Hang on a mo ! Call me wilfully obtuse, but I thought Haggard's heroes were English gentlemen, sharing the conventional values of their society, who sought to extend the Empire (most of the time).
Actually they were usually South Africans out for personal gain, but whatever.
Whereas our lot
are Desperado's on the run from the law and seeking to bring down their empire.
Yes, but as an anthropologist I'd like to point out that people tend to be informed by the values of the society in which they were raised. I'd like to recommend "The Handmaids Tale," which makes a good case for the rather sinister similarities between the hardcore left and the hardcore right.
isn't long before we're comfortably assured that primitive means dangerous.
Doesn't it ? What was it Hobbes said about life in a state of nature ?
No, it doesn't. The !Kung Bushmen of South Africa are not particularly dangerous unless you're an antelope, and one can say pretty similar things about the Inuit, the Semai Senoi of Malaysia, and a lot of others. Hobbes was a philosopher, not an anthropologist.
Taking females as plunder is (I think) fairly well documented in tribal warfare.
Actually, recent studies have suggested that it's been overreported; initially by colonial explorers looking for an excuse to take over the land from the locals (under the guise of protecting the poor innocent women), and later on by certain anthropologists with overly macho ideas about hunter-gatherers. It does tend to feature a lot in a certain sort of early European war saga, but again the current thinking is that this has less to do with reality and more to do with the ego of the writer :-).
fertility of the primitives is declining so a female would be a valued commodity.
Actually, that depends too. Witness female abandonment in parts of China; in a generation or two, their fertility will be seriously impaired by the excess of males, but this doesn't stop families abandoning surplus daughters in favour of sons.
She instantly throws herself at the feet of our sturdy white giants and hails them as the saviours of her people, singling out Avon as 'Lord'. Vila and Gan presumably come from Another Place.
Again there are precedents for this sort of thing in primitive societies on our own planet.
Only two documented ones (Montezuma and the Hawaiians), and even there there is room for dispute; in the Hawaiian case, certainly, it's heavily debated whether the locals meant what Cook thought they meant. There's a lot more precedent in Fifties pulp adventure films than in actual history :-).
From this we can deduce that the representation of the sexes on Cephlon is indeed of a very primitive kind, unsullied by any problematic complications like cultural awareness, ideological consciousness or a sense of historicity.
I agree that all this is deplorable.
I think Neil was being sarcastic.
Again, primitive societies do have primitive belief systems.
Which actually tend to be extremely complex, and not at all like the rather facile and fatuous one presented in Deliverance.
But Avon and co. don't invade Cephlon.
To pick up on Neil's Haggard metaphors, neither do Quatermain et al.-- they wander into Rhodesia (sic) in search of gold. Similarly, the colonialist endeavour had a lot less to do with invasions, and more to do with looking for resources of various sorts. In Canada, for instance, the French and English didn't come charging in, gun down the natives and take their land-- they sent in a few people to get involved in the fur trade, then a few more, then a few more. That doesn't make Deliverance any less colonialist.
If you enjoyed this episode, may I also recommend Triumph of the Will and Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom. They should be right up your street.
Not, really my cup of tea thanks !
Actually I enjoyed both, but probably not for the reasons Neil is suggesting...
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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