Talk:The Gods Must Be Crazy

Offensive

I'm not a bushmen yet this move seems offensive (I guess so??), I saw somewhat allot of it and they make the Kalahari peoples look stupid. --King of the Dancehall 14:53, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Then you, unfortunately, missed the entire point of the movie. The movie is illustrating the absurdity of what we think of as civilization by looking at civilization from the point of view of a more innocent person. Val42 03:38, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. This film portrays the "simple" Bushmen as the smart ones, and the "advanced" citizens of modern society as being out of touch with reality. --Ericdn (talk) 10:36, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually you got a point--King of the Dancehall 17:38, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

True. The movie does a good job at showing just how crazy our so-called civilization actually is (greed, violence, taking children as hostages, squabbling over imaginary lines on a map, ...). Most of the time N!xau seems to be the only person who acts based on common sense. --Lennier1 (talk) 14:11, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Wait, how could you not be a bushman yet? That's like saying I'm not a tribeman yet

• I assume he means yet in the sense of however, not already. "I'm not a Bushman; however, this movie seems offensive." --Metropolitan90 06:33, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

• Yeah, thanks for the funny ??s and imagine a comma, troll. BabuBhatt 06:05, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

This is an inoffensive film. The overseas critics who panned the film for being racist and/or offensive are in fact the ignorant and intolerant ones. The film is a work of fiction, and doesn't pretend to be a documentary. Of course the Bushmen knew of "civilised" people, but the premise of the film is that they do not. What is wrong with that? Very many films are based on one or more suspensions of fact or even logic. The film makes everyone look stupid- except for the Bushmen. We are surely civilised enough to laugh with- and sometimes at- others, without taking offense. The critics are, I suspect, mostly influenced by the fact that this film was made by a South African.JohnC (talk) 09:11, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

""The film is a work of fiction, and doesn't pretend to be a documentary."" It has a very clear documentary feel to it in the beginning, complete with narrator explaining what bushmen are like -- neglecting to mention the bad sides of living in such a society, or the unfortunate little fact that in reality they all live in reservations, living a life that's completely different from what is portrayed in the film. The film then goes on to play the "Stupid, naïve Negro" stereotype for all it's worth. It does couple this with the satirical view of modern society, but I still perfectly well understand the accusations of racism. If I was a bushman, I'd probably feel rather offended if my ancestors were portrayed as a bunch of hippies on an eternal camping trip. --Safe-Keeper (talk) 09:36, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

You do realize that those portraying Bushmen are actual Bushmen, right? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:10, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Several years late to the topic, but it's funny seeing these white Wikiers talk about "a more innocent people" like some sort of paternalistic colonist. Yeah it is offensive, and your response is also offensive.

Topics to discuss in article if they can be properly verified & sourced

1. The Gods Must Be Crazy is the most financially successful African film of all time.
2. The original film and the first sequel were actually South African productions, but were released as Botswanan productions in order to avoid the international boycott of South Africa. (How did the filmmakers get away with that?)
3. The original film and the first sequel are the only films listed in the Internet Movie Database as productions from Botswana. This is easily verifiable but requires the previous topic to put it in context. [1]
4. The original film did not go on general release in the USA until 4 years after its original release. I wonder why that was. Similarly, I wonder why they would have delayed 4 years after producing The Gods Must Be Crazy II to release it; I'd think they would have released it in other countries a short time after the original had been played out in that country. --Metropolitan90 06:33, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

1. Actually the original film was "Animals are beautiful people" and the bushman already appears there. I believe that actually the "The Gods must be crazy" serie came from the idea of making a follow up to the first film and play with the idea of the lasting effect of a film crew onto a group of people completely unaware of the rest of the world. The films are beautifully made and the personnages are all loveable.
2. I don't think you can call 'Animals are Beautiful People' original version of 'Gods must be Crazy'. These are as separate films as Inception and Memento are different films - made by the same filmmaker, share ideas - but are two separate films.

1. There was no legal boycott of South African-made films. It was however convenient to disguise the South African origin. The release in America was nonetheless delayed by politics. Ironic that critics of South Africa spoke of tolerance, yet intolerantly advocated the banning of films like this, which actually teach tolerance and understandingJohnC (talk) 09:22, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
2. It is important to note that the film is set in Botswana (Kalahari is mostly in Botswana), where Apartheid never happened - so bushmen in the film are not living in a homeland (reserves). It might be a good idea to put a map with the location of where the film is set to give international readers a better idea. The filmmaker was a South African, but otherwise the film content itself has very little to do with South Africa.

