CONSTRUCTING CULTURAL MYTHS IN NIGERIAN MOVIE POSTERS: A BARTHESIAN ANALYSIS
Keywords:
Cultural myths, Nigerian movie posters, Roland Barthes’, semiotic theory, Visual communicationAbstract
Nigerian movie posters are more than promotional materials. They are cultural texts that communicate meanings, values, and ideologies through visual and linguistic signs. Drawing on Roland Barthes' semiotic theory, this study examines how selected Nigerian movie posters construct and naturalize cultural myths. A qualitative documentary design was adopted, with six posters (2020–2025) purposively selected from IMDb and The Movies TV Facebook page for their cultural relevance, thematic diversity, and popularity. The posters were analyzed at the levels of denotation, connotation, and myth. The findings reveal that Nigerian movie posters function as multimodal cultural texts that naturalize ideologies relating to ethnicity, marriage, leadership, religion, gender, and communal identity. Indigenous languages, costumes, color symbolism, character composition, facial expressions, and cultural artefacts construct Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa identities while negotiating tradition and modernity. The study concludes that Nollywood movie posters preserve, negotiate, and circulate cultural meanings, advancing semiotic scholarship on African visual culture. However, the small purposive sample limits the generalizability of the findings.
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