'Apocalypto'

[blackcrowheart]

Mel Gibson delays 'Apocalypto' screening
Big News Network
Tuesday 19th September, 2006 (UPI)



Mel Gibson is still planning to preview his new film Apocalypto in Oklahoma after last minute problems caused him to cancel three screenings this week.

He was set to preview the film before select American Indian audiences at Cameron University and Riverwind casino, said Jhane Myers, the Oklahoma City publicist arranging the visit, the Oklahoman reported Tuesday.

He's definitely coming. It's just a matter of when, Myers said.

Gibson's movie, Apocalypto, is an action-adventure film set in the final days of the Mayan civilization in Mexico. It stars Rudy Youngblood, a Comanche-Cree-Yaqui Indian who lived in Oklahoma before moving to Los Angeles last year.

This is the first time a Native American has had a starring role in a feature film, Myers said. Rudy is kind of breaking ground here.

The film is scheduled for release Dec. 8.

[Okwes]

Mad Mel and the Maya
by EARL SHORRIS

[from Nation]

On the Yucat�n peninsula, where many of the Maya of Mexico live, there
is an often-told story about people like Mel Gibson, whose bloody movie
in the Yucatecan Maya language, Apocalypto, will be released December 8.
I first heard the story from Miguel Angel May May, a tall man among the
Maya, handsome, now in his 40s, with a touch of gray in his hair. He
speaks Yucatecan Maya so eloquently that when young people who have
begun to lose their language and culture first hear him, they shed tears
for what has been and what can be in the Yucat�n.

May May tells the story with the kind of rage and pride that Gibson
tried to portray with his Scottish heroes in Braveheart and
postapocalyptic picaros in Mad Max: "A Maya, of the middle class, like
me," May May said, "went into a Ford dealership here in M�rida. He
intended to buy a new pickup truck. He was well dressed, but clearly
Maya. The dealer offered him ten pesos to wash a truck." It is a common
experience for people of color in a white world. The Yucat�n is not
entirely a white world, yet the Maya suffer the most severe prejudice of
any large ethnic group in Mexico. In the language of prejudice in
Mexico, the Maya are said to be people with big heads and no brains, too
short, too dark and with a strange, laughable Spanish accent. Gibson
accepted the stereotype and embellished it.

To grasp what a racist act Gibson has committed in the making of his new
film, it is necessary to understand the world of the Maya as it exists
today. Perhaps realizing what has been done to the Maya in the film,
Gibson has been seeking allies among Latinos and American Indians. He
even went so far as to tell Time magazine, "The fear mongering we depict
in this film reminds me a little of President Bush and his guys."

In fact, Gibson stepped into a delicate cultural situation and may have
shattered much of what has been built by indigenous people, historians
and linguists in recent years. Ethnic prejudice is as harsh in the
Yucat�n as anywhere in the Americas. I have seen it played out in the
Maya villages as well as in the cities and on the beaches. When the
Clemente Course, which educates indigenous people as well as the poor in
seven countries, taught its first class in the Maya language and
humanities in the small village of San Antonio Sih�, the students told
me that when they took the bus to M�rida (a journey of more than fifty
miles) they were afraid to speak Maya, because people would think them
stupid Indians (Mayeros). After two years of study, Jos� Chim K�, the
student leader of the class, said, "Now, when I ride on the bus, I speak
only Maya." It took two years for the faculty, including May May, to
effect the change, for the Maya have internalized their recent history.
And like all people who live in the violent mirror of racial and ethnic
hatred, they suffer for their suffering. It is the bitterest irony of
colonialism.

In the film Apocalypto, which Gibson claims will make the Maya language
"cool again," there are many major roles. The lead is a lithe, handsome
young man, a dancer from Oklahoma named Rudy Youngblood. He has
indigenous ancestors, but he is not Maya, and like most of the other
featured players he is not a professional actor. None of the four other
major parts went to Maya either. According to Gibson, they are played by
people from the United States, and the other featured players are either
from Mexico City or Oaxaca. Yet every word spoken in the film is in
Yucatecan Maya, a difficult language to learn or even to mimic, because
it is both tonal and accented.

It is not as if Gibson had few Mayeros to choose from. There are more
than a million Maya in Mexico, and more than 100,000 of them are
monolingual Yucatecan Maya speakers. Yet Gibson chose not one Maya for a
featured role. In so doing, he has made a film that reinforces the
prejudice against the Maya, who have defended their cultural autonomy as
fiercely as any people on earth. Twice they repulsed the Spaniard
Francisco de Montejo, before he occupied part of the peninsula in 1527.
They continued to fight pitched battles against European cultural and
political dominance until the end of the Caste War in the early
twentieth century. And even now militant organizations deep in the
jungles of the state of Quintana Roo practice ancient rituals and resist
Occidental cultural and political hegemony, including the Gregorian
calendar. But the people have never been attacked by Hollywood.

Like the owners of the resort hotels that line the beautiful beaches of
Canc�n and Cozumel, Mel Gibson cast no Maya to work on his project,
except in the most minor roles. Maya nationalists think the hotels and
tourist packages that use the word "Maya" or "Mayaland" (a translation
of Mayab) should pay for what they appropriate for their own use. The
Maya patrimony, they say, is neither gold nor silver nor vast stretches
of rich farmland; they have only their history, their culture,
themselves. Like the hotel owners who bring strangers to the Yucat�n to
do everything but labor in the laundries and maintain the grounds,
Gibson has brought in strangers to take the good parts from the Maya. He
said in an interview that he chose people who "looked like you imagined
they should," but I have seen photographs of Rudy Youngblood, and he
does not look like any Maya I ever saw. One can only ascribe the choice
of Youngblood and the other non-Maya to stereotypes that Gibson has
adopted.

In casting and producing the film Gibson reinforced a colonialist
concept of indigenous people that has long existed in Mexico. Ancient
Maya culture was extraordinary, as the rest of the world now recognizes.
The Maya invented one of the few original systems of phonetic writing
(we are familiar with the Chinese system and the one that culminated in
Latin script). They worked with the concept of zero long before it was
known in Europe. They were superb astronomers. Their art and
architecture are now known and studied throughout the world. It is also
true that they were warriors and that they engaged in human sacrifice,
although not on the grand scale of the Mexica. Their ability to manage
large-scale military and civic works was impressive. Maya literature has
a long and grand history, from the ancient words incised in stone
through the Pop Wuj (Popol Vuh) and the postinvasion books of Chilam
Balam to the eighteenth-century poems ("Kay Nicte"--Flower Song--and
others) to contemporary works, including brilliant poetry by Briceida
Cuevas Cob in Yucatecan Maya and Humberto Ak'abal in Ki'che and Miguel
Angel May May's delightful fables.

