The futility of the Film Board’s outrage at Netflix

America has managed to solidly convince us that anyone who flies over the blue Atlantic will land in the Home of the Brave.

They will immediately get an excellent job and live the Dream, that dream that music videos tell us about, of girls twerking on street corners and blowing money fast.

When you land there and have to get a minimum wage job at McDonald's, or pack food in a supermarket for the first three or four years of your stay, you feel you have to hide from your relatives back home as you save enough money for your annual trip, so that you look the part of someone who has gone majuu.

America isn't kind to black people. One could argue that the systems in place effectively commit legal genocide every week, a systematic deletion of the black race with every shooting, every killing and every poisoned water scandal.  If Al-Shabaab did that, it would be called terrorism, no?

One could argue that the son of our soil (yes, I will claim him, as he has himself) has arguably done the impossible  for America over his two terms, lifting up their economy and their mindset as a nation in spite of the state they were in after George W. Bush left office.

Yet he still faces flak from all sides for every decision, even good ones. The latest iteration of this unkindness to black people has been the absolute refusal by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to acknowledge actors of colour in this year's Oscar nominations.

CYBERCRIME UNIT

Black Hollywood is in a slight uproar about it, about whether to boycott watching or attending the Oscars. Our very own Lupita Nyong'o released a statement expressing her disappointment.

I mean, the host of the Oscars, Chris Rock, is black. Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the President of the Academy, is a black woman. Black people have been in several great movies this year, such as Idris Elba who is the epitome of perfect misguided guerrilla creep in Beasts of No Nation.

Perhaps America, as a nation, needs to learn to let go of the American Dream. America doesn't like you, and America, it seems, is not where it’s at any more. Why do you think all these franchises are popping up? Subway, KFC, and more recently, Netflix, which apparently the Kenya Film Classification Board is trying to regulate.

Now, I'm curious about the Oscars because I am a scriptwriter and enjoy that storytelling medium, but this regulation that the KFCB is suddenly obsessed with also raises questions.

From my brief interactions with the police when trying to get a number blocked or tracking down a stalker or dealing with Internet bullying, or even getting footage for a crime, it would appear that our force is ill-equipped to handle cybercrime.

One officer didn't know basic Word functions to use, such as CTRL+F, when searching through a document.

One can argue that this may not necessarily be the force's fault, because of a distinct lack of resources, but still. Our cybercrime units do not have enough computers, much less the capacity to track down simple things like IP addresses.

RACY CHANNELS

Are they also planning to regulate pornography? That is rampant, if statistics on what Kenyans look up on Google are anything to go by. Why does the KFCB think that Kenyans cannot get this salacious material outside Netflix?

In the statement the KFCB released, it said its main source of discomfort is the ratings for 13 years that Netflix issues for films that contain violence, or nudity, or strong language. Yet pay television networks have entire channels dedicated to racy programming, all day.

If the KFCB truly wishes to use its authority to regulate the “creation, broadcast, possession, distribution and exhibition of audio-visual content in the country”, then how come Fifty Shades of Grey and The Wolf of Wall Street are the only movies they have come out to publicly ban in the recent past?

Fifty Shades was an awful movie anyway, made from a badly written book that you could still get in the bookstore.

There are much bigger issues on the film and TV scene than Internet TV, such as why Kenyan film-makers are still not being paid what they should be by local stations, regardless of the laws in place about local content percentages.

New talent is not being sourced. Funds that support filmmakers, it turns out, come from without, but local funding can hardly ever be found.

The film board got its publicity, and left us relying on the perpetuators of the Dream for opportunity.

Twitter: @AbigailArunga

Editor's Note: The article has been updated to clarify the scarcity of support for local filmmakers.