In 1973, author and director Ousmane Sembène published Xala, a searing, polyvalent satire on post-independence Senegal, interrogating the shifting interpretations of tradition and postcolonial modernity, the corruption of new governing bodies, and the inherent divides that are further deepened by varying expectations of a liberated future. Two years later, he would direct the film of the same name, portraying the arrogant businessman El Hadji Abdoukader Beye, who experiences a bout of incurable erectile dysfunction on the eve of his third wedding. Juxtaposing multiple sociopolitical positions—from the rich to the poor, the radicalised to the subservient—the two works target the brute alienations brought on by occupation, resulting in an incisive condemnation against social inequality. In this edition of Asymptote at the Movies, we take a look at the ways the text and the film play against one another, coming together and diverting against the same incendiary narrative.
Vincent Hostak (VH): Perhaps aware that Xala as a novel would reach a global audience, Ousmane Sembène seems to go out of his way to frame cultural references with parenthetical asides in service to the global reader; they punctuate the text with explanations of Africanity, Muslim customs, traditions of polygamy, and idiomatic language. In the film, these textual remarks are translated with a specialised cinematic grammar, using numerous audio and visual cues to satirise the state of many in the “new Africa.” Early in the film, the “Businessman’s Group,” as they are known in the text, are seen arriving only in an extreme close-up of their European shoes. Synchronously and wryly during this collection of scenes, African identity is reinforced with the audible chants of griots, trilling ululations, and Mbalax-style band music. Statements are coded into image, sound, costume design, if not direct dialogue, and through them, the viewer learns that colonial behaviors are stubborn and seemingly unerasable, even as the Business Group make a rite of casting out the art and properties of the former white leadership on the steps of the chamber.
As sure as El Hadji thinks he is “cursed” with the titular impotence of “xala,” he and his fellow citizens of a newly free Senegal are cursed by the remnants of colonialism. In the film, this is coded through European dress among the tuxedo-clad men (while women characters are more traditionally dressed), the protagonist’s copious gifts to his third wife, and an air of acquired indifference—transmitted in gestures and facial expressions of the actors. Only the beggars, a servant class, and the film’s women are dressed in apparel that indicates authentic origins and culture.
As original as Sembène is, I think certain contemporaneous satiric films may have influenced his choices, and I find it unavoidable to cite the work of another filmmaker with a revolutionary spirit: Luis Buñuel. Especially poignant in this regard is the black comedy, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. It similarly portrays callous, regional aristocrats in various comic visual tableaux (including, famously, recurring scenes of the self-important protagonists briskly walking the countryside, accompanied by close-ups of their gestures of indignation). It also recounts a party ending with a violent act, staged by complainants, and which results in the execution of the insufferable principals. Sembène echoes the latter with less explicit violence in the surprising ending of Xala, in which El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye and his family are sentenced to a ritual humiliation by the city’s beggars.
Nestor Gomez (NG): In a 1974 interview with the Tunisian film critic Tahar Cheriaa, Sembène shared that he intended his film not only for Senegal but for the entire Third World. Xala is an allegory to cultivate awareness about the bourgeoisie, a new group of individuals rising to power in African society, and the title of both the film and the novel is meant to highlight the fact that this bourgeoisie is impotent and unable to create anything meaningful.
I agree that a large theme of these works is the question and confusion around identity. Sembène is right to intend this narrative as something that speaks to the Third World over all because each country has its own tale of independence, but still struggles under the yoke of its colonised past. In Xala, this colonised identity is juxtaposed with Wolof marriage customs, which stirs a palpable tension in the main character, El Hadji, and his stricken xala.
It must be noted that xala is a temporary condition that, according to Sembène, will go away on its own. However, El Hadji seeks every possible cure for his xala, as if the condition could be healed by anything non-indigenous.
I’m drawn to what you describe, Vincent, about how Sembène translated his descriptions from the novel and adapted them to film—specifically that the African identity is “reinforced with audible chants from griots.” I wonder if Sembène intentionally played the role of griot for his film—an oral chronicler of history in West African cultures. In the role of griot, Sembène composes a holistic image of identity with music, instruments, singing, and dancing that create a representation of Senegal and Africa as distinct from colonial occupation. There is special attention devoted to this throughout the film, in which Sembène utilises European cinematographic techniques he learned during his time in the Soviet Union to mark key moments in the story for El Hadji. There is an especially long scene at the beginning of the film portraying the songs, instruments, and people native to Senegal. This kind of portrayal was unheard of in European cinematography, which focused more on the distinction and superiority of European aesthetics over indigenous ones.
