Yolngu tribe NOT from New Guinea - Lois & Clark Fanfic Message Boards

I can't believe it never occurred to me before. I didn't even know the story was real, though this post does back that up: http://www.lcficmbs.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=000928

I double-checked the spelling of the word in Google just now as I was converting a story to epub, and spotted the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yolngu

Northern/northeastern Australia, to be exact. (Granted, that's semi-close to New Guinea, but it's definitely not the same thing.) Since the "paava leaves" are fake, wouldn't it have been best to just make up a fake tribe rather than use a real tribe name and assign it a new location and fake herbal remedies? I'm not the sort to freak out over the slightest possible offense to a tribe somewhere, I just think that's a bit odd for the scriptwriters to do. Even making up the word Yolngu, which is possible, one would think they'd do a search to make sure it wasn't already used . . . Any other thoughts on this?

[This site seems to make further note of the tribal name, mentioning how Clark's pronunciation doesn't match up to the subtitles even: http://www.comicbookreligion.com/src?ID=74 ]

Your last link doesn't work, there's an unnecessary parentheses in it.

Do we know what the real script for the episode says? The subtitles might be a spelling error or someone mishearing Clark.

The tribe is apparently somewhat obscure except for the music group, anything short of a deep library search might not have brought it up back in 1993. The first search engines on the web only started out in the second half of 1993. Googling it was certainly not an option.
And whether the information would have been available on the web is questionable, too.

Whoops, had forgotten to add a space so it wouldn't tack on the parenthesis onto the link. Fixed now.

Lol, true, I forget how recent all the Internet searches are and how hard searching was to do back then.

As for the transcript, TwizTV does have actual scripts for L&C (most of theirs are dry transcription from people watching, but the L&C set they say are genuine shooting scripts someone donated), and it has Clark saying the following: "The Yolngu tribe in New Guinea eat paava leaves to relieve stress..."

You can find all four seasons of L&C transcripts here: http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/loisandclark/

Clark's pronunciation is, if I attempt X-SAMPA (a transcription for IPA when you need to use ordinary characters), jV."lAN.gu
(my attempt in English phonetics would come out "yuh-LONG-goo")

I can't even attempt to pronounce Yolngu the way the tribe does: http://www.yolnguboy.com/directory/htm/the-yolngu/index-yolngu.htm

But then again, as you pointed out, I'm sure that wasn't there in 1993!

Just in case you don't know, the boards here have scripts for most (all?) of the episodes. You can find the link on the middle top of the main board page, or just go here: http://www.lcficmbs.com/scripts/

The script for the first part of the pilot includes the following:

Quote

PERRY
Well, tell him to keep his pants
on. And where's my lunch? If
Carlini's can't deliver on time,
find a place that can.
(a sigh, to Clark)
I bought a blood pressure monitor
last week, you believe it? Hell,
I'm only fifty-two.

CLARK
Paava leaves.

PERRY
Excuse me?

CLARK
The Yolngu tribe in New Guinea eat
paava leaves to relieve stress....
puts them in a meditative state.
Maybe you should try it.

PERRY
Uh huh. Sounds like you've done
some travelling.

CLARK
(nodding)
I spent some time in a Llamasary in
Tibet and with the Sherpas in
Nepal. I just got back from
Australia. I've been studying the
Dreamtime theory in Aboriginal
mythology.

So you're right that the scriptwriters included it. As for why they'd make that mistake, I think the point about internet searches being very different in the early 90's is an excellent one. Hard to believe Google hasn't been around forever, isn't it? LOL.

Kathy