The Gods Must Be Crazy

While working on an index for this particular blog, I've been running across things I've not brought over from my earlier version. I'll be making a lot of amends for that throughout the month of April. And I'm thinking—if all goes well— the Index will be published in June (there'll be a link to it on the Main Page). There will be new things and new films this week.

 

This was written many years after the film's release, but, certainly after The Big Change in South Africa—negotiations to end apartheid occurred May 4, 1990 to April 27, 1994. So, the movie was made during the dark times and I reviewed it after. Doesn't make much difference as the issues of a white colonial patriarchy in power over an indigenous people seems to be a constant in human history...as is slavery. Damn it. Power dynamic and all. And as silly as the Afrikaners appear in The Gods Must Be Crazy (the title is a much better statement about class warfare than the film is), nobody gets off looking any good. If the tribes-people portrayed were given any more respect in the film, I suppose one could accuse the film of being patronizing...more than it already is. 

 

Anyway, not a great film, with the lowest of brows, although it was weirdly popular—enough to spawn sequels..

 

The Gods Must Be Crazy (Jamie Uys, 1980) Inelegantly filmed comedy that begins almost as a social documentary, then devolves into a slapstick fest with automatic weapons. The Gods Must Be Crazy has its semi-liberal, tentative heart in the right place (if patronizingly so, but at least it doesn't ignore the existence of indigenous people), but is inept in its execution and a bit desperate in its story-line, bringing running guerilla battles into a story that should have remained with its set-up: the encroachment of civilization (so-called) on indigenous land and the people using it.

Xin (N!xau) is a Sho, living in the Kalahari desert. A member of a tribe of hunter-gatherers,* they have (somewhat unbelievably) managed to escape any kind of contamination by industrialized society, other than the occasional plane flying over, which to the Sho are manifestations of "the god" who provides them life and food.

One day, "god" tosses a Coke bottle out of his winged chariot, which falls to the Earth and which the Sho see as a wonderful tool—multi-functional and beautifully elegant—that they then use in their day-to-day. But, as there's only one and many Sho, it leads to squabbling and fights that threaten the tribe's cohesion, so Xin (wisely, I think) determines that he will walk to the ends of the Earth to give it back to his gods.

The ends of the Earth are a long slog, and Xin inevitably confronts dim examples of his gods, in their rattle-trap conveyances and their cities and jails, arbitrary rules and disorganization and squabbles that make a Coke bottle seem like...garbage.

After a series of increasingly action-oriented situations, Xin accomplishes his goal and makes it back to his tribe, a little wiser to the ways of the gods and not having any of it. The End...until the four sequels happen.

This thing was a world-wide smash when it played around the world, and it's difficult to see why. Look, I dig the message on many levels, all well and good, but I watched in stupefied pity as the film became increasingly more awful on the way to its graceful conclusion, in much the same funk I watch the films of Ed Wood. It's one of those cases that match the phrase that graces the header of Jim Emerson's excellent "Scanners" blog** ("There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear." -- Daniel Dennett ). And The Gods Must Be Crazy is a bad argument...about bad arguments. There were charges of racism when the film came out and a couple nations even banned it, but I don't know if it's racism when everybody looks a little silly (As the whites are the most lame bunch of saps, I suppose you could make a case for "reverse racism" if you actually believe in that term, which, to me, seems like something you'd say in schoolyard bickering). I see the film as a missed opportunity; it could have been a lovely film, comedy or no, about "losing my religion," and the shattering of long-held beliefs—it is, of course, but it's not a "lovely film" by any stretch. It's like a Benny Hill sketch of that theme. All it needs a is a "Yakkety Sax" soundtrack.

K came back from her trip to South Africa, with a constant refrain escaping from her lips: "Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone!" That snippet of Pink Floyd elegantly encapsulated her feelings about what "civilization" has done (and is still doing) to "raise up" indigenous peoples to "improve themselves" in the name of God and Knowledge and Commerce. They'd survived centuries without it—why now? All the teachers haven't yet learned the lesson that what they are providing has only led to poverty and loss of a way of life that had been working, and never will again, making them dependent on an imposed system (Wow, I'm starting to sound dangerously conservative here!) they had previously never wanted...or needed. The teachers are providing solutions that don't work to a problem that they, themselves, created. When will they ever learn?

Next planet, I guess, huh?

In the meantime, I live two blocks from an "Indian Reservation" and a very large casino that rakes in the bucks with gambling, fatty buffet-food, nostalgic entertainment and cheap liquor. They've learned the lessons we taught them very well, and have turned them against us. Cochise, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse should be raising their bows in triumph. Now, that's comedy for ya.

* Truth is N!xau's tribe was living on subsistence from the South African government. 

 

** There was a link embedded here, but that very good blog has gone dark on the Internet. So many things have changed since I wrote this...but, I can't say the world has improved. Sad about that.