Culture doesn't sell tickets. Violence does. Gibson has made what he
calls "a chase movie." As we saw his Scot disemboweled and his Jesus
battered into bloody meat, we will now see a young Maya running through
the jungle to escape having his still beating heart torn from his chest.
The social philosophy of Jesus found no place in Gibson's Passion of the
Christ, and the glory of Maya culture cannot be featured in a "chase
movie." "Blood! More blood!" Gibson shouted during the filming.

According to the Maya calendar, the world will end in 2012, but there
have already been four creations in the Maya vision of the cosmos, and
there is no reason to think they do not expect another. For the title of
his movie Gibson chose a Greek word related to the ideas in the Book of
Revelation: apocalypse. Gibson has tried to sell the movie as an
allegory, using the fall of Maya civilization to limn the war in Iraq.
But it is not about Iraq, and the end of the Maya classic period took
place many centuries before the period Gibson chose for his film. The
only profound meaning one can take away from the film is that there is
an intimate connection between racism and violence. The message of the
production is that the Maya are unacceptable people; we do not want to
look at them as they are now, and we despise them for what they were then

[Okwes]

Is "Apocalypto" Pornography?
December 5, 2006
by Traci Ardren

A scholar challenges Mel Gibson's use of the ancient Maya culture as
a metaphor for his vision of today's world.

[Excerpts]

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. From then on the entire movie never ceases to
utilize every possible excuse to depict more violence. It is
unrelenting.

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. 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.

This same idea was used for 500 years to justify the subjugation of
Maya people and it has been thoroughly deconstructed and rejected by
Maya intellectuals and community leaders throughout the Maya area
today. In fact, Maya intellectuals have demonstrated convincingly
that such ideas were manipulated by the Guatemalan army to justify
the genocidal civil war of the 1970-1990s. To see this same trope
about who indigenous people were (and are today?) used as the basis
for entertainment (and I use the term loosely) is truly embarrassing.
How can we continue to produce such one-sided and clearly
exploitative messages about the indigenous people of the New World?

[Okwes]

Apocalypto Now

www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1174684,00.html

EXCLUSIVE: You'd think Mel Gibson was all done with violent movies about
the past told in a foreign tongue, right? Think again
By TIM PADGETT/VERACRUZ <javascript:void(0)>

"I need to see the blood!" shouts Mel Gibson. "Your character is
going to die soon!" He picks up a bullhorn: "Attention! We are all dying
here! We are all dying!" The Oscar-winning director is standing in a
rock quarry near Veracruz, Mexico, shooting a hellish scene for
Apocalypto, his action epic about the ancient Maya. Hundreds of local
extras--many of whom have never seen a movie, let alone acted in
one--are pounding fake limestone to build a temple used for human
sacrifices. Gibson wants one of the extras, covered in white lime dust,
to visibly cough up a glob of fake blood. But something keeps getting
lost in translation. Take after take, the young man, who speaks only
Spanish, politely covers his mouth as he hacks. A second candidate for
the role does the same. Gibson finally lets out a tortured howl, digs
vainly for a cigarette in his empty pack of Camels and turns the set
into his own Thunderdome. The translator does his best to convey the
passion of the Mel.

The blasts turn to laughs soon after when, to lighten the mood, Gibson
has the crew bring out a stuffed jaguar and leads the extras running
away in mock terror. But later he admits to TIME, which this month was
given the first look at Apocalypto's production, that the utter
inexperience of most of the cast is a price he's paying for the
authentic feel he wants in the film, in which dialogue is spoken solely
in Yucatec Maya. If people were imagining that Gibson, 50, might coast a
little after his 2004 movie, The Passion of the Christ, inspired not
only months of controversy but also nearly $1 billion worth of ticket
sales, the director has given his answer: Nope. If anything, this film
is a more ambitious project than The Passion--although success does make
some things a mite easier. Gibson had to walk a via dolorosa to find a
distributor for The Passion and ended up distributing it more or less
himself, but Disney's Touchstone Pictures needed only to read
Apocalypto's script before signing on to release it in early August.

The Passion experience--especially the part in which critics hurled
anti-Semitism charges at Gibson, an ultraconservative Roman Catholic
whose father has questioned whether the Holocaust happened--thickened
Gibson's hide along with his wallet. So if there are complaints about
Apocalypto's portrayal of human sacrifice by the Maya, whose mostly
impoverished descendants today are a cause célèbre for liberals, Gibson
says he won't care. "After what I experienced with The Passion, I
frankly don't give a flying f___ about much of what those critics think."

Still, he likes to confound expectations--he wears a cross containing
relics of martyred saints, but he can swear like a Quentin Tarantino
character--and those who peg him as a reactionary may be surprised to
learn that his new film sounds warnings straight out of liberal
Hollywood's bible. Apocalypto, which Gibson loosely translates from the
Greek as "a new beginning," was inspired in large part by his work with
the Mirador Basin Project, an effort to preserve a large swath of the
Guatemalan rain forest and its Maya ruins. Gibson and his rookie
cowriter on Apocalypto, Farhad Safinia, were captivated by the ancient
Maya, one of the hemisphere's first great civilizations, which reached
its zenith about A.D. 600 in southern Mexico and northern Guatemala. The
two began poring over Maya myths of creation and destruction, including
the Popol Vuh, and research suggesting that ecological abuse and
war-mongering were major contributors to the Maya's sudden collapse,
some 500 years before Europeans arrived in the Americas.

Those apocalyptic strains haunt Apocalypto, which takes place in an
opulent but decaying Maya kingdom, whose leaders insist that if the gods
are not appeased by more temples and human sacrifices, the crops will
die. But the writers hope that the larger themes of decline will be a
wake-up call. "The parallels between the environmental imbalance and
corruption of values that doomed the Maya and what's happening to our
own civilization are eerie," says Safinia. Gibson, who insists ideology
matters less to him than stories of "penitential hardship" like his
Oscar-winning Braveheart, puts it more bluntly: "The fearmongering we
depict in this film reminds me a little of President Bush and his guys."

