Breaking out of the (Bird)cage

My first thought when I was watching The Birdcage was “Why are there transvestites singing and dancing on the stage?” I was really confused by the opening, but my thoughts were relatively correct, except the entertainers were not transvestites but rather just men dressing in drag.

I found the funniest parts to be when a character acts in an opposite way, there like when Katherine says she’s not motherly whilst putting a champagne bottle between her legs and popping the cork. Or when Albert tries to walk like John Wayne, or just act straight.  I was weird to see Robin Williams portraying a homosexual club owner.

I think this movie shows the beginning of the change of mindset toward homosexuality. A conservative senator’s daughter and a gay couples son married? To me this seems a bit extreme for the 1990’s especially when there was/is still a homophobic feel in the US. Yet this movie was made and did pretty well, illustrating the changing mood toward homosexuality. So in a sense Albert and Armand are breaking out of the homophobic cage.

Were nightclubs as popular in the 1990’s as they are shown to be in movies like The Birdcage, the Mask, and Night at the Roxbury?

To me the most important theme in this movie is the emphasis on being who you are, not someone you aren’t.  Albert is invited to the dinner as Uncle Albert, but was not comfortable, so he came back in a guise that suited him better, as Val’s Mother.

I think that this is a great movie, especially because Robin Williams is in it. I like its progressiveness and its message of be yourself, not anyone else.

Interacting with the Roles of Gods

Interacting with the Roles of Gods

The Gods Must Be Crazy was both witty and funny.   This movie had so much to it, one time watching the movie is just simply not enough to catch everything that’s going on.    At first it seems like the entire movie will be based on the mundane lives of the native Bushmen of Africa.  However, the outside world is brought to them in the form of a glass Coca-Cola bottle falling from the sky (the Gods).  The way they filmed the scenes of this movie truly helps set a mood of funny accidental humor.  The way that it looks slightly “skippy” makes the characters seem to move in a cartoon like manner. 

            The movie has many aspects that I found funny that I don’t know if others might.  For instance when the man that collects animal droppings, when he becomes frustrated or is asked a question he doesn’t want to explain he just says “yah yeah yah.”  Many men I bet would love to be able to just say “yah yeah yah” when their wife’s are nagging at them to do something.  One of the themes of this movie that I found was highly varied throughout the movie was gender-roles.  At first in the case of the Bushmen, it is hard to really see the gender roles really having much of a difference between the men and the women.  The men hunt, help gather and the women prepare things like snake skins, however, you see these mold together simply in the means of survival.  Then as the modern society is brought into perspective, the man is more of a tough, strong man, whereas the woman is more of a delicate thing that must be waited upon and is educated and a teacher.  The gender role of men is shown from a few characters such as the main character, the man that owns the safari tour, the rebel leader, and the Bushman.  The main character is portrayed as an idiot, however he really isn’t unintelligent.  He simply is goofy and when he is in the presence of women he just gets nervous and ends up being clumsy.  In addition, it isn’t always his fault for screwing up.  For instance when he is using the wench to pull the vehicle out of the river, he does succeed which should impress some women, however when the woman becomes stuck in a thorn bush he leaves to help her, and as a result the vehicle ends up in the tree.  This then makes him look like an idiot to the woman instead of having been innovative and a handyman.  The other man is seen as a confident man that knows what he wants.  And of course the woman is attracted to her.   The rebel leader is mean and commands authority, but also has somewhat of a soft side when it came to the kids.  He didn’t want to hurt them; he just needed them as a hostage.   Even increasing the intervals that the food water and supplies would be deposited.  And of course there was the little Bushman that had a heart of gold.  He only cared to either help others or his family.  He was honest and loving.  Before having been exposed to modern society, him and his family hadn’t ever fought or become hostile to each other. 

            I just enjoyed how the differences in the different roles were intermingled and varied from the different characters and how they came together to make a funny story and a movie that is highly enjoyable. 

The Tree Grabs You

Mid-way through The Gods Must be Crazy, Ms. Thompson gets too close to a wataba tree and becomes entangled in it. While the scene is farcical, as is most of the humor in the movie, it is related to a broader message about how easy it is to become entangled with other people if you get too close to them.

Andrew the ecologist/biologist becomes entangled with Ms. Thompson and with Xi the bushman. Xi with a society he is unfamiliar with; the professional mercenary Sam Boga, with the bushman when Xi is sent to prick the mercenary group with poisoned darts.

Given 32 years since the making of the film, it is tempting to interpret the plot and characters through a contemporary lens. The individuals can be seen as caricatures of Africans and the humor plays a fine line between portraying individuals as nobel and being worthy of respect versus being comical and silly background; such as mercenaries slipping on bananas. To the contrary, one of the strongest characters is Mpudi, the mechanic and friend of Andrew Steyn as well as Xi, who is primarily trying to do right in the world, by getting rid of what his tribe considers to be an evil object. Andrew is one of the most farcical when he flails around in front of Ms. Thompson.

