Reading Non-Verbal Cues in Jamie Uys’s The Gods must be Crazy: A Subliminal and Semiotic Analysis

Abstract

As a highly constructed media text, the filmic narrative most often integrates a variety of non-verbal cues masterfully deployed by the film director to subtly convey controversial, delicate or highly sensitive messages. Two of such non-verbal cues are subliminal manipulation and semiotics, most often deployed to imply taboos, sex, profanity or other issues that may be considered obscene or troubling to some extent. In this paper, attention is given to how Jamie Uys deploys these two forms of non-verbal cues (subliminal manipulation and semiotics) in his film titled “The Gods must be Crazy” in order to convey sex related messages and ultimately sexualize its filmic production. The paper specifically answers the three following research questions: how are subliminal manipulation and semiotics forms of non-verbal cues? How does Jamie Uys use them in his film to convey controversial messages and sexualize his production? How effective are the two non-verbal cues in conveying the specific sexual messages of the film director?