René Esaú Sánchez (RES): I would like to start by adding something to what Vincent said. I made the questionable decision of watching the movie first, but knowing that Xala was not Sembène’s first written work to be adapted into a movie, I later tried to see if the novel was written in a more cinematographic style—and I think it is: the author often relies on descriptive narration, and his comments on El Hadji’s background, for example, feel like a footnote or an excerpt from a character bible. In this sense, it is true that both his novel and movie have a sympathetic language. This makes me wonder if he wrote the book with a movie in mind, as cinema was his way to reach wider audiences.
Now, to compare both the novel and movie to other media, the story reminded me of the satirical cartoons published in journals and newspapers, in which artists usually criticise political performance through visual metaphors. In this case, El Hadji’s impotence can be understood as his inability to connect with his own people. I believe the satirical cue can also be seen in the categorical and absurd differences between the Businessmen and the common people (i.e. the fancy European suits compared to the traditional clothing). As a matter of fact, satire is probably the most common approach for a fictional and critical story related to politicians, royals, and the bourgeoisie. Vincent already pointed out Buñuel, but contemporary films like The Favourite or The Triangle of Sadness also rely on this. And, as he also mentioned, there can be drama within satire. For me, drama is shown through violence: both endings of the novel and the film are overwhelming and violent.
Finally, I believe that humour is a tool that allows us to both talk and not talk about something. In other words, when we make fun of something (especially politics), we participate in the conversation without positioning ourselves clearly. With this, I would like to delve into Sembène’s position on identity: should the new Africa keep its colonizers’ culture? Should it embrace its traditions and overthrow what Europeans taught them? I think Sembène suggests mutual trust, which is emblematized in the way that El Hadji can only be helped by those he has handicapped. But, as Néstor mentioned, we all have our own tale of independence where we struggle with the past, the otherness, our desires, and our future.
Vincent Hostak (VH): I appreciate René’s observations that Xala may have been crafted with consideration to achieving a cinematographic style. I’m not sure if I can prescribe whether the novel and film should be digested in any specific sequence, but it’s reasonable to speculate that Sembène’s first work in cinema informed his approach to prose. Perhaps, given the timeline of his undertakings in both art forms, it would be more accurate to say these creative processes may have informed each other—that they were generative. It seems to me that it was practical for him to consider textual and filmic renditions of his work almost simultaneously.
By the time he published Xala in 1973, he had already released three film adaptations of his own work. Two years later, he entered the film adaptation to the Moscow Film Festival, and as such, there seems to be very little daylight between both creative endeavors. I’m imagining those revisions and screenings along the film’s journey at a time when this involved hand cutting film workprints, processing and rendering release prints.
But getting back to the cues in the text, having both read the novel and watched the film, the two now live as somewhat of a singular work in my imagination. Roughly the first third of the novel in English translation contains the greatest concentration of elements I’d call mise-en-scène, including details of Senegalese social-life and the political climate. There was much to cover—a recent past dominated by French colonial systems, which were also ongoing in reaching pre-colonial Senegalese culture. While that culture had been suppressed, it can be heard in the film through expressions in the Wolof language alongside the French dialogue. It’s an incredibly complex concoction: a novel written in French with examples of Wolof language and meanings, later translated to English and other languages, then a near concurrent film adaptation set in a moment that can hardly even be expressed as a “post-independence” Senegal.
All can be experienced in the film very efficiently, of course. I should remark that there is beautiful prose in the first third of the novel, but more that the text seems to move markedly toward inward dialogue by about page forty, coincident with El Hadji’s anticipated matrimonial intimacy with N’Gone. This is when, in my reading, intimate descriptions of the characters’ states of mind enter the story. In the novel, we experience El Hadji’s growing despair leading up to the wedding night as if we are in his own body. Both physiologically and psychologically we feel his despair and shock as he encounters what we’d probably now call male fragility:
He perspired. He, the stallion who usually flung himself upon women, was like pulp. Regret and anger filled him. His body was taken over by bitterness. He felt the full extent of the seriousness of his predicament as a wounded male and was bewildered by it.
I connect with Nestor’s recognition of Sembène making this work a gift to the whole of “third worlds.” Each nation, region, and community experience tensions associated with independence from colonial rule as they reclaim governmental and social control of their countries and their destinies. They continue to be exploited by legacies of colonial rule, not the least of which comes from educational systems put in place by colonists, which Sembène experienced directly. These are expressed in Xala most critically by Sembène, as he personally witnessed his fellow citizens form clones of the bourgeoisie.
