Curious film, 'Zulu'. It's hard to watch it without expecting Michael Caine to shout to the serried ranks of soldiers: "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"* (Instead of "First rank, fire!" - In a cod upper class accent.) What was even stranger, given the time it was made, 1963/64, was the massed ranks of half naked Zulu women in the opening scene. Ni**ples and all! In full view! Lovingly shot in close-up! The nearest that one got to nudity at the time was 'Health & Efficiency', a naturist magazine, with air-brushing all over the shop and naked tennis playing ladies! And during a supposed mass marriage ritual! It didn't take two guesses to work out what everyone was going to be doing after that was all over!
Now this was at a time in British movie history when 'a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, heaven knows, anything (most definitely not) goes' and piano legs were still covered up in case they displayed 'piano ankles'. But, I suppose, with Empire only recently on its death bed, it was OK to picture naked breasts on film in a mainstream movie, so long as it was colonial, black breasts, not white ones! After all National Geographic could get away it all the time, why not 'Zulu'?
It does betray a certain mindset tho', doesn't it?
And I do not for one second believe that the Director was aiming at veracity. God, they didn't even get Jack Hawkins to make a stab at a Swedish accent (he plays a Swedish missionary) even after they cast a Swede (with one hell of an accent, Liv Ullmann on speed) in the role of his daughter! So much for veracity.
Tits and ass! Nothing more! As much as you can get away with! I'm surprised they didn't go further. I can, however, confirm that the dancers were all wearing 'knickers' under the ornamentation (I checked. What I do for research to help mankind, ay? In slow motion!). No, I wouldn't have put it past them. Exploitation is only ever a matter of degree.
Interestingly, Chief Buthelezi, Head of the Inkatha party in South Africa, makes a brief appearence in the film; as the elder who exhorts his men to attack, I think. I wonder what he thought about it? Bit like getting Sarkozy to play Napoleon in a film about the Battle of Waterloo. Still dollars is dollars when you're a penniless African chieftain trying to make his way in an apartheid coloured (no pun intended) world.
Talking of exploitation.
The American public, but curiously not the European public, I think, have a strange fascination with the idea that Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks are going to finally realise that it was 'true love' (to quote the 'Princess Bride') and after 40 years are going to get back together again!
Now LB and SN joined Fleetwood Mac (as a couple - LB's stipulation) back in the early seventies and as a result of their song-writing skills propelled the jobbing rythmn section of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie (and his wife on keyboards - no good in Chicken Shack and no good in the Mac) to mega stardom, lots of dollars, millions of them, and a shed load of cocaine. Alright a studio-load full of cocaine!
Shortly after this jet-propelled rise to mega stardom SN and LB broke up, somewhat acrimoniously. (You can find out the names they called each other on Google) Ever since then, succeeding generations of 'fans', not just the original fans, have resolutely looked for signs that it's all going to end 'happily ever after' and 'our Wesley will find, at last, his Buttercup'! Even to the extent that one 'fan' posted on you tube that they were sleeping together again!
Now this would be adolescent nonsense, wishful thinking, as anybody knows who's dealt with 'water under the bridge'. However, Buckingham/Nicks whether unconsciously or consciously since the reformation in 1997 promote this very idea in their fans heads with every gig! The way they look at each other, the duets on one microphone, the way they wrap around each other, especially when LB plays a solo, the songs they do it to.
The only trouble is, they've always done it! Even when they were not mature enough to get over it properly! (I'm hoping they are now.) When you have to imagine that they hated each other's guts! (Personally, whatever HE did, to find your 'old lady' taking up with the drummer in the band, well that would have done for me with the band, I think! And yet it still took more than 5 years. 'The lure of easy money, it has a very strong appeal.') They still did it.
So are they exploiting the fans 'wish list'. I think so. But to be fair to both, they are performers. On stage, like any actor, they perform. To give the audience what it wants, needs. No-one would suggest that Helen Mirren as Pheadra has anything but an actor's 'affection' for whoever, and it is 'whoever', plays Hippolytus. It's what acting, performing, is all about. So why should LB and SN be any different?
They're not. But as Borges pointed out, art lies at least 50% of the time in the reaction/perception of the reader, listener, viewer.
Dream on, kids. It ain't ever gonna happen! But the coffers of Fleetwood Mac Ent. will continue to grow!
* A reference to 'The Italian Job'. A 1963 film featuring Caine, Noel Coward and some Mini Coopers!
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