drama’ type focus on the seductions following status. In both cases, power and money as such are hailed, the point is only to attain this by the right means and not to loose it through lack of self-control. While the images of power and success depicted do not reflect viewers’ actual life worlds, they resonate with their dreams. The responsible businessman, the Christian housewife and the Pentecostal pastor, all conspicuously present in society, are regarded as key icons of success. While the dangers imbued in becoming powerful and wealthy get due attention, the overall message of these films is a celebration and affirmation of Pentecostal regimes of subjectivity as the most suitable guarantee for individual success.  In a sense, the ‘family drama’ films capture the moderately optimistic mood prevailing after the return to democracy. Despite economic hardships, at least on the individual level the dream of a good life seemed to be within reach, provided one trusted in God and – preferably – attended a Pentecostal church. Yet, as the films about persons involving themselves with occult powers indicate, at the flipside of this dream there was the specter of ultimate selfishness which belongs to a particular ‘occult economy’ in which human life is perversely misused for making money. [7] Its particular icons of power and success stands central in many Nigerian movies.

The popularity of Nigerian movies struck me especially in June 1998, when I returned to Ghana for one month of fieldwork. While Ghanaian films were still popular, it appeared that the initial excitement about these local products had given way to a more critical stance on the part of viewers. Interviews with producers made it clear to me that many of them struggled with the dilemma of either doing more of the same, or coming up with highly spectacular, yet improbable matters. At the same time, they had to make films which were acceptable to the censorship board, which always made sure that there was not more violence and sex than strictly needed for the story to teach its moral lesson. By contrast, Nigerian films easily eschew censorship both in Nigeria and Ghana because they are mainly sold as home videos-tapes and rarely screened in public.       

            One important difference between Ghanaian and Nigerian films is that the latter were much more concerned with the visualization of otherwise invisible spiritual realms, such as Mami Water and even the Devil himself. Compared with Ghanaian films ones on ‘occult forces’, Nigerian film show much more transgression into the mysterious nexus of occultism and crime. Moral misgivings about Nigeria's involvement with spiritual forces notwithstanding, people would emphasize that they liked Nigerian movies exactly because of the abundance of exclusive mansions, flashy cars, expensive outfits, and the revelation of the occult sources of this wealth. Nigerian films visualize new images of power and success characterized by a fascinating combination of excessive evil and violence with splendid wealth. It is extremely difficult for Ghanaian film makers to represent the things which audiences so much crave to see - conspicuous consumption of incredible wealth and extremely evil behavior - as being part of everyday life in Ghana. Ghanaian audiences would immediately protest - and so would, in the case of the depiction of brutal behavior or an overkill of blood and sex,  the censorship board - whereas they are prepared to take much for granted if it concerns Nigeria. This preparedness to associate Nigeria with both splendid wealth and excessive evil  resonates not only with Ghanaian migrants' experiences in Nigeria both prior and after the forced mass exodus of illegal workers from Nigeria in 1983. It also strikes a chord with current stories in the popular press which depict Nigeria as an abode of `the powers of darkness', and with accounts by Nigerian Pentecostal preachers who tour Ghana regularly. I often encountered the mixed feelings many Ghanaians have with regard to Nigeria - the land of splendid riches, but with low morals, armed robbery and murder, hostility towards strangers, corrupt police and politicians, treacherous tricksters who would also occasionally intrude Ghana, and a long time illegitimate military government. There is a strong ambivalence of admiration and condemnation.

            In order to show why Nigerian films are so fascinating to Ghanaian audiences, I would like to briefly turn to Blood Money. The Vulture Men (OJ Production, 1997), an incredibly popular film about a hitherto respectable bankmanager called Michael Mouka (played by Zach Orji), who is in financial trouble because he is unable to return a large sum which he illicitly borrowed from his bank. A police officer, an old school friend, advises him that `our society has changed drastically, today the ends justify the means' and refers him to Chief Collins, one of their old boys who is tremendously rich. Protected by the police officer, Collins trades in human body parts which he gets both from the mortuary and through blunt murder. He introduces Michael to the powerful cult of the Vultures, whose members meet in a big, modern office building in Lagos. The members of the cult either trade in human parts or have a secret room, in which a person killed by ritual murder vomits brand-new Naira notes. Despite his disgust Michael  becomes a member, and he is sprinkled with human blood and transformed into a vulture for a number of days, feeding on human flesh. He becomes rich, but at the cost of being a serial killer who, at a later stage, is even forced to kill  his own mother.

