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This is sad...
...I finally opened my file for The Pilgrimage of Ian St. Ritz, only to find that many of the scenes I've sketched out for this story -- were apparently only sketched out in my head. I could've sworn I'd written some of this stuff down somewhere, but nooooo....
Anyway I worked on it for a bit, but dunno if I'll have a completed second scene ready for Saturday.
Last night I bought The Gods Must Be Crazy on dvd and watched it. I know I haven't seen it since it was in the theaters, but I had no idea that it originally released in 1980. Has it really been that long?
Anyway I was thinking as I watched it that I wanted to do some research on the bushmen and where they live, because the movie paints them as a simple people who live in a desert paradise, have never had contact with the outside world, have no concept of property or conflict, always have plenty to eat because they're so clever at adapting to their harsh environment, etc. etc. Sort of the classic "noble, innocent primitive" who is completely uncorrupted by the outside world. All of this seemed a bit ludicrous of course, although the movie plot kind of hinges on this whole idea, patronizing as it is. The thing that especially got to me was this idea that their desert doesn't even have any rocks, that they'd never seen anything harder than bone or wood, and that the coke bottle which is the maguffin of the movie is therefore the most amazing tool they've ever encountered.
After the movie was over, however, I watched a companion documentary that was about the real bushman actor in the movie and his people. The first part was kind of sad -- the movie maker says he was enchanted by the bushmen of the movie and their idylic desert landscape and life, and wanted to see it for himself. It didn't exist, of course, but he met the bushmen and G'qao (this is how they spelled his name in the subtitles of the documentary, elsewhere I've seen it spelled very differenty), the star of the movie. He did this around 1990, ten years after the film. These people weren't naked savages, they were dirt-poor natives dressed in filthy tee shirts and other western clothing. They didn't survive by cleverly collecting dew and drawing liquid from squeezing plants, they got liquid nourishment by milking their cows. They lived in junky huts and were slowly dying of starvation, something that G'qao complained about. They were a pretty miserable people.
So much for the movie's portrayal of them. G'qao explained that he'd been working as a gardener for someone involved with the movie when they picked him to play in it. The director of the documentary rather stupidly asked if G'qao had known was a movie was (he was apparently having a hard time letting go of his ideal of the noble, isolated bushmen). Rather than answer the question directly, G'qao explained that he thought the movie would be a good way to show the rest of the world what his people were like and maybe help his people out, but that the director of the movie had other ideas and wanted him to dress up in skins like the bushman of a bygone era. At first he didn't want to do this -- it seemed like lying to him, but they talked him into it and he went along with it.
Luckily the documentary doesn't stop there. More than ten years later the film maker traveled to the bushmen again. This time he was part of a mission to bring solar panels and computers to the local schoolhouse. In the intervening ten years the government of Namibia had decided that all children required education, and had built schools where the bushmen learned to read and write in both their own language and in English, the official language of the country. At this poing G'qao's people are doing much, much better, and it's fun to see how the children, despite never having seen a computer before, figure things out as easily as any kid anywhere in the rest of the world would. And the community leaders make speaches about how exciting it is to have computers and to be connected to the rest of the world -- their children have never had any access to the internet, or to anything like a real library.
The film maker tracks down G'qao again and shows him the footage he'd taken on his last visit, which G'qao says makes him both happy and sad (many of his friends and his wife from back then were now dead). He travels to the school (he didn't live in the same area anymore) and they watch the film The Gods Must Be Crazy, and laugh at it (it's still quite funny), and G'qao talks to them about his experiences in making the film and what he thinks of it now. Quite fun to see.
The sad part is that G'qao died not long after. He'd been suffering from turberqulosis for many years, and died while out hunting. His friends said that was how he would have wanted it -- he was an avid hunter, that's one of the things from the movie that is not made up, he could track as well as the movie claimed and used pretty much the same kind of bow and arrow and techniques to hunt, which is pretty much exactly how all his ancestors did it.
