Verbal and Non-verbal Codes in the Film The Gods must be Crazy

Verbal and Non-verbal Codes in the Film The Gods must be Crazy

Student’s name

Institutional affiliation

Verbal and Non-verbal Codes in the Film The Gods must be Crazy

Introduction

The Gods must be Crazy (1980) is a comic allegory film that follows the traveling Bushman that encounters modern civilization for the first time and its stranger aspects, including a band of revolutionaries and a clumsy scientist. In this 20th Century Foxx film the tribal people live a happy life in a remote African desert. However, their happy life is disrupted when a Coca-Cola bottle gets dropped from a moving plane. The villagers start quarreling over the strange object and their tribal leader Xi makes the decision to return the bottle to the gods so that peace can prevail. Xi’s journey towards the end of the world leads him to cross paths with guerillas that take Sandra Prinsloo, a schoolteacher, and her entire class hostage. This film displays numerous elements of intercultural communication. This essay highlights the verbal and non-verbal codes employed in the film The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980).

In The Gods Must Be Crazy, the director provides a rather interesting cultural interaction between the western culture and the native San Tribe dwelling in the Kalahari Desert. The film’s plot focuses primarily on the San relatives that were led Xi, that are unaware of the modernized life that is happening outside the desert. Somewhere along the story, love blossoms between a teacher and scientist, nature reflection, and poachers. The San people have everything they need, and the gods treat them fairly until the Coca-Cola bottle threatens their peace (Burki, 2020). The journey to take the bottle back to its owners leads to prolonged search for two sons that boarded a water track that belonged to poachers. Xi showcases his survival skills in modernized parties and the movie finishes with a happy reunion between the two sons and their father.

The cultural patterns that occur within the San tribe affect their communication directly. Seeing they live in a primitive society, they San worship the sky and are the opinions that the jet lanes that are in the sky are made by their gods and that these gods were the ones that dropped them a Coca-Cola bottle (Msongelwa, 2019). Seeing that the San is a patriarchal hierarchy, the male is considered the family head, and he is tasked with making crucial decisions. For example, Xi made the final decision to return the bottle as it was becoming a curse to his community. Verbal communication refers to the utilization of symbols in either written or spoken, or sign form. The Bushmen (San) employed oral or spoken language but not written language. The modern people, however used both written and spoken language, as evidenced in the scene where Miss Thompson is in her office.

In The Gods Must Be Crazy, numerous events take place that connotes the non-verbal communication in the culture of the San Tribe. Non-verbal communication refers to a nonlinguistic form of sending or transmitting messages. Non-verbal communication is a complex process of generating messages that are based on behaviors or instruments or words facilitated by cultural contexts that are well-defined. For example, when the Xi’s younger son comes face to face with a hyena that threatens to kill him, he takes his rod and puts it on his head so as to extend his height probably since hyenas never ate grownups. The coca-cola bottle that falls from a moving plane is can be viewed as a sign of anger and disappointment. Worth noting, the act of the people in the plane throwing food to the ground before and after they eat a symbol of appeasing the ancestors for providing the daily needs. Throughout the film, Xi, San’s tribal leader, is used to place his left hand on the chest or forehead of the individual they are communicating with as a symbol of blessings, peace, and love for humanity (Çadır, 2019). Moreover, the markings of animal footprints tend to showcase nonverbal communication codes for tracking animals.

Additionally, the characters in the film did employ not only verbal communication codes but also non-verbal ones. For example, in the scene where the Bushmen had a confrontation as a result of the Coca-Cola bottle that was dropped from the sky, which is deemed a scarce resource, the tribes people all got jealous of each other as they all wanted an opportunity to use the bottle. The disagreements and scuffles that ensued were and non-verbal communication skills that pointed out to signs of distress. It was not until the bottle started dividing the San that Xi decided to send it back to its origin (Ehrhardt & Archambault, 2022). From the quarrels that ensued in the scenes, their eyes were a clear indication of their fury and anger. Similarly, when Xi decides to throw the bottle away as it had only caused chaos for their community, the sadness among the community members is evident. This is also another example of non-communication code employed in this film. The eyes movements of the community members are oculesics, a classification of non-verbal communication.

