Director/Writer: Jamie Uys; Filmed: South Africa;
Cultural Influence: expression of the bushman evolving into the Urban life
Cultural Influence: expression of the bushman evolving into the Urban life
For this entry, I would like to focus on the beginning of the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy". This movie was shown to the class in two parts, the first without sound where we created our own story in our minds on what the movie is all about and who the characters were portraying. The second time, we watched the video with sound and my entire perspective changed. Through this blog entry, I will discuss anthropological concepts that we have learned thus far in the context of this movie.
Without sound, I noticed from the beginning that the location was out in the bush where there were lots of animals and then over time, the animals started to disappear and this native culture developed. With no sound, I was able to notice the small things and infer what they traditionally do like killing a cobra to use it for multiple necessities like food and tools. I noticed that unlike our culture, they wear little to no clothing. Once they have killed an animal, they bow their head and say something but I am poor at reading lips and I would rather not make assumptions. With sound was a whole other story; from the beginning, the narrator describes these indigenous people and how they have survived on little to nothing. With traditional ecological knowledge, the bushmen are able to survive in Botswana from natural resources such as snakes, trees, leaves. When the children were trying to dig the root out of the ground, an older bushman comes over to help and this showed representation of egalitarian when they share the resources amongst each other.
In my personal observation, I could only infer from the view that the setting could be in a savanna type environment. I noticed that the man was helping the children drink from the root and children were eating these drops that looked like polymers. By adding sound, I realized that those polymers were actually jube drops (I probably spelled that completely wrong). Once we discussed the movie as a class, I was learning so much more that made me rethink my perspective on our world. The way the narrator talked about how America has conformed to suit the poor country that we have built in so many words made me think: How accurate is that statement? I felt bad for these bush people because they would have to be very strategic in order to have a water type substance every morning but when I went back after reading my notes, I realized that they are satisfied in their life. They grew up living off the land and are content with the little things rather than most Americans who always want and are never complete. Don't get me wrong, these people still have their differences and do not spend all of their time together, it is like family relatives in a sense, you can only handle them in certain amounts of time. At least that is a good classification of my large amount of family members. But looking back on this movie, it opened my eyes to a whole new outlook on life and how we can be satisfied with small amounts however, we show our class through the amount of wants that we carry around.
Without sound, I noticed from the beginning that the location was out in the bush where there were lots of animals and then over time, the animals started to disappear and this native culture developed. With no sound, I was able to notice the small things and infer what they traditionally do like killing a cobra to use it for multiple necessities like food and tools. I noticed that unlike our culture, they wear little to no clothing. Once they have killed an animal, they bow their head and say something but I am poor at reading lips and I would rather not make assumptions. With sound was a whole other story; from the beginning, the narrator describes these indigenous people and how they have survived on little to nothing. With traditional ecological knowledge, the bushmen are able to survive in Botswana from natural resources such as snakes, trees, leaves. When the children were trying to dig the root out of the ground, an older bushman comes over to help and this showed representation of egalitarian when they share the resources amongst each other.
In my personal observation, I could only infer from the view that the setting could be in a savanna type environment. I noticed that the man was helping the children drink from the root and children were eating these drops that looked like polymers. By adding sound, I realized that those polymers were actually jube drops (I probably spelled that completely wrong). Once we discussed the movie as a class, I was learning so much more that made me rethink my perspective on our world. The way the narrator talked about how America has conformed to suit the poor country that we have built in so many words made me think: How accurate is that statement? I felt bad for these bush people because they would have to be very strategic in order to have a water type substance every morning but when I went back after reading my notes, I realized that they are satisfied in their life. They grew up living off the land and are content with the little things rather than most Americans who always want and are never complete. Don't get me wrong, these people still have their differences and do not spend all of their time together, it is like family relatives in a sense, you can only handle them in certain amounts of time. At least that is a good classification of my large amount of family members. But looking back on this movie, it opened my eyes to a whole new outlook on life and how we can be satisfied with small amounts however, we show our class through the amount of wants that we carry around.