But the project also fulfills Gibson's need for speed. The hunk who
played Mad Max 27 years ago wants to "shake up the stale
action-adventure genre," which he feels has been taken hostage by
computer-generated imagery (CGI), stock stories and shallow characters.
To rattle the cage, he says, "we had to think of something utterly
different." The Mad Maya hero in Apocalypto is Jaguar Paw. His escape
through the Mexican rain forest will "feel like a car chase that just
keeps turning the screws," says Gibson, flashing one of his patented
bug-eyed expressions. True to the no-pain, no-gain credo of his other
films, Apocalypto seeks to deliver enough pre-Columbian punishment--like
the decidedly non-CGI mauling of a character by an animal--to rival the
medieval gore of Braveheart. "I get pretty banged up in some pretty
awful ways," says film newcomer Rudy Youngblood, 25, the Comanche and
Cree Indian from Texas who plays Jaguar Paw.

Gibson is betting the chase will feel even hairier thanks to a new
digital camera system, Panavision's Genesis, that yields a "tremendous
sensation of velocity," says cinematographer Dean Semler, who won an
Oscar for Dances with Wolves. All the doom and zoom sound fun, but the
ancient Maya are also called the Greeks of the New World--they invented
the concept of zero, built astonishing cities and used a more complex
calendar than ours. Gibson insists the glory gets its close-ups too.
Says Richard Hansen, a Maya scholar at Idaho State University, head of
the Mirador Basin Project and a consultant for Apocalypto: "This is by
far the best treatment--the first treatment really--of the Maya any film
has ever done. I'm amazed at the detail Mel's shooting for."

In fact, says veteran production designer Tom Sanders, Apocalypto "is
the hardest show I've ever worked on." Stacks of archaeology books and
magazines are strewn about a massive warehouse in Veracruz, where an
army of costume and makeup artisans from Mexico and Italy are
painstakingly re-creating feathers of the nearly extinct quetzal for
royal headdresses and long, looping earlobe extensions for warriors.
(Because those prostheses are difficult to apply, the actors must wear
them for days on end, which rather spooks fellow guests at the Fiesta
Americana Hotel.) This month Gibson starts filming at a sprawling and
meticulously appointed city of Maya pyramids and markets that Sanders'
crew spent six months building outside Veracruz. It all suggests a
Titanic-size budget, but Gibson will say only that his production
company, Icon, is spending less than $50 million. (The Passion cost $30
million.)

Given that controversy hit his last film months before it even finished
production, Gibson has been careful to build Mesoamerican goodwill for
Apocalypto: two-thirds of the cast and crew are Mexican, and Gibson has
donated $1 million to communities in Veracruz state affected by
Hurricane Stan last year. Mexican cast members like Mayra Sérbulo, 30, a
Zapotec Indian who plays a villager, say they expect some criticism of
the film from Mexican nationalists (who also tore into Salma Hayek's
Frida), especially since it touches on the raw issue of human sacrifice,
which scholars don't believe was a prevalent Maya practice until the
post-classic period, after A.D. 900, when fiercer influences like the
Toltecs and Aztecs arrived. It is in that period, not coincidentally,
that Apocalypto is set. "But I'm frankly surprised and excited that
someone is making a film about an indigenous Mexican culture that most
Mexicans don't even know all that well," says Sérbulo. "I feel valued by
this movie."

Gibson nonetheless is a lightning rod--pro-Mel and anti-Mel blogs abound
on the Internet--and he knows that even non-Mexican detractors will ask
why, if he's so morbidly fascinated with the bloody deeds of Jewish
Pharisees and Maya priests, he doesn't hold a mirror to his own church
and film the Spanish Inquisition. Gibson won't say that's a future plan,
but he nods and agrees that "there are monsters in every culture."

The more immediate question is whether Apocalypto can repeat The
Passion's success. After all, devout Christians willing to sit through
Latin and Aramaic dialogue to see Christ crucified vastly outnumber Maya
scholars. Gibson seems certain that the film's "kinetic energy" will
make Maya language and culture "cool" enough to attract a crowd. Maya
prophecy says the current world, which began 5,000 years ago, will end
in 2012. So, even if Apocalypto flops, Gibson will at least have given
the Maya one last chance to get the word out.

[Okwes]

/Apocalypto/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypto

Mel Gibson filmed /Apocalypto/ mainly in Catemaco
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catemaco> and Paso de Ovejas
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paso_de_Ovejas> in the Mexican
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico> state of Veracruz
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracruz>. Gibson uses the Yukatek Maya
language <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukatek_Maya_language>^[1]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypto#_note-0> in /Apocalypto/, in
the same way he used Aramaic
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_language> and Latin
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin> for his religious blockbuster
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_%28entertainment%29> /The
Passion of the Christ
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_the_Christ>/. /Apocalypto/
features a cast of unknown actors from Mexico City
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City>, the Yucatán
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucat%C3%A1n>, some Native Americans
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans> from the United States
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States> and Canada, and locals from
Los Tuxtlas <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Tuxtlas%2C_Mexico> and
Veracruz <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracruz%2C_Mexico>.

While Gibson is financing the film himself, Disney
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walt_Disney_Company#Studio_Entertainment>
has signed on to release /Apocalypto/ for a fee in certain markets. The
film was slated for an August 4 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_4>,
2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006> release, but Touchstone
Pictures <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchstone_Pictures> has delayed
the release date to December 8
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_8>, 2006
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006> due to heavy rains interfering with
filming in Mexico. On September 23
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_23>, 2006, Gibson pre-screened
/Apocalypto/ to two predominantly Native American
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States>
audiences in Oklahoma, at the Riverwind Casino
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverwind_Casino> in Goldsby
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsby%2C_Oklahoma>, owned by the
Chickasaw Nation <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickasaw_Nation>, and at
Cameron University <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_University> in
Lawton <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawton%2C_Oklahoma>.^[2]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypto#_note-1> He also did a
pre-screening in Austin, Texas
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin%2C_Texas> on September 24
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_24> in conjunction with one of
the movie's stars, Rudy Youngblood
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Youngblood>.^[3]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypto#_note-2>

Actor Role
Rudy Youngblood <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Youngblood> Jaguar Paw
Raoul Trujillo
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Raoul_Trujillo&action=edit>
Zero Wolf
Dalia Hernández <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalia_Hern%C3%A1ndez> Seven
Mayra Sérbulo
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mayra_S%C3%A9rbulo&action=edit>
Mauricio Amuy Tenorio
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mauricio_Amuy_Tenorio&action=edit>
Maya Chief
Miguel Angel Galvan
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miguel_Angel_Galvan&action=edit>
Maya Priest
Gerardo Taracena
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gerardo_Taracena&action=edit>
Middle Eye
Rodolfo Palacios
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rodolfo_Palacios&action=edit>
Iazua Larios
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Iazua_Larios&action=edit>
Joaquín Cosío
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joaqu%C3%ADn_Cos%C3%ADo&action=edit>

Reviews:

www.rottentomatoes.com/m/apocalypto/

The movie starts with main character, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Youngblood>), out hunting tapir
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapir> with his father, Flint Sky, and
other male members of his village. They encounter refugees on the run
from something which has "ravaged" their land, but Flint Sky restrains
his son from asking questions. The movie follows the hunters return to
their village, establishes some of the personal relationships there and
introduces Jaguar Paw's pregnant wife, Seven, and son, Turtles Run.

