The Aesthetics of Crime Fiction in Kenyan Film: an Examination of the Paradox of Painful Art in Nairobi Half Life and the Kitchen Toto

Abstract

This study analyses two films: Nairobi Half Life and The Kitchen Toto, with a view to establishing why people would enjoy watching a film full of criminal activities, and which elicit pain when they avoid painful situations in real life. It aimed at finding out what makes audiences to feel pleasure while watching tragedies of crime and objects of distress which would be unpleasant or even horrific if set before them in real life. The objective of the study is to interrogate how the devices used by film makers to aestheticize criminal and violent actions function to represent stories of violence in an entertaining manner drawing the audience to feel pleasure in response to painful actions and to evaluate the impact of aestheticization of criminal activities. To address these concerns, the study was guided by Semiotics, Psychoanalysis and Film theory. Semiotics helped the study in analyzing how meaning is created in the selected films through the use of images, sounds, music, objects, gestures, words, body movements among others and how these signs work together to create meaning in a text. Third world film theory guided the study in examining the relationship between the films and the societies they reflect. Psychoanalysis guided the study in analyzing the audiences’ perception and how the behavior and dialogue of the film characters reflect the audiences’ unconscious, as they identify themselves with the characters when they watch a film and forge psychic bonds with the characters. The question guiding the methodology is “How do the cinematic techniques used in Nairobi Half Life and The Kitchen Toto function to transform crime and violence into a pleasurable discourse while at the same time reconstructing the society?” The study is based on the hypothesis that though the fractured, chaotic, and violent aspects of crime would appear to be diametrically opposed to the entertainment functions of films, stylistic presentation of violence would cause the audience to enjoy watching films with criminal activities which they would otherwise shun in reality. The study employed a qualitative approach to research to gather data on how cinematic techniques function to create pleasure in the audience. The data comprised of textual analysis and viewer responses. The findings of this research explain how the cinematic techniques function to make the audience feel pleasure in response to objects of distress. The analysis has shown a strong correlation between the cinematic techniques and human psychology. The study concluded that cinematic techniques transform the unpleasant emotional responses the audience may have into pleasurable ones through psychologically engaging the audiences’ mental schema thereby enticing the audiences to feel pleasure in response to tragedies of crime and objects of distress which would be unpleasant or even horrific if set before them in real life.