Kay...this won't catch on...but whatever :crazyeyes:

we're all writing papers...some are an intelligent collection of words making up some kind of main idea or coming to a point.

others are strange things that pop out of our heads and we hope the teacher at least grades them :flash:

But all the same...you either become enamored with your own wit or you are just very proud of your skillz at bsing...

here is where you can share your stuff and let us all critique and shame each other :yeah:

To start off...I'll post an essay of mine for sociology class about that classical film The Gods Must Be Crazy (note: we had to answer these 6 questions in essay form...so if my essay seems a bit jumpy...you know why:

The Bushmen are a close knit and generally friendly small group of people. When you first see the Bushmen in the film they are out gathering water in one way or another, and you see older men teaching the young children how to gather water. The film then shows the huts all gathered close to one another and a small group of women working at various tasks. Everybody is smiling and everybody seems to be quite comfortable with themselves, their surroundings and with each other. There doesn't seem to be a real formal hierarchy to the group. In fact, the film seemed to suggest that while one person may have more respect than another, no person is treated unequally or unfairly. Every person has a place and a thing to do to help the rest of the family, and every person works with in that role and accomplishes their task. No person or task seems to be above another. When Xi takes the bottle and tells the others that he is taking it away, he is not exercising a power over the group; instead he is taking steps to ensure that the group advances as a whole. In their small group there is no room for greed.
On the other hand, modern society has yet to advance so far. In fact, the film shows that in modern society, nobody seems to be comfortable with who they are or what they are doing. And they are not very comfortable or as friendly or trusting of others. That can be seen with Kate Thompson sitting next to a woman who asks if the voices in her head are bothering Kate. The film shows how busy, noisy, and pretty self involved we all are. It makes the point that we have to go to school for years in order to learn how to live in our world, but school also is there to teach how to live with others because that is a skill that we seem to have lost somewhere along the way.
To begin naming contrasts, in the Bushmen's society it is just the village teaching the children; in modern society it is strangers who teach our children. Modern society teachers have no real defining attachment to our children; they are part of the job. Teachers can have a fondness for their students and treasure them, but all the same they don't have the same level of commitment that they would if the children were theirs or would profoundly affect their lives later on in life. The Bushmen see the children as their future and treat them as such, because that is what they are. The success of the village depends solely on how well the children are taught.
The other contrast is how suspicious and untrusting modern society is of strangers. And not only strangers, but anybody or anything new or different. Xi's tribe took in the Evil Thing, not knowing it was evil then, and immediately made it useful. They did not fear it, they played with it. They created and invented with it. In modern society people tend to see new and different things as a possible threat. Kate distrusts the performance of Andrew's car. While she knows that is not how a car is suppose to act, she does not seem to understand that it can work and work well when handled right. And instead of making the best of her situation and being a help in making the car work right she instead hinders any progress being made. As a result, Andrew had a tougher time getting the car to work right with two of them than when it was just him. Suspicion of each other can be seen in how she treats Andrew and how she reacts to Xi when she sees him for the first time. Xi and Andrew are both accepting and friendly to her, but she acts as though she is in deep danger.
However, the way she reacts to strangers is not exactly unreasonable considering where she comes from. Part of her society is extreme violence, as can be seen by the terrorist group running around shooting people. For her, it is a matter of survival to be suspicious and always on guard. In Xi’s tribe they have never been threatened like that, so there is no reason to treat others like threats.
One last huge conflict I noticed was that it takes more to make us happy or comfortable, while Xi’s village does not need as much. They are able to use a Coke bottle and be absolutely happy with that. In our society, if somebody were to hand us an empty Coke bottle and tell us to be happy with it, we’d most likely throw it back at them and demand the Coke. Kate needed Jack’s tour bus to start feeling civilized and comfortable, she need the expensive drinks, cushioned seats and modern music. Xi’s village needed only to have a place to sit, the knowledge that there is water to drink, and somebody to talk to and they were content. In modern society, we spend a lot of effort in coming up with more ways to be more comfortable, we add things to our day to day lives that while they are not exactly necessary to live, they nonetheless need to be there, and we would freak out if they went missing.
As I sat and watched the film it did cause me to reflect on what all we have lost as we became more “advanced”. I also thought of an old Outer Limits show where they said at the end “When in the search to becoming more humane, let us not forget what makes us human” (Para). Basically, when we are out trying to better society and ourselves, we have to be careful not to make those sacrifices or choices that would make us inhumane. How I applied it to the film is that even though Kate and Andrew’s society is more “advanced” with medicine and technology and communication, they lose the basics. They lose how to be able to have a stranger come into their neighborhood and seeing them as a potential friend and not a threat. They lose seeing their neighbors as family. The village Kate stays in welcomes her as part of the village, they sing for her. One contrast I did not bring up earlier is that Xi’s society is a bit more colorful, same as the village Kate goes to teach. There is more color, it is friendly. In our society, we take on the color of steel, the color of the Industrial Revolution. Steel is not warm or yielding or colorful, we’d rather have our music come out of a box instead of hearing it from ourselves. So, we lose that too.
The title “The Gods Must be Crazy” to me, needs to be said with a hint of exasperation. It would be said in the same tone as “Oh no…here we go again…”. To me, the title suggests that it is the gods who must be watched carefully, and that the people are like their parents. Xi mentions a couple of times that the gods were careless, or they were unaware of what they were doing in giving his village the Evil Thing; that they were like children testing out a new trick on their dog. And now it was up to Xi to be the parent and cast off the Evil Thing from the end of the Earth. When Xi meets Andrew and Kate, he thinks they are gods, and while he is friendly to them he quickly becomes confused by their behavior and mentally treats them as if they were children. He thinks they are not approaching the situation correctly, they are dismissive, or they are more confused than he, and that is the behavior one would expect from a child. How this fits in with the rest of the movie is that, everybody in the film is crazy. If we were to think that all of modern society is the gods and Xi’s village the people underneath them, then we are all indeed crazy in comparison. Xi represents stability and reason; his life is simple while ours is complex. We need to take it down a notch, slow down and make ourselves less godlike, put on less airs and appreciate simplicity.
My last thoughts on the film simply are that there are inventions and discovers essential in life. We need the technology and advances in medicine. We need a lot of things because they simply are better than relying on raw resources. But while we have all of that, we can also have what the Bushmen have: love. Love for everybody, love for ourselves, love for our surroundings. We should be able to greet a stranger and trust that they are good people and will not harm us or our family. We should be able to go out into the woods and not be intimidated by nature and scared of all this things that might be there. As civilized and educated people we should know what the Bushmen already know: that violence really will not get us anywhere. We have to work together, cooperate and things will get done to the satisfaction of everyone. We have come so far, but we are so far behind on so many things. And that is a very sad and tragic thing.

~I'm a terrible writer :P

Ah, yes, homework... I should probably go do it sometime. :blink:

I don'
t have homework but I'm currently up to page fourteen of a submission on a proposed Act of Parliament. Do you want me to post it????

:|

highlights would do...

and maybe the basic idea too :P

you can ruin even the greatest film by over analyzing it :Q

well, I don't care to overanalyze during the movie...I enjoy it...

it's not until I am drinking coffee or whatever afterwards to I wax philosophical.