Soon the village is attacked by a Maya war party. Jaguar Paw is awakened
by a premonition-like dream, and is able to lower his wife and son into
a small cave (presumably a /chultun
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chultun>/, shaped something like a
well)^[5] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypto#_note-4> to hide
them. The war party capture as many villagers alive as they are able to,
but sadistically and unnecessarily kill Flint Sky in front of Jaguar
Paw, establishing the sadism of some of the attackers and the authority
of their leader, Zero Wolf, who saves Jaguar Paw as a captive. Seven and
Turtles Run remain left in the cave, but one of the Maya cuts the vine
that is hanging down as their means of escape.

The movie occasionally shows the pair in the cave, with scenes of
attempted escapes and a display of the known Aztec practice of using ant
mandibles to suture wounds (Turtles Run's leg). Seven is able to throw
up a rock with a vine over the edge. Her attempt is unsuccessful, and
because of her fall back into the cave, she goes into labor.

The captive villagers are taken on a long trek toward the Maya city
where they encounter the previously met refugees as prisoners, failing
maize crops, poverty, and slaves producing plaster and building
edifices. They also encounter a small girl with smallpox
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox>, whom the Maya shun, but she
prophesies doom will follow the darkness of the sun in day and the man
who runs with jaguars. In the city, the female captives are sold as
slaves, while the men are painted blue and taken to the top of a step
pyramid to have their hearts removed, be decapitated, and have their
headless bodies thrown down the front steps of the pyramid, a direct
representation of what is known about the most extreme forms of human
sacrifice in Aztec culture
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_culture>,
including the blue paint.

Jaguar Paw and most of the male captives are saved this fate when an
eclipse occurs while he is being held on the altar. The captives, now
spared as sacrificial victims to the sun god, are taken to an open space
by their captors and are allowed to run for their freedom in pairs while
the Maya attack them with javelins, arrows, and rocks. The son, Smoke
Frog, of the leader of the warband, waits at the end with a stone axe to
finish off anyone who survives the gauntlet and acts as a 'finisher'.

Jaguar Paw is able to reach the end, despite being shot with an arrow by
the leader, and when his friend gives his life to give him some time, he
is able to pull out the arrow and stab Smoke Frog in the neck. The young
Maya warrior dies in Zero Wolf's arms, who now wants to take revenge on
his son's killer. Meanwhile, Jaguar Paw is able to make it into the
jungle while the captors are in hot pursuit. While on the run, he hides
up in a tree, only to come between a jaguar and her cub. The jaguar
chases him, and when one of the pursuers tries to capture the running
Jaguar Paw, the jaguar kills the pursuer instead. Some of the members of
the warband are noticeably distraught as the eclipse and man running
with the jaguar were part of the prophecy from the small girl with
smallpox, yet they continue pursuit.

Jaguar Paw seems to recover from his wound, and leads them on a chase
throughout the night. The next day, just as the pursuers are getting
close, he comes to the top of a giant waterfall and jumps over. After
taunting his pursuers from the bottom, their leader forces them to all
jump as well (killing some in the process). After nearly being trapped
in a mud pit (the cinematic version of quicksand
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksand>), Jaguar Paw seems to be
revitalized and now begins to actively fight back against his pursuers,
starting by throwing a bee's nest at them, but including finding a
poisonous frog to envenom blowgun <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowgun>
darts.

It begins to rain and the cave with Seven and Turtles Run begins to fill
with water, and they are soon threatened with drowning. Seven climbs
onto a rock and holds her son up as the rain accumulates around them.
She gives birth while balancing her son on her shoulders.

Jaguar Paw continues to elude his pursuers in the village, although is
shot again by an arrow from the warband leader, whom he then tricks into
walking into one of the tapir traps established at the beginning of the
movie. As the last two of the warband chase the wounded and exhausted
Jaguar Paw onto the rainy beach, he is spared by the arrival of the
Spanish conquistadors <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquistador>.

The film then cuts to Jaguar Paw, Seven, Turtles Run, and the new baby
heading farther into the jungle to avoid contact with other men,
particularly the men from the ships.
=======

One review:

www.emanuellevy.com/article.php?articleID=3896

While watching "Apocalypto," try to forget Mel Gibson's spiritual intent
in making this pseudo-epic, and try to forget (if you can) Gibson's bad
behavior offscreen (DUI, anti-Semitic remarks, other prejudices).
"Apocalypto" is the best action-adventure movie to have come out of
Hollywood all year, with Gibson giving experts of the genre like Andrew
Davis or Michael Bay a run for their money.

Everything you heard about "Apocalypto" is true. Set at the end of the
Mayan civilization, the movie has no narrative or characters to speak
of, it's extremely violent, it's played by non professionals who speak
their own language, and it's subtitled.

Keeping the dialogue to a minimum, Gibson, unsure of the kind of movie
he wanted to make, has decided to structure his epos as one long chase,
interrupted by torture scenes and fights with Nature and the elements.
"Apocalypto" could have been titled, "Run, Jaguar Paw, Run," because
that's what the appealing actor is doing for two hours and ten minutes
(it's a long, long chase).

The real star of the picture is cinematogrpher Dean Semler, who provides
an extraordinarily vivid and relentlessly powerful look at a cultures
seldom seen landscape. "Apocalypsto" boasts the kind of kinetic energy
and viceral thrills sedlom seen in a mainstream Hollywood film, and this
one comes out of Disney's Touchstone!

The same gore and S&M approach that were evident in Gibson's previous
pictures, "Braveheart" and "The Passion of the Christ," are present
here--only more so. "Apocalypto" ups the ante of blood-and-guts
(literally) Hollywood movies, using the same disingenuous logic of the
crime-gangster films, namely trying to justify the gore onscreen by the
"realistic" conduct of the film's protagonists.

