Portraying society as being about sex, is cultural dislocation – Paul Obazele

Paul Obazele has expressed disappointment over producers and script writers in Nollywood who experiment with the Nigerian culture.
In an encounter with our correspondent, he queried those of them who had decided to push their money into what would ‘ sell fast’.
He stated, “They would tell you that in entertainment, nudity and sex sell more. But that is a far cry from the truth. It is just like people saying that you will make more money if you let people smoke in your bar. It will surprise you that some people get irritated while watching sex on screen. ‘Fuji House of Commotion’ and ‘The Johnsons’ are family movies and they have followers. We’ve had many soaps and films that had nothing to do with nudity or sex in the past and they did well.”
The CEO of Royal Pictures insisted that Nollywood in the past made more sense than the present. According to him, they were thorough in their production.
“If you look at all the television movies and soaps we did then, they had values. But today we are trying to copy the white man and we are doing it badly.
I describe this as a cultural dislocation; we are neither here or there. So, I cannot at this stage in my life do certain things. Look at ‘Mind Bending,’ ‘Things Fall Apart,’ ‘After the Storm’ and ‘Behind the Clouds’. People rushed home to see these movies. “It is not as if we are not telling stories again, but how do I sit down with my family and the next thing I see it people kissing or smoking out of control? So, do you expect me to tell a nine-year-old kid that smoking is bad? These are misplaced storytelling and this is as a result of the big influence of foreign forces on our movies. We built a society that gave birth to Nigeria of today, but unfortunately the people who we are supposed to handover to do not believe in their abilities.”
The actor who made his debut in series like ‘Checkmate’ and ‘Ripples,’ explained further that it would be hard to see faces like Zack Orji, Kanayo O. Kanaya, Pete Edochie and other veterans in movies lately because of their stories.
He said, “The older ones select the things they do because we cannot explain it. What we are seeing now is not us. The average Nigerian girl is not insane or goes around sleeping with men. It is a borrowed culture and it has become fashionable in our society.”