Additionally, non-verbal communication occurs through subliminal manipulation. Jamie Uys’ film The Gods Must Be Crazy employs the use of subliminal messages throughout the shots in the production of this film. In the context of this film Uys uses subliminal manipulation consisting of rapid presentation of sexualized visual material in a manner that is deemed by the unconscious mind views. A perfect demonstration of this is in the scene where Miss Thompson and Mr. Steyn repeatedly kiss one another. The images in this scene are showcased rapidly and fine-tuned to suggest that the act of kissing is accidental, and that it takes place because of the natural attempt of the two characters to get rid of the noise that the Land Rover produces. Another subliminal manipulation takes place in the scene where Mr. Steyn performed a copious hand job on Miss Thompson’s genitals as he pretends to assist her in finding her shoes from underneath the waters. The images in this scene are implicit and are presented rapidly that conscious viewer rarely views them with Mr. Steyn’s senses. However, the sexual is rather clear in the unconscious mind of the viewer. While the dialogues between Miss Thompson and Mr. Steyn have verbal elements, the sexual subliminal messages mentioned in the afore-mentioned scenes constitute implicit non-verbal communication which contributes to the film’s aesthetics (Endong, 2018). Another example of sexual subliminal messages that are non-verbal codes are demonstrated in the scene where Miss Thompson and Mr. Steyn have sex however, the images are obstructed by the bushes to once more imply that the action happens by sheer accident and not as a result of a plan of the two characters. On the surface, the scenes come of ambiguous but still implies to sex. A similar scenario takes place in another scene where Mr. Steyne sees Miss. Thompson nudity. However, the entire event is again viewed as a mere accident. Various cases of subliminal manipulations are occurrences of non-verbal communication as they enable the expression of numerous realities. In the context of this film, sexual acts are made so they can subtly spice up the plot.

The Gods Must Be Crazy also incorporates non-verbal cues from a semiotic point of view. Uys employs numerous symbols, sign, and archetypes to facilitate iconic, symbolic, and indexical communication in his film. As a non-verbal code, semiotics is seen in how the director employs sign communication in various instances. For instance, sign communication is seen in situations where white individuals like Mr. Steyn are required to talk to aboriginal or indigenous characters. In one such instance, Miss Thompson and Mr. Steyn ask some indigenous tribes from South Africa if it is true that rhinos show hostility by putting off any fire or flame they spot in the forest and they respond to them yes using their dialect and negatively nodding their heads. Miss Thompson is not familiar with their dialect hence he misunderstands their response because they seem to be insinuating to no using their body language. Semiotics are viewed in this very scene as illustrated in how the Toulala tribes people clap their hands before saying greetings in their dialect. The act clapping hands is an example of non-verbal cue and a sign that forms part of their actual greeting ritual (Gordon & Douglas, 2018). This specific non-verbal code assists the director give the film color. In particular instances, movie characters are pushed to employ various body and sign language as a guarantee of mutual comprehension, specifically when the dialogues involved interlocutors from different tribes and races. The film director also incorporates a number of archetypal images or sounds. For example, at time stamp 1:38: 43, in this scene, the director employs a mix of archetypal sounds such as pain and sex cries to non-subliminally showcase bodily pains and subliminally imply sex. At time stamp 52:19, the shot that is accompanied by a mix of pain cries and sex, Miss Thompson gets trapped in a thorny trap was she tries to get dress up. She pleads with Mr. Steyn to come and rescue her and set her free from the thorny plant. As Mr. Steyn gets the thorny stems off the skin of the young lady that is in distress, she formulates both pain and sex cries. In this case, the archetypal sounds that relate to sex imply that both Mr. Steyn and Miss Thompson were deriving some form of pleasure as they attempt to remove the thorny plant off her body.

