Made in China: The gods go east

Jamie Uys's The Gods Must be Crazy and its sequel films are icons of South African entertainment, perceived both as hilarious comedy and blatant apartheid propaganda. Three further sequels, made from Hong Kong by Chinese directors, are hardly known in South Africa. These films are particularly interesting from a cultural point of view, as they portray Orientals (and white South Africans) from an Oriental perspective and San Bushmen from a position that is neither Western nor set in an apartheid/post-apartheid South African context. The current context of globalization in which cultures are expressed and negotiated creates an interesting space for the analysis of these “multicultural” films. This article examines these films especially, Crazy Safari, and discusses them in terms of responses from focus groups, one of Taiwanese viewers in Durban, and another of Kenyans in Kenya.