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[runlola]

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[Awakened_Mind]

Interesting article. There's few of them coming out recently. (Movies) If nothing happens in 2012, it's going to be chaos anyway because of what's leading up to it.

-AM

[Nick]

Sorry I couldn't get a link, however this article by a Maya scholar is worth reading:

Apocalypto' is an insult to Maya culture, one expert says
A history professor explains where Mel Gibson got it very, very wrong
By Chris Garcia
AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILM WRITER
Wednesday, December 06, 2006

As we stagger out of a sneak peek of Mel Gibson's Maya historical thriller "Apocalypto," Julia Guernsey is visibly shaken. She's upset and not a little angry. She barely can contain her disgust, but she also can barely speak. I'm a little worried.

Guernsey is an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas. Given her emphasis on pre-Columbian Mesoamerican art and culture, we invited Guernsey along to the preview last week so she could illuminate where Gibson got his history right and where he got it wrong.

The upshot: Boy, did he ever get it wrong.

Caution: The following interview with Guernsey contains spoilers.

Austin American-Statesman: You looked truly disturbed after the movie.

Julia Guernsey: My first reaction was to the extraordinary, gratuitous violence. And the ending with the arrival of the Spanish (conquistadors) underscored the film's message that this culture is doomed because of its own brutality. The implied message is that it's Christianity that saves these brutal savages. I think that's part of Gibson's agenda, sort of, "We got the Jews last time (in 'The Passion of the Christ'), now we'll get the Maya." And to highlight that point there's a lot of really offensive racial stereotyping. They're shown as these extremely barbaric people, when in fact, the Maya were a very sophisticated culture.

Yet he goes out of his way in the first third of the movie to depict how peaceful and human at least some of them are.

Yes, they're shown as wonderful, but ignorant. They're wonderful and they get along great and they've got this rip-roaring humor, but they don't know what's going on a day and a half's walk away, where this massive city, this metropolis, is being constructed. They haven't gotten wind of that because they are in their forest, the forest of their fathers, the forest of their sons. I can feel my heart beating faster talking about this.

You just hate this movie.

I hate it. I despise it. I think it's despicable. It's offensive to Maya people. It's offensive to those of us who try to teach cultural sensitivity and alternative world views that might not match our own 21st-century Western ones but are nonetheless valid.

What were you hoping for going into the movie?

I thought it would highlight some of the achievements of the Maya, but none of them is presented. They show some buildings but they don't talk about them. You get glimpses of some art, but it's overwhelmed by the non-stop violence.

What are inaccuracies you noticed?

For one thing, the characters walk through a tunnel-like space and it's covered in wall murals. I'm nitpicking and it would mean nothing to most people, but it's a reconstruction of some murals that were just discovered in the past few years. They're from the site of San Bartolo in the Maya region (of Guatemala). Some pieces of it are copied exactly from the mural, but part of it is this gory scene of an individual holding a severed human head with blood flowing out of it. That's not in the mural! That's just Gibson on his violence kick. Plus, the murals are Late Pre-Classic, dating to about 100 B.C., making it very problematic that these people were walking through murals dating from 100 B.C. and then we have the arrival of the Spanish, which was in the 16th century. That's like 1,700 years apart.

Couldn't they just be walking through an ancient area?

You could argue that, except that the film presents an inaccurate hodge-podge of architecture. Some of it looked like Tikal Classic Maya, 800 A.D. Some looked Puuc, which is closer to 1000 or 1100 A.D. These are very different regions. It's like the difference between Texas and Delaware. It also looked like they were borrowing from El Mirador, this Pre-Classic metropolis that flourished around the year 0 A.D. It would be as though somebody did a movie on our American culture and they had Madonna and Marilyn Monroe riding in a car together, or they had a meeting of George Bush, Teddy Roosevelt and George Washington because why not condense a couple hundred or a couple thousand years? We would be appalled. We take our culture seriously. We demand historical specificity, something completely lacking here. Gibson had a responsibility to know better. He was consulting experts who should have told him.

Were the sacrificial pyramid/temples really like they are in the movie?

We have accounts from the Aztecs of such things; it shows up in their mythology. And we have some images from the Maya that suggest that that kind of sacrifice did take place and that they probably did roll the bodies down (the pyramid). Now, the guys in the movie at the bottom catching the bodies with nets? That is crazy. We have no evidence for that. Another thing that was so funny was all that crazy, wild dancing with women's breasts flapping. I was just reading hours before I saw the movie with you a 400-page textbook dedicated to Maya dance, and it talked about how women played no major public role in these ceremonies but much more subtle roles.

Was the depiction of sacrifice â€" lining victims up as if they're in a ticket queue in front of a hysterical public crowd â€" accurate? That was startling.

We have evidence to suggest that there were group sacrifices. But it would probably have been done as a pious act with solemnity. Some of it was probably public spectacle. But I'm suspect of the women gyrating and going into some kind of trance state, as, let's not forget, the world's fastest ever solar eclipse is taking place.

Did it bother you that the movie completely ignores the ancient Maya inventions and achievements, such as urban planning, writing, mathematics, astronomy and art?

I did hope they would dwell on their achievements. There's this noble savage, 19th-century idea of barbaric savages, and it was like Gibson was rooted in that. All of these advances we've made in understanding their culture were completely forgotten. I think Mel Gibson is the worst thing that's happened to indigenous populations since the arrival of the Spanish. I say that in jest, but what is scary is that people will leave the movie thinking that because the characters were speaking Mayan there is an air of authenticity.