Way after the fact. Has anyone considered that the film was made, as mentioned earlier, from the premise depicted in the film itself of a people group that were living within the parameters of the fiction? No hidden "evil/boogie" man trying to say some offensive government/societal system does not exist. A story for the sake of the story. In fact, unless one suspends reality, the film comes off as incredibly stupid or "campy".

Delay of release in the US could very well be nothing more than the reluctance of the film industry to sink money into a property they were unsure would bring a beneficial return of investment. Looking for evil finds it whether it's truly there or not. Just my thoughts. THX1136 (talk) 21:23, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Ungwatsi...

From what I've heard on Talk:Click consonant, the so-named dialect doesn't exist. What language were the Bushmen really speaking??

And BTW, from IMDb, the only films to ever use that language (if it ever existed) have been the entire Gods series. Are there any linguistic experts on Wikipedia who know what language it was? --Slgrandson 19:09, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

The bushmen in A Far Off Place seem to be speaking the same or similar language. --72.211.129.101 21:12, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

They are speaking Juǀʼhoan, one of the San dialects.JohnC (talk) 09:22, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

To those who criticised N!xau minimal wages ($300): His people had no real need for money. More importantly, it is said that he had no understanding of its value, and let his pay blow away.... He had however grown to realise the value of money by the time of the second film, and asked for $800,000, in advance!JohnC (talk) 09:22, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

If you think that the Juǀʼhoansi had "no need for money" then you are sadly ignorant of the real state of affairs for the San people since the 1960s. Check out N!ai, the story of a !Kung Woman (the movie itself, not the article on the movie) or some of the relevent works by Richard Lee. Anyway, talk page comments should be limited to discussion of how to edit Wikipedia articles and not the topic themselves. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:37, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps one should have stated that N!xau did not realise that money had value in the western world. It is an unnecessary statement though and has very little to do with the movie. Once N!xau realised the value of money, he asked for more and received it. The statement about his wages hints on intended discrimination while it was not the case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pieterloftus (talk • contribs) 09:09, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

In hopes of improvement...

Beginning tomorrow (the morning of my Barbados trip), this will undergo a peer review stage (see above). I've sown the seeds of improving it to featured status, so please help me out in my task. --Slgrandson 19:09, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

To assit you in improvement relative to the theme of the movie, please check out http://andaman.org/BOOK/text.htm for extensive, scholarly treatment of what it means to be primitive. To me, the most important sequence in the movie is the bushman's encounter with the cobra where the narrator explains that primitive people lack the concept of "good and evil", having instead a concept of "useful or not presently useful". Again, to me, this is a profound philosophical statement that supasses Eve's encounter with the "fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" in that it gives a viable alternative. Eve's problem IMO was not that she disobeyed, but that she perceived the fruit as "good", thus introducing its opposite, "evil" The Bushman troop likewise perceived the Coca-Cola bottle as "good" but soon rejected it as "evil"--not something "not presently useful" but of no further use at all. People of the Deer (published in 1952, revised in 1975) by Canadian author Farley Mowat explores the same theme, of a primitive people's introduction to "good" in the form of "goods", commercial goods, but in this case with with an evil outcome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_Deer

Lee 08:12, 16 September 2006 (UTC)pawyilee

Sigmund Freud

I do believe that this film made an interesting connection between the psychotherapist Sigmund Freud and the theme of love. Andrew Steyn, a microbiologist, lives near the Kalahari (an extremely hot part of South Africa); he spends most of his time in away from the rest of the world in isolation and studying animal waste. All the sudden he is asked to make a trip with his car (otherwise known as the anti -Christ), to pick up a schoolteacher. The trip there is interesting. His breaks are blown, the door is broken, and he has to stop to open gates while the rest of the car keeps going because if he stops it he can't start it up again. You can imagine that the woman (Kate) doesn't like this on the trip back. He proves to be very clumsy around woman. He calls it an “Interesting Phenomenon”, and also refers to it as a Freudian syndrome. As we all know Sigmund Freud was a well known psychiatrist who believed that neurotic behavior links to unusual problems from your past. Since he is isolated from the rest of the world studying animals all day that could be part of the problem, he hasn't been around a woman that long in his life. He ends up falling in love with her at the end of the movie after he falls and breaks one of her tables. I think the theme of love in this movie is very much alive and was one of the main points the director is trying to make. I wrote this because I just watched the movie and I have to write up an essay on it for my class. Although mine is on the clash of cultures, I noticed that there is nothing up here on the theme of love in the movie even though it was one of the main points (as it is in about 95% of films). So I decided to put it up here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Annette dea (talk • contribs) 00:30, 6 March 2007 (UTC).

