Far From Home: observations on gratitude, sacrifice, milestones and results

Netflix's 'first' Nigerian YA original had all the tools to break new ground but ends up circling tired tropes

A cross section of the Far From Home leads at the launch event.

On New Year’s day at a house party, I watched a group of young people in their early 20s experience the Netflix Nigerian ‘YA’ original, ‘Far From Home’, for the first time. Slightly inebriated, and oblivious to the raging discourse around the Netflix series which has put in even starker focus the ideological divide that separates Nigerian filmmakers and critics, these people for whom Far From Home was allegedly made, grew increasingly exasperated as plot contrivance after plot contrivance was wheeled out of the many-chef'd kitchen that cooked this ‘groundbreaking’ series. 

Up until this point, I had sidestepped discussing Far From Home. It felt like too many people in the industry (some of whom I know or follow) had too much pegged on the ‘success’ of this show. This meant that anything other than enthusiastic praise was immediately interpreted as an attack on the industry or a personal affront to their capabilities. It is possible to do atrocious work and still be a stand-up person. Nigerian politics makes that exceedingly obvious. 

But watching these slightly inebriated young people casually echo many of the thoughts we had been told on the internet was too ‘academic’ or too ‘nitpicky’ reminded me that our audience and our impact as an industry is much more significant than any of us can individually quantify. As such, every perspective that seeks to contextualise what we create (including my own) is not just welcome but needed. 

Before I go any further, I’d like to clarify that this isn’t yet another ‘review’ of Far From Home. I think Nigerian critics have done a bang-up job of dissecting the show, praising its highs and highlighting its lows. Nduka Dike, Eniolatito and the folks at NollywoodFilmClub all have great reviews if that’s what you are looking for. 

This essay is my personal exploration of the more prominent themes that Far From Home brings to the fore about the Nigerian psyche. Please bear with me;  promise I will do my best to make it worthwhile. 

YOU CANNOT SERVE ART AND MAMMON 

A guest studies a painting at Art X 2022

Anyone who has followed film discourse over the last three years, especially on social media, has heard the familiar chorus among many Nigerian filmmakers. Paraphrased, it is pretty much ‘fuck art, chase money’. Its biggest proponents are Niyi Akinmolayan and Uduak Isong (who coincidentally are attached to Far From Home in some capacity). The message is clear: the audience is allegedly unappreciative, and craft is a waste of time. Cut your losses, make the leanest film and cram in as many firsts and twists as possible and hopefully cash out. 

I cannot fault any Nigerian filmmaker for growing disillusioned with the film industry. As with everything else Nigerian, the film industry obeys none of the established rules on funding, production, post-production, release and marketing. Hail marys are how people get films out in this climate, and even then, there might be a censor waiting in the wings to swoop down and tear your tightly produced film apart.

But contrary to all the treatises, filmmaking is an opt-in career. People opt out all the time and chase that lucrative tech career. If you choose to slug it out, then you also have to choose to do so honourably. Anything less leads to the frankly embarrassing exploration of the vicissitudes of an art career in FFH. 

Nigeria has a vibrant art scene with globally renowned storied and contemporary artists. There is an art gallery with a curator every 20 kilometres in Lagos. Art X, the biggest art fair in West Africa, happens in Lagos every November as the climax to two months of glittery cultural events. There is no excuse for Far From Home’s refusal to properly engage the art scene and no explanation for why the show’s four visual artists are three bumbling narcissists and an emotionally negligent, physically broken paraplegic.

Ishaya Bello is a second-generation artist who apparently is also an art prodigy, and there is not a single scene where father and son have any ideological discourse about their art styles, inspirations, techniques or mediums. The ‘art’ Ishaya and Atlas create is soulless, and serve only as commercial tools used to advance their personal agendas of escaping poverty. Essien, having escaped poverty, uses his wealth to flex his class privilege, denying an obviously technically proficient grantee in dire need of a mentor his hard-won place in the workshop because he couldn’t raise the money to fly abroad. The only time we see Ishaya make art that isn’t an underpriced commission is in class and offered as a bribe to get a girl to like him. This kind of portrayal is bad enough with Essien and Atlas, but with Ishaya it suggests that poor people have no interiority, no reason to enjoy creating or consuming art for its own sake. 