Nestor Gomez (NG): I’m curious about two insights you gave, René. First, that El Hadji’s xala is his inability to connect with his fellow Senegalese. Second, that El Hadji’s xala can be helped by those he has harmed. My first impression is that this looks like a paradox. El Hadji is separated from his people by his position, status, and ambition, but also is quick to seek aid from his people when it’s in his best interest. The beginning of both the novel and the film marks the independence of Senegal from colonial control, which is a cause for celebration among the people, and an opportunity for new ambitious ideas to finally take hold in the vacant seats of power. Sembène chooses this moment as the xala of the story. Turns out, the newfound independence is a travesty. The Senegalese entering the vacant seats of the Chamber of Commerce do nothing better than their colonial predecessors and enact no change; they’ve usurped the seats of power by fooling the people into supporting their rise. In an interview, Sembène goes as far to say that they are not even an offspring of the people. This is a common theme in third-world countries: politicians with beautiful promises for the people and the nation who, once elected, are just as ineffective and disinterested in the common good as the previous political candidates that came before them. Sembène calls these types of people the emerging bourgeoisie. In the case of Xala, they are the parasitic organisms that Africa must contend with and fight against.
Back to René’s questions on identity, I also wonder how El Hadji, a member of this emerging bourgeoisie, can reconnect with the people once more. Also, how can the people heal El Hadji’s xala. Sembène’s use of the word “bourgeoisie” makes me think of Marxist philosophy, and in the novel and the film, the bourgeoisie also make me think of capitalism: the European business suits, the Mercedes vehicles, the disgust when looking at the local beggars.
This tussle between European and indigenous, coloniser and the people, rich and poor is the setting upon which the novel and film are composed. Vincent, you point to the building anticipation of the matrimonial consummation between El Hadji and N’Gone. Another tension here is the one between man and women in this context—not only in Wolof tradition, but also parallel with the newfound independence of Senegal and Africa. In the build-up to the consummation, it is clear to see that El Hadji has the power and voice to dominate the bond he has with N’Gone. N’Gone is considerably younger than El Hadji and, I believe, had just reached the age where she could be legally married. While she may not have had a voice herself in this coupling, it is N’Gone’s paternal aunt, Yay Bineta, who has the most powerful voice that vexes and frustrates El Hadji. I wonder what you all make of that relational tension between those characters and its implications in both the novel and the film.
René Esaú Sánchez (RES): I would like to start with that last comment of yours, Néstor. I wanted to talk about the friction between men and women, and, overall, the feminine role in both the book and the movie. I just was not sure how to approach it. I mentioned earlier that drama appears in Xala through violence, and one of the first violent scenes is when El Hadji slaps his oldest daughter, Rama. I first interpreted this action as a disapproval of women’s independence, as he even tells her, “You can be a revolutionary at the university or in the street but not in my house.” This also plays with Néstor’s idea of paradox: El Hadji represents the new and independent Senegal, but can’t go beyond polygamy and denies his daughter’s independence. It is also interesting to understand this in a political context.
In this sense, it is odd that El Hadji has this feeling of power and knowledge over women. He denies Yay Bineta’s ritual with a sense of superiority, believing he already knows how to fulfill his marital duties since he has married twice. But after failing, when his xala appears, he even blames his first two wives for the curse. As with many other feelings like distrust, this relation to women may stem from fear: the fear of losing power. This trait, by the way, is something many third-world leaders and populists share; it is the reason behind hate and polarisation. Now, the relationship between El Hadji’s first two wives is quite interesting as well, and I would like to know your opinions.
Vincent mentioned something that I had not considered but is quite true: there is a certain fragility behind El Hadji’s xala, a type of shame that shatters his masculinity. Combined with that fear I mentioned before, I think we can have an interesting picture of our protagonist, both as a husband and as a businessman: a man who likes commodities, a man of traditional values, and a man who, at the first moment of failure, blames others and seeks help. Considering what both Vincent and Néstor mentioned about speaking through a visual European language, it almost feels like a way of saying, “Look at the crisis you left us, look at the conflict of our men and women.”
