{"id":1225,"date":"2009-10-16T02:06:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-16T02:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1225"},"modified":"2009-10-16T02:06:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-16T02:06:00","slug":"2012-apocalypse-porn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1225","title":{"rendered":"2012 Apocalypse Porn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even some Mayans are finally getting fed up with the whole 2012<\/a> end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it apocalypse porn.<\/p>\n

(You know it’s porn because there is no real goofiness, humor, or affection.)<\/p>\n

A little while ago I received a copy of 2012: Science or Superstition<\/span>, a video from Disinformation.<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s got it all: Hopis, Islamic astrology, reverse cowgirl, Stonehenge, and lots of self-appointed experts saying “X appeared to have Y.”<\/p>\n

Lots of vague references to “cultures around the world” sharing the same cosmology, which is, shall we say, unsupported.<\/p>\n

Why the Mayas? Why not the ancient Roman calendar? The year 2012 will be 2765 AUC<\/a>. That sounds significant too. Or wait until 2772?<\/p>\n

Anthony Aveni, who is a genuine scholar of archaeoastronomy<\/a>, is in there, along with a bunch of apocalyptic pornographers\u2014and who can tell them apart without a scorecard?<\/p>\n

You won’t hear much from any Mayas, however.<\/a><\/p>\n

“The December 21st, 2012 date is gaining ground in the popular media,” says one of the talking heads. Yes, and we will see more of that, no doubt.<\/p>\n

And Halloween is coming, so you could pick up 2012: Science or Superstition <\/span><\/a>for your scary movie. Or you could watch The Exorcist<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: <\/span>The day that I wrote this post, the new issue of Archaeology <\/span>magazine arrived, with an article by Professor Aveni examing the 2012 craze<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You will find the full text at the link but here are two brief quotations:<\/p>\n

It is amusing that the Y12 prophets are certain the world will end for all of us based on a date that may or may not have had historical significance to the Maya a few thousand years ago, who were themselves looking to a date a few thousand years before that. The ancient Maya might tell us: “Hey, get your own zero point!” <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/span><\/p>\n
We live in a techno-immersed, materially oriented society that seems somewhat bewildered by where rational, empirical science might be taking us. This may be why the mystical, escapist explanations of a galactic endpoint, replete with precise mathematical, historical, and cosmic underpinnings (masquerading as science), have such wide appeal. In an age of anxiety we reach for the wisdom of ancestors–even other peoples’ ancestors–that might have been lost in the drifting sands of time. Perhaps the only way we can take back control of our disordered world is to rediscover their lost knowledge and make use of it. And so we romanticize the ancient Maya. <\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Some of the people pushing the 2012 stuff said much the same things about the “Harmonic Convergence<\/a>” of 1987.<\/p>\n

That summer, a campfire skit at a Pagan festival in New Mexico celebrated the “Harmonica Virgins.”<\/p>\n

Bring on the 2012 parodies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even some Mayans are finally getting fed up with the whole 2012 end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it apocalypse porn. (You know it’s porn because there is no real goofiness, humor, or affection.) A little while ago I received a copy of 2012: Science or Superstition, a video from Disinformation. It’s got it all: Hopis, Islamic astrology, reverse cowgirl, Stonehenge, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[20,36,22],"class_list":["post-1225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-archaeology","tag-movies","tag-weirdness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-jL","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3557,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3557","url_meta":{"origin":1225,"position":0},"title":"2012 Is Coming!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"So what better Yule gift for your loved ones than Mystic Mayan Protection Cloaks? (Link probably NSFW.)","rel":"","context":"In \"apocalypse\"","block_context":{"text":"apocalypse","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=apocalypse"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":662,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=662","url_meta":{"origin":1225,"position":1},"title":"Waiting for Euro-porn","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 9, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Euro-porn\" is my new cinematic category, although really, it's just \"Gothic\" in the 18th-century sense dressed up.The Da Vinci Code is Euro-porn, of course. It's got ancient buildings like you won't find in strip-mall America, secret Catholic societies, and layers of corruption that Karl Rove could only dream of.Well, there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4954,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4954","url_meta":{"origin":1225,"position":2},"title":"The Year the Calendars Ended","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 3, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Was 1 January 2013 was some kind of unrecognized cultural watershed, like \"The Year Frenchmen Stopped Wearing Berets\" or something? I took my 2012 Reed College alumni association calendar off the wall and realized that I had nothing to replace it with \u2014 not one free calendar. Not another from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"winter\"","block_context":{"text":"winter","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=winter"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gbgcalendar.com\/images\/60263390.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2587,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2587","url_meta":{"origin":1225,"position":3},"title":"Gallimaufry with Book Porn","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 \"Interview, Chaos, Spiritual Machines, Circles, Readings, and Book Porn\" at Plutonica. \u2022 A Heathen-metal concert review at The Movement of Sound. (That is one genre you won't hear on A Darker Shade of Pagan.) \u2022 Anticipating a movie based on Neil Gaiman's American Gods at The Witching Hour. \u2022\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4317,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4317","url_meta":{"origin":1225,"position":4},"title":"My Son “Was No Zombie”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"So says the mother of the man shot by Miami police while eating the face of his victim. But catch what the girlfriend says: \" ' That wasn\u2019t him, that was his body but it wasn\u2019t his spirit.\u00a0 Somebody did this to him,' WFOR quotes her as saying.\" Isn't that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"weirdness\"","block_context":{"text":"weirdness","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=weirdness"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4015,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4015","url_meta":{"origin":1225,"position":5},"title":"Of New Agers, Nazis, and Vin Chaud","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"People described variously as \"hippies\" and \"New Agers\" apparently view a mountain in the French Pyrenees as some sort of a refuge from the upcoming apocalypse (you do have that on your calendar, don't you?). A rapidly increasing stream of New Age believers \u2013 or esoterics, as locals call them\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"France\"","block_context":{"text":"France","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=france"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}