Threats and Prospects of the Arts in the Age of Digital Media

 The history of writing is an evolving phenomenon. There are several propositions as to when and where writing began. However, across ages and civilizations humans have had the ingenuity of inventing ways of recording important timelines. The proto-writing and the Bronze Age, the Mesopotamian and the ancient Egyptian civilization have had a means of documentation.

Then came the invention of printing press circa 1440 in Rome by the German named Johannes Gutenberg, which fueled the proliferation of writing, and that of reading. However, in not-too-distant past writers composed their works manually; using a pen and paper, and only the privileged ones had the luxury of typewriter. This was regarded as a new development in leaps and bounds compared to the previous ages. 

Readers must have to use books; libraries existed and functioned manually. This at times seemed to be cumbersome and boring to the digital media minded individuals. The presence of modern media technology has redefined the concept of reading and writing and library itself. Opinions from some quarters have averred that books are dying, but writing is still alive; instead of making people lazy and having the reading culture dying a slow death, the digital media agency turns those who were ordinarily not readers into becoming ones, even without them knowing. What you read daily on social media platforms are tons of untitled essays that might end up being equivalent to a number of book chapters.

The social media environment offers an atmosphere of infotainment in which people carry libraries in their hand and peruse contents in a more relaxed and less stressful way. But there is also a line picking the argument from different perspective, that social media is corrupting, and making people lazy. People do not like to endure to read anything that seems to be lengthy, beyond 180-character, literally. But this in turn gave birth to twitterature and related micro-fiction genres.

However, though much more concerned with sculpture, film and photography, Walter Benjamin in his famous “Work of Arts in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” expressed concern over the authenticity of the work of arts in the mechanical age, and said that the process of mechanical reproduction has the tendency to denude work its aura of eternal traditional aesthetic values. 

Let’s debate, critique, and agree to disagree with each other over threats and prospects of reading and writing in the age of mechanically digital media reproduction.

Editorial at ABU Creative Writers’ Club

The Secret Life of Hajiya Binta Zubairu (from 1956- to the death of her husband and son)

Thrilled and hilarious! I was wildly excited all through Abubakar’s Season of Crimson Blossoms and quickly quaffed the offering down my gullet without me knowing. It’s the story of a common Hausa family, of a widow mother, an elderly woman of stately dignity living with a niece and a grandchild. What a thrill you read a novel and meet people you know. As I read, I found myself laughing and yelping and whispering and talking to characters I feared people called me mad. 

Lines are poetic and ringing in Abubakar’s work. It is a delight. Characters and their dialogue seem real and believable, speaking and behaving convincingly. Faiza, the eccentric girl proves mesmerizing in her manner and speech pattern as a real Hausa girl. She is young and knows the new fashion in town. She disagrees with Hajiya over dress and appearance, laughing at Hajya like my sisters laugh at our mother for her lack of sense of trends.

Abubakar must have caught a conversation one-on-one with his characters. Have you met Mahmood Mai-shayi, quick, energetic and agile? He reminded me of a tea seller in our area. Abubakar created memorable characters by letting them to speak themselves. However, Season of Crimson Blossoms is nearly ruined by attempt at providing what Orville Prescott called “political documentary details.”

People like me who had never been to the closet of women bedrooms would find the book revealing, revealing the secret thinking of women about sex and things we never hear about girls. 

Beyond the world of Hajiya Binta and her sexual adventure lies a world of rhythms of street culture and subculture assembling at San Siro, and streets of Jos with its joy, daymare and nightmare. There is the notorious Nigeria’s image looming large in Reza’s boldness to confront the law for hindering his illegality. There is something that many people out of this culture may not understand about Reza, you understand. 

Season of Crimson Blossoms is a story of Hajiya Binta, a widow who struggles between the intersections of faith, culture and personal fulfillment. Hajiya Binta was originally caught in a tasteless marriage that almost looked like sexual slavery, escaped her past ten years after her husband died, Mal Zubairu, and finds life in Reza, in whom she sees and feels her late son, Yaro. At childhood, Yaro shared a lot with Reza, was in drug and weeds and in the street puddles. Hajiya nursed deep affection for Yaro but was forbidden to show it openly “because of kunya, the socially prescribed modesty” she “had to live with…” 

Reza breathes life to the story and propels it. A product of broken home, he was raised by stepmothers after his mother was separated from his father. As a result, he grew up with a thirst for maternal emotional needs. 

