Blame the market; Sex sells.

Sex sells

Sex sells. That is a fact that is as sure as money itself. Recently, a famous Kenyan songstress has found herself on peoples’ lips for all the wrong reasons. Her crime: doing a live stage performance half-naked.

However, before we join her critics’ bandwagon, we need to understand a few things. Why does sex sell?

Famous rapper T.I once said, “a rapper’s material is mostly influenced by their immediate environment”. This is after he was asked why African-American rap songs mostly preached violence and confrontations with the police. This was at a time when police brutality was at an all-time high in America.

Some quarters may dismiss that statement. However, we cannot simply assume its logic. American rap group NWA sold millions of records in their time. This was from the production of such songs.

Whether such songs are good or bad for the society, is not really the question here. There is only one thing that boldly stands out: the classic demand and supply theory.

Every musician or entertainer is as well an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur’s goal is to keep their market satisfied. The market wanted violent rap songs; that is exactly what they got and paid for.

So, to the previous question: Why does sex sell? Simple! The market wants and is willing to pay top ‘dollar’ for it.

An entertainer is simply a channel through which the market achieves ‘satisfaction’. As such, the ‘problem’ is then not the entertainer. It is the market that should be ‘blamed’.

There is and there has always been a market for sexual content. This market has grown exponentially in the age of the internet. A controversial Kenyan blogger once asked whether we are watching prime time news or foreplay. Harsh comments off course. However, the bigger picture still holds: sexual content has found its way to news anchorage as well. It may be in the slightest of forms, but it is there.

‘Socialites’ have risen to become the most sought-after celebrities in the entertainment industry. For example, if you are opening a club, you will need them. Revelers attend in their numbers whenever a ‘socialite’ is in the building.

You might be wondering. How does one become a ‘socialite’? Well, it involves a lot of things. A full nude photo is one of them. This is to be posted on social media for your ‘fans’ to see.

Even our so loved west-African films have jumped ship from the original ‘Aki na Ukwa’ setting. The films are nowadays characterized by vivid bedroom scenes. Cooking oil commercials have also not been spared.

It’s a cycle of the market wants, the market gets and the market pays. Going forward, the question then should be, “why does the market want it?” More so, why does the African market want it? This is despite our default moral setting that borders on piety.

The world has changed. The conventional ways of doing things stands challenged. This is so even for the entertainment industry. A good laugh is no longer enough.  Neither is a decent drama. The market demands ‘more’.

Game of Thrones, the award winning Television series, generates slightly more than $1 billion annually. This is according to the New York Times. The show is however, characterized by scenes upon scenes of sexual content albeit borderline-soft core.

The show’s producers reckon that the nudity is mostly geared towards the development of characters. Some fans of the show however, argue it out differently. According to them, a show is a story scripted about life and as such, it cannot be censored. To omit a practical part of the story is to give your audience a skewed reality. This is one step to understanding why the market wants what it wants.

Let us veer off the subject for a bit. Donald Trump won in the most surreal election ever in America. The opinion polls had greatly suggested that he was to lose. Upon further studies after the election, an interesting fact was derived. Most of the voters who said they would vote for his opponent had lied. They instead voted for Trump. 

They were just not ready to face the public humiliation that came with supporting Trump. Even though he appealed to them in one way or the other. Trump was at the time seen as the ‘bad boy’ of American politics.

The entertainment market, especially the African segment, behaves like that 2016 American voter who lied. The independent website ranking site Alexa.com made stark revelations. Kenyans visit adult sites more than they do the publicly ‘acceptable’ and more ‘helpful’ sites, such as ‘E-Citizen’.

We are quick to blame

Drawing from the above, we publicly shame the entertainer, but secretly enjoy their material. Not to mention, it is one thing to determine what the market wants. To become that thing is something else altogether. A fact that often gets overlooked. Especially here in Africa.

Have our moral standards gone down?

Africa is strongly working towards equal appreciation and recognition in the international scene.  A scene that has already set and accepted the standards that conform to the ‘Beyonces’ and ‘Rihannas’ of this world. The same entertainers who have more fans here in Africa than the African entertainers themselves. Despite their half-naked shows. Incidentally, if we switched the Kenyan songstress’ face with Beyoncé’s, would the reaction be the same?

An entertainer is a creative. There are only two things for a creative. What they can or cannot be. The potential for what they can be is unlimited in the ideal environment.

To ban a creative from expressing themselves is to kill their potential. To kill a creative’s potential is to drown the industry’s general creativity. To drown the industry’s creativity is to destroy a trade. To destroy a trade is to cut employment. 

Worse so for Kenya, with a 64% unemployment rate bearing over her. Bearing in mind, the Kenyan entertainment and media industry is currently valued at slightly over $2 billion. This is according to the PWC’s ‘Entertainment and media outlook: 2017-2021’.

As long as the material does not negatively affect political peace or motivate abuse or assault of any nature, let it be. There must be a fine balance between regulation and the freedom of expression. One must never overpower the other.

Afterall, since when did banning material really make it go away? If anything, it just lowers the standard and opens the door for associated vices. So severe were the effects of bootlegging in America, that the ban on alcohol had to be lifted. This paved the way for better regulations and in turn better alcohol.

We may have all the morality debates we want. However, the new entertainment standard is here with us now. The African society must come to terms with the changing trends in entertainment and what we see in the media. It started in the west, has come to Africa and will soon end up in the east. We must embrace and find better avenues of dealing with it.

For example, in America, Game of Thrones as earlier stated, runs on HBO. HBO is an American cable-only network. It is in a class of TV channels that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates less stringently. This means that sex, nudity, violence language and promiscuity (SNVLP) have a higher tolerance on HBO. 

HBO is a premium service beyond normal cable such as CBS and NBC television networks. Therefore, adults, especially parents, have direct control of whether HBO runs in their houses or not. This limits it to a matter of choice. To watch or not to watch. Also, adult shows are shown as from 9pm. This then minimizes the risk of children accidentally watching the shows. This could form a basis for consideration in the establishment of a local solution. 

There should also be fair warning of the possibility of nudity and language (NL) before buying live show tickets. Hence, the decision to purchase is more informed. This would limit the possibility of blame games in the event of NL.

In conclusion, you may want to make one consideration. Long before the missionaries got here, Africans mostly lived half naked. Songs and dance were also performed in the same attire. It only became taboo after we were introduced to western clothing. Could it be that the chickens have come home to roost?

Aaron Ochieng Ogunde.