I'm a language geek, so for a long time now I've been looking forward to Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, just because of his quirky idea of doing the whole thing in a language practically nobody on earth speaks today. I don't know when I'll get around to actually seeing it, unfortunately, because I have four kids under the age of ten and babysitter time is dear.
But I have the next best thing to a chance to see the film: a good friend who is an archaelogy grad student with field experience in mesoamerica who happened to see a special pre-screening recently. I opened up the discussion by passing her a link to Traci Ardren's Archaeology article, "Is 'Apocalypto' Pornography?".
She agreed to be interviewed so long as her identity was protected against retribution from fellow grad students, and this is what she said...
Anonymous Archaelogist (AA): Yeah I read the Ardren article.
It is interesting that everyone is making a big fuss about the violence when I didn't think it was that over the top. (I saw it at a preview screening last Monday and I thought it was a good chase/action movie). People complain about the "Maya on Maya" violence, but it seems that everyone is missing the point that the protagonist is also a Maya.
There are plenty of anachronisms that people complained about when I saw it, but at the time no one mentioned the violence. There was a desent critique of the movie and I'll email it to you.
(She sent a link to William Booth's "Culture Shocker" in the Washington Post.)
Me: The part that really grabbed me in the Archaelogy review was when she complained about the film ignoring the Mayans' "profound spirituality". How in the heck can one make an objective evaluation of an entire culture's spirituality" centuries after the fact??
I guess I'm once again asking the question, "What is 'spirituality'?" Also, do anthro's have some sort of rubric for measuring spirituality that they all generally accept?
AA: Yes there is.
In order for a civilzation to be portrayed as acurately spiritual they need to:
- Not be white;
- Pray to multiple spirit beings at least 8 times a day;
- Hurt themselves;
- Erect little statues everywhere thanking the spirit beings for letting them live;
- Walk around with a faint white glow around them;
- Be ignorant like children (because we know all non-white people are children);
- Know that they could defeat the white man at any point (and the white man would be better for it) but choose to lose instead.
Okay, so obviously I have some pent up issues but soon I'll be done. I'll probably keep complaining about academia but I won't have to be surrounded by them! Woohoo!
(At this point, we were joined by another close friend and fellow language geek who also happens to be a teacher of religion and history with a grad degree in the classics.)
Fellow Geek (FG):Wow - Traci Ardren certainly speaks the academia party line well. It is my understanding (haven't seen it yet) that the Christian vessels at the end ARE the impending doom, not the savior. The reviewer's own politics and delicate academic sensibillities are only a little less entertaining because they are so predictable. "But what about their engineering?" indicates she is more interested in forwarding her political interests (1970's wars? why?) than in informing the public.
A fun read.
AA:You're right. The Spanish were obviously the impending doom.
Me: Huh. And all this while I thought the two keys to anthropologically correct "profound spiritualism" were (1) a deep awareness of agricultural cycles, and (2) a noble inclination to voluntarily and collectively abandon urban living and return to obscurity in the jungle because it's what's good for dear Momma Earth.
Shows how much I know.
AA: Ha ha.
FG: I thought spirituality was about endowed chairs and silence.
For a culture to be "spiritual", it has to provide enough academic grist for several departments to justify their study of said "spirituality" while having few enough current members that there will be no jarring discrepancies between the academic study of the spirituality and the spirituality as practices in the real world.
This makes the Maya perfect—lots of spooky painting, tantalizing hints of everything, and no current culture to mess with PhD approval process.
Me: You should also read this AP story ("Mayans Excited, Unsure" by Mark Stevenson) on how Mayans are reacting. Uh-huh.
AA: I like how they think that the Maya will come out with one opinion about this as if they are some sort of unified tribe (which they aren't).
Frankly, I think that the Maya that I know will love it. They love Stephan Segal and Chuck Norris and all bad action movies; they also liked epic stories like Lord of the Rings. I'm sure some Mexican Maya activist group will come out with some "pan Maya" opinion, but I'm also sure that if the anthropologists just showed the movie to a bunch of people down there and asked them if they were offended they would probably wonder why they would be since hey, the people and civilization portrayed in the movie is not who they actually identify themselves to be.
I think the freak out by archaeologists is spurred by the fact that they have been spending so much time and effort on giving the native people some sort of ownership over their own history that to have a portrayal of that history not perfectly doctored and overseen by them may "ruin it all." Gimme a break. You think Gladiator made Italians seething mad because it portrayed them as fight-happy barbarians? You think the British give a rip about the ridiculous raunchiness of the King Arthur tales? Do Germans protest every time a Nazi movie makes them all out to be fascist Jew-haters? Someone should tell them that it is possible to have a story that is based on history that is not actually making a direct historical comment on those people.
I thought the movie was beautiful. Yeah there were some issues, but only issues that a dork like me would notice. I enjoyed the story, I really liked the main character, and honestly it seemed like the kind of story that people would sit around telling with all the embellishments and exaggerations without being magical realism. It is sad at some points and funny at others and Gibson incorporated all sorts of visual elements that I had never thought of (like the fact that if you work in a plaster mine you would be covered in white, how cool is that!).
I particularly like how all the Mayanists are coming out and saying "uh...it was the Aztecs who did mass torture, the Maya were into slow torture" as if that is really an argument. Or "they didn't have slavery, just forced labor". (And by the way, the people building the temples in the movie are not ever actually depicted as slaves). Academics are worried that this will be the only view that people will have of the Maya. Well I say, at least it's a view! And hopefully this will open up the genre of bad history movies (China, Rome, Greece, Egypt, etc.) to include more movies about the Maya.
Hey, it was a cool civilization that lasted for 800 years—someone should make a movie about it. And Mel Gibson did. Mel Gibson who made Braveheart and The Patriot and The Passion and Ransom. Mel Gibson isn't going to make a fun happy clappy story about how even though all these horrible things happen they still do good stuff. Mel Gibson is going to make a movie that is beautiful, action packed and points out that those horrible things destroy societies. I realize I am preaching to the choir here but grad students are such sheep.
When the movie was over all they were complaining about were the inconsistencies and unrealistic pace, and now that the big important people say, "No, no, it's okay to have those things. It is a movie after all, but the violence...." Suddenly they all care about the violence.
According to a friend of mine, I missed the dwarf (always gotta have one in ancient cultures) so I'll probably have to go back and see it again.
Me: So you're saying this is a good flick.
AA: Unless, of course, crazy Guatemala uses this as a propoganda piece to justify killing more people. Then I'll be eating my words.
Me: Of course.