Additionally, Uys also employs numerous symbols. One such example is the Coca-Cola bottle itself is a symbol of the Western culture which, despite being attractive has its fair share of disadvantages. However much it had the power to facilitate economic and human development, it caused a brutal disruption in the African traditional system. The Coca-Cola bottle that the San tribe sees for the first time stands for the Western exotic technology of the White man that would be later introduced into primitive African life. In addition to having other uses, technology today has turned out to be a curse in disguise. The indigenous San community suddenly comes up with a plan to get rid of the bottle to restore its traditional values and system. The unspoken message that comes from this symbolism is that the technology and western civilization and technology have great utility for the African community but cultural and civilization imports tend to have serious side effects which, if not well controlled, can cause a chaotic situation in the indigenous community.

In the film The Gods Must Be Crazy, the members of the San tribe use several features to the nonverbal and verbal codes. A gradual transformation takes place throughout the film. The San culture embraces dependence and adopts extended affiliations, not nuclear family ties. As the families continue to grow bigger, most finally accept each family member as an equal when allocating opportunities, roles and resources. This trend caused the adoption of cognitive descent, that is a fusion of spiritual and traditional belief orientation which ensures there is continuity.

Essentially the nonverbal and verbal codes that are in this culture are controlled, suing a common understanding of the expectations of every member that is assigned a unique responsibility. There exist three kinds of meanings which are concerned with building relationships that exist between communicating parties which clearly arise from the field, including social distance, contact, and attitude. Contact is deemed one of the most significant visual systems because it enables viewers to differentiate between images which showcase different objects, such as an animal or a person. Contact visualization is usually achieved using plots which introduce characters at the start of film. Seeing that the San is a predominantly conservative community, the film shows distinct social episodes governed using specific cultural rules (Lukianova & Ilchenko, 2019). For instance, when Xi finally manages to get to the top of the clip and he is surrounded with low-lying clouds, he immediately assumes that he has gotten to the end of the end edge of the world and here, he throws the coca-cola bottle at the end of the cliff. He then goes back to his family and the entire clan welcomes his with open arms. In this regard, going on the long journey to the world’s edges and coming back in one piece was an equivalent of going to war and getting back alive. This was a symbol of protection and blessings from the gods. Moreover, the San clan strongly believed that they were they were the only beings that existed in the world (Mahalingam, 2019). Xi has a strange reaction to the people that he meets outside of his clan (san). He actually thinks that everybody he comes across as god that seemed relatively huge and who traveled using road vehicles.

In closing, in general, the film The Gods Must Be Crazy possesses an interesting plot apart from its rich ability to augment verbal and non-verbal communication codes as a component of the San culture. The film’s director Uys uses a combination of both codes to tell a story involving individuals of two rather diverse cultures. Non verbal cues in the Gods Must Be Crazy are evidenced using subliminal manipulation as well as cues from a semiotic perspective. Although the subject of discussion in this text was both verbal and non-verbal communication skills, it is important to note that the San Bushmen rarely used written language but rather used oral and spoken language to a greater extent. In this essay, attention is paid to the ways in which the director incorporates subliminal semiotics and manipulation in the 1981 The Gods Must Be Crazy to pass sex-related messages and push the plot.

References

Burki, N. (2020). The Gods must be Crazy, or the Rhetoric of Apartheid: A (Re) evaluation of Jamie Uys’s Film in the Context of French Anti-apartheid Solidarity. Critical Arts, 34(1), 87-98.

Çadır, V. (2019). Non-verbal communication (bady language) and cultural differences (Master’s thesis, Namık Kemal Üniversitesi).

Ehrhardt, D., & Archambault, C. (2022). “The Gods Must Be Crazy”: Students’ Attitudes and Dispositions as Enablers and Blockers to Internationalization. Journal of Studies in International Education, 26(1), 80-96.

Endong, F. P. C (2018). Reading Non-Verbal Cues in Jamie Uys’s The Gods must be Crazy: A Subliminal and Semiotic Analysis.

Gordon, R. J., & Douglas, S. S. (2018). The Bushman myth: the making of a Namibian underclass. Routledge.

Lukianova, T., & Ilchenko, A. (2019). Intersemiotic translation: meaning-making in film and musical art. Cognition, Communication, Discourse, (19), 78-95.

Mahalingam, S. (2019). The Travel Gods Must Be Crazy: Wacky Encounters in Exotic Lands. Penguin Random House India Private Limited.

Msongelwa, M. (2019). The Khoisan and 21st Century History Teacher.