Expanding outward from the story of military buffoonery, each group is portrayed as being caught up with outside forces. The bushmen from a bottle introduced from the sky; Sam Boga is a representation of forces from Europe, interfering with politics in the country. Meanwhile, the indigenous people are trying to simply get on with their lives.

Even the mercenaries are presented this way, when the two soldiers that blow up the helicopter almost immediately go back to playing cards, one still holding a bazooka, before the armored cars show up seconds later.

The style of the movie is like a nature documentary of the early 1980's, starting with a day in the life of people in an urban setting, a narrator explaining various elements of the world. As the story moves forward, the narration drops away. It is as if the movie were being presented to the audience in the familiar way of the Mutual of Omaha nature series. Given the 30 years of Discovery, History and National Geographic channels, the presentation in the movie comes across as a bit off putting.

Strangely, the movie does not address the Republic of South Africa, which had a full decade to go before the end of apartheid. It is unclear if Ms. Thompson is from the RSA or from another nearby country, but at least one of the early urban scenes shows a sign for Johannesburg, implying that she is in the RSA. I do wonder what was behind this aspect of the film, given the issues surrounding apartheid, perhaps the film makers avoided it to not entangle themselves in a side show of politics.

Gods... phhhsss... humans being crazy!!

In this movie we can see many elements some that I would like to highlight on is Love, gender roles, sex, simplicity, and ongoing humor. This film is simple to the eye and an easy movie to sit down any time to watch. Contrast is an ongoing theme that can be easily over looked. At the begging of the movie we see a comparison between two worlds. The first being the indigenous people of the desert. They live there day by day gathering food and water and worrying about nothing else. The second world we see is the city and the inhabitants of the city are living by a thing called time. This time becomes a deterrent a rules the life of a city person.

Love is present in both worlds. To the indigenous people love is simple. It is a part of their culture just like getting water or food. To the people of the city love is complicated because most of the time it is misunderstood for just sex or pleasure seeking. Mr. Stan does a great job of conveying this to the audience. When he speaks to a woman he makes a fool of himself. In this we see that he does not understand the nature of women and the ways of courting a woman.

Gender roles are very apparent in this film as well in the indigenous people we see a clear line between the men and women. The women will gather supplies and tools for the men to use and hunt with. The men gather food and water for the people to use. In the more modern world we see men sewing and women working alongside men to do the same exact job. Now don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with men and women doing the same job but the roles of men and women are mixed in a city atmosphere.

Sex is a key element to both cultures and drives a lot of emotions between people. In the tribe sex is seen as something sacred given to the people by the gods. To the city people it is something that is more for pleasure and self-satisfaction. In the tribe we see women without bras and upper clothing but in society we see women always covering up like Ms. Thomas. Also we see a play on rape and men’s urges to satisfy his needs. Something we do not see in the tribe life.

    Simplicity is something that the tribe knows very well until the city people mess with it. A bottle of coke enters their life and makes the people feel selfish and angry. These emotions are something that the people of the city know too well.

Ongoing humor is apparent all throughout the movie.  With silly quotes for Ey-ya-ya to someone sleeping on a banana peal. Or the car not being able to stop or having any brakes gives this film a light hearted feel. Also I wonder if the narrator was in some form a God watching the people grow and change. Food for thought.

gods must be crazy, Zach Pedroncelli

The film the gods must be crazy incorporates two extremes with each other being the conditions and life of tribesman and current day city problems. Many of the scenes had a very animated or fast forward feel to them. The locals lead a very simple life where something as simple as an unknown object causes problems within their society. The other side of the setting shows extreme political and civil war situations occurring in their own society. The battle scenes have an all or nothing feel giving them humorous leads even though it involves the death of many people. This includes the first attack in the banana growing lands where they casually return to card games after blowing up a helicopter. Another scene I found amusing was when the lead tribesman negotiates with the monkey telling him he really doesn’t want to keep the bottle that was previously found by the bush men. A big contributing factor to the humor is the narration of the movie when the Bushmen are in scene expressing the simplicity but ironic situations that they are presented with. One example would be when the tribesman picks up the strangers gun and the stranger runs away and the narrator follows the scene by stating the man must have been scared of the evil bottle. The other part that carries on through the story is that the man always seems in sexual tension with the girl whether he tries to save her from the rhino or the grabbing trees she always had an offensive reaction. All along the bushman is trying to return the evil bottle while greater things happen in the rest of the film making for other humorous aspects. Also the aspect that the gods sent the evil thing and it had originally been a surprise made for a less dramatic surprise when the bushman ran into more new things to their culture. Overall the film was very amusing and my favorite so far of the films we have watched. 