Cargo Cults

Why does it say "citation needed" after the reference to New Guinean cargo cults? What's to cite here? I think the similarities between this movie and the cargo cults are fairly obvious to anyone who's familiar with both. Keep in mind, of course, that the article doesn't say that the movie story is BASED on the cargo cults, merely that it is SIMILAR to them. That's incontrovertibly true, so it doesn't need to be cited, nor COULD it be, save for a link to the Cargo Cult article--already provided. Chalkieperfect 19:29, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

However, "fairly obvious" means that you are synthesizing information. — Val42 02:45, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

No longer accurate?

Re this statement: "It should also be noted that the films' depictions of the Bushmen, even if they were accurate in the 1980s (also a source of debate), are clearly no longer accurate." If it's accurate for the 1980s, it's accurate for the 1980s. The phrase "no longer accurate" doesn't make sense.--Mkweingart (talk) 23:45, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

There are a couple places within the first 15 minutes of the movie where there are what looks like metal cans or buckets in the background. I am not courageous enough to state this on the main page as I am not certain due to the poor quality of the video I saw. --Tim Legg, January 20, 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.54.34.34 (talk) 01:28, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

pronunciation

I highly doubt Xi was pronounced [gi] - unless gi was the Afrikaans spelling of his name? kwami (talk) 13:35, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

The X in linguistic phonology is a dubios letter. It is used to represent a sound that can't be quite (precisely) represented in the standard phonological ways. I.e. it doesn't stand for the "X" sound as in the English word "exit" but in linguistics acts more like the x,y,z variables in Algebra. It means a non-directly translated sound. I don't see an argument here, but rather a misconception of why there are two spellings of the same name. The Xi is the linguistic way, and the 'gi' would be the English (language, I mean) way of trying to identify a near sound to the correct equivilent of its actual usage. Hope that clarifies things, for you. 165.138.95.59 (talk) 16:26, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps Kwami is more doubtful because of the information at Juǀʼhoan language regarding the language's orthography. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

In reference to this; I did not consider the Nambi dialect of the Juhoan language in this discourse yesterday. Written Nambi (or Juhoan) has a relatively unique writing system in which letters and symbols from the English typeset (well not English, per se, but the typest used on Keyboards in English speaking countries) were taken to represent the oral sounds of the Juhoan language (but they do not necessarily match the sounds that these symbols would represent in other languages.) For example, the (double backslash represents a clicking of the toungue behind the palate // and the X would be a gutteral "g" sound.) This is one of the two languages that modern day (South African) "bushmen" children learn in school; the other being English. So this may be a matter of language spelling, rather than phonology. So yes, it is possible the original authors of this article were using the Juhoan (or Nambi) spelling of "gi" which would be Xi... It just hadn't occured to me at the time of responding to this. I think we have found the most rational answer. Special:Contributions/165.138.95.59|165.138.95.59]] (talk) 15:33, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Burani?

Isn't that simply the non-fictional African country of Burundi? Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:12, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

No. The flags displayed in the cabinet room where the assassination attempt took place are actually the national flag of Zaïre and the presidential flag of Zaïre. I lived there in the early 1980s, and recognised them immediately. Ptilinopus (talk) 10:34, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Reception/Rotten Tomatoes

In the reception section, the article claims that the film holds a 95% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Whereas, the page on Rotten Tomatoes lacks any critique or ratings. Is there something I am missing here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.235.159.23 (talk) 15:47, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Probably not, but I've never visited Rotten Tomatoes. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:04, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Children?

Would this film be suitable for Category:Children's films? I've seen this film, and to me it seems to quite family-friendly. I mean, even children would laugh at some of the scenes in this film, and there is hardly anything that will offend children. PRProgRock (talk) 15:14, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

• No, I don't think so. Category:Children's films is "devoted to films, both animated and live-action, created exclusively for young audiences". Clearly the film was not created "exclusively" for young audiences, and while I wouldn't want to restrict children from seeing the film, the scenes involving the guerrillas shooting up the Burani cabinet meeting and killing some of the ministers would definitely take the film out of the category of "children's film". --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:12, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

  I agree. I know many people saw this film in childhood, but it has violence, nudity and shooting. So while some parents may have viewed it as a charming reflection on society and humanity, sending a positive message to children, it was not created to be a kids flick. CarlSerafino (talk) 09:51, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Missing Information and Expansion

This article has sections that are too short and is missing important information on the film's production which needs to be added to the article. The article's reception section is way too short and needs reviews from notable critics added to it, information on the film's DVD releases also needs to be added to the article as well. All of these additions need to occur for this article to meet wikipiedia's standards of a well developed article.--Paleface Jack (talk) 18:06, 28 October 2015 (UTC)