??!! Apoca-puke-o
posted by on December 12 at 0:53 AM
I spent (maybe I should say wasted, but the company was good) a few hours of my day off to watch Apocalypto, Mel Gibson’s riff on the fall of Mayan civilization. The critics are falling over themselves to praise the crazy drunk Catholic’s film—such a fun, counterintuitive stance to take! But I must say, the movie is a weak melodrama and offensive, bordering on racist. The historical inaccuracies, which are legion, are discussed elsewhere. They mainly bother me because most North Americans, myself included, know jack about what actually happened down there. We need all the help we can get—and the real story is plenty dramatic for a film. What really bothered me is that the savages are totally fetishized, especially the women. All the female natives have straight, white teeth and perky, prepubescent breasts. A little sexualized exoticism would be interesting to watch if it were a good movie. But it’s not. I got bored, I didn’t really care about the hero and there were far too many moments—Kelly O—when I laughed when I should have been crying.
bummer. I used to minor in Anthropology, and loved reading about Toltecs, Mayans, and other such groups.
But I'm not sure why have good dentists (since they didn't eat lots of sugar) and perky breasts is a bad thing ... it's a movie. Think of Keira in Guinevere and how the US poster "pumped" her up ...
Yeah but. Several of the dudes had flabby bodies and bad teeth.
It is akin to a good Western - good story - action - blood and perky tits.
What else is new?
A movie for Christ's sake.
You know, entertainment. Like novels, opera, fables, most music and plays and poems ... and ....
Saw it, like it, a bit too bloody, but then cutting open the chest for heart eating is most likely very bloody .... yum ... yum, and all raw and natural
I bet more investigation will show they ate the victims TESTICLES, not tits, as well.
Just to clarify, prepubescent breasts would be flat, wouldn't they?
boarding on racist?
This is why I didn't bother to see it. I watched The Passion, mainly out of curiosity about the Aramaic, a language I studied in grad school, and my best friend and I ended up cracking jokes through the entire thing. As she giggled and tried to stifle outright guffaws, the person sitting next to her thought she was weeping and offered her tissues, which only made the situation even funnier. I knew Mel would pull the same bullshit with Apocalypto (which means revelation, not new beginning), so I didn't even bother.
Were they caked from head to toe with dried blood? Does the movie show guys piercing their dicks with thorns and bleeding all over leaves which were then burned? The Mayans were absolutely blood-crazed. Blood everywhere. They had a very advanced system of self-sacrifice, where they would let their own blood. The sacrifice of others was something they learned from the Toltec invasions, but Mel's flick is set very late in the Mayan epoch, so it could be appropriate.
But the Mayans were not brought down by the Spaniards; their civilization was nearly collapsed before they ever saw a white man.
Unfortunately what little we know of the Mayan culture is hampered by the fact that Father Diego de Landa burned all their books. They had the only real writing system in the Americas. The code that remains in their writing on the many stelae has been broken in recent years. I doubt Mel used any of that knowledge though, since his world begins and ends with the Catholic Encyclopedia (presumably a late-nineteenth-century one).
#3 said: "A movie for Christ's sake."
Well, I guess it is a Mel Gibson movie, so he would make it for Christ's sake. I haven't heard yet how the movie portrays the Jews who started the warfare in this movie.
Wouldn't "A-puke-alypto" have been a better heading?
is "kelly o" the new slang now?
"shorty kinda live, yo- kelly o."
How are Mel's any more fetishized than the actresses in any other period-piece film? I thought the french debutantes in marie antoinent were fetishized too and I could go on for hours about the fetishized gorilla in king kong...
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).