Getting to Know the "Anatomy" of Tribe

My first port of call

Is to see what Brucie himself has too say (www.bbc.co.uk/tribe/bruce/index.html) on the development of the program. This is where I found the five points, that occur throughout the 15 episodes. In a personal statement Bruce says

“What is Tribe to me?

“Tribe has been my whole world for the last four years and is the most important thing in my life right now. It's a series about people and culture, our culture as well as others. We hope it's entertaining, because we want people to watch and enjoy, especially people who wouldn't normally tune into this type of programme, but we also hope we can communicate something important about the world." Close «

“Tribe is about looking at the way other people live and asking questions about the way we live. It's about family values, joie de vivre, free time, gender, sex, drugs, health and sustainable living. It's about everything that we talk about down the pub. Not just me and you but everyone. All our lives. But it's also about the global environmental and cultural threats that we know exist but that we don't know what best to do about. It's about commercialism and corporations and perceptions of our individual, materialistic world. It's about politics and social organisations."

“Tribe is also about how indigenous communities round the world are under threat from disease, human rights abuse, water and land rights and marginalisation from nation states and corporations."

“It's about the hopes and wishes of indigenous communities trying to grapple with a mad modern world where they face losing their language, identity and in some cases, their lives. It's about people who are so important to the world, who could teach us all so much in these troubled times. That's what Tribe is to me.”

Bruce Parry

Bruce Parry answered a q and a to the public personally and by analysing relevant questions I can get more of an insight into the methods and approaches parry has towards the tribe. To recap his 5 points:

• Knowledge
• Issues
• Dailylife
• Location
• Language

So….

The question is....When going from the Suri to the Nyangatom were you tempted to try to broker peace between the tribes?

Of course it crossed my mind, but it was not within the remit of my job at that time. This process would not be simple, nor quick. Our aim was to raise awareness in the hope that people of power within the Ethiopian Government or elsewhere may be moved or pressurised in to doing something. I would simply have been potentially more troublesome to have half heartedly started a process which we had not the resources or time to see through. No matter how tempting to do so or how heart wrenching to not try at least.

We wanted to show the fallacy of all wars through this film.

This encompasses the issues part of the five points. Parry realises that conflict is a part of life with the tribes, and that there is little that can be done by one man to help, but he can help build awareness.

In the same way we see in sci-fi films of time travel how slightest alteration can cause a catastrophic chain of events maybe bruce thought it might worsen the situation?

I was wondering if you could help organise a meeting between the old Suri chief and the Nyangatom elder? They both seemed intelligent people. I am sure that if they talked they might reach some sort of agreement so as to stop the fighting.

I thought about this at length, but for the reasons mentioned above have decided that it is not my place as I could not give it the time I feel it would require. My assistance is better served by informing others. Sad as this sounds.The situation is so much deeper than our film could possible hope to express in an hour. There is a lot of political rhetoric, lots of blood lust, cultural belligerence, and scarce recourses. I believe that the chiefs do want peace, but the young guns similarly want to express themselves . There simply are not enough resources to go round right now. There needs to be a bigger change here which would need governmental intervention. These tribal groups do often go through periods of truce, but the resources are too scarce for the truces to last long. It’s incredibly complicated.

Similarly to the previous question the issues that surround tribes are variable and Bruce wants to interegrate himself as a tribal member so to interfer with the issues would not be assimilating himself in the tribe.

What kind of issues could my tribe have? As students the most obvious would be tuition fee rises or the genral lack of money, or a rival faction of students??

I really enjoy your programmes and I find it amazing how well you communicate with the people you are staying with, without knowing the language, you seem to keep eye contact and just smile! Is that all you do or is there anythign else you use to help with this communication (other than an interpreter!) Cheers Tom

It’s just simple body language, eye contact, knowledge of the context of the conversation and simple friendliness. Not too hard really. Oh and interpreters do help but interestingly get in the way sometimes too. I prefer one on one regardless of how little I understand what’s being said, especially if it’s a physical activity.

 One of the points is language, how could I show this barrier?

One idea I have is, being bi-lingual means I could speak in German to the camera while the tribe speak English to the camera and then subtitle it, and still use English in the voice over?

We often see you livng and eating like the locals. This often includes eating raw blood and untreated milk. How come you don't get ill from the bacteria's that exist in these uncooked delicacies and have you ever been really ill from eating anything on your travels?

I get ill on occasion, though generally not as poorly as the crew sometimes do. In essence I’ve trained my gut up pretty well over the past few years and can get away with ingesting most things. I’m lucky I suppose and I am happy to maintain a high level of parasites and bacteria in my gut to help fight such illnesses. I generally get most ill if I’ve just returned to the bush from a long time back in pristine cellophane wrapped Europe, so when at home in Spain I try and eat old, off or dirty food where I can and think nothing of picking up food off a dirty floor to try and keep my gut flora and fauna topped up for my next trip away. It seems to work well enough for me. I also totally avoid antibiotics where I can. I am not a doctor though; so don’t do anything like that at home without consulting a physician first. Put it down to eccentricity.

This would come under custom, student often come to university without any life skills, I met many and can conjuure some pretty rank concoctions!

Even things like pot noodles disgust me, maybe if I went deeper and looked at what the ingredients are without sounding too much like Morgan Spurlock from supersize me, one might be as disgustedas if one had to drink raw blood!

Bruce, If you could begin your very own tribe somewhere in the world, what would your initiation ceremony be for new members into your tribe?

I love this question. I live in Ibiza and the tribe would have to be there. As for the initiation ceremony, you got my imagination going and I think I’m going to leave that question blank for now.

I have been looking forward to filming the initiation scene. In tribe its usually the form of some strange cactus or root. In my student culture it would definitely have to be the dirty pint. I have seen lots of nasty things go into these in my time as a student including

• Spirits beer cider wine
• Milk
• Olive oil
• Washing
• Dirty cutlery
• More unmentionables
• Bruce, how do you protect yourself from the scorching sun? Do you pack sun cream into your loincloth? Seriously, I see you in hottest Africa with no burning & barely a tan. Also do you genuinely stay 100% of the time with the natives while in the village, or do you 'cheat' by having a reserve tent nearby? If the latter, is this when you apply cream? By the way, fabulous programme - well done!
• Rarely use sun cream as I build up a defence first. Sometimes I borrow some off the crew if it’s really bad.
• Secondly, once I move in with a family I never move out. I have been known to join the crew on occasion for a meal, but only after at least one week of abstinence.

I was thinking of having a bit of a behind the scenes with the camera crew and havning some of the footage from the point of view of a tribe member, that is too subvert the film. I won’t have to worry about suncream as the setting is the westcountry

I was thinking of having the support crew as being horrible to the tribe member telling them to “get lost” subverting the usually squeaky clean happy BBC crew.

3 months after initially writing this I am not going to include this and stick true to Parry’s way.

So, Out of many questions here I have chosen the most relevant to my research. Looking at this has given me ideas and insights into the “anatmomy” of the series.