Although it has been close to two weeks now since I saw the film Mooladé for the first time in class, it took me a matter of only a few minutes to refresh my mind on the subject by looking over some notes taken during class. The movie was, in my opinion, one of the most emotional films we have watched this far in the semester. However, while it was an incredibly dramatic and emotional movie, I feel like the cultural and political topics handled in the movie had the greatest impact. From arranged marriages, to the men having multiple wives, to the extreme demands for obedience, Mooladé showed just how strong the African people believed in their culture.
One of the first, and perhaps most obvious, cultural differences in the movie was the practice of arranged marriages. Being that this was an African film it made sense right from the beginning that arranged marriages would be an important factor in their culture and family lives, but considering modern American and even the Western part of the world’s practices on the matter it took a while to be able to grasp just how important the arrangements were.
Another difference between American and African cultures that I noticed was extremely important to practice in the African lifestyle of Mooladé was all the men in the community had multiple wives. Also, not only did they have multiple wives, but they were all different ages; there was an “elder wife” and then there were also other wives that seemed to be a significant amount of years younger than the man of the house/family and the other wives. The wives all lived together and seemed to treat each other more like what seemed to be a sister-sister relationship, which I found to be hard to comprehend being that they were all married to the same man, and I would assume that would bring a lot of tension and even competition. This was not the case to say the least, and I found it very respectable and it made it sink in that much more how much the women of the community and in the African culture really valued each other.
The aspect of the African culture that by far stood out the most to me while watching Mooladé was the extreme belief and practices that pertained to and went along with making sure that all the men, especially the elder men in the community, were strictly obeyed by the younger men and the women. While there were several instances throughout the film in which various punishments were depicted, the one that was the most dramatic and evident would be when Collé was beaten by her husband for not enforcing the younger girls to be Purified. This was such a strong scene in the movie, perhaps the most intense, because it wasn’t just a few whips. He whipped her excessively, all while doing it in front of the entire community, which I felt made it emotional beyond the intensity.
Mooladé, overall, I felt was an extremely powerful movie and was an excellent look into the idea of the African culture and their practices. The few differences discussed previously were not even close to the only differences between American and African culture, and I feel more could even be picked up after the initial viewing of the film. However, I feel these differences were some of the strongest, and therefore would be interested in learning more on the subject.
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