            When I watched Blood Money together with friends, many of them young men, the sphere was much tenser than when we watched Ghanaian movies. Everybody was immediately prepared to accept the film as `a true story'. A woman commented that it revealed how things were in Nigeria, the country where she had worked for some time and of which she had such bad memories (except earning a lot of money). To her, the film accused the Nigerian upper class to get splendid amounts of money mainly through blood sacrifice, and run the state for their own purposes. While such things also occurred in Ghana, they did so on a much lesser scale; in any case, here the class of business-people and politicians was not imbued in such a blood-economy to the extent as supposedly was the case over there. Interesting in this comment is the fact that Blood Money was taken to reveal something about Nigerian society as a whole. Far from telling a personal story, the film evokes links between the individual striving for money and the wider conditions which facilitate the accumulation of wealth by figures such as Chief Collins and Michael.

            Blood Money spoke to Ghanaian audiences’ fears about ritual murder which happened to be all over the place. For example, when Charles, a 21-year old young man, and I passed in my car through High Street (Accra) in the evening (at a time when electricity was off because of the long lasting power crisis which troubled southern Ghana throughout  1997 and 1998) on our way to a small video-theatre in Jamestown, he told me how dangerous this area was: dismembered bodies had been found here at the nearby beach, and probably it concerned the victims of Nigerians who were after human parts which they used for ritual purposes. Didn't I know that at certain shrines one could generate riches through body parts? Indeed, I had heard about these things during my previous visit in 1996 and before – I had of course seen  Diabolo and Nkrabea, and knew that tabloids occasionally published articles about people going in for body parts -, but it seemed that now the topic had gained much more centrality in popular imagination. People started to be afraid to go out in the night, especially when electricity was off.

            The imagery represented by the vulture cult is dense and, I sense, has multiple points of reference (and different ones for Ghanaians and Nigerians) which I am not yet able to overlook. In any case - and this, in my view, is the clue - the imagery appears to speak to both global rumors about organized trade in organs[8] and traditional practices. Interestingly, the depiction of the Vulture cult makes very few references to African religion. The members are people dressed in the latest style who meet in an office tower, rather than somewhere in a shrine in the bush or on the beach (the place where Ghanaian video movies would usually locate the occult). Here evil forces are at the center, rather than in the margins of modernity. Being organized in the style of the lodge, the cult is represented as following a Western - and thus not traditional' or `African' - model of secret organization and as being linked with an international network trading in body parts. Thus, the bad state of Nigeria is not attributed to `tradition' and `backwardness' (as is the case in development and modernization discourses' view of Africa) but to evil global connections. Globalization, this film suggests, not only entails sharing in `civilization' but also being entangled into worldwide networks of oppression and destruction thriving on brutality and primitivism. For Ghanaian audiences this view was new and fascinating, for the bulk of Ghanaian films would usually take as a point of departure the opposition between African powers,  represented as diabolic, and Christianity, guaranteeing the best of modernity.

            When I talked with a befriended Ghanaian film maker about the popularity of Blood Money, he explained to me that people appreciated the film so much because it attributed all these crimes to Nigerians. If one would make a similar film about the Ghanaian upper class, people would condemn it as `too artificial'. Thus the moral superiority generated through watching Blood Money stems from the fact that these are crimes of the ultimate Other. Yet it would be too easy to assume that watching Blood Money merely entails an imaginative journey into the realm of the treacherous Other, an exploration of the brutal reality of a system dominated by big men who owe their power to involvement with occult forces, with which the innocent spectators have nothing to do and through which they can safely assert their personal superior morality, as well as the distinct state of Ghana. One important aspect of Blood Money, and for that matter similar Nigerian films, is the way in which it evokes the notion that individual evil behaviour is part and parcel of a general occult economy, which thrives undisturbed by the state, or is even protected and supported by some of its agents. The police officer’s statement about the fact that society has changed and  ‘today the ends justify the means’ well-illustrates the point that life worlds have been transformed and restructured in such a way, that the accumulation of wealth at the expense of human life has become the order of the day. If  Diabolo and Nana Addae still were portrayed as person’s on the wrong path, eventually to be condemned by society (if not by a Pentecostal pastor then by a state court), a figure like Chief Collins is a representative of the system. Who is still able to control the occult forces which appear to have taken over society?, Blood Money appears to ask. While Christinity is used as a frame in order to visualize evil, it is not presented as a solution to this problem – that is, not within the narrative told by the film. At the same time, the film entices audiences to view the film from a Christian perspective, and to morally condemn the main characters.        While, at one level, Ghanaians could claim and try to convince themselves that Nigeria is different, I have the impression that the logic of Othering was not able to rule out second thoughts about the state of Ghana. While, by watching these products, Ghanaian audiences may generate feelings of moral superiority both on the individual and national level and confirm their stereotypes and prejudices about Nigerians, Nigeria is not just Ghana's far-away Other. It also is - and here we reach another layer in the Ghanaian imagination of Nigeria - a target of desire, and at its flipside, also a specter which appears discomfortingly close. This layer shows in statements in which Ghanaians represent Nigeria as not fundamentally different, but just ahead of Ghana. In many respects, Nigeria is supposed to set the tone for all sorts of economic and spiritual developments which will get to Ghana later. This is somewhat different with regard to politics, as Ghanaians pride themselves for returning peacefully to a democratic government when Nigeria was still ruled by an illegitimate military. Yet at the same time, during my research I found that Ghanaians raise a lot of doubts and express fears about who is why in power in Ghana's new, tender democracy - doubts and fears which resonate with ongoing rumors about the occult sources of the wealth and power of big men and politicians. Being much less subject to control by the censorship board and much freer to visualize excess than local productions, Nigerian films started to thrive in a niche - and pointed towards a gap - in the world conjured up by Ghana's new movie industry. A film like Blood Money was better than any earlier Ghanaian movie able and suited to provide a space to express second, only partially articulate thoughts about the powers that be and stimulate a critical investigation of the (im)morality of power in real life.

