Title: Tug-Of-War - Bushmen /
Authors: Marshall, John, 1932-2005
Publisher: Documentary Educational Resources,
Year: 1974
Subjects: Black people Namibia Social conditions.; Ethnology Namibia; !Kung (African people) Social life and customs.; !Kung (African people) Social conditions.; !Kung (African people) Economic conditions.
Abstract: A short film about the Ju/'hoan version of this universally popular game. In this film, a group of !Kung boys between the ages of eight and fifteen improvise a tug of war with a piece of castoff rubber hose. A tug of war in our society is highly competitive: each side tries to pull the other over a line in order to win. But !Kung children do not see games this way. Though they strive to improve their own performance in games, they are not encouraged to do so at the expense of other children. "Winners" and "losers" are unknown to them. There are two main reasons for the lack of competitive spirit in !Kung games. In the first place, meaningful competition demands that all the players in a game be of roughly equal ability. !Kung bands are quite small, so the chances are small that a child will have many age-mates within his band. As a result, !Kung play groups are almost always composed of children of widely differing ages. Competition in these groups would have no purpose. Second, !Kung adults do not value competition very highly. They do not respect the warrior, and fights between bands are unheard of. Competition, they feel, would create inequality, inequality would breed jealousy, and jealousy could lead to violence. The !Kung abhor physical and verbal violence: they have several institutions, such as meat-sharing and reciprocal gift-giving, which serve to prevent social tensions from reaching violent levels. IKung parents, then, do not provide competitive role models for their children to follow. During his time in the Kalahari, John Marshall shot over 600,000 feet of film from which 24 films on the Ju/'hoansi, have been made. These films on the lives and culture of the Kung people constitute a body of work that continue to define the fields of anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking today.