Because the writing has no real anchor on which to peg its critique of visual art as a medium/career choice (there are loads of valid critiques such as cultural appropriation, plagiarism, exploitation of personal privilege as a famous artist, legacies of artists with ties to bigotry, pollution e.t.c.), we are given the tepid justification that because Ishaya’s brother Dauda died as a result of his father’s negligence art, art = bad. The plot introduces Essien as a foil; a ‘world renowned’ successful artist who Ishaya is supposed to aspire to become instead of his failed artist father, but we have no idea how Essien actually makes his money or why his work is so coveted as to be owned by the Willoughbys and sought after by the rest of their coterie. Who is Essien’s agent? Who is his gallerist? How many solo vs group exhibitions has he had? Who is facilitating the art workshop in London, and why London? Is it a residency or an apprenticeship? Why doesn’t Essien have at least an executive assistant?

For a billion-dollar business that minted several Nigerian millionaires between 2016 - 2021, very little care is taken to accurately portray an artist's life. Art at the level the artists in this show are alleged to create requires hundreds of hours of diligent practice, diligence that can only come from a genuine love of art as a creator and consumer. The transactions that bookend every depiction of artistic expression in the show weakens its utility as a plot driver the moment value is exchanged for compensation. Still, art is an ongoing conversation, evolving as the creator and the audience gain language to discuss the intricacies of the work that brings them together. That relationship allows the creator to continue asking the audience and the audience to participate as co-collaborators, giving the work meaning and value. It is a symbiotic relationship that enriches both parties and justifies artists' patronage cost. To flatten it and the discourse around art to ‘good vs bad’ in this way is incredibly telling about the state of the industry and perhaps why people like Funke Akindele and Toyin Abraham continue to break boundaries while others struggle to break even. 

Even the graphic design on this show was informed by 100% vibes

FASHION IS A LANGUAGE FAR FROM HOME DOESN’T SPEAK. 

A Young Adult show is a commitment, for the showrunners, but especially for the cast. Iconic YA shows like One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl understand that once an actor or actress is cast in a role, they must forgo any other opportunities and fully commit to the character and universe in which that character operates, including its limitations. Leighton Meester and Blake Lively, the anchors for the genre-redefining Gossip Girl, fully committed for the duration of the show, starring only in projects that either mirrored or complimented Blair Waldorf and Serena Van Der Woodsen. They were so committed, it took a few years for both actresses to separate themselves from their fictional alter-egos in the public’s consciousness. 

A critical way they succeeded at this was through costuming. Blair’s iconic headbands and structured cropped blazers telegraphed her obsession with control, in direct opposition to Serena’s impulsiveness as represented in her bohemian style and obsession with kaleidoscopic prints. Throughout the show, their styles evolved along with the rest of the cast, while remaining instantly recognisable. A visual shorthand for the audience who can tell when a character is rebelling, emotionally struggling or going through a state of euphoria simply by their choice of clothing. But even outside of the show, most of the cast continued to honour the show's dress codes, mirroring the aesthetic choices of their characters. This again, is why it is so confusing that the Far From Home team opts to make Ishaya, Rahila and Adufe aesthetically unrecognisable from their blue blood co-stars in their marketing.

This in my opinion was the lowest-hanging fruit for Far From Home, on and off the screen. There are rich historical and contemporary references unique to Nigeria that could have enriched the storytelling on Far From Home. Between 2014 and 2019, a whole generation of Nigerian youths defined themselves by an aesthetic, the ‘alte’ look. This look, which was a mash of several fashion eras, came first before the music and creative projects for which the era is now remembered for. The pandemic in 2020 reset the conversation, paving the way for the ‘rich auntie’ trend that launched a thousand boubou copies. Aso-ebi is part of our way of life and a very elaborate way in which class is enforced in Nigerian public gatherings; many Nigerian cultures have specific dress codes for royalty and nobility. 

So many references to incorporate yet all we got was a lousy Isale-Eko t-shirt.  

WHAT DO WE CARE ABOUT?

The marketing around Far From Home has been instructive on what matters to Nigerian showrunners and filmmakers. Many ‘firsts’ have been bandied around, most prominently, the ‘first Nigerian YA television series’. If we are being technical, that honour belongs to any of the dozens of weekly soaps that Tajudeen Adepetu executive produced in the late 90’s to early 2000’s that were driven by teenage leads and explored young adult dilemmas. More contemporarily, the youtube juggernaut Best Friends In the World and Ndani TV’s Schooled (where Emeka Nwagbaraocha also stars) have already explored in lurid detail, the fatalistic narcissism that heightens the liminal space that is adolescence. Why being the ‘first’ matters more than being the best of the crop (it isn’t) is still a mystery to me. 

