See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227995571

Annoying Anthropologists: Jamie Uys's Films on ‘Bushmen’ and Animals

Article in Journal of the Society for Visual Anthropology · May 2008 DOI: 10.1525/var.1990.6.1.75

CITATIONS READS 2 203

1 author:

Keyan Tomaselli University of

485 PUBLICATIONS 2,674 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Critical Studies on African Media and Culture View project

Research and Publishing Ethics View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Keyan Tomaselli on 11 November 2014.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. ANNOYING ANTHROPOLOGISTS: Jamie Uys's Films On 'Bushmen' And Animals

Keyan Tomaselli

he international success of rate 'Bushmen' wasDirkie (1969). Dirkie, tive. But ultimately, the narrative dem- South African director Jamie an eight year old city boy lost in the desert onstrates that 'whitejustice' is sufficiently Uys's The Gods Must Be with his dog, is found unconscious by flexible to incorporate aspects of tribal T Crazy (1980) cracked an- two Bushmen, who revive him. Dirkie law. thropological complacency on the rela- mistakes the meat they feed him as his tionship between representations of the dog. He runs away, throwing stones at Disneyfying Animals and People 'Bushmen'1 and apartheid. Uys has been them. They abandon Dirkie as they would considered 'fair game' ever since. an evil spirit. The Bushmen clan in Beautiful Critical frameworks through which The desert is primeaval, hot and a People (1974) is presented as one of the academics have focused on Uys's films, place of death where only the most hardy "60 stories" weaved together in each of however, tend to be theoretically narrow. survive - snakes, scorpions, hyenas and which "you met a little animal or a big These rightly foreground racism, but sup- Bushmen. The adult who finds Dirkie is animal, and you had to fall in love with it, press the broader historically discursive stern, frightening and intractable. They and find the solution to the problem" contexts from which Uys and his films abandon him as easily as they found him. (Press Kit). The clan is shown to be have emerged2. Such critiques rely on a The Bushmen are not criticised by Uys. perfectly attuned to nature, in which ani- reductive view of the complex processes Uys's later films replace this sandy mals are given the respect reserved by that shape relations between film makers manevolence and its killer inhabitants whites only for the Gods. and the state, and of how ideology con- with kind animals and beautiful scenery. Beautiful People (1974) Disneyfies structs individual identities within dis- The villain in Gods I is not the environ- depictions of animals through documen- cursive practices. ment, but terrorists, and white poachers tary realism which also introduces the This paper questions some critiques in Gods//(1989). Where planes, radio, two Gods films. These and many of of Uys's films and responds to a broader jeeps and the mil itary were hot on Dirkie's Uys's earlier films use wildlife and tour- matrix of subjectivities on the part of both trail, now Uys makes fun of modern tech- ist photography, and ethnographic film to the film maker and critics. I aim therefore nology as the path to rescue. Uys states: set the scenes for their respective narra- to open up analytical spaces ignored, if "I find civilised things more of a nuisance tives. not suppressed, by recent analysis. than an aid" (Gods II Press Kit, 1989). Animals are anthropomorphised in This feeling recurs in all his films. Din- Beautiful People. The Bushmen endear- First Impressions: the Hostile Desert gaka (1964), for example, criticises ingly mimic, and have an affinity with, civilisation's impersonal judicial system, the animals of the desert. These images The first of Uys's films to incorpo- and empathises with the tribal perspec- recur in Gods I when N!Xau imitates an

1. I use the term 'Bushmen' ironically. Terms like San and Khoisan have been proposed by those offended by the term 'Bushmen'. However, 'San' is also an imposed word and does not entirely elude the ideological implications of the term 'Bushmen'. See Elephick 1974. The most honest way of naming particular clans is to refer to their own clan names. However, apart from the Ju/wasi at Tshumkwi, the clan membership of the other 'San' actors is unclear. 2. The full historical account of Jamie Uys's relationship to Afrikaner Nationalism is to be published in Pretorius, W. and Botha, M. (eds.): Current South African Cinema. Taurus, Johannesburg (Forthcoming).

