This paper introduces five concepts that guide teachers' and students' critical inquiry in the understanding of media and visual representation. In a step-by-step process, the paper illustrates how these five concepts can become a tool with which to critique and examine film images of indigenous people. The Sani are indigenous people of the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa. The culture, language and social life of the Sani has been represented in the film, "The Gods Must Be Crazy" (1984). Through the humorous images in the film, the writer-director makes jokes about the absurdities and discontinuities of African life. In films, through the manipulation of camera angles and other techniques, the viewer is given a sense of realism. Such ploys of visual representations of people demand a careful analysis to discover: (1) what is at issue; (2) how the issue/event is defined; (3) who is involved; (4) what the arguments are; and (5) what is taken for granted, including cultural assumptions. Each of these questions is explored in relation to "The Gods Must Be Crazy." In critical viewing in general, a systematic mode of inquiry should be applied which focuses on the visual, source, origins, and the determinants of media and visual constructions. By using these five concepts in critical inquiry, the ways in which the language of visuals is socially and historically produced can be examined. (Contains 13 references.) (AEF)