I finally got around to watching the 2010 documentary "Babies" that follows the first year of life of one baby each in San Francisco, Tokyo, rural Mongolia, and rural Namibia. There's no narration. It's like a greatest hits collection of home movies, if they were all beautifully lit.
Babies are pretty much the same (cute) everywhere, so the main interest is looking at the four different environments from a baby's point of view.
Mongolia looks like the most fun of the four places to be a baby. Dad takes Mom and the new baby home from the hospital on the back of his amped-up motorcycle. Mom looks like she'd prefer to ride in a Camry but Dad is no doubt a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, so what are you going to do? The Mongolian baby gets to live in a nicely furnished yurt on a ranch on the steppe, with lots of fancy carpets indoors and endless grass outdoors, like the Teletubbies set. It's a good place to fall down, which you do a lot when you are a baby. Plus, there are a huge number of animals around to look at (watch the trailer embedded above to the end), and he has an older brother to poke him and otherwise make life more interesting.
Life is pretty similar for the Tokyo and San Francisco babies of yuppie couples, who are only children. Lots of polished hardwood floors, and only cats for animal company. The yuppie parents constantly point out interesting things to their babies and talk to them about it to get them ready for their SATs in 17 years. For example, the Tokyo mom belongs to a baby group with other mothers of only children. They all push their strollers to the zoo and helpfully point out to their babies the tiger, which terrifies the morsel-sized infants, but presumably will help them get into a good college someday.
The Namibian baby has lots of siblings and cousins around -- there are, evidently, a lot of babies in Namibia -- but the whole place is dirt. The women usually sit on pieces of cloth on the dirt, but they just let the babies crawl around in the dirt. The menfolk are never around. Are they all working in mines sending home paychecks or are they drinking at the shebeen?
Just as you would expect from that popular Hart and Risley study about how professional parents speak 427 million words to their children by age 1 or whatever, while underclass parents can barely be motivated to say "Shut up" to their kids, the Namibian women don't seem to have much to say to their children.
Just as you would expect from that popular Hart and Risley study about how professional parents speak 427 million words to their children by age 1 or whatever, while underclass parents can barely be motivated to say "Shut up" to their kids, the Namibian women don't seem to have much to say to their children.
The women usually sit on pieces of cloth on the dirt, but they just let the babies crawl around in the dirt. The menfolk are never around.
ReplyDeleteAre black men ever around when it's childrearing time?
Best scene was watching the Namibian babies get into a fight. They were both facing the same direction. They kept sort of grappling, crying when the opponent would get the upper hand. The two-year-old was winning, probably because he was up against a one-year-old.
ReplyDeleteNot unexpected, really. Black babies are much more reactive than whites, who are more reactive than Asians, who are more reactive than Native Americans, who are incredibly stoic. Reactive means crying more, but it also means pulling a blanket off your head. Chinese babies actually have to be older than whites or blacks in order to develop the ability to pull the blanket off.
Oh, duh, I guess the fight between the 1- and 2-year-olds is in the trailer.
ReplyDelete"The Namibian baby has lots of siblings and cousins around..."
ReplyDelete"Half siblings?," begs the peanut gallery.
By African standards Namibia doesn't seem that bad. A $5,651 per capita income, a population density (6.6 per sq mi) lower than any sovereign country save Mongolia (Shhh! don't suggest to Leftists, neocons and neofeudalists that the two might be related). Oh, and the country is 7% white (down from ca. 14% in the 60s).
Contrast that to, say, Kenya: $809 per capita income, 174 people per sq mi, <1% white.
Another nice thing about Namibia: in 2010 the government announced that "henceforth 100 per cent of all unskilled and semi-skilled labour must be sourced, without exception, from within Namibia."
Any chance of trading their government for ours?
This is probably cuter with the sound off.
ReplyDeleteIt looks as if these taciturn Namibians are Himba, Ovambo or Herero, ie, Bantu tribes; as opposed to the more laconic Bushman or Khoi San.
ReplyDeleteGilbert P.
"Are black men ever around when it's childrearing time?"
ReplyDeleteIt's racist to notice this, or to suggest it might be a problem. Clearly the ugly legacy of slavery and Jim Crow has reached all the way into Namibia.
"Are black men ever around when it's childrearing time?"
ReplyDeleteNo, neither are white men who have jobs.
A $5,651 per capita income, a population density
ReplyDeletePretty meaningless. That's just the white-created, white-owned and white-maintained wealth statistically divided by the number of Namibian inhabitants. A Gini of over 70 pretty much tells the whole story. (That's unimaginable inequality, few other countries ever get over 60; Brazil, with all its massive disparities, hovers around 50.)
Silver
The concept of this movie annoys me. It's seems to be saying, "Look, people are the same all over!" Yeah, we get it, we got it in the 70s. Now let's look at group differences.
ReplyDelete"...while underclass parents can barely be motivated to say "Shut up" to their kids, the Namibian women don't seem to have much to say to their children."