75 SVA REVIEW/SPRING 1990 ostrich to get amongst the school children Fossy had to work at developing an affin- cally. The film here works from the unfamiliar taken hostage by the evil terrorists. Martin ity with the gorillas by invading their to the familiar, it 'domesticates', seeking to Blythe (1986:20-1) argues that Uys fo- space. In the process, she alienated the play down ambiguity and focus audience at- cuses attention on Bushmen in a zoologi- humans around her. Uys may well be tention on what the bushmen to not understand cal way. Because Uys excludes other making the same pointabout 'civilisation'. about us. Thus the coke bottle becomes an ironic symbol of white 'gifts' to colonized Just Who Are These Crazy Gods? cultural referents in Gods I, Blythe con- cultures, though it was never intended as such cludes that "the effect is to render the Cultural misunderstanding reappears (Blythe 1986:19-20) bushmen as somewhat akin to animals in Gods I when the friendly Bushman, Xi themselves." This, he states, is further is maltreated by whites because of their The racism, concludes Blythe, seeps encouraged by emphasising the own ignorance. In Gods II, XiXi is en- through a modulated irony which laughs Bushmen's 'ability' to converse or com- tirely oblivious of the conflict between at another cultures' failure to understand mune with animals, especially in the the Cuban and UNITA soldiers, or be- white Western culture. Whether or not scenes where Xi 'talks' to a baboon and tween them, the rugged game ranger and the racism that Blythe has identified is mistakes moving phenomena in terms of the girl, and the two murderous elephant pernicious is a pertinent question. Peter animals. In Gods II, XiXi reads the wheel poachers who unwittingly drive off with Davis (1985:51) states that Gods I "be- prints of the poacher' s truck as belonging XiXi's two children in their water bowser. longs in that grey area of racism where no to an animal he had not encountered Here, XiXi signifies the ultimate inno- harm is intended." He asks: "Who are before. cence, oblivious as he is of the other these 'gods' who are crazy? They are the Blythe validates his reading of Gods unfolding "four stories" (Press Kit), or of technologically advanced whites, whose I by separating it, and Beautiful People,. civilisation itself. very garbage is a source of wonder to the from the intertextof Uys's own idiocode. In Gods I, Xi's innocence is dis- Third World" (Davis 1985:53). Thecode However, to argue, as Gilliam (1984) rupted by the Coke bottle for, in returning inversion that Blythe attributes to Uys is does, that Uys sees San as equivalent to it to the gods, he encounters the biologist, a problem facing all directors who make baboons, or as subhuman, is over-state- his helper, and the white city woman who films about 'other people', whether fic- ment. Although the San have a relation- wants to teach in the bundu. He also tive or ethnographic. And by extracting ship of dominance over animals, that stumbles across buffoonish black gueril- Gods I from the longer and broader in- dominance is tempered by a realisation of las intent on overthrowing the banana tertext of all Uys's 25 features and three mutual interdependence. San kill to sur- republic government; and ultimately, documentaries, dating back to 1951, vive, and never for greed or to exploit the policemen, court and imprisonment for Blythe perhaps over-emphasizes the cate- ecological system for profit. In Gods II, killing a goat. The guerillas take the gory of racism at the expense of other this value is contrasted with the motives teacher and school children hostage. Xi codes and signs (like auteuristl which of the ivory poachers. XiXi sees the dead rescues them by shooting the terrorists moderate the discourses by which people elephants as food for many families for with the biologist's animal tranquiliser are represented in Gods I. many days; the white poachers just leave applied to his arrows. A similar misapprehension occurs in the carcasses to rot. 'Civilised' people who drink Coke Davis' attribution of the pale skinned The issues here are ecological bal- know what the bottle is - this is the audi- terrorist leader as SA Communist Party ance and mutual respect, rather than in- ences' secret. Thus, Western cultural dif- leader Joe Slovo. Very few white South ferences of racial inferiority. In Grey- ficulties in making sense of the Bushmen Africans were aware of Slovo at the time, stoke, the Legend ofTarzan, Lord of the are displaced onto the Bushmen's diffi- as he was a 1 isted person who could not be Apes, for example, a similar situation of culty of understanding an artifact of civ- quoted or shown photographically. More a human being in total empathy with his ilised Western culture - the Coke bottle. likely, this hispanic looking character environment is made where Greystoke is The Bushmen responses to this alien in- mobilizes the myth that Cuba is an 'ex- seen to be integrated into the ecological trusion of the bottle are articulated by porter of revolution', that even black system inhabited by apes. He grunts, Uys through Western conventions, codes governments are not safe from commu- mimics and behaves like them. In a way, and stereotypes: nism. Here, additionally, white ethnic he is part of the animal kingdom, but at and military discourse influences the the same time also uniquely human, in- The film would seem to treat both cul- narrative that blacks are incompetent corporating the best qualities of both. In tures ethno graphically a«

