Is ‘Apocalypto’ Pornography?

Bagger: “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.”

Don’t think Gibson is saying anything like that. His message is history is always in flux with the little guy usually caught smack dab in the middle.

Apocalyto might be more appropriately entitled “Between a Rock and Hard Place”. After our hero escapes the Mayans, he encounters the Spanish.

Making things worse for the poor chap is his wife isn’t a very appreciative type. She’s rather go with the Spanish but for the sake of children and the absence of child support back then her only practical choice was going back into the forest with hubbie.

Like Wagner is performed in Israel, I will not forego seeing the work of one of the greatest cinematic artists of this generation just because he can’t hold his tongue when he can’t hold his liquor. No doubt the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of this world say worse about us out of earshot and really mean it.

For a unexpected insight to Mel Gibson’s personality I recommend seeing his cameo appearance in Paparazzi. Best scene in this entertaining minor movie.

“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.” There is a great shot about halfway through this movie that shows a pan shot of the great city and a number of enormous building being constructed (albeit by slaves). That, to me, says a lot about their engineering abilities. In addition, the overstated connection between the sacrifices and the crops and the eclipse and the gods more than mentions their profound spirituality. It makes one wonder though why if they were so good with crop cycles they wouldn’t see a connection with decaying corpses and a bad harvest, but that was probably just the movie trying to make a point.

In any case, the second half of this movie is so unbelievably unrealistic that it discredits the rest of the film and therefore it doesn’t seem to matter what Gibson is trying to get across. Ms. Arden does make a good point however that Gibson implies that the Mayans needed the Spanish, a Savior.

I have read much about the Maya, from many who have studied them. They were war like, they sacrificed captives by the thousands. Their agriculture was doomed by upheavals of a violent earth which, ruined their irrigation. The pits with thousands of decapitated bodies have been found. In my humble opinion this was a historically accurate tale right down to the stone knives and headdress of the priests. It also showed the hunting party in the same light as a bunch of modern day men getting together for a hunt or other manly persuit. This part may be lost on someone from a large city.

It may be obscene (that’s a “may” – I haven’t seen the movie), but it does not appear to be pornographic. It’s dismaying when an academic – who should know better – dilutes the meaning (and therefore the value) of a word by using it carelessly.

I take exception to Ms. Ardren’s comments with regard to Mayan science, agriculture, and art being absent from the movie. I didn’t go see “The Longest Day” to get a well rounded view of German/European/American cultures; I went to see a depiction of a segment of WWII, period.
TMI (too much information and analysis) Traci Ardren the movie isn’t called “History of the Maya…” Lighten up.

The Mayans did destroy themselves, through warfare and ecological catastrophe of their own making, well before the Spaniards came. They had art and ritual, yes, although perhaps not so much spirituality, unless the palaces, hagiography, and ritual killings promoted by Saddam also qualify. 15th century Central America would have been a fascinating place to visit, but not to live. People interested in Guatemalan affairs of the 1980s are best referred to David Stoll’s “Between Two Armies.” Today’s poor have it tough, but the lords of old were as bad or worse.

I never cease to be amazed by our collective gullability when it comes to cinema.
I hold with Dr. Traci Ardren, and I am not seduced by the artist’s ‘gifts’.
Gibson’s ‘gifts’ betray his amorality.
Apocalypso is seductive eye candy for viewers who can’t discriminate between art and pornography.
Just like Gibson.

With all the hype, I went into this movie expecting a gorefest and instead saw a film not much different in its portrayal of violence than movies like Gladiator or Predator.

So many critics seem to ignore the obvious — you can’t tell this type of story without showing violent images. One of the big reasons Apocalypto works is because the early scenes of Mayan brutality against the main character’s village set the stage emotionally for the rest of the film. Audiences root for Jaguar Paw because they want to see him deliver his family from tragedy.

Here, you’re describing “orgasmic jungle violence,” and many of the same critics who condemn Gibson for this movie praise directors like Quentin Tarantino. The difference is the violence in Apocalypto is not gratuitous. Gibson uses it to help tell a story, and he’s condemned as a pornographer, while Tarantino sets flying limbs to a disco soundtrack and he’s hailed as a visionary.

As for the bit about “rescue,” Dr. Klein gets it right — the Europeans at the end of the movie aren’t rescuers, they’re just the second of two large and brutal powers. Without getting into spoilers, the way the characters react to the European ships makes it clear Gibson isn’t framing the conquistadors as saviors.

