I’m returning to our first REVIVAL film club pick of this year: Welcome II the Terrordome (Ngozi Onwurah, 1996). Onwurah’s Welcome II the Terrordome is the second film in my recent Black British watch series.

ALERT: (THOUGHT PROVOKING) SPOILERS BELOW.

The Code Continues…

There are many things that surprised me about Welcome II the Terrordome on my first watch. Surprisingly astute, in tune, synchronized. The story has a strong scaffold: a cinematic mirror image between Igbo Landing and the Transdean, or the Terrordome. So, I’m going to treat Terrordome’s story scaffold as the code, or at least a foundation of the code.

Welcome To the Terrordome …

Like Babymother, part of this code is music. A Film Club member pointed out to all of us back in February that Welcome II the Terrordome is likely informed by the Public Enemy song, “Welcome to the Terrordome” from the album Fear of a Black Planet (1990). I confirmed this when, after this most recent watch, we watched Criterion Channel’s interview with the director, Ngozi Onwurah, recounts how the idea for Welcome II the Terrordome came out of a weekend of rage (from a toothache) and listening to Public Enemy and N.W.A. to engage her rage.

American Influences

Another part of this code is a contention; a diasporic relation: American influences. Watching this with a Black British person has meant a surprising amount of discussion about American influences in Black British culture. According to them, “there was a rich moment of Black British cultural production and funding, then it just stopped and America came in.” When we discussed Public Enemy during film club, we didn’t descend into the consideration of why a Black American presence was central to this Black British film. I suppose it just made sense to me; even though I am a literature and culture scholar, and should be cognizant of U.S. cultural imperialism.

We also saw the American influence in the martial arts scenes, with Black denizens of the Terrordome preparing for self-defense towards the end of the film. We did wonder at that time whether this depiction reflected U.S. cultural influences or a moment of diasporic synchronicity where martial arts was being practiced at the same time by Black folx across the world because we all recognized the need to protect ourselves.

Igbo Landing

My American gaze also colored another major portion of the film: the recreation of Igbo Landing. The film opens with Igbo Landing, which took place on St. Simon’s Island, one of South Carolina’s sea islands. During film club we discussed why in the world this myth - so core and specific - to Black America, is the opening of this Black British Film? At that time I wondered whether it was because Black American myth was also core to Black British culture. It must have been, right? Black America, I thought, for better or worse, is at the center of our Black diasporic culture.

Ngozi Onwurah corrects my American gaze in the same interview. For her, Igbo Landing was a story “[she] brought with her back from Nigeria”. I never occurred to me that this story would be known, let alone remembered, by Igbo in Nigeria. How had the story travelled? Had someone survived? In this case, the story survived long enough to be passed on to Onwurah, who received it via her birth and early childhood in an Igbo-British Father and a white British mother.

And perhaps it is because of her Igbo heritage and lived experience why Onwurah chose to experiment with this myth. Onwurah’s depiction of this myth is the result of her growing up with the story and her conversations with Black Americans about the story. She recounts that for the Black Americans she spoke to, Igbo Landing wasn’t a liberation. In fact, Igbo Landing shepherded the survivors into dystopia. (I agree.)

Igbo Landing is Alive

One of my favorite components of the film is the multiple layers mirroring - how Onwurah sees the mirroring of the story through to the film’s characters. None of the survivors from the film’s Igbo Landing opening are heroes (well, not really). They are fully engaged in the dystopic life of the Terrordome, from drug dealing and enforcement to police brutality and social disorder.

Interracial Love? Interracial Desire?

It is the actions of one of the Igbo Landing survivors, Spike, which sparks the racial confrontation which leads to the film’s multiple tragic endings. Curiously, disappointingly, but heartachingly too familiar, it is Spike’s relationship with the mother of his soon to be born child, Jodie. Jodie is a white woman character who watches Igbo Landing from the shore alongside her husband, a white laborer.

The products of interracial relationships - the children - are tragic figures. Both Spike and Jodie’s child, and Spike’s sister Chrissy, who is an addict who gets her drugs from her own brother. At film club we discussed what it means for interraciality to be conceived of and captured in this way by a director of mixed race.

…The Code Continues…

I learned that so much of the film is likely very familiar for Black British people. Not in a sense way, like it is for me as a Black person, but in that they recognized actual events in each scene. Starting with Spike and Jodie’s relationship. They assume it is a reference to the interracial couple at the center of the Notting Hill riots. So the code continues in this way from Babymother to Terrordome. What’s so cool about this is a Black British lineage is encoded in the film, perhaps only in a way in which Black British people can decode this. It de-centers Black America, possibly putting us back in place, on something more of an equal footing with other parts of the diaspora. Onwurah confirms their suspicions - “everything in the film actually happened”.

Encoding Motherhood

Another continuation in the code is motherhood. There are three generations in this film. The grandmother holds down the homes, peeling yams to prepare meals, calming her two younger generations, safekeeping the money. She is calm and collected, and sees clearly. Sees Jodie clearly, and sees her own children clearly as well.

Jodie and Spike interracial relationship leads to the tragic dénouement of which revolves around Angela’s mothering of her children, particularly Hector. Onwurah uses Black motherhood here, she recounts, as an argument for police abolition. She says that, at the time she didn’t have a label for what she was calling for; the film was what she could offer.

Motherhood is so deeply embedded in Terrordome that the films immediately changes once Angela discovers Hector. Sonically, musically, in an embodied way - the performances, even how the performers move.

What’s even more groovy is that each time we’ve watched Suzette Llewellyn (also in Babymother) for film club she’s playing a super down mother.

Encoding Masculinity

Terrordome also makes strong statements on Black masculinity. From the “N***** boy” / Uncle Tom in the Igbo Landing beginning to the Black criminal masculinity of the Terrordome and the Black fatherhood present throughout. Hector emulates his father’s Black criminal masculinity in the Terrordome, and it is, in turn, his father who must carry Hector at the head of his procession. Note that it is Hector’s father who carries his lifeless body while it is his mother, Angela, who takes revenge.

But there are also questions within those statements on masculinity. How the men fight the police while the womxn fight directly for their children. How masculinity succumbs to interracial desire while none of the Black women are in relationships, or even express any interests in any of the white male characters. How Angela insists on educating her children while their Father finds it a waste.

Perhaps taken together we get this loop from Igbo Landing to Igbo Rising rather than a straightforwardly messianic liberation.

Igbo Rising

The film ends on Igbo Rising, a part of the myth which I’ve never heard of. Have y’all? Is this an aspect of the myth only remember outside of Black America? But it seems to me, following the plot of Terrordome, that Igbo Rising is not transcendance. But I’m also not sure what it is. It just seems to be… elsewhere. What might Igbo Rising be for you?