Historical Fabulations and the ‘Potentially Queer’ in New Nollywood Epics

In the opening scene of the film Ẹlẹṣin Ọba, Odunlade Adekola, playing the titular king’s horseman, is seen stretched out on an elegant bamboo bed, adorned with raffia leaves and beautifully patterned adire. He is flanked on all sides by beautiful women, most of whom are only clad around their waists. They all reach for the king’s horseman, who reclines, basking in the excess of sensuous attention around him. Many who saw the film or who at least know Wole Soyinka’s original play, Death and the King’s Horseman, from which the film was adapted, would know that the scene was setting the stage for a story about the horseman’s lascivious greed and, in the climax of the story, his ultimate failure to perform his sacred duties. A second look at the scene, however, suggests a possibility of queer reading—a vision of group intimacy, bodies clustered together on the single bamboo bed, women leaning sensuously towards the horseman and in the process, against one another.