Pretense

A friend once told me about this African tribe in the film ‘Amistaad’ that did not have a word for "should". How they only do what they want to do.

Came across this fascinating section in this book - 'A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters', by Julian Barnes. This particular story is a series of letters by this actor Charlie who has gone into the Amazonian jungles as part of a film crew - they're filming along with a group of Indians whom they've convinced to act in the movie, via an interpreter:

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"Monday. Here's a funny thing. While the Indians appear to understand roughly what we're doing - they're happy to do retakes and don't seem at all put out by this great big eye being pointed at them - they don't seem to understand about the idea of acting. I mean sure they're acting their ancestors and they're quite willing to build us a raft and transport us upstream on it and be filmed doing this. But they won't do anything else.

If Vic says could you stand in a different way or use the pole like this and tries to demonstrate they simply won't. Absolutely refuse.

This is how we pole a raft and just because a white man is watching through his funny machine we aren't going to do it any differently.

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And the second one below - set me thinking - why and how we changed into a society that learned to pretend to be somebody else - and how pretense has become a part of our very lives, not just acting. It is in fact a survival skill now, being absolutely truthful would get us into much trouble.

Maybe pretense became necessary as we evolved into a bigger, more complex society? But what about the price we pay for it, being forced to behave in a false way so often? What is it doing to us?

But even if we did start off with absolute honesty, there's no going back now, is there?

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"The other thing is even more incredible. They actually think that when Matt and I are dressed up as Jesuits, we actually are Jesuits! They think we've gone away and those two blokes in black dresses have turned up! Father Firmin is just as real a person for them as Charlie, though I'm glad to say they like Charlie more.

But you can't persuade them about what's going on. The crew think this is pretty stupid of them but I wonder if it's fantastically mature. The crew think they're such a primitive civilization they haven't even discovered acting yet.

I wonder if it's the opposite and they're a sort of post-acting civilization, maybe the first one on the earth. Like, they don't need it anymore, so they've forgotten about it and don't understand it any longer. Quite a thought!"

Page 243, Upstream

'A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters', Julian Barnes