Luddite Films: The Gods Must Be Crazy

The term ‘Luddite’ is synonymous with technophobia: the rejection of industrialized technological progress.  The original Luddites of the early 19th century were English workers enraged over losing their jobs after the introduction of industrial machines.  They protested by smashing the machines.

Luddites didn’t impede industrial progress nor have Luddite films persuaded us to give up our technologically-inspired desires.  Many films critical of our machine-dominated world have themselves employed technologically complex special effects to underwrite their mission.  The Matrix and Terminator films immediately come to mind.  Making movies by definition means employing the very devices Luddite films warn us about.

It would be hasty to say that Luddite films "hate" technology.  It’s more like they are illustrating the deleterious effects of a technologically driven society. 

Specifically, the films show how we have become increasingly dehumanized by allowing the machines to dominate us.  In other words, we have become complacent stupefied automatons in our everyday lives.  We are increasingly losing touch with not only Nature but our inner nature.  Stupefied bordering on stupid.

The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980) when it was released in the United States in 1984 achieved the highest box office ever for a foreign film (it was subsequently passed by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). The film satirizes western civilization's overdependence on technology, yet The Gods' tone is never severe, dogmatic, or apocalyptic. Indeed, we could better serve it by creating a different category, like "civilization versus noncivilization" movie, as it points out the dangers of being overcivilized and of humans having lost their better instincts. 

Into the camp of Kalahari desert natives, the !Kung (in their language an exclamation point refers to a click of the tongue while the word is pronounced), drops a Coke bottle, the ultimate symbol of our civilization's productivity and waste. The narrator says that it is the hardest object they have ever found.  The group finds many uses for it and gets great happiness from those uses. They deem the bottle a gift from the gods.

Who are these "gods"?  They are the ones who soar above the desert and create jet streams in the sky.  The gods are mysterious and almost unknowing.  We never get a theological perspective from the Bushmen.  It is hard to say how much the gods are respected.  The gods are us.  As long as we remain unknown to the natives, our reputation as being larger than life (the !Kung's life) remains solid.

When do things go wrong with the gift from above? The native band finds the bottle too useful. Everyone wants it for different tasks and fight for possession. This causes the adults and children alike to have emotions like envy and selfishness they had never experienced. They feel a shame analogous to Adam and Eve's after eating the apple. However, they preserve their innocence by casting the bottle out of their paradise. This becomes only way to evade the technological trap.

The !Kung leader, Xi (N!xau), initially tries to solve the coke bottle problem by throwing the bottle back into the sky and nearly clunks himself on the head. After a tribal council, he resolves to take it to and throw it over the edge of the earth. The removal of this original sin is possible because the group's small size allows it to detect more quickly and unequivocally the noxious aspect of this godsend.

Most of The Gods, in fact, shows Xi's encounters with civilized people who have apparently been progressively dumbed down by their technological improvements. We are proved to be "crazy". Only after he overcomes civilization's barriers can he accomplish his mission: tossing the coke bottle over the end of the earth.

The comedic film follows three separate plot lines.  First, Xi encounters the odd rituals of the technological world on his way to getting rid of the evil object, the coke bottle.  The second has Mr. Stayn, a scientist working in the game reserve, meets Miss Thompson, a school teacher, to whom he‘s attracted, but Stayn cannot do anything right around women.  The third has Sam Boga lead an unsuccessful military insurrection whence he’s pursued into a neighboring country.  Boga takes Miss Thompson’s class hostage during his flight.  Mr. Stayn and Xi, who temporarily works as a guide, help free the hostages, capture Boga and his men, and Stayn finally is able to relate his feelings to Miss Thompson.

Little about the plot informs the anti-technology themes, except that most of the characters appear slightly ridiculous.  In no small measure, The Gods suggests that civilized people are emotional cripples, due in great part to their alienation from the simple basic things needed to survive.  The world has become too complicated and contrived. 

The director, Jamie Uys, specializes in capturing the quirky aspects of human and animal life.  His first major feature, Animals are Beautiful People (1974), serves as a good introduction to the mood created by The Gods Must Be Crazy.  It starts with the narrator of both films, Paddy O’Byrne.  Listening to him gives me the feeling that the two films are attached at a very basic level.  His voice gives Gods a documentary feel.  What he says about the Bushmen in the Kalahari has the same authority as when he describes the Animals in the Namib desert. 

In Animals, Uys depicts the various fauna and reptiles in an anthropomorphic way.  He views nature through a human lens to demonstrate that humans are little different from animals.   Likewise, he  pokes fun at civilization in Gods, showing it to be an elaborate, confusing version of the tribal Bushmen. 

Looking back at both films, I can’t help feeling there's a missing dimension.  The animals shown in the 1974 film have come under increasing attack and many face extinction.  The feel good formula of Animals are Beautiful People doesn’t work as well anymore.  The same with Gods.  Native peoples in the Kalahari or the Arctic or Brazil have also been facing extinction, and to enjoy the film one cannot think too deeply about the fate of the !Kung.