I may be doing disservice to Gibson's intent, but it's possible to enjoy
(if this is the right word?) his massive, colorful, beautifuly mounted
spectacle while disreagrding completely its historical setting, theme of
the conflict between civilizations, and the "end" of the world message
(hence the title). Nonetheless, since there is no dialogue, the movie's
purported goals of showing civlization on the brink of demise and the
oppression of native cultures by large oppressive powers lack resonance
for contempo audiences.

Cast with indigenous natives, who reportedly speak the surviving dialect
of the Mesoamericans, "Apocalypto" is wildly exotic and ferociously
brutal, with torture scenes that involve tearing hearts out of humans,
and cutting heads off and then let the camera depict the dismemberded
bodies falling down from steep rocks.

The skeleton of a script, credited to Farhad Safinia and Gibson, centers
on half a dozen characters, who are taken as captives and then tortured
to death. "Apocalypto" is basically a survival film, driven by the human
hunt motif. The movie begins and ends with a wild chase. In the first
scene, we witness a fast, brutal animal hunt that sets the tempo for the
whole picture. The little info about the characters and their culture is
offered in the first reel, after which Gibson forgets all issues that
pertain to narrative cinema.

In the first chapters, Gibson establishes the intimate nature of
family-oriented life in a small jungle settlement inhabited by
free-spirited individuals. The only (intentional) humor in the whole
movie is in these sequences, when a man is forced to eat testicales and
later becomes an object of ridicule by his mother-in-law for failing to
impregnate her daughter.

The saga's hero is Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), a handsome young man
with flowing locks, tattoos, and body scars, who wears a loin cloth. He
is depicted as a family man, devoted to his wife and son. However,
Gibson fails to offer any clues about the natives' myths and values,
thus preventing any emotionl investment in them as human charcaters
other than the generalized notion of being captives and victims.

The village's tranquil life is abrupted by the attack of brutal
marauders, Holcane warriros, who sport bones through their noses. Their
leader, Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo), is accompanied by the sadistic Snake
Ink (Rodolfo Palacios), who instead of killing Jaguar Paw, murders the
captive's father in front of him, thus launching the yarn's chief conflict.

With his surviving fellow villagers, Jaguar Paw is bound and marched off
through the jungle. Just before the attack, Jaguar Paw manages to hide
his pregnant wife Seven (Dalia Hernandez) and their young son (Carlos
Emilio Baez) in a deep, dry well. He promises Seven to return before she
gives birth, and miraculously he does.

I suspect there might have been an earlier, more elaborate draft, in
which Gibson and his co-writer dealt with the causes for the sudden
collapse of the Mayan civilization. However, judged by what's presented
on screen, we get only hints about possible famine, drought, and warfare.

In one of the film's most bizzarre and haunting scene, while moving
through the forest, the prisoners pass by a young girl plagued with "the
sickness," who warns about the coming "blackness of day." The exact
meaning of her doom propehcy is never explained. As noted before, Gibson
couldn't be bothered by such old-fashioned issues as dramatic conflict
and characterization, instead resorting to a largely silent epic film,
replete with horror scenes and grisly human sacrifice.

What's missing in terms of narrative and drama is made up for by the
elaborate production design, and Tom Sanders deserves special credit for
his work, detailing the look and feel of each locale, from the derelict
shantytown to the commercial districts, the slave market where the women
are sold off and the central arena, where detached human heads are being
bounced down the steps of a pyramid toward the cheering crowds below.
The abundant blood and gore onscreen would please Tarantino and the fans
of his "Kill Bill" pictures.

At least one reel is devoted to the chilling torture of the shackled
prisoners, orchestrated by royals and high priests, who stick a sharp
knife into a man's body, while the victim is still alive, tearing out
his heart as an offering to placate the gods to end the drought. Jaguar
Paw and five other survivors are made objects of sport and ridicule in
this arena.

The last reel depicts the long and eventful chase of Jaguar Paw, the
only survivor, by Zero Wolf and his men back through the jungle.
Periodically, to alleviate the intensity and varigate the proceedings,
Gibson cut to Seven and her boy, trying to survive down in the pit.
Various efforts to climb out of the place fail, and at one point, there
are nearly drowned by torrential rains. In the midst of it all, Seven
goes into labor and gives birth while carrying her son on her shoulders!

Casting director Carla Hool has done a great job in assembling a large
troupe of savage looking warriors. The performers are appealing and
photogenic. The handsome and energetic Youngblood is the closest the
movie has to a protagonist, and he carries the whole saga on his broad
and muscular shoulders, giving an utterly credible and compelling
performance. Most of the action is seen from his POV, thus allowing the
audience some possibility for emotional engagement.

Historians will have a field day with this picture, which takes liberty
with facts and portrays the Mayans in a naive, idealistic way. They are
peace-loving people who accept death and physical pain as integral part
of their lives.

The sets, costumes, makeup, body and hair designs are extremely
elaborate and detailed. "Apocalypto" is one of the best-looking films to
be shot digitally. As he proved in the "Mad Max" films, Dean Semler is
an ace lenser, and here his camera moves restlessly and relentlessly
through dense forest and other rough terrains. Accoridng to the notes,
the picture was shot on locations near Veracruz and in the rainforests
of Catemaco, with additional shooting in Costa Rica and the U.K..

Who will see "Apocalypto"? Realizing the potential effect of his bad
press, Gibson has been conducting campaigns among ethnic minorities,
specifically Latinos, and various ecological groups. The curiosity
factor may also work in favor of the picture; after all "The Passion of
the Christ" was a blockbuster that grossed $370 million.
==================
Gibson Talks Apocalypto!
*Date:* March 21, 2006

*By:* Kellvin Chavez
*Source:* Time
<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1174684-1,00.html>

www.latinoreview.com/news.php?id=425

*Time
<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1174684-1,00.html>*
has got a great interview with director Mel Gibson
<http://www.latinoreview.com/news.php?id=425#> about his upcoming flim
*'Apocalypto,' <http://www.latinoreview.com/filmpreview.php?id=208>* the
heart stopping mythic action-adventure set against the turbulent end
times of the once great Mayan civilization
<http://www.latinoreview.com/news.php?id=425#>. The film follows a man
who is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and
oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and
spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family he will
make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of
life.

