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Conquistadors as Liberators?
The Mad, Mad Mayan World of Mel Gibson
by LOUIS PROYECT
Since I doubt that any CounterPuncher would be inclined to watch Mel
Gibson’s “Apocalypto” except on a dare, I almost decided not to include
a spoiler alert. Gibson’s reputation precedes him, so much so that I
avoided watching the film for the longest time. On a particularly arid
cable TV and Netflix evening a month or so ago, I decided to give it a
shot partly out of boredom and partly out of morbid curiosity.
I will give the devil his due. Gibson threw caution to the wind and made
a movie that defied conventional Hollywood studio expectations. This is
a tale set some time in the distant past in the Mayan empire of Central
America that pits a classless hunting and gathering society against
Mayan class society, with Gibson standing up for the primitive
communists—as Frederick Engels dubbed such peoples.
Ironically, the film echoes “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” with the
hunting and gatherers living in a state of peace and harmony soon to be
threatened by a technologically more advanced society but one with more
retrograde values. Also, like the original “Planet of the Apes” that
starred Charlton Heston, “Apocalypto” relies on a deus ex machina
surprise ending that is intended as a commentary on civilization and
progress.
The plot of “Apocalypto” is quite simple. Within fifteen minutes after
the beginning of the film, a Mayan raiding party attacks a small village
living in Yanomami-like simplicity deep within the rain forest, killing
women and children wantonly. The men are then put in chains and led off
to a Mayan city, where they are doomed to be sacrificed to the gods in
the grizzliest fashion. A high priest cuts open the captives’ chests one
by one and plucks out the still-beating heart to the adulation of the
Mayan masses.
Gibson makes sure to make the Mayans look as scary as possible, with
tattoos and piercings in such abundance that you might think you are in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
full:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/18/the-mad-mad-mayan-world-of-mel-gibson/
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