SVA REVIEW/SPRING 1990 76 otherprisoner, both becoming the prison- tions been catapulted from what was little Davis (1985:51): ers of the white woman. more than subsistance farming to the fore- If the epidermis of Gods is a simplistic XiXi (which means older than Xi) in most industrial economy on the African con tale of the search for the tranquil life, beneath Gods II is not the same character found in tinenL From peasants they have become the surface of these films lies a psyschogenic Gods I. Gods II is only related to Gods I bureaucrats, Uys shows his whites suffering parable about white , an explota from all the ills of big cities, slaves to their in a marketing sense; there is no narrative tion of its myths, and an attempt to exorcises technology, alienated by their stress ... In the connectedness. XiXi has regained his the Black Devil of those myths by means of good old days, back on the farm, life was less laughter. innocence, notknowing whatguns, trucks, complicated, more enjoyable - so the nostal- terrorists, soldiers or whites are - he thinks gia runs. Rex Reed of the New York Post re- they are all friends and he constantly produces Uys's ethnic discourse well: jabbers away at them in !Kung. Uys projects Afrikanerdom' s endur- "The most delightful think about 'The Gods Must Be Uys projects Afrikanerdom's enduring pastoral fantasy onto Bushmen goofy people The poachers keep losing their way, ing pastoral fantasy onto Bushmen. But with the real animals, natives and nature" backtracking, until the paths of all the Eden has been receding in Afrikaner (Star Tonight 27 Sept. 1986:28). It would characters converge, culminating in a con- mythology since the turn of the century, be unkind to accuse Uys or Reed of ra- frontation between everyone and the nasty as Afrikaners have become progressively cism, or indeed everyone who enjoyed poacher. Though Uys constantly dis- urbanised. Though the Eden myth has the film. Uys is trying to make an eco- claims a message, this is what he says in run through South African colloquial- logical statement about Bushmen being the press release: isms, cinema, literature, radio and televi- positively integrated into their unchang- sion since the defeat by the British of ing 'natural' environment, while urban- N!Xau as Xixo has a lesson to teach all Afrikaners in 1902, the alternative, in- ites have become victims of the insane the so-called civilised people whose paths dustrialisation, has not been easily ac- worlds they have manufactured. This is keep criss-crossing his in this comer of Af- cepted into the Afrikaner consciousness, signified by intercutting between beauti- rica. Their technology and experience count still yearning for a 'pastoral independ- for nothing when exposed to the natural forces ful long shots of the desert and the fast ordained by Nladima (the creator of the uni- ence' (Tomaselli and Van Zyl 1985). In- motion and fragmented shots of the "vast verse). It is a gentle and hilarious lesson, dustrialisation was the only way to recap- city" only 600 miles to the south... where though, for N!Xau is a gentle person, the ture economic power from the British, you find civilised man." But reviewers ultimate in sophistication in his own environ- but it brought with it all the social ills and do need to be sensitive to paternalist ment. N!Xau epitomises the dignity and cultural dislocations exposed in discourses and the negative way they strength which is ... a Bushman. cinema, and in Uys's imaging of stressed reinforce myths about people and groups, whites in hostile cities. So, perhaps the particularly one as embattled as the San. The closure of both Gods films is a Bushmen are simply a metaphor for Afri- Uys says that the Kalahari people return to innocence. Having returned the kaners, who themselves nostalgically long laughed more at the film than did any bottle to the gods Xi comes back to a for a mythical idyllic past which contin- other audience: paradise again in harmony. XiXi re- ues to permeate their cultural conscious- trieves his children from the poachers ness. This is a reading that arises from We took the film to show it to the Bush- and returns to his 'happy' hunting identifying auteur codes threaded through men. We put up the screen between two trees. grounds. While Uys's most savage crit- a materialist analysis of all Uys's films. These Bushmen have never seen a house, ics have assumed that the Bushmen sig- The white characterisations encode never mind a town or city, but they followed nify Uys's apartheid beliefs sans Bush- bits of Chaplin, whole chunks of Uys the story and laughed in exactly the same men/blacks, Davis offers a different per- from his earlier movies, and the silliness places as the Americans, the French and the spective: of Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther films. Japanese. Only they laughed at a few places The Bushmen characterisations are less where no one else had laughed. I kept on noticing that they were laughing when N!Xau In the light of the enduring persecution knowable, part of the colonised 'Other'; was speaking. You see, he had to make up his of people who have the misfortune not to be they are the 'little golden people' who born with a white skin, there is a savage irony own dialogue: we would tell him what to say have been relocated within the codes of in the Rousseausque depiction of the Bush- and then he would say it in Bushman, but he Western representation. The result is that men. Uys plays a sentimental little game for played the fool. He would say something the Afrikaner here: the Afrikaners, of whom the audience laughs at situations which completely different, and only the Bushmen Uys is one, have within a couple of genera- are not funny in reality. Explains Peter realised this. He was always joking.

