Here's a prediction: with the imminent US release of Mel Gibson's new film
Apocalypto media interest in Maya culture is going to be higher than normal. Not a hard one- but here's another: despite inciting a discussion of Maya history, there'll be very little accompanying airing of the challenges facing the modern day Maya living in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. In fact, partly due to how the film is being trailed, many may even believe that Maya culture is extinct.
This from Wikipedia: "
Mel Gibson filmed Apocalypto mainly in Catemaco and Paso de Ovejas in the Mexican state of Veracruz. Gibson uses the Yucatec Maya language in Apocalypto, in the same way he used Aramaic and Latin for his religious blockbuster The Passion of the Christ. Apocalypto features a cast of unknown actors from Mexico City, the Yucatán, some Native Americans from the United States, and locals from Los Tuxtlas and Veracruz. While Gibson is financing the film himself, Disney has signed on to release Apocalypto for a fee in certain markets."
Reservations about Gibson and Disney producing a film about Maya history aside, this is a rare example of a large distribution film looking at Central American history (pre-European colonisation). But we'll have more to say on this once we've seen it!
For all the ins and outs on the production of the film: check out the
Apocalypto Watch blog.
UPDATE: (05-12-2006)The reviews are starting to roll in. No mention of Maya culture here on the
BBC. If this one from
The Guardian is anything to go by - doesn't appear to be much hunger to actually talk about the film- and not the filmmaker (tempting as it is):
"It has no stars, its plot is obscure, it has a made-up word for a title, it is told in a Mayan dialect and it has subtitles. Oh, and its famous director is most recently known for an anti-semitic outburst he unleashed this summer when stopped for drunk driving near his home in Malibu."
However, this new piece in
The Guardian (Mark Stevenson - Associated Press Writer) comes closest to contradicting my prediction of an absence of discussion of the present day:
"Still, the percentage of Maya speakers in Yucatan state fell from 37 percent in 2000 to 33.9 percent by 2005. Paradoxically, for a state that advertises the glories of the Mayan culture for tourists, it is having a hard time keeping the present-day Maya there; many are migrating to the United States."
For a different take on the film read
this review from Traci Ardren who is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Miami:
"In "Apocalypto," 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. 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."
UPDATE: (09-12-2006)Mysteriously,
a report from Reuters used the above quote we pulled out three days ago on this blog, and attributed it to Ignacio Ochoa, director of the
Nahual Foundation that promotes Mayan culture. These articles appeared in
The Guardian,
BBC,
Channel 4, and
ITN under the title 'Mayans slam film'. Now the
BBC appears to have corrected this and quoted Traci Ardren directly -and changed it to 'film angers Mayan groups'. The BBC even links directly to Traci's article. Slow papers like the
Independent are way off the pace and using the old attribution for the 'racist' quote (09-12-2006).
Ignacio Ochoa kindly responded to us and has categorically denied this is his quote. Ochoa doubts the film will increase stereotyping of the Maya beyond what it is already. Ochoa's concern is that the "ancient Maya civilization" commonly referred to is more an ideological construct. This constructed concept has been used by the likes of the Guatemalan State as a kind of systematic colonialism to control indigenous movements in Guatemala during the civil war up to the present day. The real danger for the present day Maya is that Guatemalan politicians are blocking their participation in local development. Ochoa cites the
COCODE system as an example of this. Ochoa agrees that any hint by Gibson in the film, just as in the school books many Guatemalans have to read, that it took the Spanish conquest of the Mayas to 'civilize' them is totally unacceptable.
Wouldn't it be great if the media could go beyond the mudslinging (the need for controversy) and examine the issues at stake for a change? They might even check with the people they're quoting- rather than just recycling the news.
Traci has also brought to our attention the film
The Fountain which has recently had a US release (22-11-2006) and is also influenced by Maya culture. The film's director Darren Aronofsky
has described how concepts in the film such as the
Tree of Life and the Mayan underworld
Xibalba come from the
Popol Vuh. This is certainly another film worth comparing and contrasting with Apocalypto in terms of how big budget films are depicting Maya culture at the moment. So what made Aronofsky interested in Maya culture?
"
I've always been fascinated by the Mayas. I was a sophomore in college, and me and some friends drove a cheap car to Palenque, Mexico, to the Mayan ruins. We were in the abandoned Mayan plaza, and there were these huge anthills. I was standing in the center of a huge dead civilization that had been taken over by another civilization of another species. It was a moment of chaos. I realized that civilizations die and others take over. I went back to school and took some classes on Mayan culture. I've been fascinated ever since by their first Adam and their tree of life, so that made me want to connect them to this story."
UPDATE: (10-12-2006)
As more people are watching Apocalypto in the US (we still haven't in the UK) there seems to be an increasingly stronger reaction against it. Professor Gerardo Aldana is the latest to enter the fray with a pretty
damning critique.
NISGUA appear to be beginning a campaign to boycott it.
Can't help but feel though that it would be better to counter the inaccuracies presented by Gibson through informing potential audiences, as Gerardo Aldana and others are doing. Never had Mel down as a stickler for historical accuracy
ever since Braveheart- nor as a filmmaker is he the first to present a cinematic vision at odds with known historical fact. But it's probably better to use this
current spike in public interest in Maya culture and history to educate and not lecture.
UPDATE: (17-12-2006)Another interesting take on the film this time from Robert Parry on Consortiumnews.com. Parry turns the tables and
points out the US's role of the more recent Apocalypto of the Maya in Guatemala. There's also this great review by Kanishk Tharoor in
Open Democracy: "Mel Gibson's Mayan blockbuster is an imperialist Christian dream but otherwise an imaginative, historical and cultural worst nightmare".
UPDATE: (31-12-2006)With the approach of the UK release date- the reviews are flying thick and fast.
Philip French in the Guardian loves it- but doesn't mention Guatemala. The Times' Cosmo Landesman thinks
it's bloody fantastic.
Philip Sherwell in the Sunday Telegraph has this interesting article, which concludes 'They're nothing like us' after conferring with Professor Bartolomé Alonzo Caamal who has pursued 'his mission to keep the Mayan language and culture alive':
"...the Mexican academic, whose forebears built one of the great civilisations of pre-Columbian America, was delighted when he heard that Mel Gibson's next blockbuster would be a Mayan epic filmed in his native tongue... Prof Caamal's excitement, though, rapidly turned to disappointment when The Sunday Telegraph showed him Apocalypto."