Nigerian films, with their depiction of ultimate transgression and their increasing technical sophistication and spectacular special effects (computer-designed at MAD-House, Lagos), at first appeared to be detrimental to the popularity of Ghanaian videofilms. Many producers sought ways to take up the challenge exerted by the Nigerian films. Actually, the liberalization and commercialisation of the media worked in their advantage. Self-trained independent film makers were not only affirmed in their strategy to visualize what lived among the people, but also sought to expand the possibilities to visualize transgressive behaviour. Although Ghanaian films still had to pass through censorship, filmmakers obviously started to press what would be acceptable to the limits.

One important strategy was to modify the genre of ‘family drama’, and bring in much more stuff on occult forces. Yet in retrospective it can be stated that in the course of the last two or three years, in Ghanaian videofilms the theme of a rich person’s involvement with occult forces became increasingly important, thereby linking up with earlier productions such as Diabolo and Nkrabea and recent Nigerian films. One example for this new trend is Namisha (Akwetey-Kanyi Productions, 1999), a film about a man, who involves himself with occult forces in order to become rich and take revenge on the man who took his former wife as a lover, and the two men who impregnated his daughters who died through abortion and child-birth respectively. Namisha was a hit because it successfully brought together the depiction of excessive evil and cruelty, surprising special effects (designed by Nankani studios, Accra), and a heavily moralizing Pentecostal framework (picturing a fascinating spiritual battle between the powers of darkness and the Pentecostals). Another spectacular movie was Time, one of the first Nigerian-Ghanaian co-productions(Miracle Films, D’Joh Mediacraft and Igo Films, 2000). The pace of this film is much faster than usual Ghanaian films, which still offer audiences much space to express their emotions. Moreover, the film has a number of extremely violent scenes, for example depicting how a man opens the womb of a pregnant woman because he needs her baby for ritual purposes, and some terrible shooting scenes in which small children are being killed. The film comes close to the genre of horror – into which earlier Ghanaian films do not really fit because the lack of suspense - and shows how a man, who spiritually sacrificed his wife for money,  keeps her dead body in the closet of his bedroom where she vomits money (the old story of the exchange of life for money). This man kills his little son who found out about his secret, and is in turn killed by his extremely violent gangster-like brother-in law, who in turn is brutally assassinated by the evil man’s friend. This man, who has promised the god in the bush to sacrifice a virgin in return for wealth, takes the young, firmly Pentecostal daughter of his dead friend to the shrine. But at the very moment when he wants to kill her, she starts calling Jesus. This changes everything, and the whole shrine is destroyed by the fire of the Holy Spirit. Typically, the film ends with a biblical text warning about the striving for wealth.

            Co-productions like Time, and subsequent films by the same producers such as Jewels, Asimo and the Visitor, are very different in that they are faster, have more suspense, and focus on the upper class. As Blood Money, the stories take place in secluded worlds, the worlds of the rich, and depict the meanness of  big men. They live in villas which one would still hardly find in purely Ghanaian productions, use big cars from Nigeria, which are still a rarity on Ghanaian streets, and usually are accompanied by body guards in black Western suits. These people are as exceptional in their conspicuous consumption as they are in their immorality and violence. While both Nigerian and Ghanaian actors are involved, the mean characters are often played by Nigerians (with Zach Orji being the most popular of them).[9] As I explained above, a film like Blood Money appealed to Ghanaian audiences because it could be looked at from the perspective of a  logic of Othering which made it easy  to voyeuristically enjoy transgression and at the same time draw a boundary between Ghanaians and Nigerians. The popularity of the co-productions pinpoints that the earlier emphasis on national difference, already then problematic on the level of second thought, appears to be increasingly fragile. Of course, even if the opposition of Ghana versus Nigeria has become increasingly eroded, films still thrive on a moralizing Christian framework, which makes it possible to look with utmost fascination at evil behaviour, and at the same time maintain a position of moral superiority. Still, virtually every film is framed in a Christian way. Interestingly, however, the message of the films is not so much that good life depends on faith and self-control, but rather that in situations of danger one is better protected if one believes in God.

