Posted on 12/13/2006 4:59:55 AM PST by UltraConservative
*4,000 unborn babies murdered every day
*embryos used for experiments, stored and frozen for future "use".
*Terri Schiavo tortured to death by dehydration
I guess people will see what they want to see.
Oh, come on! I have a feeling Shapiro has an alterior motive in his review.
Ping!
What? he really has gone off it.
Try this, Mr. Gibson: "What's human sacrifice if not 43 million innocent unborn babies slaughtered and flushed down the toilet, efficiently enough that the women who bore them can get back to work before thier freaking lunch hours are over?"
Mel, totally missed your time. This was your chance. You're done. You blew it.
Did he really say that?
God help him.
You could say that about any civilization that gets reorganized out of existence by another civilization that impinges successfully on it, which is exactly what happened to the New World societies, which were ravaged by Old World diseases propagated in the Columbian Exchange (see, Secret Judgments of God, which discusses both the colonial and precolonial epidemics which attacked New World societies after first contact).
Gibson's Apocalypto is based in part on the boutique idea of the last decade, that (classical) Mayan civilization simply exhausted its resources and thus undermined its own abilities to organize people, competencies it tried to leverage by intensifying the organizational activities in order to try to meet the crisis. Postclassical Mayan cities are also thought to have been in crisis before the Spanish arrived, as witness the formation of the defensive League of Mayapan in the Yucatan, and perhaps for some of the same reasons, but the full story may not have been elucidated yet.
This exhaustion thesis is also being pushed concerning central Mexican civilization, and it is supported by forensic studies of excavated burials, which show deteriorating health among the people.
The collapse of the Mayan Classic cities occurred centuries before contact, and the Postclassical Mayan city of Tulum in the Yucatan, which Gibson's fictional city resembles sitewise, fell to revolt at least 50 years before the arrival of the Spanish (about the time of first contact, in other words).
The fate of the city depicted in Apocalypto turns, however, not on its afflictions, but on a "judgment of God" formed in secret and then delivered to the frightened Mayan warriors by a plague-stricken but inspirited girl, who pronounces an oracular doom on the city. The rest of the film is the unfoldment of her doomsday pronouncement of divine judgment, which is contrasted with the cynicism of the head chac officiating at the ceremonies and declaiming to the vast crowds below.
The bottom line is that the arrival of the Spanish in the New World was, in Gibson's opinion at least, as expressed through his film, the descent of the hand of God Himself on the civilizations of the New World and the fulfilment of His fatal judgment of their lurid perversions and brutalities. Noah's neighbors got the Flood, Lot's got the brimstone, and the Mayan kings and priests got the conquistadores.
My question: how come he didn't make a movie about the Navajo, or the Sioux? Why didn't he make a movie about the ancient Egyptians, or the Indus Valley civilizations? The Crusades? The Napoleonic Wars?
Why didn't he continue "The Passion" with the story of the Resurrection and the events in the Book of Acts?
I believe the answer lies in the fact that none of these could have included bloody human sacrifice, and I will leave it to the psychologists to determine why someone would dwell on such stuff.
Agreed.
Several years ago I saw an exhibit at the Florida Museum in St Pete about the Mayans, Aztecs, et. al.
It seemed that the academics were trying to portray those barbaric societies as victims of the Spanish.
After I walked out I asked the question to the guys I was with if "in a thousand years, will the liberals consider the nazis victims of the allies?"
Just a reminder that in spite of The Passion of the Christ, Mel is a Hollywood wh*re.
The human sacrifice in our society is not sending men to Iraq to die but the sacrifice that comes from millions of abortions.
Although Gibson is a loon - he does have a point of our civilization being destroyed from within. We are also letting the Islamic hoards take over the West.
"while the western society isn't capable of defending itself against the horde of invaders..."
I find it very interesting how the US is portrayed as unable to win the war in Iraq, which can be stretched to "unable to defend itself." This is so absurd. The US absolutely can win the war in Iraq and we can defend ourselves. We just don't seem to WANT to defend ourselves. Big difference. It's like having someone tying us all up with toilet paper and then beating the crap out of us. Clearly we could break free from the TP, but we just lie down and take the whupping until we truly are incapable of defending ourselves. We have the strength. We have the weapons. We don't have the will to use any of it for fear of being called a Bully. God save us all.
we aren't 'unable' we're 'unwilling'.
BFD ... I don't watch a whole lot of TV either (what a colossal waste of time!) ... but for FR, I wouldn't know about it either.
For some folks, the Holocaust, Holocaust deniers, Israel, etc. form the central focus of their lives.
For others ... they don't.
I watch WGN, 8AM EDT every morning, the Beverly Hillbillies back to back...beats the news everyday!
Well put - even if the Spanish Conquistadores were the judgment of God on the Mayans, they were angels of mercy compared to the Mayan priests and people. The Spanish did not sacrifice or eat the Mayans but the Mayans had no scruples about doing this to others.
OhmygoshwhatanIDIOT!
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