77 SVA REVIEW/SPRING 1990 Just as N!Xau had the last laugh on white men before he was rescued from naivete !Xau(3), the Khoisan actor, was not com- Uys, Uys had the drop on his audience. by the great white director; white administra- mitted to a package deal on Gods II: Doubly so, for Uys added extra clicks to tors had been in the Kalahari for decades, as the soundtrack to enhance the exoticness had white schoolteachers, anthropologists, bushmen, peripatetic and speaking no ofthelKung language. Andwenevergot writers, film-makers, and, since 1978, the English, do not sign contracts. They just to understand Xi's dialogue, even through white South African Defense Force. John enjoy helping people they like, and !Xau and Marshall, who had worked in the Kalahari Jamie have an extraordinary rapport. They sub-titles, because the narration ignored since the 1950s, reports thatNIXau grew up as both have a kind of vagueness which puts the what he was saying. In the end, only they a herdboy - not a hunter - on a Herero farm in rat race firmly in its place. know what they were laughing at — we , and moved in 1976 to Bushmanland certainly cannot rely on Uys's reading of () to take a job as a cook in the local their encounter with the film. school... More importantly, N!Xau certainly According to Uys, N'.Xau has main- knew about earning and tained his traditional way of life and that spending money (and there whites (whom he calls "heavies") don't was plenty to buy on (sic) understand that the "dead petals (money) In Japan, N!Xau is a Bushmanland when Uys ap- only gave him pleasure when they took peared in 1978). wings on the sighing wind and blos- sex symbol" and Bushman dolls, somed into the blue sky." Of the cattle, robots and colouring-in books But Uys repeated according to Uys, N!Xau laughed "The much of his Gods I pub- lion came and took most of the cattle have been produced licity in Gods II. When away. They were hungry. More hungry he wants to see N'.Xau he than us! We were overflowing with food flies 1,400 miles and then and unable to move, otherwise we would Commoditizing the San circles over the approximate area, until have chased the lion away" (Sunday Trib- N!Xau makes a fire to signal his where- une 29 October 1989:19). Uys says that The working title of Gods was "The abouts (New York Times 28 April 1985). he now pays N!Xau a monthly retainer: Bushmen." Uys stated that N!Xau was Mindful of the corrections made by crit- plucked from his hunting grounds in the ics like Volkman he amended his 1989 There is no w a shop not very far from his Kalahari on the strength of a snapshot publicity: hunting grounds, so he can walk there. He photo, and carried away to play (there doesn't mind walking 50 miles. It takes him being no Bushman word for work) in the Until recently, if I wanted to visit him, I two days and then he walks back again ... he had to fly out to where his hunting ground didn't spend his money wisely, but now he white man's world (Star Tonight 14 July was, then circle around until I spotted him and 1983). Uys's claim in the film's press does - he makes sure that his kids are well he spotted me and then I would land some- clothed for school, for instance. But I have a release that before he made Gods I he where in an opening and we would get to- "spent three months travelling around the trust fund for him, which I can't give him now gether there. But now there is a better way. because he can't handle big sums yet Kalahari looking at all the Bushmen" is For the last several years there has been a dismissed by Toby Volkman( 1989). Uys School for Bushmen and the Mission Station Uys's producer, Boet Troskie, is claims to have repeated the exercise prior is not far from NIXau's hunting ground, so I notoriously right lipped on his business to the sequel, findingth e "two most beau- can contact him by getting onto the School by dealings and box office revenues, and my radio and they speak to him on my behalf. tiful children." attempts to confirm a report that N'.Xau Uys remarked in 1989 that "When had been paid only R7 000 ($3 200) for Compare this shift with Volkman's 4 I met N!Xau he ... he must have seen assertion: Gods II have failed . But if this is the three or four white people before he met case, then Uys joins that band of exploit- me. He had seen vehicles too, but he had N!Xau, in the real world, is easy to find. never seen a city or a town or a house" He, along with 1,000 other Bushman (sic) (or 3. The spelling of NIXau's name mysteri- (Press Kit). But in 1985 (or earlier) he Ju/wasi, !Kung or San), lives atTshumkwi.. ously changed from !Xau between Gods I and told the New York Times (28 April): "the . the major settlement on the homeland known Gods II. Maughan Brown (1989:124) re- tiny Bushman had only seen one other as Bushmanland . . . No smoke signals are marks that "it is apparently becoming a con- white man, a missionary." Volkman necessary to locate Tshumkwi. (1988:240-1) accuses Uys of reflecting vention of popular fiction to preface San names "a wished-for Bushman world that bears with an exclamation mark - an index, no Uys's comments on N!Xau is a continu- doubt, of surprise at the outlandishness of San little resemblance to reality": ation of earlier fabrications designed to pronunciation". meet the opportunistic needs of his pub- 4. Information provided by the Institute for a N!Xau had, in fact, seen quite a few licity office. Marilyn Poole states that Democrative Alternative for South Africa.

