Welcome to violence
Collections.
Compositions.
Literature.
Form realizes content.
Techne requires preservation. Beyond Departing
Compositions.
Literature.
Form realizes content.
Techne requires preservation. Beyond Departing
"Is Apocalypto Pornography?" Is the author of this article an idiot?
Excuse me while I rip the author of this article, Professor Traci Arden, a new one.
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) …
Cry me the fucking Amazon River. A quick Google search yields Ms. Traci Arden herself:
Yes, I am sure she has nothing but compassion toward Native Americans, being an expert in Maya civilization, and the atrocities committed by our European ancestors are not her fault, nor anyone’s living today. But the simple fact of the matter is that Traci Arden looks pretty European, maybe Latina, though Arden is about as Spanish a name as Trotsky. Maybe there isn’t a lot of Yucatec talent out there because they have been hunted to near extinction and subjected to horrendous squalor and poverty… by whites. You need good actors to carry a film, trained actors. I’m not sure there are many ethnic Maya who can afford to go to Juilliard.
… 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. From then on the entire movie never ceases to utilize every possible excuse to depict more violence. It is unrelenting.
Oooh, “Maya-on-Maya” … that’s a good way to relate your griping, whining text back to your brilliant title. Ma’am, this is a film about violence. Mel Gibson decided to tell this story, not the story you would like to have seen. The reality differed from your expectations. So what? Film is the domain of the filmmaker, not the U Miami professor with an opinion. As for “every possible excuse,” this gets at the core of the cultural puritanism toward onscreen sex and violence. We want it, it excites us, but we get offended when it is portrayed frankly. We shift in our seats and grow uncomfortable. Apocalypto is fearless in this aspect. The great director Sergio Leone responded to criticism that his films were too bloody by saying, “I want the audience to know what the hell it feels like to get shot.” When you take the grue out of carnage, it cheapens it, turns it into football. The audience feels like they are watching a sporting event, not a war. If we define storytelling as “truth under imaginary circumstances,” then the most effective way to communicate a message about bloodshed is to portray it uncompromisingly. This is why Funny Games is a better movie than Transformers.
I am told this part of the movie is completely derivative of the 1966 film The Naked Prey.
And The Lion King is completely derivative of Hamlet. Hamlet itself is completely derivative from an earlier play, Ur-Hamlet. Who gives a fuck? Stories have been recycled since before Homer. If it speaks to our hearts and expands our minds, as Apocalypto certainly did to me, what does it matter?
But I find the visual appeal of the film one of the most disturbing aspects of Apocalypto … 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. It looks authentic; viewers will be captivated by the crazy, exotic mess of the city and the howler monkeys in the jungle.
So you’re basically making the argument that the film’s seeming authenticity will mislead the public. Okay, fair enough. It’s a legitimate concern for a historian who, due to Apocalypto, may be correcting misconceptions for the rest of her life. That would be a pain in the ass and I sympathize. But how exactly does this relate to your thesis, “Is Apocalypto Pornography?” Spoiler alert! — It doesn’t. Traci, I’m afraid you’ve gotten an F on this portion of your essay.
Yes, Gibson includes the arrival of clearly Christian missionaries (these guys are too clean to be conquistadors) in the last five minutes of the story (in the real world the Spanish arrived 300 years after the last Maya city was abandoned). It is one of the few calm moments in an otherwise aggressively paced film. The message? The end is near and the savior has come.
Okay… we all know Mel Gibson is traditionalist Catholic, and he doesn’t like the Jews a lot, nor the Prods, nor anybody, really, and he’s a crazy old drunk who is slipping further and further over the edge. But the inference that the Spanish are portrayed as “saviors” is badly researched conjecture at best. What is the quote that opens Apocalypto? For those of us who have forgotten: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” No one can deny the Maya civilization declined on its own initiative. The arrival of the Spanish fulfills the prophetic quote. They are not glorified in the film. They do not come into view with the sun behind them, the everlasting light of Christ’s law blinding the wayward savages. They look tired and scared, the friar with a sneer on his face and the armored captain — reputedly supposed to be Columbus himself, on his fourth voyage — swaggers with arrogance. In fact, Jaguar Paw, our protagonist, ultimately decides to return to the forest instead of going down to the ships.
As for the much shouted about historical inaccuracy, Let’s look at Wikipedia, shall we?
The Maya centers of the southern lowlands went into decline during the 8th and 9th centuries and were abandoned shortly thereafter. This decline was coupled with a cessation of monumental inscriptions and large-scale architectural construction. There is no universally accepted theory to explain this collapse. Non-ecological theories of Maya decline are divided into several subcategories, such as overpopulation, foreign invasion, peasant revolt, and the collapse of key trade routes. Ecological hypotheses include environmental disaster, epidemic disease, and climate change.
