Twining Around Twins: The Theme of Twins in Folklore and Nigerian Cinema

The subject of twins is a fascinating area of study and has continued to reverberate in studies and research over the ages creating an age- long tradition and typology. The concept of twining is one of ambivalence, of polarities of things in co-operative antagonism yet uniting in external attacks. Twins appear in creation stories, folklores of various groups and races, in mythologies and now in cinema. There also exist folklore and myth of the spiritual twin - the Dioscuri, Romulus and Remus in a long legendary narrative which ends with Romulus carried up to the heavens by his father, Mars, and is worshipped as the god, Quirinus. Twins are associated with certain characteristics like abnormal behavior, evil, romance with the supernatural, distaste for societal vices and a semiotic symphony of benevolence and malevolence which sounds a duality of poles and a metaphor for opposing principles. The circumstances of birth, of environment and of human relationships determine conundrums and ambivalence of light and darkness exhibited by the twins. This paper explores the archetypal variants of twins - the re -unification, the scapegoat, the symmetry, the soul mate and the duality of perspectives, the rivalry of the self exhibited through the duality of twins as they exist in world cultures and mythologies, particularly Nigerian culture. The paper finally analyzes how the mythology of twins is grimly connected to the vicissitudes of daily life in Nigeria explored in Nollywood cinema, a fascinating transcript where narrative image coalesce with nature for enhanced understanding and sustainable development.