Movie Critics Corner Take 3; or Things that have nothing to do with anthropology

I was really excited about this movie, it looked inspiring and uplifting and had two actors that I really enjoy, Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. Damon is incredibly attractive in this film, so just like rate your professor.com, it gets bonus points for hotness level. I can't help being a girl.




Delicioso...

In general, the movie was really good. The message was inspiring, especially since it was based on real events. But something was missing for me and I still haven't figured out what exactly it was or if it's more me than the movie.

Accents: The South African accents that were used were really interesting (I love hearing accents) and made the setting believable, but I had a hard time understanding people sometimes. So this issue is likely my problem more than the movie's.

Morgan Freeman: no complaints - He made an excellent Nelson Mandela and brought a lot of realism to the role. I do wish they had fleshed out his relationship with his family more since it was portrayed as troubled and that is something I have never known when reading about him. But overall, excellent.

Time Period: I liked how you see a lot of the overall racial issues going on in South Africa at the time through the prism of Mandela's bi-racial security team. These guys don't trust each other at all and I think the first line that the head dude says to the white security detail when they first enter the room sums it all up, "Are you here to arrest us?" Because that had been a regular occurrence.

I do wish we could have had a little more history. We know Mandela was imprisoned and that it was unfair, but as Americans (and my generation especially) we don't have a great understanding of what exactly happened. We start the film with Mandela being released from prison and people say things and news reports mention that black South Africans can now vote (and that was 1994!), but I would have liked to have seen flashbacks to understand what it was previously like, political arrests/societal oppression, etc. And maybe see why it suddenly changed (was it more international or internal pressure?). Clint Eastwood, show me, don't tell me!

I think what I really wanted was an explanation for why white South Africans felt that the previous apartheid government was ok. Why they felt that they were actually superior and could just say racist comments out loud and think nothing of it. But questions concerning government/societal indoctrination of racist norms is not, I guess, really a part of a movie that shows how a man tried to move people past those issues. Much like the South Africans in the movie, we the audience are pushed to focus on the future. It makes sense, but I'm left wanting more context.

Rugby: I'm not sure if the movie needed more rugby or more structure to let the audience know what was going on. I know a little about rugby and have watched a few games (world cup a few years ago: biggest Frenchmen I have ever seen, wiped the floor with my poor Irish kin), and this movie reminded me that for such a brutal sport, rugby is surprisingly boring. I don't know why. Huge guys dragging each other up and down a field should be interesting, but it's not and I think the problem is the scrum. And that's what the issue was in the movie.



Much like real life, there's a lot of scrum and not a whole lot of running (except for the Maori guy in the New Zealand match, he kicked ass). So you have a lot of camera shots of the scrum, where all the action is taking place. And to catch this exciting time, we are in the middle of it, watching from below as these guys heave and ho against each other for field and ball advantage.

The problem is that it's not exciting, I'm not on the edge of my seat wondering if the little guy who's name I can't remember is going to get the ball or get trampled. And if you aren't watching the screen, it sounds kind of like a bad porn or a day at Gold's gym, i.e. a lot of grunting.

I'll be honest, this is probably me. I just may be scrumophobic. And I don't know how to improve these scenes, although a more intense instrumental music sequence might have helped. I'm thinking battle scenes from Braveheart or Gladiator, something heavy on ethnic/tribal drums, maybe a bodran. But I didn't feel the intensity of the game and I needed to since it was as much a main character as Nelson Mandela or Pienaar.

So, it was good and inspiring, but I wish I felt it a bit more. And I wish I had waited for it to come out on Netflix.

Graduated

Best graduation gift ever!



Anthro kids give the best presents!

Graduation

Graduation tomorrow and now I need a job until August when I move my happy butt to New York and start this all over again. Huzzah.


(image borrowed from http://www.upstatenyroads.com/assets/oldi-81.jpg)

Metric Sex

I've never been particularly good at math, in fact the reason I had to take the GRE so many times was because I couldn't get my math score up to a competitive level. Embarrassing, but true. So color me surprised when I find myself preferring and appreciating metric analysis to determine sex and ancestry. If only metrics could give a better idea about aging, but I think there we are stuck with morphological characteristics for awhile.

Morpho traits have been the main determinant in sex and ancestry estimation. Some of these can be incredibly easy to discern especially when they deal with the pelvis; the presence or lack of a subpubic angle, the depth and breadth of the greater sciatic notch, the shape of the ventral face of the pubic bone.


