I love the Three Stooges too. Great comics.
As for Mel Gibson? Phooey!
Posted on 12/13/2006 4:59:55 AM PST by UltraConservative
According to Mel Gibson, his new movie, "Apocalypto," is a metaphor for the death of American civilization. "The precursors to a civilization that's going under are the same, time and time again," Gibson explained at a film festival in Texas. "What's human sacrifice if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?"
Gibson's comparison between Mayan and American civilization is deeply offensive. To elucidate just how offensive the comparison is, I must review the film's portrayal of Mayan society. (Warning: There are spoilers. If you are intent on seeing this movie, read no further.)
"Apocalypto" portrays two societies within Mayan civilization. The first is a hunter-gatherer sort of Rousseau-ian society, wherein noble savages tell colorful stories, cherish their pregnant wives and play practical jokes involving eating raw tapir testicles. The second is the decadent Mayan city, where slave laborers covered in powder cough up blood as they pound rock; where throngs cheer wildly as power-mad priests engage in ritual human sacrifice, pulling still-beating hearts from chest cavities, beheading victims and tossing those heads down towering flights of stairs to a waiting crowd, which then sticks the heads on pikes; where the headless bodies are dumped in Holocaust-like mass graves, to rot in the sun.
The Mayan city society invades the Rousseau-ian hunter-gatherer society, brutally and graphically raping and murdering its way through village after village. Citizens of the hunter-gatherer society are kidnapped and used for ritual sacrifice, or for sport killing.
Gibson's point is this: Mayan civilization in decline had corrupted itself through brutality and barbarity. It sacrificed its own citizens on the altar of fear. The values that made Mayan civilization worth preserving -- the values embodied by the Rousseau-ian society -- were destroyed so that the fears of the population could be assuaged. In doing so, Mayan society made itself ripe for conquer by the Europeans.
Gibson likens Mayan civilization to American civilization. "We're all afraid," Gibson told Entertainment Weekly. "That's something I've been finding out more recently -- how racked by fear we are as a society." We are discarding our values, Gibson implies. We are engaging in Mayan barbarities in Iraq, sending our own citizens off to die on the altar of fear.
"Apocalypto" opens with a quotation from historian Will Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it destroys itself from within." Durant is correct -- but the film's exposition of Durant is utterly wrong. If American (and Western) civilization falls, it will not be because our fears drove us to "Mayan barbarities," but because, like Gibson, we failed to distinguish good from evil.
Not all civilizations are created equal: Some deserve to fall because they are deeply corrupt from the outset. Mayan civilization, with its human sacrifice and primitivism, was never a beacon of liberty. The Rousseau-ian values Gibson sees were not what distinguished Mayan civilization. The strength of Mayan civilization was based solely on its power -- it was doomed to fail from the moment it encountered a society more powerful militaristically and economically than itself.
Western civilization has values worth protecting -- liberty and equality of opportunity -- and those values give it strength. Those values make us stronger than our enemies, unlike the Mayans. Equating all civilizations, as Gibson does, is what undermines Western values. There is a world of difference between using violence out of superstition and using violence to both ensure domestic security and free others from the oppression of a death cult that ritually beheads its citizens or dumps them in mass graves. It is moral barbarism of the highest order to equate the two, as Gibson does.
Critics have rightly focused on the stunning violence of Gibson's "Apocalypto." The movie is certainly one of the most violent ever filmed -- Gibson's camera lingers lovingly over each wound. But it is the violence Gibson does to morality that should worry us. It is that violence that contributes to the internal destruction of Western civilization. If Western civilization is doomed to failure, it will not be despite Mel Gibson's best efforts, it will be because of them.
Mr. Shapiro is a student at Harvard Law School. He is the author of "Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future" (Regnery, a Human Events sister company) and "Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctinate America's Youth" Thomas Nelson).
So, if Mel were a Mayan of that day, he would still be refusing to see what or who his real enemy was - which was the corrupt, evil priests of a pagan religion hellbent on grabbing power, bloodlusting to behead people and attacking innocent people to garner more victims. So, instead of fighting the real enemies, the gentle hunter gatherers sat around the campfire singing cumbayah and burning their spears in unison, so when the evil priests came after them they had no guns . . er . . spears and were so weak from eating a diet of mostly tapir testicles they couldn't escape the imams . . er . . pagan priests nor protect their women from the terrorists . .er . . . rapists and pillagers. Mel is the perfect liberal Democrat, even if he isn't yet aware of it.
I also had tears at the birth of the baby Jesus in The Nativity Story. It was a stunning, exhilarating moment.
So - are you agreeing with me?
I would have preferred the actual birth of Jesus remain a miracle and a mystery. Although I very much enjoyed the movie and would recommend it to any adult,I would never take my grandchildren to it.
They are all under ten and I have no interest in spending any time discussing childbirth with them,neither generally,or specific to Mary or Elizabeth.
I also found both labor scenes just a little too pedestrian for an event like the birth of Jesus,or to a lesser degree,John.
I love the Three Stooges too. Great comics.
As for Mel Gibson? Phooey!
Mel was probably sober, therefore, facing the world without a crutch, and nervous.
Well I did actually see the movie so yes I am agreeing with you.
I do find it interesting that people who have not seen the movie are judging it already.
I think Mel's comments will get liberals to go see it, but they will not leave with the message they came for.
And yes, I have been to Tulum as well. It's been five and a half years ago. Although the ruins are nowhere near as spectacular, the view from the cliff is breathtaking.
I agree that the pyramid in your graphic more closely resembles the one in the movie.
I took those photos in the summer of 2005. After sweating my tail off climbing to the top of one tower, I was amazed at the true scale of the whole Grand Plaza. And more than creaped out at the thought of the very real human sacrifices done on the many altars around the plaza.
You might notice my limiting adverb, "sitewise".
Yes, the pyramid more resembles the big one (which I haven't seen in person) at Coba, which is farther inland than Tulum. And the pyramid and other main buildings appeared to be architecturally up to the standards of the classical Mayan cities, whereas Tulum is not.
Thanks for the photo of the Mexican conservators' marker, which is newer than my visit (in 1980) and gives the original name of the city, Zama' or Zoma' (can't quite make it out on my 12" 800x600 VGA+ screen, thanks to the font they used).
He was raised by an antisemite. How does he get rid of that influence on his own life?
OTOH he has tried, apparently, to live it down, as witness his prompt apology when sobered up, which gainsays the second half of your statement.
To try to ride him down on everything now because of his father's unseemly passion strikes me as vindictive, as if his father's antisemitism is deemed by Gibson's critics to have worked "corruption of blood" in Mel Gibson and his family, to borrow the language of the Constitution (forbidding such punitiveness even for treason).
Then you can't possibly object, can you, to his getting drunk again and yielding to his antisemitic upbringing, can you?
Everyone to his own passion (or whatever), right?
To Mel: Please see 'Lord of the Flies'
I guess you missed the parts where some excellent fighters from the village killed several of the raiders very promptly and efficiently, and our man Jaguar Paw put a big hurt on the sadist -- whereby hangs a plot thread.
"....."Apocalypto" opens with a quotation from historian Will Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it destroys itself from within."....."
To Mel: Durant associated the horrors of the French Revolution on Rousseau.
No, I didn't miss any part. I haven't seen, nor do I intend to see, the movie, "Apocalypto". I was just writing the plot through a liberal's eyes with modern day liberal flights of fancy.
bttt
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