Comparing the versions
It is interesting that you can read both the earlier and later versions of the scene.
As in previous exercises like this, briefly explain which of the two versions you feel is the most effective?
Why do you feel the screenwriters are at such pains to emphasise Miss Ludik’s beehive hair? What might be the danger in making Miss Ludik seem merely foolish in this scene?
Why do you think both versions of this scene are emphatic that several of the children answering questions are ‘blonde angels’?
In both scenes Sandra suffers a humiliation – which of them do you feel is the most demoralising? This scene comes at a very early point in the film and it is interesting to see how the pencil and hair test which the bully Dawie carries out in the early version is shifted in the later script to an official ‘hearing’ scene at the Ministry of Interior when the Laing’s have to allow Sandra to undergo this test publically and it is carried out by an adult official before a tribunal of adults.
Why do you feel this shift might have occurred and in what way does its being moved perhaps better underline the absurdity of Apartheid race distinctions?
