The Gods Must Be Crazy 2 (1989) Download Tamil Dubbed 33
Bok Mull
A number of years ago I was surprised to find out how many of my students, many of whom were born in the early 1990s, were very familiar with the film the The Gods Must Be Crazy. This was encouraging to me at first, because they were taking an interest in South African history and watching a film created well before they were born. It also disturbed me because they were blissfully unaware of the very real problems with the film ranging from both sins of omission (Homelands and brutal police crackdowns are left unaddressed) and sins of commission (the director added additional clicks to the San people to make the language sound more exotic).
When teaching a subject as complex as apartheid, instructors will often spend lots of time looking for the perfect movie. They look for a film that captures the complexity and pushes to the forefront issues students need to be made aware of, but may not have had the opportunity to examine on their own. The complex and powerful 2005 film Tsotsi is great for looking at post apartheid South Africa, as are a host of other films. But why not look for a movie filmed in southern Africa during the apartheid era? Furthermore, why attempt to find the perfect movie when it is so easy to find one that is tragically flawed and typifies films viewed by both South Africans and millions of Americans. With some effort from the instructor, a flawed movie created during the apartheid era can lend itself to instruction and engage students in ways the perfect film could never do. This is especially true if so many of our students have already seen the movie in question. Using an inadequate film in the classroom can help instructors expose the flaws, take their examination to another level, elevate the discourse within the classroom, and challenge many of their student's preconceived notions. This essay will examine the film The Gods Must Be Crazy as a film to be used in the class. I will reveal some of the most egregious problems with the film's depiction of South Africa during the apartheid era. I have used this film in both World History and Twentieth Century World History classrooms with students ranging from 9th year freshmen year to 12th year seniors, and when examined properly, I believe this film can be a useful tool.
The Gods Must Be Crazy is not only a comedy; it is a visual artifact providing viewers with a snapshot of South Africa in the 1980s. 1 Yet, the snapshot is most interesting for what was not filmed and the absence of many important issues. First, the film was not only successful in South Africa, but grossed millions world-wide. It influenced viewers in the early 1980s and, due to cable television and streaming video, influences viewers today. Second, the film ignores the plight of the Homelands. The San people are repeatedly shown as healthy hunter-gatherers, but by the 1970s very few of them could support themselves in the traditional way. The San had a high death rate due to terrible living conditions and even depression, yet the film does not reveal any of this to the viewer.2 At the time of the filming, the apartheid system distributed all the peoples of South Africa into racial groups and legislated that each had its own culture while making white culture dominate. The government deemed all whites (British and Afrikaner3) unified and broke up the many African groups into ten independent nations each with their own homeland.4 The film never shows the reality of the Homelands and the nation-wide policy of apartheid that dominated South Africa from 1948 until its collapse in the early 1990s. The third issue to be dealt with is the political oppression of the majority black population and the United States' unwillingness to do anything about it. While the director of the film claimed the film was apolitical, it in no way depicts the brutal suppression and in many cases the killing of political activists. Still relevant in the minds of viewers in the early 1980s, Steve Biko's high profile death gets overlooked by students. They need to be made aware that Biko was brutally murdered by the South African police in 1977, but the only images of the police and judicial system are both generous and kind. The subject of black rights does not come up in the film and instructors will need to make sure their students understand that while the black population of South Africa always had a dominate population, in 1980 the African population numbered 72 %, Colored (mixed race) 9%, Indians 3%, and Whites 16%, they were deprived the right to participate politically in any meaningful way.5 Africans did not have the right to vote until the collapse of the apartheid state. The first free and open elections in 1994 brought to office Nelson Mandela. American students will be interested to know their government did little to halt the oppression and of the majority population of South Africa. Lastly, the film perpetuates the idea that black South Africans are dangerous and incompetent, and should never be allowed to rule themselves. This is most evident in the assassination attempt of the African government at the beginning of the film and the subsequent chase scene that follows as well as the portrayal of the black terrorists who eventually take a classroom full of students and their teacher hostage. There are a host of other very important topics instructors may wish to explore with their classes before they show the film.