The gods must be crazy

            I found this movie hard for me to watch because it was just boring. It just seemed all over the place. The humor is mixed with slapstick and intellectual humor. This is probably why so may of the reviews said there is humor for everyone.

            With the mix of humor it really set the pace of the movie. During the slapstick humor like when the scientist is driving his jeep with no brakes, then has the conflict of opening and closing gates while his jeep is running moved forward or roles backward. At first, this scene seemed to go by fast since it was amusing to watch how he had to jump off his jeep to open the gate, let it role by, quickly close the gate then run to jump into it. Or place a rock behind the tire to keep it from rolling down hill. But it just got annoying and boring as it kept happening over and over. It felt like someone was saying, “wait I have more so please stay and watch”. Some things are only funny once and when you constantly repeat it hoping to get another laugh it looses it touch. Also his awkwardness towards the teacher, at first it was funny, but soon lost its touch. The humor is gone and time to move on.

            The intellectual humor for me was more enjoyable than the slapstick humor. Although I really liked Modern Times slapstick humor, the humor in this movie was just not that great. The mixed use of humor to me either sped up the scene or slowed it down. Which made it difficult to keep my attention on the movie. I honestly do not remember most of the scenes. Humor can be presented in different ways, I just think this movie could have presented it better then it did. 

God must be Crazy

David Duneman

Expository Writing

Joe Serio

2/17/13

Move To The Kalahari!

            I must say, when I first started watching “The Gods Must Be Crazy” I thought I was watching a documentary, and I thought I was watching the wrong movie. But I kept watching. Once the film reached the section on describing American civilization in Xi’s perspective I could finally tell it was a comedic film. The laughter first starts as a comparison between the heavenly Kalahari Desert, where Xi and his people live, and the pointlessness of the American civilizations. When an unidentified flying object drops an unidentified hard object, the Coca-Cola bottle, the Kalahari people make good use of it. Slowly but surely the bottle turns the Kalahari people against each other, every person wants to be using the bottle all the time. Before the bottle came, the Kalahari people didn’t know hate, possession, or fighting against each other, but the bottle brought those traits out in them. The bottle represents the evil, useless products people make that we just can’t seem to live without, such as Coca-Cola. I thought the film was going to be based on the compare and contrast humor that was established at the beginning of the movie, but after Xi leaves the Kalahari to throw the bottle off the Earth, the film takes a surprising left turn that seems to give the movie more of a story line to follow. With the entrance of Andrew Steyn, the entrance of the slap-stick humor comes into play as well. Mr. Steyn is a manure collector, as he hilariously tells Kate, and that is just about the funniest job description one could possibly have. This film did the slap-stick style very well. They had that cheerful, cartoonish music that cues you to laugh, and they also have the fast paced movie style that helps make slap-stick what it is. The main slap-stick humor occurs with Andrew’s Jeep that doesn’t have working brakes, so he has to stop it some other way. There’s always a fence in his way while he’s driving, so that he has to get out of the car, open the fence, and by this time the car is already rolling away backwards, and then he has to drive past the fence, get out of the car, close the fence, and then run after his Jeep saying “AyeAyeAyeAyeAye”. This was a very humorous gag that seemed to be prominent throughout the film. The slap-stick style of humor also occurs when Andrew is around women, Kate in particular. As Andrew says, his brain “turns off” when he’s around women, and it’s a “psychological phenomenon”. So Andrew is always tripping up when Kate is around. The two also overlap at one point, when Andrew has to get Kate out of a tree she’s stuck in, whilst he is also trying to get his Jeep out of the river with the electric pulley. He is too busy attending to Kate so his car is pulled almost all the way up the tree, and is hanging off the ground. Andrew had so much misfortune, that he had to get the girl at the end. This was an interesting movie and I would recommend it to anyone.

The Gods Must Be Crazy

Holly Reese
2-16-13
The Gods Must Be Crazy

         Before I watch a movie, I always check its IMDB online entry to learn about it and get context about the filmmakers and actors. The tagline for this film is “A Sly Comedy from Africa” which made me skeptical. I had high expectations when I began watching this film. It began at a very slow pace with almost the first 45 minutes of the film being just setting and character development of the bushmen in Africa. It took until the scene with the scientist visiting the school teacher for me to finally get into the comedy of the film and become interested. Once the premise of the film was established and I was able to appreciate the sly comedy involved throughout this film.
                         