Then, of course, the obsession with ‘ships’, a term borrowed from Wattpad culture, mutated from its clearly defined categorisation into a mongrel by Big Brother Nigeria’s fandom and grossly misappropriated here. Ships, by definition, are between fictional characters who aren’t already written to end up in a romance and are often employed as a way for readers to introduce complex, sexual backstories to the story arcs of unlikely characters. The propelling fantasy of a ‘ship’ is that both characters become consumed with desire for each other and express that desire through physical intimacy. Ships worked (only marginally) on Big Brother because of the parasocial nature of the show. But tweets like the one shipping Reggie and Zina (who are already a couple), and the one ‘shipping’ Oga Rambo and Angeli fit right in with the outsize imaginations of the smutty and deviant Wattpad crowd who popularised the term (MxM Werewolf MPreg any one) but definitely not with the very conservative and homophobic Nigerian audiences they are trying to woo. 

The most confusing marketing decision for me has been the bewildering demystification of all the characters on Far From Home. Mere weeks after the show went live, I have been reminded over and over that Ishaya Bello is actually friends with Derenle and Reggie, Adufe and Rahila are, in fact, ‘bad bitches’. The cast is one happy family, and everything that happened on Far From Home is ‘acting’. Tiktok after Tiktok, IG post after IG post goes up, showing the cast in different configurations, performing a camaraderie that completely contradicts the show's plot beats and emotional rivalries. I understand that there needs to be a flurry of activity because of the early mixed reactions and the need to prove to the commissioning bigwigs at Netflix that the show resonates online, but at no point are we allowed to sit with the show and make our own conclusions about the characters before we are jolted out of the world of the show and back into the brittle busyness of Nigerian celebrity culture. 

Altogether, these three seemingly disparate elements converge to a single point; spectacle. Spectacle informed the marketing of the show, as it does for many Nigerian productions that have come out since the Wedding Party launched the Nigerian blockbuster in 2016 because substance is always in short supply. 

WHO IS THE SHOW FOR ANYWAYS?

A common sentiment reflected in many reviews of Far From Home is that it felt unoriginal. I think this was a consensus among all the reviewers who gave the show a negative review and many positive reviewers. Unoriginal is not necessarily bad; the Netflix film ‘Do Revenge’ is a veritable mash of overt YA tropes that was critically received and much beloved by audiences. Primarily because it doesn’t hide its unoriginality, but instead leans into it, using the predictability of the tropes that it employs to trick its target audiences, young adult viewers who have been inundated with  YA tropes, into overlooking the apparent twist that was heavily foreshadowed in the first and second act. Far From Home is no ‘Do Revenge’, but it does beg the question, ‘who was this show made for anyways?’

The first mistake the showrunner (who has spoken at length about his inspiration for the show) makes is to assume that ‘millennial’ and ‘Gen-Z’ audiences are homogenous. And that is an understandable assumption because the showrunner and many people who worked on the show are products of a specific zeitgeist and operate within its parameters.

It is a common problem in many spheres of Nigerian life, this absolute faith in a zeitgeist. The stories we tell ourselves about these cataclysmic events are homogenised by confirmation bias, which is where the idea of a zeitgeist manifests. The access we have to media that confirms or contradicts what we believe about the events we have experienced shapes how we view the world and interact with each other. Nigeria exists as a country because the British were able to communicate in real-time to millions of West Africans that an arbitrary border is real, which isn’t very different from a fandom choosing to platform a celebrity because someone they hold in high regard makes an argument for it that aligns with communally held values. 

Having a cataclysmic event or series of events that everyone experiences simultaneously and processes differently has always been an essential tool in storytelling, especially when you are trying to sell the same story to diverse audiences. For Nigerians who came of age in the 1980s, the zeitgeist was the 1-2 whammy of President Shehu Shagari followed by General Muhammadu Buhari, and the sharp decline in economic fortunes and personal freedoms that followed the regime of the second. For Nigerians who came of age in the 1990s, it was Atlanta ‘96 and the artistic and athletic triumphs that unified a nation in the thrall of ruthless dictators. For Nigerian millennials who came of age in the 2000s, it was the democratising power of the internet and the power to reinvent ourselves. For Nigerian Gen-z’s, it was the cult of personality exemplified by the maladaptive parasocial relationships that have come to define their virtual lives. 

Understanding these pivotal events and how they awaken specific fundamental desires in those who experience them allows filmmakers and showrunners to focus on challenging or satisfying these subconscious desires no matter what the surface plot points or character arcs are.

The Favourite and Mean Girls are both essentially films about court intrigue and overthrowing monarchies, exploring how much dominance or submission a person can barter in a hierarchical relationship and still maintain some measure of neutral independence. 

