Homework Question on The Fast Runner
THE FAST RUNNER VIDEO REVIEW
1-2 page typed (adhering to all syllabus guidelines).
MUST BE: Typed, printed, and stapled prior to coming to class. Include name, date, class, and a “title” The Fast Runner
- (One paragraph) What relevance and value does the movie “The Fast Runner” have in relation to Soc/A 105.
- (Four paragraphs) What characteristics of hunting & gathering / band type political organization are shown in the movie?
- YOU MUST PROVIDE 4 specific examples (1 paragraph for each example) of hunting and gathering, band type political organization as depicted in the movie, and YOU MUST explain each example within the anthropological framework discussed/provided in class lecture and also as provided in Faces of Culture Video segments the class viewed. (PLEASED REFER TO YOU NOTES AND TEXTBOOK for definitions and characteristics of hunting and gathering, band type political organization, and for an anthropological context if you are confused.
- 3 (One paragraph) Provide a definition of “Oral Tradition”, explain how Oral Tradition relates SPECIFICALLY to the “The Fast Runner” video and conclude by sharing what you think is the “Moral of the Story”?
Homework Answer on The Fast Runner
The film is based on a traditional Inuit story that Kunuk and the script-writer, Paul Apak Angilirq, have said they’d heard early in their lives. For the film project, the story was recorded in Inuktitut inversions told by seven or eight or ten elders. Before his early death from cancer in 1998. The particular spiritualist who is presented as the person who brings trouble to the community of the Igloolik does not originate from the community to start with but while the events of the film unfold, we are told that he is the one who changes the entire community as the events he puts up are inspiring and good intended.
The film functions as a colonial allegory as well as a narrative about identity reconstruction in the wake of this catastrophe. This is a powerful insight, although not in the film, Tungajuaq is asked where he comes from, and he answers. This audience generally manages quite successfully to ignore or reject the film’s challenges to think differently by translating the film’s world into familiar categories. Rather than relate the film’s beauty to its “practical social power,” they respond to the film’s production of the beautiful as a purely formal matter, giving rise to an experience at best to be contemplated or else simply consumed.
The film as a whole is really exciting and touching. The appearance we are presented with is of the bad spirit in the end is paranormal, and the effect is just done by the camera position, there is a sort a documentary immediacy to everything, as if the camera just happened to be in the right spot when the story unfolded.