Noisy animals, the flatulence of the gods and the evil thing

The Gods Must Be Crazy, which takes place in Botswana funny enough, came out in 1980. The story begins by introducing us to the "little people of the Kalahari" - the Bushmen - who have no sense of ownership, know no jealousy, live simply without a formal government or laws and are stymied by a Coke bottle that a pilot tosses out his window into their world of animal skin thongs and hand-made tools.

The story then shifts to the "civilized world" where people drive to their mail boxes and back, sit in traffic, work at desks and wonder if other people can hear the voices in their heads. In time, the modern versus natural world dichotomy devolves into a romantic comedy between the two main Caucasian characters with the Bushmen and other Africans playing smaller roles.

What the movie does do, though, is 1) introduce one picture of Botswana that is no longer representative of the entire country and 2) provides concretes stereotypes to work with.

In the first case, we're given a glimpse of what may be urban Botswana (possibly the capitol, Gaborone, but we never know for sure), but for the majority of the film we see rural Botswana and its people. Because the early urban setting is not identified as part of Botswana or not, we never truly can say or believe that the country has an urban, modern and successful (by Western standards) element to it. Rather, Botswana is simplified as rural.

In the second case, we learn that the Bushmen refer to cars as noisy animals, consider the noise of airplanes examples of the gods' flatulence and come to consider an item that they cannot share - the Coke bottle - as "the evil thing" which must be thrown off the side of the Earth. [If I'm not mistaken, 20th century Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski mentions in his book, The Soccer War, the use of paratroopers in Africa by a Western army as a means of instilling fear and showing dominance as the Africans feared anything that fell from the sky.]

Now that Botswana has become an important player in the diamond trade, I'd like to think these misconceptions have become dated. I will have to find out for sure, but it certainly would make for a delicious scene where the Batswana protagonists show they are no longer afraid of soda bottles (never mind beer bottles) while making their antagonists look that much more foolish for believing a country couldn't evolve over 25 plus years.

Confession

My good man Costas is right. I haven't been posting as frequently as I'd like (ie, weekly) lately, but he's also right that I've been working on a side project. I'm editing a chapbook's worth of poems that I'd like to finish by September.

I continue to edit chapter two of Any Color You Want - but the editing process isn't particularly sexy so I haven't posted about it. The first read through was for basic grammatical correctness; in the second I highlighted areas that could be expanded or needed better explanation; and the third will require me to do the expanding and 'splaining. That's where I'm at. Where you at? Where Brooklyn at?
I'm not familiar with The Sheltering Sky so I'll have to look into that. What I did see recently was The Gods Must Be Crazy which is the first movie I remember watching about Africa which'll be the topic of my next posting.

Africa in Film

When you think of Africa, what films come to mind? I've been watching one that I'll discuss more in depth in the coming days, but am curious what films other folk associate with the Dark Continent. Holla.

In other news, Bigtooth is right. Ohio and Michigan had a wicked spat over the Toledo Strip back in the day. Atta boy, Biggie!