Vincent Hostak (VH): You’ve both described well the power imbalance we witness in both the text and film adaptations, and it is apparent in many manifestations: the newly wealthy and most empowered over a servile class and the community of the afflicted (“beggars”); men over women; and the dominance of the “middleman” in business transactions, assuming both roles of buyer and seller. Most of these behaviors seem to be strongly charged by ambitions that have evolved into obsession, reinforced by the feudal education system and dominant European influences. It is also criticised in the institution of polygamy. Sembène describes explicitly that El Hadji wouldn’t rest in one stable state of empowerment and that he must take a third wife to raise “him to the rank of traditional notability.”
René pointed to the moment early in the film and text where Rama, the eldest daughter, is introduced. She is a powerful character and I imagine one which Sembène may have identified with most fully. She is pivotal in advancing dramatic tension, yet her appearances are few. A powerful critic of the institution of polygamy and the subjugation of women, she has also participated in actions to advance the liberation of West Africans. We are invited into this scene as an observer/ listener of a conversation that Rama has with the “first wife” Adja Awa Astou. It is at a scene of two women who are equal to one another in the power dynamic, engaging in a debate over the wedding. Rama says she won’t attend in protest over enforced polygamy, and it is a subject over which they essentially agree, but Adja Awa Astou expresses that she must observe the traditions to maintain her property and her deportment among women in the community. As El Hadji enters the scene, Sembène gives him words which efficiently carry the weight of his disdain for Rama’s acquired sense of agency: “Still with your language transcriptions.” He is responding to her greeting, which I assume is in the Wolof language. The verbal sparring devolves into a violent action from El Hadji, as René noted, when Rama maintains her position against the marriage and polygamy.
I responded to this scene in the film with immense respect for its intimacy and the free-flowing dialogue between the women—until El Hadji enters the room. To me it felt virtually unmoderated by the male gaze, which was apparent in films from Hollywood at this time, even as scripts purported to present liberated women characters. This is to say, these women signify meaning without their specific relationship to male characters; and the power dynamic is upset when El Hadji makes his entrance.
I think this early scene, flanked with the final scene, is a reasonable place to begin a summation. It is immensely powerful that the triptych of Rama, Adja Awa Astou, and El Hadji are in the final scene in the novel and film. The women sensibly attempt to negotiate a peaceful conclusion with the “beggars” (one that would not involve the ritual hazing of El Hadji). They threaten to call the police, whom they waved off initially, to return to restore order. But there is no order in this new environment, and one beggar acknowledges that prison is no threat because they would be better off with food and shelter. In one moment in the novel, Rama repeats the offence of her father and strikes a beggar who insists she must spit on her father. It’s the legacy of forceful indignation and the refrain of the vengeance cycle.
Nestor Gomez (NG): Regarding René’s point on violence and the friction between men and women, violence can be seen as that tension between two sides. It could be tensions between men and women, revolution and tradition, independence and colonialism, to name a few ideas. This dynamic between El Hadji and his eldest daughter, Rama, is compelling in that both are in a similar position of privilege. El Hadji is a part of the new ruling class of Senegalese who run the country but are also wealthy because of their connection to European resources. Rama is the eldest daughter of El Hadji’s first wife, Adja Awa Astou, and is perhaps the boldest and most tenacious woman in Xala besides Yay Bineta and Oumi N’Doye. However, Rama’s position and status is due to her being born and raised as El Hadji and Adja Awa Astou’s daughter in a house of privilege, status, and resources provided by El Hadji. All roads lead to foreign influence, to colonialism, to France—the very country that Senegal had just declared independence from. The French may be gone but their influence on the people, especially the leaders, remains.
I agree with you, René, that El Hadji fears losing his power, status, and influence. Perhaps his sense of superiority over women has to do with his roles as man and as husband within Wolof marriage customs. As a man and husband, El Hadji is required to be able to provide for his wives, and this ability to do so is proof to the community that El Hadji has power and means. The more wives he has, the more his status and influence increase. Echoing Vincent’s remark about El Hadji’s restlessness with a stable state of empowerment, acquiring a third wife was a means for El Hadji to increase his status, which is part of the reason why he pursued N’Gone as his third wife. This is also the reason why N’Gone’s family approved her marriage to El Hadji, because he displayed all the markers of a successful man and provider by Wolof standards. When xala afflicted El Hadji on the night of consummation, his status as provider was in jeopardy. In Wolof marriage customs, if a man is unable to provide and care for his wives and his family, then they are all in jeopardy of their way of life, even if the wives are able to find other means to live. The structure of marriage in this case is patriarchal, and if the man fails, his family fails with him. The ending of Xala is the metaphorical epitome of this failure.