While Hajiya sees her son in Reza, Reza also sees his mother in Hajiya Binta, to whom he felt not only filial affection for but also romantic.  While putting a ring on his palm his mother’s smile enchanted him. “The elegant with which she performed the gesture mesmerized the boy” (p.41). The boy also has affection for his mother, “the gleam of gold in her teeth and her beautiful face shimmering like an image under water” fascinated him. Something here is already hinted. Therefore, the affair between Reza and Hajiya Binta is transferred Oedipus complex and inverted Electra complex  respectively – Reza “mother-fixated, she, “son-fixated.” 
 

In this case there is a little problem about their relationship, since each is struggling to mend the little jarred pieces of their past. However, half-way through the reading I became disturbed and troubled as Hajiya’s sexual escapade became wild and untamed. Blame the author for authorial conspiracy, letting Hajiya going to hotel rooms and giving her so much energy to conduct her affair with agility and rhythm that surpassed person her age.

You won’t get troubled about the whole thing until you pick Hajiya out of the fictional world and plant her into the real. A mother of four, with a string of grandchildren and a niece? What is even more troubling is that Hajiya Binta is decent, respectable and dignified surrounded by the comforting atmosphere of family life. Imagine a woman of her age having an affair with an irresponsible young man like Reza with all the putrefying smell and bad feeling after each sexual encounter. 

It’s hard to forgive Hajiya given that Hadiza and Munkaila approached her with the proposal of remarrying, which she never bothered to consider. Hajiya Binta could have fought oppressive social codes in ways that preserve her honor and dignity and that of her family. She could marry since the children are not totally opposed to the question of remarrying than as to the character of the person. The fact that there would a possible resistance to the idea of marrying Reza proves that decency and respectability are cherished values in Binta’s culture.  

With courage and candor, Abubakar touches on raw aspect of society. The question however, is not to blame Binta directly, but to look into the condition that begat her, that begat Reza and Gattuso and San Siro.

PS

Parresia did a splendid job on editing and proofreading. However, I think there is the need of improvement on consistency on whether to italicize throughout or not, and check really if “Unguwa” can be written as Angwan Rukuba Junction (p.169), (later I learned this is how many Hausa-speakers of central Nigeria say it) and if Mararaba market (p.181) is not actually Mararraba. I almost forget this, that two dots appear at the end of the paragraph where Munkaila was stamping his immaculate shoes “every now and then” (p. 159).

What Defines Work of Arts?

Owing to its fluidity, it is very difficult to pin down the greatness of work of arts by aesthetic or thematic values; since these values work according to individual tastes and likes, and seem to mean different things to different people. Despite this slippery canvass, conventions and rules are usually applied to determine a piece as a high quality work or not.

Theories and opinions have been put forward with regard to what defines a great work of art, with sharp distinction between Conservative art Critics and the New Critics. The New Critics and the scholars of Popular Culture seem to be working in sync to eliminate the line between high and low arts.

Many a writer struggles to get a place in literary scene. Some important writers that are being celebrated today were the unknown men of yesterday. They were never celebrated in their life-time, nor received any critical attention from the literary luminaries and critics of their days.  Some died unread, unknown, and only came to receive literary accolades posthumously.  John Kennedy Toole for instance, was unable to publish his work in his life-time, A Confederacy of Dunces, only to be published and earned the Pulitzer Prize for fiction after taking his own life. Nicolas Gogol, died a sad writer, only to be discovered after his death and named as one of the greatest Russian novelists. Shelves upon shelves were filled with commentaries over his works. The American novelist Francis Scott Fitzgerald died with a pain gnawing at his soul, the critics of his time were unable to understand his work, the Great Gastby, and fetched him the attention he deserved. It was until after his death that the book came to be regarded arguably as one of the greatest American novels of the 20^th century. 

Since Adam, thousands upon thousands of works have been written, of which many had left the shelf. It is important to investigate the qualities and standards that define a truly work of art. Therefore, the question is what qualifies a work of art to sail into the district of literary canons and be accepted as a good work? Is it the thematic values or the aesthetic qualities; stern, muscular and serious narratives? Is it personality, accidents and conjectures, qualities or superb literary craftsmanship?