SVA REVIEW/SPRING 1990 78 ers like Robert Flaherty, Hector Babenco doned. (Gabriel 1989) and Werner Hertzog Although the integrity of the San en- Uys's insistance that the Bushmen (CIPA 1979) who pay their characters a vironment has been decaying through en- do not have conceptions of 'property' or pittance, but make their reputations as croachment of whites since the early 'work' is wrong (Volkman; Shostak film makers, not to mention millions of 1900s, the film places its 'people' in a 1981:921), or that they do notneed money dollars, out of them. static system in perfect balance, upset is naive at best as settlements like In Japan, N'.Xau is a "sex symbol" only by the unwitting intrusion of a coke Tshumkwi operate on financial exchange. and Bushman dolls, robots and colour- bottle and outsiders, black or white. Uys The irony regarding Uys is that money ing-in books have been produced. Uys suppresses history and recreates a Gar- has rapidly become the root of all evil at comments on how gifts worth several den of Eden in the desert prior to the Fall, Tshumkwi. Unlike meat, money is nei- thousand dollars bestowed upon N!Xau a state that the Afrikaner volk genre of the ther perishable nor visible, and can be were "left outside", that in "the night the '30s and '40s sought to legitimise. easily hidden and hoarded. It does not hyenas came and carried some away, but The assumption that Bushmen don't grow in the bush, so is not accessible to he didn't care because it was of no inter- work, that they only play, is sourced to all. The money economy introduced by est to him." "Because out there in the 18th Century moral philosophy which anthropologists, commerce and film Kalahari all that stuff doesn't mean a held that civilisation could only advance makers has splintered even the nomadic thing. By the third day there was nothing through work (Jordan 1974). Thus, the Ju/wasi clan first filmed by John Marshall left of the gifts. Hejust leftitoutside - it's constant visual and voice-over references in the early 1950s (Shostak 1981:26-7; useless stuff." The corrupting influence to 'play' intercut with civilisation in which Volkman 1988:243). The Bushmen are of 'civilisation' is present "... when he people 'work' intercepts the duality that "at present one of the most heavily scien- came to the city.. he had to eat our food children play, hence Bushmen are 'child- tifically commoditized human groups in ... in fact he started getting a bit too fat, like'; whites however 'work', and are the annals of academe" (Gordon 1990:3). so I was glad when he went back to the hence adult, if stressed. This myth is key In !Nai, the Story of a IKung Womant Kalahari, so he could get back to his to Xi's release from prison in Gods I. He N!ai, whom Marshall periodically filmed normal weight. Our food is too fatten- is paroled into the biologist's custody as as she matured, lives in a walled house, ing." N!Xau, says Uys, has not changed a wage-labourer. The assumption is that alienated