Here's a a clip:

/"I need to see the blood!" shouts Mel Gibson. "Your character is going
to die soon!" He picks up a bullhorn: "Attention! We are all dying here!
We are all dying!" The Oscar-winning director is standing in a rock
quarry near Veracruz, Mexico, shooting a hellish scene for Apocalypto,
his action epic about the ancient Maya. Hundreds of local extras--many
of whom have never seen a movie, let alone acted in one--are pounding
fake limestone to build a temple used for human sacrifices. Gibson wants
one of the extras, covered in white lime dust, to visibly cough up a
glob of fake blood. But something keeps getting lost in translation
<http://www.latinoreview.com/news.php?id=425#>. Take after take, the
young man, who speaks only Spanish, politely covers his mouth as he
hacks. A second candidate for the role does the same. Gibson finally
lets out a tortured howl, digs vainly for a cigarette in his empty pack
of Camels and turns the set into his own Thunderdome. The translator
does his best to convey the passion of the Mel./

/The Passion experience--especially the part in which critics hurled
anti-Semitism charges at Gibson, an ultraconservative Roman Catholic
whose father has questioned whether the Holocaust happened--thickened
Gibson's hide along with his wallet. So if there are complaints about
Apocalypto's portrayal of human sacrifice by the Maya, whose mostly
impoverished descendants today are a cause célèbre for liberals, Gibson
says he won't care. "After what I experienced with The Passion, I
frankly don't give a flying f___ about much of what those critics think."/

[Okwes]

'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

www.austin360.com/movies/content/shared/movies/stories/2006/12/history.html

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 queuein 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."

[e-mail]

445-3649

[blackcrowheart]

Star of 'Apocalypto' comes from small Central Texas town

Web Posted: 12/22/2006 07:06 PM CST
www.mysanantonio.com/entertainment/stories/MYSA122406.3P.youngblo\
od.152cafd.html
<http://www.mysanantonio.com/entertainment/stories/MYSA122406.3P.youngbl\
ood.152cafd.html>

In 2005, Rudy Youngblood, an American Indian grass dancer and powwow
singer from Belton, went to California to work on a theatrical
production. One fleet-footed jog around a conference table, however, set
him on an unexpected path through the Mexican rain forest and on to the
top of the box office in Mel Gibson's bloody opus "Apocalypto."
As Jaguar Paw, the soulful-eyed protagonist of the film set in the
waning days of the Mayan empire, Youngblood manages to outrun an angry
mama jaguar, survive a plunge down a waterfall and escape a quicksand
pit, all while being chased by some highly motivated individuals with
very sharp weapons. The 25-year-old also manages to win a few hearts
while trying to keep his own.

Q. How did you end up in the film?

A. I kind of stumbled upon an open casting call and I just went there
not knowing what it was for. I met with Mel, and he had me run around
his conference table to see how I moved and that was pretty interesting.
Then ... about a day later, I was on a plane to Mexico City. It's just
been nonstop since then.

Q. Was that the extent of the audition, running around a conference
table?

A. Yeah, you know, and just sitting there and speaking with Mel and just
kind of feeling each other out. This is a very physical, demanding role,
so I would have to be able to move how he wanted me to.

Q. How did you prepare for the physical demands of the role?

A. I've always stayed in shape ... and I'm a runner and a dancer and so
on and so forth. That helped a lot, trust me. Along the way you pick up
a lot of bangs and bruises, and separated shoulders and fractured bones
and all the whole works, but you just take a lickin' and keep on
tickin'.

Q. Which of those things happened to you?

A. I had three ripped ligaments on my left foot and my right foot, two
bruised heels, I tore my whole right side of my body � ripped that
whole muscle � separated my shoulder, popped out my collar bone,
fractured bones, bangs, bruises, cuts.

Q. How did you separate your shoulder?

A. I did all my own stunts, all of them. But you know, it was worth it.
It made for a better film. (laughs).

Q. So, what did you think when you saw that tiny costume?

A. (Laughs) Were you looking at my bum?

Q. I think a few thousand people saw your bum.

A. Oh! I know! Don't tell me! It just makes me nervous. ... I had to do
all my butt exercises. ... I was like, "Where's the rest of (the
costume)?" ... But I have no shame. I was like, hey, might as well show
it off.

The first week is kind of funny. You want to put your hands behind your
booty, but I'm running, I'm fighting, then it just becomes, "I'm dirty."

Q. Have people started recognizing you on the street?

A. Last night, this gentleman ... called me over and he says, "My wife
seems to think that you're the guy in 'Apocalypto.'" I said, "Well, what
do you think?" And he was like, "I'm trying to tell her ..." And I said,
"I am the guy in 'Apocalypto.'" And she goes, "I knew it! Look at his
eyes!" ... I thought it was pretty funny.

Q. Is it weird for you?

A. I just count my blessings that I was given this opportunity ... It is
what it is. I just don't think about it, because I always want to stay
Rudy, the small town country boy. And I'm happy with that, because I'm
happy being Rudy.

Q. We talked about what you went through physically, but what was the
most challenging aspect of doing the movie?

A. Well, I think for me was the emotional part, because I'm from Texas,
I don't carry my emotions on my sleeve. We're country boys over there.
You know, you take a bangin' and a beatin', you don't cry, because if
you cry we're going to make fun of you.

Q. What about learning to speak Mayan, was that a challenge?

A. To be honest with you, I pick up on things really fast, whether it be
in dancing, whether it be in art, anything. ... I'm like a sponge. So
learning Mayan was not difficult. I was the last person to get cast for
the film, and I just picked it up within a month. That was just a lot of
work on my part, because I felt that I had to pay my dues and put the
time in and the work in to be that person, and come off like it's my
first language.

Q. So, can you chat in Mayan?

A. Yeah, that's what I was having my dialogue coach do, "Talk to me in
Mayan. I don't want to know just my lines. Talk to me in Mayan and I'll
talk to you in English, and we can teach each other." It was like a
give-and-take situation.

I know a few things, just to charm the ladies.

Q. A lot of people have been talking about the violence in "Apocalypto."
Did that concern you?

A. No, not at all. I think it's very necessary to tell the story. ...
"Braveheart" was far worse as far as blood quantity and everything like
that, but everybody loves "Braveheart."

Q. Did they have barrels of fake blood on the set?

A. Yeah, of course, it's all fake. It's all fake blood.

Q. Except for the blood that they got out of you.

A. Yeah. I left some blood stains there.

[Okwes]

Gibson, Professor Trade Barbs Over Film
Friday March 23 6:00 PM ET


Mel Gibson exchanged angry words with a university professor who challenged the accuracy of his film "Apocalypto" at an on-campus screening. Gibson was answering questions from the crowd at California State University, Northridge, Thursday night when Alicia Estrada, an assistant professor of Central American studies, accused the actor-director of misrepresenting the Mayan culture in the movie. Gibson directed an expletive at the woman, who was removed from the crowd.