Mr. Klein, like most of America, apparently, is woefully out of touch with what Mr. Gibson’s “message” actually is in “Apocalypto.” Tell us, Mr. Klein–what IS Gibson’s message? The fact that this isn’t an easily-answered question is no surprise; the film itself is frighteningly uneven, its narrative both convoluted and blatant at the same time. What is clear is this: according to Gibson, the protagonist, and his community, are morally and racially equivalent to those who attack them (the “civilized” population). They are both groups of savages, who enact violence on each other with impunity, and thus deserve what the audience knows to be a hideous imperial overthrow. Gibson’s evangelical subtext–the white man as a force of righteous moral judgment–is not only reprehensible because of its inherently racist implications, it also clashes remarkably with his characterization (if it can be called that) of his protagonist, who morphs into a Christ figure fairly early on in the film (see the arrow/spear in his side, etc). The main problem with Apocalypto is that Gibson himself has no idea, really, what the point of his film is; he has stated in interviews that it is “about George W. Bush and the war in Iraq,” but how is the audience supposed to garner this allusion from the narrative itself? Clearly Mr. Klein, for one, missed that point.

What is bad about the confusion over Apocalypto’s “meaning” is this: in the absence of an obvious message, something American moviegoers have always been taught to look for and accept, viewers of Apocalypto will take away from the film whatever aspect of its narrative aesthetic is the clearest; namely, racism. We don’t know much in the film–we can’t, as we don’t speak the language, which is no accident–but what we do know is that the “mayans,” a term which apparently encompasses all the characters in the film indiscriminately, are savages. They are uncivilized, unsophisticated, and inferior in all ways to the cross-toting Spaniards who arrive, deus ex marin, to close the narrative. There is no mention in Apocalypto of the Mayans’ very real scientific and technical sophistication (why, for instance, would they have been afraid of an eclipse?) The reason for this is quite simple; Gibson is not making an historical film. He is making a Hollywood film, and therefore his investment in any sort of accuracy is minimal; what he is after is an aesthetic which will induce large numbers of people to fork over $10 and sit still for almost three hours, and then leave without raising any sort of objection. Since the days of “Birth of a Nation,” racist visual tropes have accomplished this quite successfully by creating simple stories of categorical superiority and inferiority, and in Apocalypto we see the same imagery from many now-condemned films of the 1930’s and ’40’s. The paradigm of the “savage native” is something which is usually avoided in this day and age, because it is undeniably, offensively racist. However, Gibson’s frenetic oevre indulges in this sort of imagery quite gleefully (as did “Pirates of the Caribbean II” and the “King Kong” remake) and no one, save a few insignificant Mayan descendents, seems to mind. We, the white (Christian) American audience, understand Gibson’s film even if we can’t articulate its “message”; these are lesser people, who lived reprehensibly primitive lives. They are inferior to their white conquerors, and deserved what they got.
As to Mr. Klein’s opinion, besides revealing himself to be one of the above-mentioned audience members who can’t articulate the film’s message (“between a rock and a hard place”?) he also voices a dangerous assumption about Gibson, and many Hollywood “auteurs” in general; namely, that Gibson is “one of the greatest cinematic artists of this generation.” What, pray tell, defines a “great cinematic artist”? Is it the ability, as I outlined above, to simply keep bums on seats? If the main criterion of “greatness” is simply creating compelling visual stories, perhaps we should all laud Leni Riefenstahl, the infamous Nazi documentarian, for her work orchestrating large numbers of the Hitler Youth before her cameras. Indeed, Gibson hasn’t missed this point–he includes a brief scene involving a “mass grave” through which his protagonist is forced to crawl. This is an undeniable reference to Holocaust imagery, and a dangerous move for him, one would think, to make under the current scrutiny levelled upon him after his famous anti-Semitic rant.
I will grace Mr. Klein by ignoring his ridiculous and non-sensical misogynist comments (which mirror very nicely Mr. Gibson’s ridiculous photography of the perpetually-unclothed “native women”) and, instead, gently point out that the reason why people should be outraged about Apocalypto is not because of Gibson’s inability to “hold his tongue when he can’t hold his liquor.” Rather, people should be outraged because, apparently, it is not “wrong” in 2006 America to be a racist, so long as one does it on screen. Woe betide he who voices his opinions in words, but the world of images is still, as Mr. Klein demonstrates, something which the American public has yet to fully comprehend. Though we are quick to condemn onscreen violence, as with the hysteria after the Columbine incident in 1999, no one seems to be concerned about indulging in more focused social taboos, such as racism, in film. (It is not even worth mentioning, in the world of MTV, such issues as misogyny in film, of course).
What gives Mr. Klein away, finally, as a complete cinematic imbecile is his assertion that “the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of this world say worse about us [whites, presumably] out of earshot and really mean it.” Mr. Klein, along with the rest of America, has totally missed the point. Gibson meant everything he said, clearly, and no amount of Betty Ford-ing is ever going to change that. Accusing Al Sharpton of racism, like playing Wagner in Israel, does not serve any social purpose, and merely represents Mr. Klein’s puerile indignation at his own inability to either comprehend or accept the current state of racism in America.