from her clan and embittered by "over the years. He still lives the same Xi will 'reform his (thieving) ways' if he her experience. This same N!ai was way as before... He prefers his way of is put to work. employed by Uys on Gods I. The squalid life, which is simple and enjoyable . . . Gods I contrasts "people who are huts of Tshumkwi gave way to clean and closer to nature" (Press Kit 1989). worth knowing" (The Bushmen) with the grass huts; animal skins surplanted That's probably what Flaherty thought "sophisticated life outside the grassy clothes, and the children's faces were about Nanook, who died of starvation glades and confusing aridness of the washed. two years after Flaherty had finished Kalahari" (To the Point, 17.10.1980). Uys's mythical image of the Bush- Nanook of the North. What incenses international critics is that men is exactly that of the Marais Report Like Flaherty, Uys maintains the ro- while Uys admits that the San are "worth (August 18, 1984) written for the South mantic myth of the 'traditional way of knowing", it seems that he doesn't really West African Administration. Marais life' of a contented 'unspoiled' hunter- know them at all. Uys told the New York assumes that the San are hunter-gather- gatherer who 'drinks the morning dew'. Times: ers, that they have no history, that all This forager is unconcerned with mate- Bushmen cultures are alike, that no evi- rial things and exotic travels. His strength They don't have a sense of ownership ... dence exists that the Khoisan ever had and humanity lie in his rejection of indus- If I put my jacket down, one of them would put mixed economies or were pastoralists. trial civilisation. But the integrity of this it on. They share everything'. Hence there Just as Marais based his report on myth mythical culture is contested by the facts were problems when it came time to pay his (both ethnological and apartheid) rather of a dispossessed people in transition. leading man, N!Xau, Uys gave the Bushman than on anthropological and archaelogi- N'.Xau himself is not a hunter, but a cook R600 for his first ten days of work and then cal evidence, so does Uys, who perpetu- in a school, where Uys first found him in realised N!Xau had no use for money. 'I ates this "paralyzing myth" (Volkman: the late '70s. While Uys has every right found out later', says Uys, 'that the money had 28). blown away'. So N!Xau was paid with 12 to create dictive cinema, his insensitivity head of cattle, 'because he liked the idea that In 1970, South Africa drew borders towards San cultures that were ruthlessly cattle don't run away when you hunt.' Lions around Bushmanland, making it into a destroyed, first by the early German set- killed eight of them, and the Bushman and his homeland, elimating two major foraging tlers after 1900, and by the South African clan ate the others (Reader's Digest Sept areas. Restricted in their movements and government since 1948, cannot be con- 1988:131). deprived of ancestral subsistance areas,