Overall the documentary was quite fascinating, a really nice addition/companion to the film!
Anyway I worked on it for a bit, but dunno if I'll have a completed second scene ready for Saturday.
Last night I bought The Gods Must Be Crazy on dvd and watched it. I know I haven't seen it since it was in the theaters, but I had no idea that it originally released in 1980. Has it really been that long?
Anyway I was thinking as I watched it that I wanted to do some research on the bushmen and where they live, because the movie paints them as a simple people who live in a desert paradise, have never had contact with the outside world, have no concept of property or conflict, always have plenty to eat because they're so clever at adapting to their harsh environment, etc. etc. Sort of the classic "noble, innocent primitive" who is completely uncorrupted by the outside world. All of this seemed a bit ludicrous of course, although the movie plot kind of hinges on this whole idea, patronizing as it is. The thing that especially got to me was this idea that their desert doesn't even have any rocks, that they'd never seen anything harder than bone or wood, and that the coke bottle which is the maguffin of the movie is therefore the most amazing tool they've ever encountered.
After the movie was over, however, I watched a companion documentary that was about the real bushman actor in the movie and his people. The first part was kind of sad -- the movie maker says he was enchanted by the bushmen of the movie and their idylic desert landscape and life, and wanted to see it for himself. It didn't exist, of course, but he met the bushmen and G'qao (this is how they spelled his name in the subtitles of the documentary, elsewhere I've seen it spelled very differenty), the star of the movie. He did this around 1990, ten years after the film. These people weren't naked savages, they were dirt-poor natives dressed in filthy tee shirts and other western clothing. They didn't survive by cleverly collecting dew and drawing liquid from squeezing plants, they got liquid nourishment by milking their cows. They lived in junky huts and were slowly dying of starvation, something that G'qao complained about. They were a pretty miserable people.
So much for the movie's portrayal of them. G'qao explained that he'd been working as a gardener for someone involved with the movie when they picked him to play in it. The director of the documentary rather stupidly asked if G'qao had known was a movie was (he was apparently having a hard time letting go of his ideal of the noble, isolated bushmen). Rather than answer the question directly, G'qao explained that he thought the movie would be a good way to show the rest of the world what his people were like and maybe help his people out, but that the director of the movie had other ideas and wanted him to dress up in skins like the bushman of a bygone era. At first he didn't want to do this -- it seemed like lying to him, but they talked him into it and he went along with it.
Luckily the documentary doesn't stop there. More than ten years later the film maker traveled to the bushmen again. This time he was part of a mission to bring solar panels and computers to the local schoolhouse. In the intervening ten years the government of Namibia had decided that all children required education, and had built schools where the bushmen learned to read and write in both their own language and in English, the official language of the country. At this poing G'qao's people are doing much, much better, and it's fun to see how the children, despite never having seen a computer before, figure things out as easily as any kid anywhere in the rest of the world would. And the community leaders make speaches about how exciting it is to have computers and to be connected to the rest of the world -- their children have never had any access to the internet, or to anything like a real library.
The film maker tracks down G'qao again and shows him the footage he'd taken on his last visit, which G'qao says makes him both happy and sad (many of his friends and his wife from back then were now dead). He travels to the school (he didn't live in the same area anymore) and they watch the film The Gods Must Be Crazy, and laugh at it (it's still quite funny), and G'qao talks to them about his experiences in making the film and what he thinks of it now. Quite fun to see.
The sad part is that G'qao died not long after. He'd been suffering from turberqulosis for many years, and died while out hunting. His friends said that was how he would have wanted it -- he was an avid hunter, that's one of the things from the movie that is not made up, he could track as well as the movie claimed and used pretty much the same kind of bow and arrow and techniques to hunt, which is pretty much exactly how all his ancestors did it.
Overall the documentary was quite fascinating, a really nice addition/companion to the film!