"In no way was my question aggressive in the way that he responded to it," Estrada said. "These are questions that my peers, my colleagues, ask me every time I make a presentation. These are questions I pose to my students in the classroom."

Gibson's publicist, Alan Nierob, characterized the professor as "a heckler."

"The woman ... was rude and disruptive inasmuch as the event organizers had to escort her out," Nierob said.

Lauren Robeson, editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, the Daily Sundial, said Gibson denounced Estrada as a troublemaker.

"It was a brief disruption to an otherwise interesting, stimulating event from our students' perspectives," said university spokesman John Chandler. "The students were very appreciative of Mr. Gibson being there. He spent a lot of time answering questioernational headlines. The R-rated epic about the decline of Mayan civilization shows Mayan rulers slitting throats and beheading and ripping the beating hearts from the chests of their enemies.

Human sacrifice among the Mayans has been well-documented in recent years and is accepted as fact by most anthropologists, knocking down a previous theory that the culture did not take part in such bloody rituals.

However, there are some scholars and Indian activists who still believe the human sacrifice accounts are false or overblown, and an attempt by racist scientists to paint the culture as violent.

"This isn't the Mayan culture," Juan Tiney, leader of the National Indian and Farmer Committee, Guatemala's biggest Mayan organization, told the AP. "Although it might be part of it, there was also culture, economics, astronomical wealth and language. ... It discredits a people to present them in this manner."

Gibson "did his homework and consulted with world authorities on this matter," Nierob said.

"Apocalypto" has grossed more than $100 million worldwide, and it earned three Academy Award nominations.

___

Associated Press writers John Rogers in Los Angeles, Traci Carl in Mexico and Juan Carlos Llorca in Guatemala contributed to this report.

[Okwes]

What can possibly be added to the discussion about Apocalypto that we
haven't heard? Funny you should ask…because Colorado writer
Carlos Guevara answers. No, his analysis isn't the usual blah de blah
defense or academic vitriol; but it is pointed…and
irreverent…and, I'll let you decide for yourself…

By Carlos Guevara

Mel, Mel, Mel, my what a can of worms you opened… Just some
interesting feedback from the people he insulted, just in case your
media provider did not print these tidbits eh....

...That's ok. They are not as "Native" as tribes who speak English
anyway. After all, we all know that your only Native if your conquers
were English. A pock to those whose conquerors were French or Spanish
fore they are not as Indian. Why do I find this axiom so trite? Divide
and conquer and yup, we Natives are as divided as ever....

MEL MEL MEL (Gibson, that is) His Movie, His Motives. And Indians.
<http://www.nativevue.org/blog/?p=329>

NativeVue Film & Media <http://www.nativevue.org/>
[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>

[blackcrowheart]

Mel Gibson Genocidal Fantasies Against the Mayans

tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LifeSci/message/4

Juan Santos, a Latino writer living in Los Angeles, California. has
written for Liberator Magazine, La Prensa, The San Francisco Bayview,
Alternative Press Review, The Final Call, Aztlan Rising, Consafos.com,
Americas.org, ZNet, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Countercurrents.org,
Uruknet, Mexika.org, Infoshop, Chicano.org, LatinoLA, Iran Solidarity,
GlobalResearch.ca, Autonomy and Solidarity, Guerrilla News Network,
Interactivist Info Exchange, and his blog and has given us a powerful look
at Mel Gibson's cinematic rage in this fantasy and Right Wing Christian
morality play, "logic of Genocide", this time against the Mayans.

Hank Roth

From:
the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/

Apocalypto: The Cinematic Logic of Genocide

by Juan Santos

Mel Gibsons Apocalypto is not a mere adventure tale, its not just another
excruciatingly brutal portrayal of apocalyptic violence for its own sake,
and the Village Voice is dead wrong when it says that unlike Braveheart
and The Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto is unburdened by nationalist or
religious piety, that it's pure, amoral sensationalism.

Despite its extreme brutality Apocalypto isnt just Gibsons latest snuff
film with a religious theme. The film is a morality play, and there are
only two things one needs to remember to get a hint of the ugly moral
intent behind Mel Gibsons depiction of the Maya.

The first is that, despite Gibsons vile portrayal of the Maya as a macabre
cult of deranged killers straight out of Apocalypse Now!, there is no
evidence that the Mayan people ever practiced widespread human sacrifice,
and they certainly didn't target the innocent hunter-gatherers and
horticulturalists Gibson chooses to portray as the victims of a Mayan
death cult.

Gibson knows better. He studied the terrain in depth and had no practical
limit to the funds he could expend on research. His portrayal is a
conscious lie, one he uses to justify the premise that the Mayan city
states collapsed because they deserved to collapse, and that they deserved
to be replaced by a superior culture in the genocide known as the
Conquest.

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed
itself from within," is how Gibson puts it. In other words the Conquest
was not genocide but a moral comeuppance; the civilization didnt fall, in
the final analysis, from climate change or inadvertent soil depletion or
even war it was conquered in gods wrath against the forces of evil. And
Gibsons made sure you see the ancient Maya as a force of profound evil.

Heres a taste of the standards Gibson used in conjuring his image of the
Maya. The LA Times quotes production designer Tom Sanders:

"We had an archeologist, Dr. Richard Hansen, onboard," said Sanders. "It
was really fun to say, 'Is there any proof they didn't do this?' When he
said, 'There is no proof they didn't do that,' that gives you some license
to play. And play they did. Rex Reed calls the racist portrayal of the
Maya Gibsons huge cast of spear-carriers from the Oom-Gawah-Bwana School
of Dramatic Art.

In a stunning interview with Chris Garcia of the Austin American
Statesman, Julia Guernsey, an expert on Mayan culture at the University of
Texas says of Gibsons agenda, "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
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

The other hint you might need to remember is this. No matter what happens
in this film, the Spanish don't show up at the end, at the collapse of the
Mayan civilization, to save anything at all.

Hundreds of years would pass between the collapse of the Mayan city states
and the American Holocaust. For the sake of empire the Spanish would
sacrifice 95% of the population in Mexico, a horror they would achieve in
a mere 100 years. Hitlers holocaust, with its 20 million dead, pales: the
Conquest of the Americas by Europe would claim 100 million lives. There is
no more savage genocide in the history of civilization.

