I was watching Zulu on TCM the other night, for the umpteenth time, and decided to pose a question that’s always puzzled me.
The opening sequence is a mass marriage dance of Zulu warriors & maidens, observed by the missionary and his daughter. The women are holding little spears as they dance, and the daughter asks her father why. He’s obviously embarassed, and stammers that the spears are “symbols of their chastity.”
What are they really? (I can make a guess, but wonder if anyone knows for sure. More an anthropological question than a movie question, I suppose.)