The Gods Must Be Crazy is an important film because of its popularity and World History instructors can use this film to explore the depth of the apartheid era. Released in South Africa in 1980 and in the United States in 1981 and a rerelease in 1984, The Gods Must Be Crazy was the largest grossing film produced under the South African film subsidy program which produced 275 movies from 1910- 1985.6 In 1982, it was the highest grossing film in Japan and grossed millions world-wide. Critics claim the film subsidy program was used to legitimize apartheid and present it as "a natural way of life."7 The star director in the film subsidy program was Jamie Uys who said the film was nothing more than a comedy and was, by all accounts, "the only full-time moviemaker, and the only one with any international distribution."8 Once in the United States the film became a hit even while the director took heavy criticism for its racial overtones, method of production and its exclusion of the homelands.9 For Uys, the film was a comedy, to others the film was a small part in the creation of a living memory of South Africa for audiences around the world. Moviegoers left theatres with a positive image of South Africa and a memory of a place few visited but felt they understood. Again, instructors will need to emphasize to their classes the enormous holes in the film as Uys chose to leave out all of South Africa's apartheid policies. This is troubling because the film is still seen in syndication, rented in video stores, and even streamed online. It still influences thought regarding South Africa and may be the only lasting image viewers had of the region. Since The Gods Must Be Crazy was the most successful film in the South African government subsidy program, it was the most important film in the attempts to legitimize apartheid for viewers around the world. Receiving praise for its "slap-stick" humor and scorn for its lack of political discourse, The Gods Must Be Crazy is a useful tool for teachers looking to explore the depths of South Africa in the 1980s.10
The Gods Must Be Crazy is a comedy set in the early 1980s among the rural portions of southern Africa, specifically in and near the San Homelands in the Kalahari Desert. Uys chooses not to show the terrible living conditions and isolation of the San people, instead he uses stereotypical and anachronistic versions of the San people for comedic effect. In the film, a San bushman11 named !Xi is pulled by the forces of globalization into the modern world when he finds a Coca-Cola bottle.12 One man's trash literally becomes another man's treasure. According to the narrator who does most of the translations for !Xi, the bottle is at first a welcomed addition to the village. It has a variety of purposes but one serious drawback, the gods only gave the village one; the bottle is so useful to the villagers that it soon drives a wedge between the previously harmonious people. The film's narrator informs the viewer that until the "thing" arrived, they did not need it, but they now found it indispensable. !Xi decides to take the bottle to the edge of the Earth to give it back to the gods. The character of !Xi, and his fellow villagers, are used in juxtaposition to the "civilized" world. The villagers are the noble savages focused on family and village first and foremost with no crime and total focus on the community. In the white dominated "civilized" world, working for money and worrying about material possessions have robbed people of the simple pleasures enjoyed by the San. Again, according to the narrator, !Xi and his people understand and do not want any part of the "civilized" world; even trash is not good enough for the Kalahari. The films reinforces the government policy of apartheid that said Africans should have their own Homelands in which to practice their own culture. This culture was seen by the Nationalist government to be inferior to the Afrikaner culture which required the black population and other minorities to carry passes with them everywhere they went and tried repeatedly to allow in only the workers they wanted and keep out the families of workers. According to Leonard Thompson at its peak, 381,858 Africans were arrested in a single year for violating the pass laws but over 100,000 were arrested every year.13 In a strange example of this, !Xi must also leave his family behind as he travels into the "civilized" world and eventually work for an Afrikaner zoologist.
Once on his way, !Xi meets his future employer and fellow travelers, zoologist Andrew Steyn and the teacher he is escorting, Miss Kate Thompson. Steyn is a lonely, bumbling, and socially awkward scientist. Thompson has recently abandoned her "civilized" life in Johannesburg as a journalist to begin a new life teaching in rural Botswana. The movie takes an interesting turn as her class is abducted by revolutionaries. The zoologist, !Xi, and the zoologist's mechanic/assistant, Mpudi, form an integrated team that cooperates in order to save the class. !Xi is then free to return to his world only after he has thrown the bottle off the edge of the Earth, a beautiful shot of God's Window on the Drakensberg escarpment in Mpumalanga, South Africa. In the end the zoologist "gets the girl," and !Xi returns to his family, escaping the confines of the modern world, again forcing him into the role of the noble savage. The last thing the viewer sees of !Xi is him leaving a pile of money behind before he returns, much happier, to his family even while the actor was being paid very poorly by Uys himself.
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