I myself am studying to be a filmmaker, and my main passion is the period piece. I read staggering (and probably pathetic) amounts of historical non-fiction. When I see the phrase, “no universally accepted theory,” I think, “Great! I can let my imagination run free, and invent my own theory, a purely cinematic one, that will get my characters from point A to point B, explore the themes of my story in greater depth, and be sufficiently compelling for the audience so they won’t leave the theater halfway through the picture.” This is how filmmaking works, Ms. Arden.
Before anyone thinks I have forgotten my Metamucil this morning, I am not a compulsively politically correct type who sees the Maya as the epitome of goodness and light. I know the Maya practiced brutal violence upon one another, and I have studied child sacrifice during the Classic period.
You didn’t forget your Metamucil, you just mixed it with LSD.
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.
Oh, so the months of grueling work by the art department of the film, which clearly show the engineering feats of Maya cities (which wouldn’t be possible without achievements in science and art, knucklehead), don’t count, I suppose? No, because Traci Arden needs mention to be made. Another lesson in filmmaking: SHOW, DON’T TELL.
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.
The notion that Maya people were brutal before the arrival of Europeans is offensive and racist? I’m pretty sure it’s a fact, actually. You said it yourself — child sacrifice in the Classic period. People are people, and human nature transcends race. We, as a species, enjoy brutality almost as much as we enjoy sex. War was not an import of the Columbian exchange, you dullard. It has been with mankind since before we left Africa.
How can we continue to produce such one-sided and clearly exploitative messages about the indigenous people of the New World?
One-sided? I’d say multi-faceted. One of my favorite moments in Apocalypto is when the eclipse saves Jaguar Paw from sacrifice. The king and high priest atop the pyramid, who are educated enough to interpret astronomy as natural and patterned, grin shamelessly at the panicking proles below them. The high priest knows that the eclipse will pass — he calls for the sun god to return. Inevitably, the sun appears again and the poor rejoice, making the rich make even more powerful in their eyes. Did Gibson himself not say that the corrupt Maya aristocracy reminded him of the Bush administration? Mel’s public personality may reek of conservatism, but any careful examination of the film itself reveals political ideas that are anything but. It’s important to remember that it’s Apocalypto on trial here, not its director.
Personally, I think Native American culture was wonderful, fascinating and unique, and its destruction by European colonizers was perhaps the single greatest atrocity committed by one civilization on another. All told, the butcher’s bill of the Age of Discovery dwarfs the Holocaust. Hundreds of millions died. The best way to honor the memory of those lost natives is to portray them truthfully, with the ugly and the beautiful in equal measure. They were people, no more and no less, and possessed all the flaws inherent therein. Politically correct filmmakers do Native Americans a great — and arguably racist in itself — disservice when they are portrayed purely as gentle, peaceful frolickers completely in touch with nature (like in Terrence Malick’s hunk of steaming feces The New World). Good stories, if they access the human condition, are much like a mirror. And when we look upon ourselves for what we are, we do not always like what we see.
Cildo Meireles, Volatile, 1994
From the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston:
Complete with its own walls, ceiling, and entrances, Volátil is a multisensory environment that plays with the human response to danger, real or imagined. The floor is covered with talc, and a single lit candle is displayed toward the end of the room. In removing the danger factor from the installation, Meireles decidedly takes the work into the direction of allegory, impregnating the room with the scent (t-butyl-mercaptan) normally used to signal a natural-gas leak in urban areas. According to the artist, many spectators have associated Volátil with the gas chambers of the Holocaust, whereas Meireles himself describes walking on the talc substance as like walking on clouds. These vastly disparate responses underscore the complex metaphysical nature of the work and its myriad associations that lie somewhere between the sensorial, the horrific, and the sublime.
In Focus: The American West, 150 Years Ago
In the 1860s and 70s, photographer Timothy O’Sullivan created some of the best-known images in American History. After covering the U.S. Civil War, (many of his photos appear in this earlier series), O’Sullivan joined a number of expeditions organized by the federal government to help document the new frontiers in the American West. The teams were composed of soldiers, scientists, artists, and photographers, and tasked with discovering the best ways to take advantage of the region’s untapped natural resources. O’Sullivan brought an amazing eye and work ethic, composing photographs that evoked the vastness of the West. He also documented the Native American population as well as the pioneers who were already altering the landscape. Above all, O’Sullivan captured — for the first time on film — the natural beauty of the American West in a way that would later influence Ansel Adams and thousands more photographers to come.
(via captainboyd)