               I am always wary of watching films that revolve around issues of race and racial stereotypes. When the bushmen of this film were introduced I couldn’t decide if it was inappropriate or not. I knew this film was made in Africa and I am unfamiliar with indigenous cultures so I did not know if this portrayal was satirical or in any way accurate. The language of these people seemed to be exaggerated and stereotypical but I was not totally unbelievable. didn’t find them to be funny but their situation and interactions were funny. Our main character was comical because he was an innocent player in each situation. His humor came from his lack of knowledge of civilized culture. He wasn't funny because he was stupid, he was funny because he was in an unfamilar situation.

                 Beside the obvious humor of the bushmen and the revolutionaries, I liked the subplot involving the school teacher and the scientist. It was the typical situation with a clumsy, foolish man and a beautiful woman, but it was funny nontheless. My favorite scene was when he was trying to deliver flowers to her and the children were laughing hysterically at his failures. Again, he was an intelligent man but his unfamiliar situation made him funny.

                 I would agree with this movies tagline in saying that it is a sly comedy. The narrator and documentary style added another level of humor and rhetoric. Once the viewer understood the kind of humor that was being presented, it ultimately became effective.

The Gods Must Be Crazy

The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980) was one of my favorite movies by far this semester.  I think they're are three main plots that all tie into the end.  The first one is the "evidence of gods" and also a critique of modern society.  They find the coca cola bottle in the middle of the desert.  It is like a revelation to Xi who basically knows nothing about life outside his family.  But the only thing the coke bottle does is bring turmoil to the tribe.  I think this is a great critique of modern society, everyone has unlimited wants, but there is only limited resources.  We all want the latest and greatest gadgets and items but in reality we can't have everything we want.  One of my favorite parts is when Xi meets Kate and Andrew for the first time.  He assumes they are gods because he has never seen white people, jeeps, or the clothes they were wearing.  One of the other plots is a political uprising which is needless to say crazy.  I think the underlying themes in The Gods Must Be Crazy is the turmoil of modern civilization.  It all comes down to the beginning of the move with the coke bottle.  The Bushmen were living in harmony until this unusual even took place.  Even with a simple coca cola bottle from modern society comes into a outcast tribe it has its effects on them.  They want Xi to throw it off the edge of the earth.  In my opinion when you even have a hint of modern ways come into your group I think it can either go two ways, good or bad.  This movie just kept on unraveling and presents modern civilization's strange aspects of life and living.  I like how they assume that everything happens in the sky have to be the gods.  Like if there is a thundering sound but no clouds they think gods have just eaten. 
All and all I really enjoyed this movie, in my opinion I think there are tribes even today who don't know about the modern world and would act the same way as depicted in this movie. 

The Gods Must Be Crazy

The Gods Must be Crazy is an interesting movie. It had plenty of laughs due do situational and slapstick humor. I did think that it accurately portray the amount of culture shock that would be experienced by a bushman travelling into modern society. Although I don think that there were any isolated tribes, like the one describe, in Africa in 1980 due to the colonization of that continent by European powers and the slave trade that was prevalent in Africa throughout most of its history.

I think that this movie did kind of show Modern society and technology for how it really is. In the beginning of the movie there was a comparison made between busman society and modern society. It showed that people in modern society work around times and are less happy because there are not only good things in the world, that cause happiness and joy, but also bad things that cause jealousy and violence. As a comparison the bush people are “primitive” because they don’t have technology, but seem to be doing well enough in a one of the harshest environments on the earth. The bush people see everything as good and put on earth for a good purpose until they find a modern coke bottle and it causes nothing but pain for the family.

Another thing this movie made me think about is all the trivial reasons one could be arrested. The Bushman gets arrested because he was prepared to do what he needed to survive, which included killing and eating a goat from a heard. No one seemed to understand that his people had no concept of ownership. He was tried and sent to jail for 12 weeks.  This makes me think of the current justice system and how it really does curtail our freedom as people. As an example, if I were to playfully punch one of my friends and a police officer saw me, he/she could technically arrest me for assault. A person can hardly do anything nowadays without it being some kind of crime. It really makes you (or at least me) think.

I thought that this movie accurately portrayed the current state of Africa, and the state it has been in since its decolonization in the 1950s. In most countries there is some kind of war or revolution going on because someone is power hungry or thinks they can run the country. Sam Boga tries to do this in the movie. The Gods Must be Crazy also shows the radical differences in the state of living through out Africa for example what must be Johannesburg, South Africa is fairly wealthy as compared to most of Botswana which is overwhelmingly poor in comparison.

I thought the slapstick humor was pretty funny especially the river scene where Mr. Steyn tried everything in his power to escort Ms. Thompson to the edge of the river but ends up falling into it and causing her to fall into it. And the awkwardness between the too was funny as well.

Overall this movie was well worth the watch. It was funny but it also made you contemplate some serious things about our society and the state of the world.