proves Jews not responsible for all the world’s wars.
Mel Gibson’s film about the Mayan civilisation has come under fire from indigenous members of the culture.
Activists in Guatemala – once home to a large part of the central American Mayan empire – said Apocalypto was unrealistic.
Well, at least they’re indigenous. Not like that Ward Churchill guy.
“The director is saying the Mayans are savages,” said Lucio Yaxon, a human rights activist.
But consultant archaeologist for the film, Richard Hansen, said Gibson was “trying to make a social statement”.
It is axiomatic that any attempted social statement will have some people up in arms.
He said the director, who also co-wrote the film, took pains to ensure the film was historically accurate and authentic.
Well, painstaking can be good. But Traci Arden says that it’s not accurate, insofar as all the Mayan cities had been abandoned long before the Europeans arrived.
Savage Nobles: “And then we’re going to Tikal, and Copan
and El Mirador! YEEEARRRGH!”
Priceless quotes from Dr. Arden’s article (which has some good bits, too):
After Jared Diamond’s best-selling book Collapse, it has become fashionable to use the so-called Maya collapse as a metaphor for Western society’s environmental and political excesses. Setting aside the fact that the Maya lived for more than a thousand years in a fragile tropical environment before their cities were abandoned, while here in the U.S, we have polluted our urban environments in less than 200, I anticipated a heavy-handed cautionary tale wrapped up in Native American costume.
So, wait: Jared Diamond is to blame? Naturally, I blame Bush. I haven’t quite figured out how yet, though.
The thrill of hearing melodic Yucatec Maya spoken by familiar faces (although the five lead actors are not Yucatec Maya but other talented Native American actors) during the first ten minutes of the movie is swiftly and brutally replaced with stomach churning panic at the graphic Maya-on-Maya violence depicted in a village raid scene of nearly 15 minutes.
I am glad to hear that Yucatec Mayan is melodic. I’m sure Otomi, is, too.
But I find the visual appeal of the film one of the most disturbing aspects of “Apocalypto.” The jungles of Veracruz and Costa Rica have never looked better, the masked priests on the temple jump right off a Classic Maya vase, and the people are gorgeous. The fact that this film was made in Mexico and filmed in the Yucatec Maya language coupled with its visual appeal makes it all the more dangerous.
The people are gorgeous, the language is melodic, the film makes the jungles seem beautiful, and it’s all horrible.
But in “Apocalypto,” no mention is made of the achievements in science and art, the profound spirituality and connection to agricultural cycles, or the engineering feats of Maya cities. Instead, Gibson replays, in glorious big-budget technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserve, in fact they needed, rescue.
She likes Braveheart, but I can’t recall any of those things being celebrated in that movie, either.
Perhaps she and her colleagues might start work on a screenplay.
Everyone who ever took a course in Ancient Central American Civilizations is now going to be competing for attention as an expert, and will vie for such attention by progressively more picayune deconstructions of Mel’s flick.
You didn’t quote the best part:
I loved Gibson’s film “Braveheart,” I really did. But there is something very different about portraying a group of people, who are now recovering from 500 years of colonization, as violent and brutal. These are people who are living with the very real effects of persistent racism that at its heart sees them as less than human.
See? How you portray any group depends on their current victim status. Facts don’t enter into it.
I look forward to many such articles in the near future.
Instead, Gibson replays, in glorious big-budget technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserve, in fact they needed, rescue.
Well. Duh! Most indiginous peoples of North and South America were gleefully hacking their neighbors to bits prior to the arrival of the european hoards. Their cultures were based on it.
”To quote John Derbyshire:
“Personally, I have a clear and uncomplicated attitude to the whole business. The white man took North America from the Indians, by means frequently foul. As a result, we have a civilized nation here, with laws and legislatures, with libraries and hospitals, with colleges and police departments and TV talk shows and orthodontists and supermarkets and second-hand bookstores and gun clubs and lawns and swimming pools. If the thing had not happened, North America would be vegetating in barbarism, as it did for the previous several millennia, with none of the above. I like the above, all of them. I don’t want to live in a society with no law but blood revenge, with no medicine or sanitation, with no books or computers, with a 30-something median lifespan, with a famine every five years, with ritual public torture, human sacrifice and chronic tribal warfare. Far as I am concerned, civilization is the bee’s knees, and barbarism stinks. Yes, I know how it was done, and I can’t say I altogether approve. But it was done, and I am glad it was done.†“
hat tip to Kim du Toit
Untrue. I have it on good authority that the hacking (although that’s sprung up globally in a variety of cultures in a strange instance of independent cultural evolution)never was quite gleeful until the Europeans perfected it.
The euros just modernized it. The locals had it down to a, well, science like process. Very few if any were the noble savages that russeu(?) pined for.
Rousseau.
And his quaint, muddle-headed fantasy of the “noble savage” has passed from generation to generation, undaunted by factual history, from his age to ours, as personified by Jared Diamond himself. Thus is the lineage of the politically-correct multicultural gobbledygook we continue to foist on our children, while the modern-day “noble savage”, the Jihadi, raises the Sword of their bandit Prophet above their necks.
*his*
…
Well, how was the naval battle scene? You know, the one where the Spanish admiral yells, “Sink-o the Mayans!”
These are people who are living with the very real effects of persistent racism that at its heart sees them as less than human.
Well, gee whiz, y’see any Maya living in Encino? No. They’re in Mexico. So bitch at them Mexicans, huh?
The Iroquois and the Hurons got on just peachy-keen before the nasty British and French arrived.
/sarcasm off/
In Evan S. Connell’s excellent book about Custer, “Son of the Morning Star”, he has an extended section about the generated myth of Native American environmentalism. From chopping down fruit and nut trees to get to the produce to burning vast areas of grasslands (Global Warming!) to killing buffalo only for the tongues or testicles, Connell sought to demystify several Indian tribes as he had shown a bright spotlight on the godlike fraud of Custer.
Needless to say, he took a lot of crap from Ward Churchill like critics. My memory of the complaints was that they, for the most part, had less to do with questioning historical fact and more to do with Connell helping “demonize” a noble people badly treated by whitey. Facts are not so important as telling the right story, you see.
In the meantime, Hollywood vomits up historical biographies and perspectives with a large tablespoon of “artistic license” that, coincidentally, allow a particular point of view to shine through (think Oliver Stone.) After all, entertainment is the primary goal, is it not? Unless you are a media convicted religious zealot, rascist and anti-semite like Mel, then entertainment is irrelevant to the global understanding of the absolute victimhood of “indigenous peoples.”
Thank you, ma’am, and may I have another?
Once upon a time hilzoy and I had a chat about Rousseau, related to how I just couldn’t get past Rousseau’s in-hindsight ridiculous notion of what prehistoric Man was like. hilzoy maintained that yes, Rousseau was wrong about many things that weren’t really crucial to understanding the important things Rousseau had to say, which I gather was some subset of Rousseau that excludes his asocial-marauding-savage notion. Not being a patient philosopher, this kind of selective perception is not easy for me.
In a like spirit, then, I invite you to try to subtract the stupid bits out and keep a sharp eye out for anything incisive. Let me know if you find anything.