I watched Apocalypto on IFC last night after my friend brought it up on Facebook earlier in the day. I haven't seen this movie in ages. Mel Gibson did such an amazing job writing and directing this film. But it's been hard to watch again. I read about real stories like this daily that are still happening today. This is not fiction.
I really needed this message. Here I feel like I've been going through hell for a while now and I'm being reminded what this poor young warrior goes through in this film. Watching him persevere and survive the psychopath sadistic tribe gives me much inspiration. He's fighting a real test of endurance in body, mind and spirit.
Thanks Karina for indirectly guiding me to watch this movie. Hugs. ♥
I'd like to share the exchange I had with one of Karina's fb friends after she posted she was watching the movie.
Pablo: Apocalypto did a disservice to the Indigenous peoples. it wasn't an authentic representation, it was criticized for that heavily by Native Americans cultural anthropologists and historians alike. Mel Gibson sought to depict the Mayans in the most blood thirstiest light he could muster, as the backdrop against which to deliver his subliminal message at the very end, when the protagonist are saved by the arrival of the apparently civilizing influence of the Christian Cross and its emissaries. The message is that the new world was a place of Godless savagery and should be grateful for the salvation heralded by the arrival of Saintly Spain. Mel is a certain kind of religious nut/zealot he practices an ultra orthodox form of Roman Catholicism that rejects all the post Vatican II changes. And he works those beliefs and world views into his films.
Shannon: It was made by Mel Gibson. I always assumed it was a load of white washed hog shit. Mel Gibson makes me embarrassed to be white.
Josette (Me): I thought Mel Gibson did an amazing job with this movie. Since the beginning of time, there have always been good harmonious tribes and bad evil sadistic tribes. Just as there are good harmonious people and bad evil sadistic people around the world today.
Mel didn't depict the Spaniards as "saviors". Watch it again. The poor guy (main character) escaped from the psycho sadistic tribe, made it to the coast and what does he see??? A foreign psycho sadistic tribe showing up, symbolizing this poor guys nightmare hasn't ended.
Reseach humanities ancient ancestors the hunters and gatherers. There were good harmonious tribes and theiving tribes causing misery and horrors.
Phoenix: that movie was disturbing. but, so is life in this day and age. it seems that people are not evolving.
Josette: Phoenix unfortunately, that is part of the human condition.
Pablo: Josette the movie was mass marketed as an authentic depiction yet: he conflated Aztec Sacrifice with Mayan rituals,: "Gibson seems to have researched anything the Maya might have done badly over a thousand year history and crammed it all into a few horrific days. How would the gringos look if we made a film that lumped together within one week the torture at the Abu Ghraib and Guatanamo prisons, the Tuskegee experiments, KKK lynchings, the battle at Wounded Knee, Japanese internment camps, the Trail of Tears, the Salem witch hunts, Texas death row executions, the Rodney King police beatings, the slaughter upon the Gettysburg battlefield, and the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - and made this look like a definitive statement on U.S. culture?"
Josette: Pablo Mel did not conflate anything. He showed the harsh reality tribes endured during that time period. Just like the Commanches in North America and other bloodthirsty tribes that massacred other tribes for land here before and during the arrival of the "white tribes" escaping religious persecution in England.
Pablo: Josette as a horror movie, as a great edge of your seat suspense thriller it can have an A+. I also love and have a great appreciation for dated cowboy flicks in all seriousness I love John Wayne flicks, But I dont receive those as history. I think the great failure of this movie is in its attempt to capture a history, without being able to shake of its creator's bias.
Josette: Pablo did you know that African tribes sold their people to Europeans into slavery? The African tribes were land hungry too. They would sell off the people from the other African tribes they stole land from.
Did you know Black free people in the South OWNED Black slaves in America and AFTER the Emanicipation Proclamation, those Black slave owners did not bother to tell their Black slaves they were legally freed and kept them enslaved?
Did you know the South slave plantation owners both White and Black were democrats and fought to keep the freed Blacks from equal rights?
Did you know the KKK were and still are democrats?
Just to name a few things.
Pablo: Josette I also have a great appreciation for the history of the Pilgrims and Puritans who founded this country and their quest for religious freedoms that we enjoy to this day, I would never frame the debate in terms of white tribes or black tribes as you are doing, but just what happens between civilizations with different levels of technology when they meet, always the superior subjects the inferior and these are universal human truths we should only hope do not extend to superior alien or artificial intelligence should we ever come across them least not we also be subjected, and that if that were to happen they would please I beg of them when they told our stories to not jumble them all up in stereotypical fashions but for integrity and posterity and as a memorial to our culture and civilizations once we are all long gone to please tell our stories accurately with respect to us the by then dead and fallen, if its not to much to ask for, I mean or just label it clearly as a fictionalized sensationalist biased account if that's what the thing is to be, cause I love my horror flicks, but I watch those with horror hat on.
Of course every race on earth has held slaves and some of the earliest Euro Settlers arrived as indentured servants who served a term of 7 years to buy their own freedom back. Yes Blacks were essential in the slave trade capturing people and selling them to the Portuguese and all that. I haven't said anything about race, but I have said alot about Religion, Civilization, Culture, and Ideaolgy.
Josette: Pablo you said, "I haven't said anything about race." Really? That was your target motive throughout your argument.
Go back and read this little snipit I took that you wrote, "How would the gringos look if we made...."
Pablo: that was a quote I borrowed and I tried to leave out that term, but I honestly dont' think it has anything to do with black and white Josette, my ancestors are both African and Spanish, and I think had roles been reversed it would have been the Africans subjecting the Spanish to slavery rather then the other way around. I think its universal human truths thing...
Josette: Pablo Okay. But you did share that other person's perspective as your own. Meaning you shared because you were in agreement with what they said and used it to make your argument.
Victor chimes in: The KKK ARE NOT "Democrats" today. They were up until the time of the Civil Rights Movement and then became the ultra right neo conservative wing of the REPUBLICAN PARTY.
Josette: I'm sorry you have been so misinformed. Be an independent thinker and do your own research. Refuse to be spoonfed information. (shared photo)
“These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference… I’ll have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years”.
~President Lyndon Baines Johnson 1963
THIS IS WHO HE WAS:
FYI: Lyndon Baines Johnson was the 36th President of the United States (1963–1969), a position he assumed after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States (1961–1963). He is one of only four people who served in all four elected federal offices of the United States: Representative, Senator, Vice President, and President. Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, served as a United States Representative from 1937 to 1949 and as a Senator from 1949 to 1961, including six years as United States Senate Majority Leader, two as Senate Minority Leader and two as Senate Majority Whip. After campaigning unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 1960, Johnson was asked by John F. Kennedy to be his running mate for the 1960 presidential election. After their election, Johnson succeeded to the presidency following President Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, completed Kennedy's term and was elected President in his own right, winning by a large margin over Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election.
Johnson was greatly supported by the Democratic Party and as President. [source: wikipedia]
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Click HERE to read the TIMELINE of CIVIL RIGHTS IN AMERICA.
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