'The Gods Must be Crazy'

The report is about a film screening on November 25, 2013. The title of the film was ‘The gods must be crazy’ and it was directed by James Uys and released in 1980. This film was screened for the students of MA Applied Sociology as it is an important tool to understand numerous sociological concepts.

The movie juxtaposed two varied cultures which include a technological developed society and tribal society, namely that of the Bushmen of the Kalahari. The film paints an exceptional portrait of differences between human culture as well as ethnocentrism that runs common to all.

The Bushmen’s culture is one of simplicity and contentment. The pace of life in the Bushmen culture is relaxed and slow. They seem to have a deep respect for all life both for human and non-human. They are self sufficient and happy with what they have, whereas the modern society is very different from the world of Bushmen. The ‘developed’ society is one that moves at an incredibly fast space. It is a culture of alarm clocks, traffic jams and coffee cups etc… Where people create complex things and make it clear then they create complex ideas. The social construction of reality seems to be wonderful and there are several sharp contrasts that come to light through the thoughts and behavior of characters in the film. The first such difference is standard of beauty, where the Bushmen saw a teacher Kate Thompson is not regarded as the beautiful in the eyes but was instead thought to be ugliest creature he has seen. The second difference is prevalence of fear, where Bushmen was not afraid of gun, when he picked it up it was just nothing more than a funny stick. Gun in modern society was considered as scared to death. The prevalence of bottle was another incident that created fear in Bushmen.

To conclude this film was successful in accomplishing its intended purpose which was to show that people socialized into different cultures which were to see the world through very different sets of eyes and also helped us understanding how the social change is. Just because we are different does not mean that there is nothing that we can learn from each other.

Ambika