I love the observation you made, Vincent, how the male gaze felt unmoderated when interrupting the modest domestic interaction between the women. I think there’s also a tension here between bare male lust and the deference to the patriarchal head of the family. One is base, predatory, and Western (something Vincent remarked as Hollywood-like), while the other is dutiful, orthodox, and indigenous (based in Wolof family structure). El Hadji straddles these two tensions in his relations to women in Xala and bears the heavy consequences when he is unable to meet the standards for either. El Hadji’s two wives could also represent each opposite: Adja Awa Astou, the dutiful wife who adheres to Wolof customs and employs marriage-bound practices to compel El Hadji, and Oumi N’Doye, who relies on her beauty and knowledge of Western trends to sway favor with El Hadji. Both wives at one point acknowledge that the addition of N’Gone as a third wife would threaten the balance between the wives.
In the final scene where Rama and Adja attempt to reason with the beggars, it is especially tragic that nothing they do can fend off the beggars’ demands and advances. In a sense, it’s as if no new world order and security can protect El Hadji’s family from the beggars—the people of the country. It is upon the people that El Hadji’s family has built their status, despite El Hadji’s wealth from foreign sources. However, there is a price for treating one’s people with disdain, disgust, and neglect. This is the cause for El Hadji’s affliction of xala.
René Esaú Sánchez (RES): I would like to conclude this fruitful dialogue with some reflections that have emerged from what has been said. It seems to me that throughout our comments, the tension between two cultures and two ways of life—the Western and the Senegalese—is perpetually present. Néstor hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that “El Hadji is unable to meet the standards for either,” because as the protagonist, he embodies the intention (and perhaps the misfortune) of an entire people seeking to find their identity. His impotence, his xala, is a metaphor for the inability of the new Senegalese government to offer a stable and distinct economy. In this sense, I return to what Vincent said a few comments ago: that this impotence is treated with a certain type of sensitivity and fragility; it is not an object of ridicule but is perceived with an honest and transparent shame. It is a peculiar choice for a work that is generally satirical.
This leads me to think about the place of the reader or spectator: are we witnesses, or do we intrude into the lives of these characters? I think that Sembène treats us as witnesses—not of simple physical and sexual impotence, but of the cultural odyssey experienced by all countries that have been colonised or have lived under the rule of other nations. After independence, there remains an itinerancy, an incompleteness that is reflected in our ways of life. This happens, perhaps, because we are unable to capture the essence of both the external and the internal; in other words, we either want to be like the colonisers or to be fully traditional and indigenous, but neither is possible for us. Xala presents this almost ontological discordance, in which the essence of a culture is precisely its accidental nature, the intermediate, the unfinished. And the tension, as Néstor also pointed out, is even present in El Hadji’s first two wives: they are a metaphor for two cultures that are able to recognise and understand what binds them.
After revisiting these comments and the work itself several times, what Vincent mentioned at the beginning becomes very clear: both works coexist in the mind as one. Their narrative “sympathy,” coupled with the fact that Sembène created both, forms a multimedia, almost experimental object. There too lies the itinerancy, the ontological accident, the midpoint between two things that never quite become something distinct. But what a message it leaves.
Vincent Hostak is a writer & media producer living near the Front Range of Colorado. His poetry has been published in the journals Sonder/Midwest, the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, the Texas Poetry Assignment, the anthology Lone Star Poetry: Championing Texas Verse, Community, and Hunger Relief (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2023), and the forthcoming The Senior Class: 100 Poets on Aging (2024, Lamar University Literary Press). He shepherded the physical production of a slate of independent feature films at the University of Texas at Austin through the unique public/private framework of the UT Film Institute. He produces Crossings: The Refugee Experience in America (podcast) and The Phantom Script (a podcast on contemporary poetry). He joined the Asymptote team in 2024 as Podcast Editor.
René Esaú Sánchez is a journalist, poet, and translator currently based in Mexico City. He writes about politics and culture for Vértigo, a weekly magazine by major media company TV Azteca; and has collaborated with other publications such as Periódico de Poesía, the Trinity Journal of Literary Translation, and Reflexiones Marginales. Academically, he has collaborated with the Centre d’études sur la pensée antique “kairos kai logos”, a French research institute for Classics; and the Institute for Philological Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He joined Asymptote Journal in 2023 as Editor-at-Large for Mexico and is currently working on his first poetry book.
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