As film media become more accessible, it becomes harder to tell an original story that has universal resonance, especially in film and television. The generation of Nigerians raised on NTA in the 1980s is vastly different from each generation that has followed. Millennial, Gen-z and Gen-Alpha Nigerians have been raised on a refined diet of global cinema and television, some unsubtle and played for shock or laughs, others niche and cerebral. In place of a zeitgeist, there is a singularity, an inexhaustible archive that can pull up almost every streamable show or film from the last 100 years. It is all available to them, and sometimes unavoidable as these shows transcend the niche genres they inhabit and the cosseted audiences they are initially created for and become embedded in popular culture. While they might not be able to articulate tropes or a directorial style, these viewers recognise them quite easily and can situate them within the larger discourse of cinema and television. This is partly why Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite caused a stir in global cinema and Hwang Dong-Hyuk’s Squid Game did the same for TV. Both took a familiar premise and told them to a new audience in a wholly original, terrifyingly excellent way. 

In contrast, Far From Home was positioned to Nigerians as a ‘first’, disregarding all the other projects in which the tropes it draws on had been successfully explored. It was the problem of the zeitgeist rearing its ugly head, the idea that the Gen-Z and millennial audiences who were encountering FFH for the first time were supposed to judge it as a the ‘first Nigerian Netflix YA Original’ rather than a continuation of the very expansive conversation filmmakers around the world have been having with tween and young adult audiences about adolescence.  It positions its heteronormative ships as revolutionary and tries to sell this to a generation where gender is deconstructed and sexuality is fluid. It asks them to disregard the plot contrivances or accept them as how this alternative Lagos resolves storylines, except there are nearly two decades worth of Young Adult novels, comics, films and tv shows set in every possible speculative timeline, exploring every possible permutation of teenage chaos, most with better resolutions.

Considering how heavily FFH borrows from all the YA shows and films that come before it and neuters everything that makes those tropes interesting, it would be fair to make an assumption of my own. The crux of the show’s problems is that it was created to appeal to a universal audience without understanding that said universal audience is tired of universal stories.

REWARD FOR HARD WORK IS MORE WORK

In Nigeria, there is a phenomenon that seems even more insidious than our world-famous corruption. It is the obsession with activity and the propensity to self-congratulate for hard work. 

I think it was no more evident than in the discourse around Far From Home. There was little talk about process or motivation, no reams and reams of edits or even a working script posted online for audiences to pore over and understand a little better the process behind the choices made on Far From Home. Instead, we had the familiar refrain of how long it took to write the show, how tricky it was to cast the leads, how long it took to post-produce, how hard every cast and crew member worked, how ungrateful we were to not acknowledge the near 3 years of tireless work that has gone into the show.  

Do you know who else talks like this about gratitude and sacrifice instead of milestones and results?

Nigerian politicians. 

As anyone who has worked in the civil service or in the employ of a Nigerian politician will tell you, no one works harder than a politician. It took a lot of hard work for Godwin Emefiele to churn out new currency notes (something the UK does on an average of 24  months) in a 6-month timeline. But the quality of the work, the integrity of the decision-making process and durability of the product negate all the ‘hard work’ that has been put in to make this ‘feat’ possible. Every player in Nollywood is hard-working, much like every politician, public official and special advisor in Nigeria is hard working. This hard work would carry weight if in both situations, it wasn’t only trotted out as a rebuttal to dissenting opinions. The results and final product do not reflect the hard work, and as such that hard work must be narrated to the audience, and the audience asked to believe what they are told, not what they can see with their eyes. 

Every country that has successfully addressed social dilemmas like poverty, technological decline and cultural dilution has done so by substituting activity with results and outlawing labour for its own sake. Every industry that has powered its stars into meteoric levels of success has succeeded by finding the thrust to break out of the orbit of monotonous mediocrity and chart its own path in the cosmos. 

If I want anything for Nollywood in 2023, it is for us to stop working hard. It clearly doesn’t produce results, at least not the ones that we so desperately want. It is time for us to start working smart, to extract the most value from the least amount of effort. Ema Edosio and Ifeoma Chukwugo do this brilliantly in Kasala and Diiche. Instead of throwing money and bodies at a problem, let us court the intellect of our vast intelligentsia and collaborate to sustainably solve these pesky problems. Let us relearn the fundamentals, of staging, of story, of motivation and desire. 

If all else fails and hard work is Nollywood’s last resort, then by Jove, show us, don't tell us.