            Ghanaians’ inclination to regard Ghana and Nigeria as increasingly similar certainly has to do with the fact that recently ritual murder has become a main issue in Ghana. Since 1999 a number of women have been found dead around Accra, sometimes with missing sexual organs. This became a matter of great public concern, people felt frightened to go out in the night and reproached the police for not being able to find the killer(s). How was it possible, it was asked, that the state would not be able to protect its citizens?!! – thereby suggesting links between the spheres of the police, politics and the criminal rich. Many people complained to me that Accra would increasingly become like Lagos, especially in the night an area of operation of mean serial killers who would use human parts in order to become rich. One could no longer trust anybody. These fears about Ghana being incorporated into an occult economy with Lagos at its center are not only taken up by the increasingly violent plots featuring new images of power and success as such, [10] but also started to change the film scene as a whole. Whereas for a long time – and in distinction to the situation in Nigeria – films were screened in the cinemas before the video tapes were being sold, now producers gradually start to bring out their films as home video tapes almost immediately because people are less inclined to go out to the movies in the night (and a larger number of people has access to a VCR).

            These nagging fears about the secret operations of  an occult network of ritual murderers and criticisms of the government’s inability to cope with the situation also played a role in the elections in December 2000, as a result of which the NDC, which had ruled Ghana ever since 1981 was brought down, and the long-oppositional NPP formed the new government. Of course, there are now high hopes that life will become more secure and prosperous, but at the same time, due to the opening up of the public sphere, the specter of new images of power and success will find easy articulation in the media, and will certainly feed into a great number of future videofilms.

I have tried to show that in videofilms there is a marked shift from positive heroes such as pastors, Christian housewives and born again businessmen to negative heroes such as ritual murderers, from the genre of family drama to something close to the genres of thriller and  horror, from an emphasis on dreams of good life to an obsession with spectres (both far away and nearby). I argued that this shift was facilitated by the fact that, as a result of the liberalization and commercialization of the media, there emerged a new public sphere which made it possible that all sorts of hitherto suppressed, partially hidden views were reconfigured as part and parcel of a new  pentecostalite public culture. As in Pentecostal sermons, in videofilms the affirmation of divine power requires, and thus legitimizes, the more or less excessive visualization of moral transgression into the field of selfishness, greed and jealousy, giving way to perversion, brutality and  – as local discourse has it - ‘bondage’ with occult forces. This possibility to voyeuristically peep into the realm of the ‘powers of darkness’ from a position of distance is the main reason for the popularity of these films. Allowing audiences to indulge in the twilight zone of prurience, Satan scores highly both in terms of  entertainment and moralization. Here, too, ‘the spectral becomes spectacle’,[11] so much so that one may wonder whether, on the long run, Pentecostal styles will become fully commodified forms of entertainment – pentecosta-lite indeed.[12]

            Remarkable in our investigation is not only the fact that videofilms adopt Pentecostal styles of revelation and power claims based on the capacity to penetrate the otherwise invisible, but that they increasingly use these styles in order to expose the moral transgressions upon which power and money appear to rest. In so doing, they link up with a general feeling that success is, above all, generated at the expense of the well-being of ordinary people, and offer a discourse to address this problem. It seems that the Pentecostal mode of subjectivity, with faith and self-control as success formula has lost at least part of its appeal and credibility. For many, it simply doesn’t work, and they wonder why. The fact that transgression and excess are so much emphasized both in videofilms and popular imagination pinpoints a transformation of ways of talking about power and success. This transformation has to do with actual developments which appear to favor new trajectories in order to make it in the now prevailing neoliberal climate. Success cannot simply be gained by a parasitic appropriation of state resources as in the era of kalabule when the state was still a major player in the national economy, but has to be achieved above all by tapping into global networks. For the beholders, the mysterious enchantment of power with its secret links to global occult resources and crime calls for powerful regimes of visibility, which offer a glimpse of it without, however, breaking its spell.

            Thus, the shift from born again to satanic figures of power and success signals a transformation in the ways in which urban Ghanaian audiences perceive the nexus of power and morality. The fear that ‘Ghana will become like Nigeria’, a society held to be marked by the erosion of  social structures and individual’s strife for money by all means, has become more and more outspoken. While it would be exaggerated to credit videofilms with the capacity to mobilize people into democratic movements, they certainly play an important role in ongoing public debates about the (im)morality and legitimacy of power, good governance and citizenship.