01:18 - 08.03.06
USS Monitor
I watched Sahara tonight with my youngest. It's funny sometimes how one's mind interacts with the material being presented isn't it? It seemed to me that some of the movie was an attempt to parody other action adventure movies. Early on when they are first on the yacht going down the Niger River it seemed I could hear echoes of Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in "African Queen" in the conversation between the two main characters. There was a running gag too about the one character constantly losing his favorite hat - a tip of the hat to the Indiana Jones series I think. A lot of the adventure sequences had echoes of some of the plots in the Indiana Jones stories, the Richard Quartermain series and also some of the MacGyver stories I've enjoyed. A lot of improbabilities strung together that made for an entertaining tale anyway. An extra bonus was the music - Nigerian and Malian rhythms mixed with music out of the '60's and 70's. Well done.
As I was watching, something kept tugging at the back of my mind about the setting and scenery too. I pulled out my encyclopedias and looked at the entries for "Africa" and "Asia". Sure enough. I've read a fair amount about the herbal remedies used by some of the tribes that were included in the story - the Tuareg and the Songhai. Wade Davis was the more credible writer, while the other anthropologist seemed to have gone with a preset notion of what he was going to find. He expressed frustration often that he felt the tribe wasn't being honest with him, but I'm guessing that what might have been occurring was that they weren't responding in the ways he expected of them. Could be wrong I guess. As I was looking at the topographical maps for the two continents it occurred to me too that sometimes what masks our vision of the truth is the lines and boundaries we superimpose on a landscape that aren't supported by the natural conditions of the area. That was very evident in the African section, but even moreso in the political borders that theoretically divide Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Maybe to address issues in those regions one might have to look at the social or faith communities that extend across boundaries. Maybe issues such as poverty and environment would be better addressed if approached from a different perspective than imposed political niceties. After all those solutions aren't even coming close to helping so why not try another approach? Odd how the mind interacts with information sometimes, isn't it? Good night dear diary.
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