Dress Politics

Malcolm X said, if chickens are raised in an oven they are called chickens, not biscuits. People on the continent of Africa just like people in the Diaspora have been visited by the same level of destruction. In Africa, as in the UK as in America, as in South America as in the Caribbean have devalued our own clothes. We have Nike in Africa as our uniform just like in the UK. A friend of mine from Tanzania at uni told me we in the Diaspora have no culture. I forgave him because he had never been to the Diaspora and Africans globally have a terribly poor education which goes both ways. It is shamefully poor. And it was made that way by the forces which enslaved us. The last thing they want us to do is to unite via our common identity. But the Diaspora, just like Ethiopia is Ethiopia and Benin is part of the African world. It is just that we are in the West now. In Africa, just as much as in the Diaspora, we do not wear our cultural clothes preferring to add value to Nike and Puma. In Africa,

The vulgarly contradictory nature of South Africa where their public speak of Pan-Africanism and rainbows does not match their internal policies and attitudes stymies their development. No postal system, xenophobic anti-African immigration, poor human resource management, and poor education halt any hopes of true development. Development is just political rhetoric for token gestures as a patina on failure. 

Do you have to be "pretty" to be a model? Well, that is only one consideration. These days they putting anyone on the cover of Vogue. Because what places like Vogue like to do is SHOCK YAH! So skinny, asexual, dehydrated, and anemic might be the new look for them. Vogue etc is not into diversity, they are into shock. 

Traditional art forms are being destroyed today at an alarming rate, and we say this against the historical backdrop of culture is always changing, and like the Earth, things are created and things are destroyed. That is the natural process of things. The CD destroyed the record and the Mp3 destroyed the CD. In every instance, we lost something but also arguably gained something (but is that the case today, are we gaining something?)

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media has altered our world. And sometimes that has not always been for the best. In 2005 when we made 500 Years Later things were actually better for us without social media. Now, everyone with 2 cents is in the same space as people with 2 million. So the entry-level for us in film was to own some serious equipment and produce serious quality content. That high bar in itself separated out who is who. If you did not have this equipment the notion of making content did not exist even as a dream. Now today people can

Premium-grade final goods are critical to the growth of any industry. Almost every industry is top-down, the most beautiful artwork of any country is expensive. The most beautiful African mask takes time, and as a result costs. You see when the only products Africa produces for local consumption are low-end, it has a kickback to the quality of craftsmanship available in our Motherland.

Modernity is a technological state and has zero ethical or cultural considerations in its construction. And modernity has nothing to do with degrees of civilization, in the humane usage of the term. Africa can be African and modern with zero compromise to the state of being African and the state of being modern.