79 SVA REVIEW/SPRING 1990 Lhey moved to Tshumkwi, which soon emerge from different readings of the lished as "The Missionary Posi became an overcrowded slum. In 1978, same film. Davis, for example, allows for tion: An Analysis of Jamie Uys' when Gods I wns being filmed, virtually a more historically sensitive 'open' read- ''", Pa none of the 1,000 Ju/wasi living there ing of the film than does Blythe who cific Coast Africanist Newsletter hunted or gathered. argues almost solely within ethnographic 9(2), 1985,7-11; and Tomaselli, film discourse, but who is more open K.G. and Hennebelle, G. (eds.) "I am Apolitical!" than, for example, Gilliam, who assumes 1986: Le Cinema sud-africaine est- the mechanistic anti-apartheid political il tombe sur la tetel CinemAction, The Gods filmsar e certainly affirma- discourse which reductively assumes that Paris. ('Has South African Cin tions of apartheid discourse which argues race = apartheid; and that Uys = racist ema Fallen on its Head?') against cross-cultural contamination. propagandist; andUys-as-propagandist= Elphick,R.H. These films plead for the nostalgic pas- government official. 1974: 'The Meaning, Origin and toral images seen in Beautiful People. How to explain the different read- Use of the Terms Khoikhoi, San and Critical analyses of the Gods filmshav e ings of Uys's films? Quite simply, differ- Khoisan":, Ca/x> 6(3), 3-15. identified socially referenced representa- ent people create their own mental texts Gabriel, T. tions which circulate and recirculate about the film. Those aware of how the 1989: "Towards a Critical Theory of dominant racist meanings appearing as myth was made and who lean towards Third World Films. In Pines, J. and common sense. Uys speaks Afrikaner intense anti-racist feelings have read their Willemen, P. eds.): Questions of ethnic discourse in his imaging of 'Bush- interpretations into Uys's films. Con- Third Cinema. British Film Insti men', and white political discourse in versely, those unaware of the myths tute, pp. 32-33. making fun of the black UNITA and mobilised, tend to respond less aggres- Gilliam, A. Cuban soldiers in Gods II, and the black sively, and are able to derive some pleas- 1984: "The Gods Must be Crazy", guerillas in Gods I. They are the Idi ure from the film without losing their Interracial Books for Children^ 15(7 Aminsof the world, the 'proof thatblacks antagonism to racism. & 8), 34. are incapable of governing themselves. For those who have always agreed Gordon, R. While Uys's narrative techniques with apartheid, the film is transparently 1990: "The Prospects for Anthropo have increased in sophistication, his po- decoded as an affirmation of the way logical Tourism in litical sensibilities are exactly those of the things are and should be. Bushmanland", Cultural Survival Quar dominant political interests; indeed they terly, 14(1), 1-3. Dr. Keyan G. Tomaselli is Director, Con- have not shifted much since he made Jordan, W. temporary Cultural Studies Unit, Univer- Daar Doer in die Bosveld in 1951. Per- 1974: 'The Myth of the Savage" in sity of Natal, Durban. He is author o/The haps this is why is is able to proclaim his Maynard, R. (ed.): Africa on film: Cinema of Apartheid: Race and Class in 'apolitical' nature - Uys can't see politics Myth and Reality. Hayden. South African Film (Smyrna Press, New because apartheid is what he lives. This Maughan Brown, D. York) and co-author of Myth, Race and is the classic position of an ideologue 1989: "The Rehabilitation of the Power: South Africans Imaged on Film who claims not to be ideological. As San in Popular Fiction". In Malan, and TV (Anthropos, Bellville). He is Volkman argues, Gods I is a metaphori- C.(ed.) Race and Literature. Owen currently Visiting Professor, Department cal construction. This is the only expla- Burgess^ietermartizburg, 116-126. of Radio, TV and Motion Pictures, Uni- nation given Uys's repetitive denials of Tomaselli, K.G and Van Zyl, M. versity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. the real conditions under which the Ju/ 1985: 'The Structuring of Popular wasi live at Tshumkwi where he staged Memory in South African Cin References the return of Xi to the Bushmen Eden a the ema and Television Texts". In close of Gods I. Haines, R. and Buijs, G. (eds.): T Blythe, M. wentieth Century South Africa: the 1986: "A Review: The Gods Must Happy Endings: Revisiting the Myth Struggle for Social and Economic be Crazy", UCLA African Stud Space. ISER, University of Dur ies Center Newsletter Spring 17-21. Discourses change and are internally ban-Westville, Westville. CIPA contradictory: Gods I is racist; Gods I is Volkman, T.A. not racist, both concluded by people who 1979: "The Aguarana and Werner 19XX: "The Hunter-Gatherer Myth consider racism an anathema. To under- Hcrtzog", Cultural Survival. stand this, we need to examine how dif- Davis, P. in Southern Africa: preserving na ferent viewers make sense of the same 1985: "The Gods Must be Crazy", ture or culture?" Cultural Survival films, and why and how different 'texts' Cineaste 14(1), 51-53. Also pub Quarterly, 10(2), 25-32.

