Apocalypto

[infrogmation]

I never got around to posting about Apocalypto, which mshollie and I saw over a week ago.

Afterwards Hollie commented that the mass human sacrifice scene was the goriest part. That there'd there'd be serious competition gives you a good idea of the gore content of the film.

It was indeed a "chase movie"-- a very well done one, with lots of excitement and some excellent cinematography.

I'm glad I wasn't expecting much in the way of anthropological accuracy, and was able to enjoy the film as simple action adventure set in the usual b.s. Hollywood has often made of historical subjects.

The Mesoamerican content was really pretty minimal-- largely an exotic setting for the action, plus a platform for The Mel to suggest that destruction of the native civilization by at the hands of those well washed shiny faced conquistadores bearing crosses was the best thing that could have happened to the Mesoamericans.

BTW, It's in Maya, but not very good Maya, as most of the actors don't speak Maya. (The one handed story teller seems to have been about the only actor Gibson picked from the aproximately 1 million people still fluent in it.)

Comments

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

I did some research on the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in college, but not much -- practically all of it was from the POV of Cortez, so naturally I reached the same conclusion. As I see it, at least as far as the Aztecs were concerned, it was peripheral societies that had to send humans as tribute to the Aztecs. The Spanish put human sacrifices to an end, or at least replaced them with traditional money-based taxes. But they also forbade sodomy. Would it have been worth it to keep both?

But I'm only vaguely aware of the current situation south of the border, that the brown people are poor and the white people are rich. That means there's evidence of a big cultural imbalance, but remember the English didn't let that many of the brown people live to future generations.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Well, far and away the primary effect of the conquistadores (and other Europeans) arriving in the Americas was that the diseases they brought killed a substantial fraction, probably a majority, of everyone who lived there. While it was mostly inadvertent on the Europeans' part, I wouldn't wish that on even the most bloody and tyrannical civilization; surely not everyone there was evil to the point of deserving to die of infectious diseases.

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

Mesoamerica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerica) had a group of civilizations that developed for some 2k years seperate from those of the Old World. For the most part, the conquering Spanish just judged their entire civilization as the work of the devil to be stamped out as throuroughly as possible.

In the example of the Maya, the Spanish burned all their libraries, and by chance 3 books and a few pages of a 4th survived to modern times-- from one of which we find out that the Maya had tables of the movements of Venus superior to any other civilization without the telescope.

I think conquest by the British might have had a much better result, from the example of India. Human sacrifice would have been stopped, but much of the native traditions would have been let continue so long as the Brits were making a profit, and the books would have been copied and translated.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

They had books? Everything I know about Maya is from Voyage of the Mimi 2, and so I thought they just had hieroglyphics carved onto stuff.

It's like the Library of Alexandria all over again. Damn Christians.

[wrayb.livejournal.com]

ok, i guess i'll wait for it to come to cable.

thanks for the comments.

wrb