The bad belle model: introducing a new model for understanding disability in Nigerian cinema and culture

This paper is part of a five-year research into disability representation in Nollywood and Nigerian culture. While analysing data for the research, a recurrent way for representing and understanding disability was discovered called the bad belle model. The term bad belle model is used to describe views that disabled people are innocent victims of other people’s malice. Thus, this paper analyses Nollywood films and focus group data with disabled people in Nigeria to identify how the bad belle model manifests and its cultural underpinning as a way of extending understanding about the various ableist positions within society as well as con-tribute to the theorisation of disability shame. Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry, is the second largest cinema in the world according to number of productions. The industry is also nestled against Nigerian cultures which contribute toits ideological positions as much as Nollywood contributes to audience perception of disabilities.