Intercultural Communication

‘The Gods Must be Crazy’ – a Cultural Comment

Please check the font style and layout requirement. Looks like you should choose Times New Romans 12pt

To communicate is to do more than simply speak. It opens a window into another’s life – their values, their history and their culture. Our communication can define us as a society and distinguish us from others. As such, cultures have developed idiosyncratic ways in which they interact, both within their own civilisation and with others. This inevitably leads to miscommunication between cultures – a situation in which the cultural differences of the two societies causes the misinterpretation of social behaviours and verbal and nonverbal messages.

A film which explores these intercultural communication issues is Jamie Uys’ ‘The Gods Must be Crazy’ (1980). The film delves into the miscommunication between the ‘Bushmen,’ a tribe of simple and contented desert people, and members of a modern Western society. The film addresses a number of important themes of intercultural communication, such as individualism and collectivism, the cultural interpretation of time and the perceptual context in regards to communication.

From the beginning of the film, a clear distinction is established between the two societies observed in terms of individualism and collectivism. According to Harry Triandis and C. Harry Hui in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, members of a collectivistic culture place emphasis on the goals and desires of the group as one entity, and this attitude guides individuals’ behaviour (1986, p. 225). Accordingly, a member of a collectivistic culture feels an inherent connection to a group in which the principal objective is the maintenance of harmony(ref). This theory is presented to the audience within the opening scenes of the film. The audience is introduced the Bushmen, a small tribe living in the harsh Kalahari Desert. In order to survive, they work as a community with a common goal. The Bushmen...