If moviegoers were simply a little more educated about film (what, think about movies? Never!) then perhaps D. W. Griffith would have been condemned in 1915, instead of being lauded. Perhaps Dr. Goebbels would have been out of a job. As it stands, as long as moviegoers at large, such as Mr. Klein, are prepared to fully indulge in such virulent aesthetics, we can indeed expect history to always be “in flux”; if, by “in flux,” Mr. Klein means “constantly repeating.”

What Arden sidesteps in this review is the central question: is the violence accurate? From all accounts that I have read, it is. Although the violence is focused on, it isn’t exaggerated. Mayan culture was one of the most brutal and bloody civilizations to have ever arisen. It seems that Arden, like too many archeologists, has become so steeped in the study of a culture’s achievements and modern liberal rhetoric that they lack the ability to step back and assess it honestly.

Was Mayan culture fascinating and unique? Yes. Were many of its achievements amazing and worthy of admiration? Yes. But so too is the very real savagery that they exhibited and it can be rightly judged as horrific.

Beyond the film, the question I have for so many contemporary historians who now denigrate early western opinion of such cultures as racist and ignorant, is what would their assessment be if presented with a similar culture today? Is one allowed to pass judgement if presented with a new society that, on a daily basis, tears the hearts out of living victims (whatever the religious and spiritual justification), executes prisoners of war and sacrifices children? Would “scientific neutrality” prevent them from being horrified and describing it as barbaric and deserving of being stopped? Would this just be “another people’s culture” that one has to be respectful of? If so, then is the slaughter in Rawanda, simply their culture? Would an archeologist 300 years from now say that any discussion of the brutal ethnic killing need be counter-balanced by that of their unique cultural contributions?

Let’s be grateful that Traci Ardren isn’t making movies…I can only imagine how mind-numbingly boring a movie about “the achievements in science and art, the profound spirituality and connection to agricultural cycles, or the engineering feats of Maya cities” would be.

It’s a movie, and as someone mentioned, akin to a Roadrunner/Coyote movie. It’s not intended to be an egg-heady parable on the subjugation of the latest victims of the month.

Gibson seems not like cities and civilizations. He is like Rousseau, believing that in a state of nature people are innocent and at their best. Small family oriented culture, resisting larger nations, is best for humanity (Braveheart was like this too: simple and good village life against the colonial English).

It would have been nice to see a less-cartoonish version of the Mayan city. This does not mean, though, that Mayans were peace loving. They were warlike and fought for territorial conquest (not to mention sacrifice to keep the Gods happy). In that sense, perhaps they are no better or worse then Europeans and others.

Post #17 fails to make a convincing argument for racism despite using the word several times and writing at way too much pompous length.

It seems that the promotion by Hollywood of Gibson’s movie as a paragon of “historical importance and accuracy” worked as planned.
The culturally / historically challenged (and biased) movie audience swallowed it hook line and sinker, and stand defensively for their appointed “great cinematographer”.
Lets face it, there isn’t a single scholarly soul who would have expected to be enlightened by a Mel Gibson film under any guise. We all know this is drivel for the masses that like it served to them “bloody rare”.
But the gloomy perspective here is that the greater majority of the moviegoing public will take away (even subsconciously) the underlaying message that the native american is naught but a base savage at the core, if only because they will not bother to question “How did a civilization that spent so much time killing each other manage to achieve astronomical, agricultural and engineering feats which Europe had yet to experience?” – but of course this would challenge their vision of the “European Saviour”.
Alas, Hollywood and Mr. Gibson have figured out the mainstream culture pretty well.