But if youre looking for savagery, the holocaust against the Mayan people
doesnt stop there. The most recent wave ended a mere decade ago. A quarter
of a million innocent Maya were slaughtered in Guatemala by a death squad
regime backed by the Gibsons cohorts on the Christian Right, including
Ronald Reagan and apocalyptic fanatics like Pat Robertson and Jerry
Falwell. Its called The Silent Holocaust by those who know of it.

The Maya have suffered a modern apocalypse more brutal than anything in
Gibsons sadistic imagination, more brutal than even he would dare bring to
the screen. Its a tale he would refuse: its demons arent savage Mayans in
horror movie drag, theyre Christian death squads backed by fundamentalist
leaders using old school Spanish methods. A British anti-war organization
writes:

Working methodically across the Mayan region, the army and its
paramilitary teams, including 'civil patrols' of forcibly conscripted
local men, attacked 626 villages. Each community was rounded up, or seized
when gathered already for a celebration or a market day. The villagers, if
they didn't escape to become hunted refugees, were then brutally murdered;
others were forced to watch, and sometimes to take part. Buildings were
vandalised and demolished, and a 'scorched earth' policy applied: the
killers destroyed crops, slaughtered livestock, fouled water supplies, and
violated sacred places and cultural symbols.

Children were often beaten against walls, or thrown alive into pits where
the bodies of adults were later thrown; they were also tortured and raped.
Victims of all ages often had their limbs amputated, or were impaled and
left to die slowly. Others were doused in petrol and set alight, or
disemboweled while still alive. Yet others were shot repeatedly, or
tortured and shut up alone to die in pain. The wombs of pregnant women
were cut open. Women were routinely raped while being tortured. Women -
now widows - who lived could scarcely survive the trauma: The presence of
sexual violence in the social memory of the communities has become a
source of collective shame.

Gibson hasnt told the story of the hunted refugees fleeing Christian death
squads a decade ago. His ancient hunters are nothing more than figments of
his imagination, racist stereotypes of ancient Mayans who existed nowhere
but in his own delirium tremens. They are his own demons chasing his
imaginary hero / victim / alter ego, Jaguar Paw, through a savage jungle.

The framework of the story is deeply embedded in Gibsons extreme right
wing religious and political views. He casts Mayan priests and leaders as
demonically malevolent at a time when interest is growing world wide in
Mayan politics the Zaptistas and in Mayan spirituality and prophecy. The
subtext of the film and its social context involve the Mayan prophecies of
the end of an age of destruction, and the beginning of another around 2012
C.E., an age that can lead to harmony between humanity and the Earth.

The biblical counter-vision is of a righteous world destruction carried
out by a vengeful god who destroys all living creatures, a vision embedded
in the Apocalypse of Saint John, the Book of Revelations, which was the
inspiration for the films title.

The Maya who survived the killing in Guatemala and elsewhere kept their
spiritual traditions alive - including their prophecies of the end of this
age - despite 500 years of intensive efforts to eradicate them. Right wing
Christians see hell-driven New Age plots at every turn, and understand
attacking other cultures spiritual traditions not as cultural genocide but
as legitimate spiritual warfare at a time of approaching apocalypse.

Gibson brought Apocalypto to life on the propaganda front of a spiritual
war, a deadly serious culture war between those who would protect and
defend the Earths ability to live and those on the Christian Right who
want to bring on Armageddon.

The stakes are the future of life on planet Earth in a time when the
industrial civilization of the West is seen by many as on the brink of
collapse and when the worlds most respected scientists see Earth as on the
verge of ecological destruction, a sentiment that is deeply shared by the
living Mayan wisdom keepers whose indigenous spiritual tradition Gibson
has chosen to paint as evil.

The survivors of the most recent wave of genocide havent seen Apocalypto
yet no Maya has, not even those who had the bit parts Gibson reserved for
them, or who worked as extras and maids.

One cant help but wonder how Apocalypto will play to Guatemalan audiences,
but one thing is a sure bet: Mayans will be deeply disturbed to see their
culture portrayed as a madhouse of killing, while those who supported the
death squad regime of the Christian fascist Efran Ros Montt will take
solace: their view of the Maya as subhuman will be justified by the film,
and so will their genocidal reign of terror.

Racist stereotypes, after all, serve one function and one function only
they serve as a story, a script that justifies the use of violence against
a targeted group, whether the weapons of the oppressor are the sword and
cannon, the gas chamber, the M16, a lynch mobs rope, or a camera.

One viewer understood and embraced Gibsons intent in its entirety, saying
Apocalypto:

Pretty much precisely describes the whole point of the civilizations of
such noble savages as the Mayans, if you ask us. There isnt one, there
wasnt one, and there never will be one. Those bloodthirsty mongrels and
many others before and after them were brutal, savage, cruel and entirely
without redeeming qualities, and the best thing that ever happened to this
planet was when they were wiped out, never to be heard of again.

In fact, we owe the Spanish Conquistadores an eternal debt of gratitude
for having wiped that blood-curdlingly bestial, brutal blight upon
humanity off the face of the planet because, had they not done it, we
would have had to do so ourselves.

The son of a Holocaust denier, Gibson defended his father in a 2004
interview, and, in the wake of his recent drunken tirades against Jews,
Gibson can ill afford charges of propagating racism against Indians. The
films PR campaign has carefully skirted potential opposition and negative
exposure. Despite that effort Mayan activists whove seen nothing more than
the films trailer denounced the film the day before it opened.

Ignacio Ochoa, director of the Nahual Foundation, said "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 deserved, in fact needed, rescue."

The Indians whove seen the film itself have been a carefully chosen crew;
Apocalypto, for all its epic pretensions, premiered in an Oklahoma casino,
and certainly not for an audience of American Indian Movement activists.
The initial Latino audience was chosen just as carefully. A Beverly
Hills-based PR man arranged screenings of the film for the Los Angeles
Latin Business Association not for Mexican and Central American migrants
who know the Maya, not for indigenous minded Chican at s, and certainly
not for LAs substantial community of Mayan refugees.

The Latin Business Association obligingly gave Gibson their "Visionary
Award. But its too late for Gibson to hide behind such contrived honors.
Even the LA Times pointedly noted, it's one thing to acknowledge a work's

merits and quite another to proclaim Gibson a visionary, especially at a
time when the immigration debate has reminded Latinos that virulent racism
is only a few drinks away.

Genocide is even closer than that. Ask the Spanish. Ask the death squads.
Ask Mel, behind the camera or a behind small glass. Its just a shot away.

________

Juan Santos is a Los Angeles based writer and editor. His essays from 2006
can be found at: the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/.
<http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/> He can be reached
at: JuanSantos at Mexica.net.

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