What about the garb and elaborate ornamentation they wear in the movie, including bones in their noses?

Some of that is based on images we have that are probably more or less accurate. But again, they played it up in a way to make them seem somehow subhuman. So the costuming just played into the idea of them as real savages, rather than what it was for the Maya, which was an aesthetic display of beauty, just as we take care of our clothing and appearance. The whole thing was wrong. I was looking at the film's trailer, which says, "No one can outrun their destiny." And I thought, "You better run. You better outrun this movie."

[Awakened_Mind]

I think I'll watch the movie a little different now. That's very interesting.

-AM

[outofbodydude]

Screw apocaplyto. Everyone needs to go see The Fountain, right now. If your on this board you probably have similar interests and ways of thinking that I do. This was the best movie I have ever seen. It just left me in awe. It has many ideas that are disscussed on these boards. Ive never felt this way after watching a movie before. I want to marry that movie and have little fountain kids with it.

[Novice]

Nick, that was an excellent article you posted.

I had read an interview with Mel the other week on this movie and wasn't too impressed. He basically said he had taken a trip down there some time ago and was amazed at this huge pyramids in the middle of the jungle that were built before the egyptians, so he decided to do a movie around it. The non-stop action scenes were because he wanted to do a great chase scene that hasn't been done before, or at least not often -- so opted for the foot chase scenes.

There was no research on the culture or history, no real knowledge of anything about them except the pyramids were 'cool'. He also said he was surprised the movie got the rating it did. He thought it was going to be too violent, but they (the people doing the ratings) commented it was a bit violent, but there 'letting it slide' (I'm paraphrasing this obviously). From what he described, it was way too gory for me to watch. And even if it wasn't, I don't think he did much, if any, justice to the culture and civilization.

[Sunn]

Nick, that was an excellent article you posted.

I had read an interview with Mel the other week on this movie and wasn't too impressed. He basically said he had taken a trip down there some time ago and was amazed at this huge pyramids in the middle of the jungle that were built before the egyptians, so he decided to do a movie around it. The non-stop action scenes were because he wanted to do a great chase scene that hasn't been done before, or at least not often -- so opted for the foot chase scenes.

There was no research on the culture or history, no real knowledge of anything about them except the pyramids were 'cool'. He also said he was surprised the movie got the rating it did. He thought it was going to be too violent, but they (the people doing the ratings) commented it was a bit violent, but there 'letting it slide' (I'm paraphrasing this obviously). From what he described, it was way too gory for me to watch. And even if it wasn't, I don't think he did much, if any, justice to the culture and civilization.

Its all jazzed up nonsense really.. same thing with the passion where it was full on gore (although I have seen much worse films) I do like the look of this..even if it IS lacking historical accuracy. They way I look at it is its just going to be 2hrs of entertainment (providing i enjoy it)

[Awakened_Mind]

Well I suppose that's what it comes down to. Should we watch it as a movie or a historical documentation? I'll definately watch it, with full appreciation to the Mayans of course.

Mel Gibson seems to be having a chop at a lot of religions. Didn't he have some controversial comment recently after being pulled over?

-AM

[Adrian]

Hello Lola,

article link

Some Mayas are excited at the prospect of the first feature film made in their native tongue, Yucatec Maya. But others among the 800,000 surviving Mayans are worried that Gibson's hyper-violent, apocalyptic film could be just the latest misreading of their culture by outsider

"Apocalypto" also portrays Mayan civilization at a low moment, just before the Spaniards arrived, when declining, quarreling Mayan groups were focused more on war and human sacrifice than on the calendars and writing system of the civilization's bloody but brilliant classical period

Mauricio Amuy, a non-Maya actor who participated in the filming of Apocalypto, says the production staff discussed the theory on the set.

"We know the Bible talks about prophecies, and that the Mayas spoke of a change of energy on Dec. 22, 2012, and it (the movie) is somewhat focused on that," Amuy said. "People should perhaps take that theory and reflect, and not do these things that are destroying humanity."

Apocalypto is nothing short of a disgrace. It is another attempt to desecrate the incredible ancestry of the Maya by making them look like savages.

I count among my friends the worlds leading authorities on the Maya, with many published books such as Maya Cosmogensis 2012. That book was written by the person that lived among the Maya and spent years around the ancient remains, and also decoded the glyphs including the long-count that ends in 2012.

This movie is a trend of propaganda perpertrated by the "new world order" who control almost all the popular media.

If 2012 is the transformational eschaton we expect, the next phase of in the evolution of the human race, the nwo will lose completely.

The ultimate outcome of 2012 will be determined by the collective consciousness of mankind at that time.  So by controlling mankind through the popcorn media they believe they can control the consciousness of the human race in that or other ways.

The idea with Apolcalypto is to totally discredit the 2012 end-date by portraying the Maya as a bunch of savages and therefore incapable of arriving at the 2012 end date.

The true Maya are nothing like those depicted in the movie; which is pure, contrived, sensationalistic drivel of the worst kind.

The indigenous races of the USA and mesoamerica have been treated appallingly badly by the invaders from Europe who stole their lands throughout history; and it seems the persecution continues.

Incidentally; there are around 10 million Maya descendants living today.

Best regards,

Adrian.

[CFTraveler]

Well, here is a very interesting comment on the movie (I wouldn't see it anyway) from Anne Strieber.  She is very perceptive:  http://www.unknowncountry.com/diary/

[Awakened_Mind]

There's "2012: The Oddessy". Looks really good. I'm not sure when it's coming out.

-AM