ReplyDeleteThat was noted in the book, "Sick Societies" which dismantles absurd fantasties about various primitive cultures. One of the most shocking examples, from a book by Rena Gazzaway, "The Longest Mile", describes a hamlet in eastern Kentucky (100% white) where they barely communicate at all and the vocabulary is extremely limited especially with respect to kids. One nine year old flipping through a picture book saw a dog and said, "that dog's walkers are in the air." She was holding the book upside down. The adults just don't talk to the kids, who do go to school yet cannot be assimilated in the larger world.
At least she knew it was a dog. The kids tended to call any animal "cats." "Reckon' thems cats" if they didn't know. Personally I reckon the average IQ in Duddie's Branch was well under the norm. Usually whites with IQ under 80 are physically exhibiting some sort of syndrome, but these people were normal, other than what you'd expect from poor hygiene, a diet of flour fried in lard, and general negelect.
The low mental level of these people was the worst i've heard of for any white population and I wondered if it was some sort of sequestered low-iq breeding ground. They lived on welfare (c. 1965) and were by and far the poorest most miserable living people I've heard of in this U.S. of A. Indian reservations are better and black ghettoes are a veritable Walmart of consumer goods by comparison with this white hamlet in Kentucky. "The Longest Mile" by Rena Gazzaway. I've never been able to find any follow up on her two or three year study.
Blacks hav babies.
ReplyDeleteWhites do not.
GAME OVER.
> neither are white men who have jobs
ReplyDeleteTroof, are you so dumb that you think that's a zinger? You do understand that those absent black males aren't exactly away working to support their families, right?
You're sort of sympathetic as that rare example of a black small business owner. But seriously, the softballs you pitch...guess it wouldn't be iSteve comments without you and Whiskey as comic relief.
No, neither are white men who have jobs.
ReplyDeleteYes they are...just not during working hours, when, you know, they are providing for their families.
Funny--at one point in the documentary, the white baby was whining about being in a spa with the jets turned on. The likely impression the typical (self-flogging leftist) viewer got was, "spoiled, privileged and ungrateful bastard."
ReplyDeleteBut I bet the little black babies would be 10x as fearful and animated in the same situation...
"Are black men ever around when it's childrearing time?"
ReplyDeleteNo, neither are white men who have jobs.
Sailer, wtf? Can the shitposter.
"Are black men ever around when it's childrearing time?"
ReplyDeleteNo and neither are employed white men.
Because you know, there's no difference betwen a white man working at a job so he can earn money to support his offspring and a black man hanging out on the corner, in the barbershop or at the shebeen working at maintaining his street cred so he can bolster his ego.
Rob:
ReplyDeletePerhaps you didn't notice but Truth's comment is nothing more than a mirror image of Camlost's (perhaps just a bit wittier via the intrusion of "jobs").
Perhaps you didn't notice but Truth's comment is nothing more than a mirror image of Camlost's (perhaps just a bit wittier via the intrusion of "jobs").
ReplyDeleteNo, he's just trudging out the same old lame "crime is everywhere" or "white people do it too" arguments that blacks always try to employ as a trump card.
Last month he posted links to the Vancouver riots to show that "whites are violent, too" when we were discussing the rash of violent black flash mobs this summer. (Because we know that a few drunk SWPL Whites and Asians breaking storefronts is analogous to the weekly episodes of blacks beating random people into comas all across the US)
the namibian men were out cattle herding, so they were employed.
ReplyDeleteBlacks hav babies.
ReplyDeleteWhites do not.
In America, neither Whites nor Blacks have kids. Only the Amish and the Mexicans. But the good news is that when whites and blacks do manage to have kids, usually its bastards from the underclass.
-osvaldo m.
"It looks as if these taciturn Namibians are Himba, Ovambo or Herero, ie, Bantu tribes; as opposed to the more laconic Bushman or Khoi San."
ReplyDeleteAs opposed?? You do know the meanings of these words, don't you, Gilbert?
"Because you know, there's no difference betwen a white man working at a job so he can earn money to support his offspring and a black man hanging out on the corner, in the barbershop or at the shebeen working at maintaining his street cred so he can bolster his ego...."
ReplyDeleteNow, Sportette, you have been very forthcoming in the past about your family and your ex-in-laws, remember?
"(Because we know that a few drunk SWPL Whites and Asians breaking storefronts is analogous to the weekly episodes of blacks beating random people into comas all across the US)"
ReplyDeleteReally, what about this one ,analogous?
"As opposed?? You do know the meanings of these words, don't you, Gilbert?"
ReplyDeleteYeah Gilbert, they're all the same, just like Germans and Greeks, for Christ sakes!
You guys suck. The Namibian family used the money they got from filming to send that kid to school. The men are off tending their herds.
ReplyDeleteThe African baby had the biggest head and developed the fastest. She was beginning to run, dance, balance an object on her head while the other babies were still struggling to walk!
ReplyDeleteSome of the dumbest comments i've ever read. I don't think any of you can speak for childrearing in a Himba village or any other village in Namibia for that matter.
ReplyDeleteThe African baby had the biggest head and developed the fastest. She was beginning to run, dance, balance an object on her head while the other babies were still struggling to walk!
ReplyDeleteGive the creepy little troll a cigar!