Xala (pronounced[ˈxala], Wolof for "temporary sexual impotence"[1]) is a 1975 Senegalese film directed by Ousmane Sembène. It is an adaptation of Sembène's 1973 novel of the same name. The film depicts El Hadji, a rich businessman in Senegal, who is cursed with crippling erectile dysfunction upon the day of his marriage to his third wife; that could only be cured by him stripping naked before the lowly of the society and have them spit on him.[2] The film satirizes the corruption in African post-independence governments; El Hadji's impotence symbolizes the failure of such governments to be useful at all.[3]
El Hadji Abdoukader Beye, a Senegalese businessman and a Muslim, takes on a third wife, thereby demonstrating his social and economic success. On the wedding night he discovers that he is incapable of consummating the marriage; he has become impotent. At the beginning, he suspects that one or both of his first two wives have put the spell on him, without realizing that he walks by the true guilty party every day (beggars and people he has stolen from). Much of his journey leads to many efforts to remove the spell, only to not notice that his business empire is falling around him. The film criticizes the African leaders' attitude after Independence, underlining their greed and their inability to step away from foreign influences.[4] In the end, after losing nearly everything, the people he has robbed confront him, and offer to remove the spell—for a price.
Characters
El Hadji Abdoukader Beye, a Senegalese businessman
Xala was released at the Moscow Film Festival in July 1975.
Xala received a home video release in 2005. The DVD has been out of print for some time.
Reception
Critical reception
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Criticism
Aaron Mushengyezi wrote: "I posit that in Xala, he evokes two problematic binary oppositions: between the corruption and decadence of foreign influence and the purity and morality of African tradition, the former represented as 'corrupting' and the latter 'redemptive'; and between strong, revolutionary 'masculine' women and villainous, weak, 'feminine' men."[5]
Another scholarly perspective is from Harriet D. Lyons: "I shall argue that in Sembene's work the "covertness" of the folk material takes the form of suppression of detail combined with the retention of essential values. Sembene is thereby able to use folk elements in such a way as to give the work political implications that go well beyond the preservation and/or revival of a local tradition. One can, therefore, examine the folk elements of Xala without fear of consigning yet another expression of African creativity to the museum of primitive art."
[6]
^Mushengyezi, Aaron (2004). "Reimaging Gender and African Tradition? Ousmane Sembène's Xala Revisited". Africa Today. 51 (1): 47–62. doi:10.1353/at.2004.0070. S2CID144701974.
^Lyons, Harriet D. (1984). "The Uses of Ritual in Sembene's Xala". Canadian Journal of African Studies. 18 (2): 319–328. doi:10.2307/484332. JSTOR484332.
