SACRIFICE [Professors say Gibson's Apocalypto is biased against Mayan bloodletting]

Newsweek ^ | December 5, 2006 | Newsweek

[freedomdefender]

Let's get right to the point, shall we? About halfway through Mel Gibson's movie "Apocalypto," which opens this week, viewers are treated to a stomach-turning scene of human sacrifice, set in a Mayan city around 1500. It's not revealing too much to say that the movie's hero is captured by a gang of marauders, bound, marched through the jungle, painted blue, and forced to the top of a pyramid where heads roll.

In a smaller version of the outrage and skepticism that preceded the opening of "The Passion of the Christ"—is it historically accurate? is it anti-Semitic?—scholars who study the ancient Maya are concerned that Gibson's film will distort the great civilization and demean its descendents, six million of whom still live in Central America. Yes, the Maya sacrificed humans to the gods, but these rituals were part of a complex worldview: the Maya believed that their bodies, their blood, were created by the gods and that they occasionally needed to repay this debt with human life. "The gods need you," explains David Carrasco, professor of religious history at Harvard. "They depend on human life for their own existence, there's this kind of reciprocity." In sacrifice, he adds, the people are becoming like gods. Based on the trailer, Carrasco believes that Gibson has made the Maya into "Slashers," and their society a "Hypermasculine fantasy."

[justshutupandtakeit]

Another illustration in #60.

[Dixie Yooper]

In a Simpsons episode Mel machinegunned Congress

I missed that one. Must have been watching football.

[norton]

" Those chosen to be sacrificed generally believed it to be a high honor as well at least with the Mayas."

I've always wondered just how someone today knows that the victims felt 'honored'.
I've never heard anyone suggest that Christians felt honored when they let the lions loose or that anyone said thanks to the Gestapo.

I'd be willing to go with 'hoplessly aware of what was coming next'. I'd believe generous application of locally grown drugs. I'm not willing to accept feeling honored, certainly not once they saw the knife.

[Killborn]

Oh yeah, forgot about that. IT fits in well with the environment. You don't just destroy a rival tribe's warriors, you destroy the tribe.

Way before Euros even develop the first city state, genocide was already being practiced.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks raygun. This made me chuckle:

Yes, the Maya sacrificed humans to the gods, but these rituals were part of a complex worldview

See, that excuses everything.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[nmh]

Can I claim that my god (notice lower case g) hates liberals and won't love me if I don't SACRAFICE THEM?

;)


Imagine how the earth would be without godless liberals?

;)

[bert]

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

The Mayans didn't get the memo. After the final sacrifice of Jesus, there was no longer any religous need for human blood sacrifice. Unfortunately, the Spanish Dominicans were very slow in delivering the message.

[nmh]

These godless liberals are really scraping the bottom of the barrel for this "complaint".

[wildbill]

"The gods need you," explains David Carrasco, professor of religious history at Harvard. "They depend on human life for their own existence, there's this kind of reciprocity." In sacrifice, he adds, the people are becoming like gods"

Isn't it curious that the sacrifices that the Gods need and demand are always from the 'other' tribe or whoever happens to be at the lowest end of the culture?

The only sacrifice I ever heard of that was demanded by God of an 'in-group' member of a culture was Isaac--and it turned out that God was only kidding Abraham.

[Malacoda]

MMMM. Diversity/muticulturalism/cultural equivalency ping.

[Jaded]

"Hansen hopes viewers will see the movie, as he does, as a contemporary allegory on the squandering of natural resources and the abuse of power, but he says that "the movie is designed for people who don't have the intellect to grasp the deeper concepts."

Weave the flowers into your hair, form a cirlcle, hold hands and lets all begin to sing....

Kumbayah my Lord, kumbayah
Kumbayah my Lord, kumbayah
Kumbayah my Lord, kumbayah
Oh Lord, kumbayah

Someone's singing my Lord, kumbaya
Someone's singing my Lord, kumbaya
Someone's singing my Lord, kumbaya
Oh Lord, kumbayah

Someone's laughing, my Lord, kumbaya
Someone's laughing, my Lord, kumbaya
Someone's laughing,my Lord, kumbaya
Oh Lord, kumbaya

Someone's crying, my Lord, kumbayah
Someone's crying, my Lord, kumbayah
Someone's crying, my Lord, kumbayah
Oh Lord, kumbayah

Someone's praying, my Lord, kumbaya
Someone's praying, my Lord, kumbaya
Someone's praying, my Lord, kumbaya
Oh Lord, kumbaya

Someone's sleeping, my Lord, kumbaya
Someone's sleeping, my Lord, kumbaya
Someone's sleeping,my Lord, kumbaya
Oh Lord, kumbaya
Oh Lord, kumbaya

[chesley]

What I can't understand is, why is "complexity" considered such a virtue? NOTHING, not even a "world-view", should be any more complex than it needs to be to function. Otherwise, you have a "Rube Goldberg" contraption. "Wasteful" is the best that can be said about it.

I think maybe I've hit on something. Liberals love complexity. Now a study as to why this is so might provide a cure. :)

[Redcitizen]

Thus the phrase; eat your heart out.

[murphE]

I think you're probably right.

[Antoninus]

Just part of the left's ongoing rehabilitation of all that was evil in history.

In the next issue of Newsweek, an article about how the Roman Emperor Nero was actually a gentle artist and visionary--the first man to legally marry another man!

[chesley]

I've got to admit that I was extremely disappointed in Mel. Loved his "Passion", though, and as far as I know he was not knuckled under to demands by various Jewish groups to admit that the "Passion" was racist. So I give him points for that.

[mewzilla]

Yeah, let's hear it for cultural relativism.

From this link on the subject:

In fact it's quite strange the way a line of thought that's intended to side with the oppressed often sides with oppressors in the name of multiculturalism. A great many practices could be put in the box 'their culture'. Dowry murders, female infanticide, female genital mutilation, slavery, child labour, drafting children into armies, the caste system, beating and sexually abusing and witholding wages from domestic servants especially immigrants, Shariah, fatwas, suttee. These are all part of someone's 'culture', as murder is a murderer's culture and rape is a rapist's. But why validate only the perpetrators? Have the women, servants, slaves, child soldiers, Dalits, ten-year-old carpet weavers in these cultures ever even had the opportunity to decide what their culture might be?

And this is where the hard choice comes in, where the competing goods have to be sorted out. One can decide that tolerance and cultural pluralism trump all other values, and so turn a blind eye to suffering and oppression that have tradition as their underpinning, or one can decide that murder, torture, mutilation, systematic sexual or caste or racial discrimination, slavery, child exploitation, are wrong, wrong everywhere, universally wrong, and not to be tolerated.

Everywhere and everywhen.

[Veto!]

Hmmm...this Logic Flow can take us anywhere.

Exactly.

[Antoninus]

I won't be seeing any more of his movies.

I'm always surprised when I hear that women have seen ANY of Mel's movies since 1996, as they are obviously meant primarily for men. They're definitely not for the squeamish.

As for his comments against President Bush, he's a paleo-con. I've got relatives who think exactly the same way. I don't agree with them, but I don't shun them because of it. Unlike Bush-hating liberals, I know they at least love the country and mean well.

I can't wait to see Apocalypto.

[Antoninus]

Perhaps the biggest reason the Aztecs fell was that Montezuma saw Cortez as the fulfillment of religious prophecy. His religion predisposed him to defeat as the Will of the Gods. But for that Cortez would not have lasted two minutes once Montezuma gave the word to kill him and his small band.

Personally, I can't help but see the Hand of Providence in the whole conquest.