[Aztlan] Apocalypto

[daniel at elchicano.net]

'Apocalypto' does disservice to its subjects

by
Dr. Zachary X. Hruby
University of California , Riverside

December 11, 2006

"Apocalypto," Mel Gibson's new thriller about the ancient Maya civilization, is 
exactly that: thrilling. But this entertainment comes at a price.

The Maya at the time of Spanish contact are depicted as idyllic hunters and 
gatherers, or as genocidal murderers, and neither of these scenarios is 
accurate. The film represents a step backward in our understanding of the 
complex cultures that existed in the New World before the Spanish invasion, and 
it is part of a disturbing trend re-emerging in the film industry, portraying 
non-Western natives as evil savages.

"King Kong" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" show these natives 
as uncaring, beastlike and virtually inhuman. "Apocalypto" achieves similar 
goals, but in a much subtler fashion.

As in "The Passion of the Christ," Gibson utilizes native language to invoke a 
veneer of credibility for his story, in this case Yucatec Maya, a technique that 
unfortunately does much to legitimize this rather strange version of Maya history.

First, a typical Maya village is shown as an unorganized group of jungle people 
who appear to subsist on hunting alone. The Maya were an agricultural people 
with a very structured social and economic system. Even small villages in the 
hinterlands of large cities were connected to some political center. The jungle 
people in Gibson's movie are flabbergasted at the sight of the Maya city, 
exclaiming that they have never seen such buildings. The truth is, pyramids of 
comparable size were never more than 20 kilometers away from anywhere in the 
Maya world, be they occupied or abandoned.

Second, Mayan city people are shown as violent extremists bent on harvesting 
innocent villagers to provide flesh for sacrifice and women for slaves, leaving 
the children to die alone in the jungle. Hundreds of men are sacrificed on an 
Aztec-style sacrificial stone, their headless bodies thrown into a giant ditch 
reminiscent of a Holocaust documentary or a scene from "The Killing Fields." 
Problem is, there exists no archaeological, historic or ethnohistoric data to 
suggest that any such mass sacrifices -- numbering in the thousands, or even 
hundreds -- took place in the Maya world.

Third, once Gibson paints this bloody picture of 15th century Maya civilization, 
the ultimate injustice is handed the pre-Columbian Maya. As the jungle hero 
escapes the evil city and is chased to the edge of the sea by his antagonists, 
with literally nowhere else to turn, Spanish galleons appear, complete with a 
small, lead boat carrying a stalwart friar hoisting a crucifix. For Gibson, the 
new beginning for these lost Mayan people, the Apocalypto, evidently is the 
coming of the Spaniards and Christianity to the Americas.

Although this film will undoubtedly create interest in the field of Maya 
archaeology by way of its spectacular reconstructions and beautiful jungle 
scenes, the lasting impression of Maya and other pre-Columbian civilizations is 
this: The Maya were simple jungle bands or bloodthirsty masses duped by false 
religions, resulting in the ruin of their mighty but misguided civilization, and 
their salvation arrived with the coming of Christian beliefs saddled on the 
backs of Spanish conquistadors.

As archaeologists struggle to accurately reconstruct ancient Maya society, 
obstructed by their decimation via Western diseases; destruction of their books, 
art and history by Spanish friars; and their subjugation and exploitation by the 
conquistadors, such films as "Apocalypto" represent a significant disparagement 
of that process.

Further, inaccurate representations by Hollywood of indigenous peoples as 
amoral, inhuman or uncivilized can only lead to greater misunderstanding and 
strife in contemporary society. This may be particularly important in a modern 
world, where common ground is increasingly difficult to come by.

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Zachary X. Hruby, Ph.D., is a lecturer and research affiliate in the department 
of anthropology at UC Riverside, and senior archaeologist at CRM Tech in 
Riverside. He divides his time between Southern California and Guatemala.