(Image borrowed from http://scienceblogs.com/afarensis/)

But people are variable and geographic groups differ in their amount of sexual dimorphism. Even within the most studied groups in America (European and African descent groups), there can be individuals who are extreme outliers. My favorite story concerning this issue comes from my undergrad forensics professor who attended a conference where one presenter laid out several skulls and asked participants to attribute sex and ancestry. One skull was consistently scored as European-American female based on morphological traits. Then the known determinations were revealed. The European-American female turned out to be an African-American male. This is a pretty big discrepancy to have missed on both counts.

This is why in the forensics class I took in my final semester of grad school, I appreciated the encouragement to try out new ways of determining the biological profile. Around mid-semester someone found a JFS (Journal of Forensic Sciences) article using a scapula metric calculation for sex (Dabbs et al. 55(1) 2010).

This article has become my new favorite method of double-checking my morpho assessment. There are two different methods described in the article. The 5-measurement method uses non-standard measurements from a 1928 article that I couldn't get my hands on, which was a shame because there are no pictures of the exact measurement method and the descriptions could have been more detailed. I was left approximating what I thought was probably the right way to do them. So basically, guessing. The 2-measurement method was much better, standard measurements (breadth and length) that are part of the usual measurements you would do for a case anyway.


This method correctly determined sex for African- and European-American cases, and most importantly, for Hispanic individuals, which have had less skeletal assessment for modern populations and are becoming a bigger presence in forensic cases. The only down side was that the cases were all male, so I can't vouch for the female side of things, though Dabbs et al. had an overall accuracy of 91% for the 2-measurement method. As always, more research is needed.

Long time no see

Yes, again, I was a horrible blog writer person. I apologize. But the good news is that my hard work and ignoring my blog paid off and I get to graduate. Huzzah! One week from today I will be officially a master's person...or a person with a masters. Sadly, it doesn't have the same ring as being officially a doctor or officially a bartender or welder. And also seems a little unhelpful at times, at least with those programs you end up qualified to go do something, make money, get a real job. With the masters, happy though I am that I survived, I am qualified only to go get my doctorate, oh well.

Lots of things have happened since the last time I posted. Graduation coming up being one. Moving to NY soon being another. There is a spot at a doctorate program with my name on it and I get to move to a brand new place far from the dear and familiar South to do it. I'm pretty excited.

But while that's exciting for me, it's probably boring for you all. So I do have a fun story to relate, complete with pictures.

I have been collecting data for a project my professor and I have been working on. This has involved me tramping through a field for the better part of a year as pigs we laid out decomposed. It sounds gross, but the NC fall was pretty hot and the decomp part of the study didn't take very long. Our primary objective was the bones - how do they change over time.

I'd initially been worried about snakes, but after months of not having any issues, I got brave and stopped carrying the machete that I had originally used to cut down foliage. This was my first mistake. The snakes seemed to sense my lack of fear and started hunting me down.

By snakes I mean one snake, but the important thing to remember is that I did the requisite stomping of the ground as I moved along, a 'snake scare away' tactic I learned as a child. Unfortunately, I found out later from a rattlesnake expert in Albuquerque, NM that snakes are deaf so won't hear you coming (which I knew) and even as you tramped along sending out specific 'here i come' vibrations, they will just curl up and stay where they are (which I didn't know). So much for my snake preparednes.

But the problem with my snake encounter wasn't that I scared it or snuck up on it. It was that it snuck up on me. Something the so called rattlesnake expert had no answer for. There I was checking on my pig (who was nicely weathering in the sun and vegetation) and when I turned around, there he was, a 5 ft snake waiting for me like some sort of ninja. The bastard. But don't worry I handled the situation like any seasoned anthropological researcher would. And by handled it, I mean I did the running-jumping-screaming thing which is key when evading snakes.

These are the lengths that you must go, dear readers, when you take on anthropological work, so be fore-warned. Our field is not for the feint of heart!

Need further proof? Fast forward a few weeks and my field has suddenly exploded with late spring vegetation. And the machete is back in action to find some of my pigs that have gone missing in the growth.

There is one important thing you need to know for future reference about this particular procedure: machetes are sharp.



Unfortunately, I know this because I mistook my thumb for a clump of grass. Whoops. Luckily my handy-dandy masters education has also qualified me as a green beret level anthropologist! So I was able to stop the bleeding by using a long blade of grass as a makeshift band-aid.



So, kids, join the ranks of anthropologists and you, too, can go on exciting and dangerous data collection expeditions and employ creative field first aid!