SVA REVIEW/SPRING1990 80 What is Ethnographic Film? (concl.) The Decolonization of Ethnographic Film (concl)

production of films and videos about water temples, some D. MacDougall, intended primarily for documentation and kept in the ar- 1969-70 "Prospects on Ethnographic Film", chive of the principal water temple; others to portray the Film Quarterly, XXIII(2): 16-30. social and economic role of the temple system to outsiders A Moore, such as development agencies. 1988 "The Limitations of Imagist Documen- tary : A Review of Robert Gardner's Forest of Conclusion Bliss", SVA Newsletter 4(2): 1-3. My suggestions for the approaches we take toward film A. Ostor, in the next decade are based on the premise that we approach 1989 "Is that whatForest of Bliss is all about? A film from the perspective of ethnography rather than as a response", SVA Newsletter 5(l):4-8. branch of the documentary film tradition. Visual anthropol- ogy needs to define its concerns, its problematic in the J. Parry, context of the central anthropological issues of the day. 1988 "Comment on Robert Gardner's Forest of 1. Critical scrutiny of the epistemological issues in- Bliss, SVA Newsletter" 4(2):4-7. volved in ethnographic film has barely begun. There is an J. Ruby, unconscious positivism at the heart of the documentary film 1989a "The Emperor and His Clothes", SVA tradition, which accepts film as an uncomplicated represen- Newsletter 5(1):9-11. tation of "reality". Perhaps for this reason, surprisingly little 1989b "Robert Gardner und der anthropologis attention has been given to the processes by which the que Film", in R. Kapfer, W. Petermann, R. authors of films assemble their images and construct their Thorns (ed), Rituale von Lebe und Tod, pp. 51- interpretations. Simply put, we do not subject ethnographic 67,Miinchen, Trickster. films to the critical scrutiny routinely applied to written M. R. Schafer, ethnographies. 1985II paesaggio sonoro, Milano Uoncoli-Ri 2. The technology of ethnographic film can can help us to restructure the fieldwork process. Instead of buying in- cordi. formation, film can facilitate exchange on the level of ideas Article translated by Ilisa Barbash and Andy Wilson and interpretations. Through collaboration in film, the negotiation of meaning, of which story is to be told, is brought out into the open. In this way, film moves towards discourse and away from what has rightly been criticized as Orientalism: films about exotic peoples designed solely to be a spectacle for a Western audience. References Mette Bovin, The Society for Visual Anthropology Review 1988. "Provocation Anthropology: Bartering Performance welcomes submissions of articles, news, in Africa"; The Drama Review Vol 32 No.l, Spring reveiws and information. 1988:21^41 James Clifford, 1988. The Predicament ofCulture.TwentiethCentury Ethno- g raphy, Literature and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Please address all editorial correspondance to: George Marcus and Michael Fischer, 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental The Editor Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Society for Visual Anthropology Review Chi-cago Press. Center for Visual Anthropology Edward Said, University of Southern California 1978 Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Los Angeles, CA 90089-0032 Tony Williamson Tel: (213)743-7100 1988 'The Fogo Process: Development Support Commu Fax: (213)747-4176 nications in Canada &. the Developing World', unpublished paper. J. Stephen Lansing is the chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California.

81 SVA REVIEW/SPRING 1990

View publication stats