{"id":975,"date":"2008-01-24T22:55:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-24T22:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=975"},"modified":"2008-01-24T22:55:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-24T22:55:00","slug":"review-apocalypto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=975","title":{"rendered":"Review: Apocalypto"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not one to rush into things, I finally watched Mel Gibson’s<\/a> slightly a-historical movie of Mayan imperial collapse, Apocalypto<\/span><\/a>, a gory but amazing adventure story.<\/p>\n

My father was a big fan of historian Will Durant<\/a>, so I got the impact of the Durant epigram about the fall of empires at the beginning.<\/p>\n

I know that a few blowhard Chicano Studies types complained about the movie, but face it, all those things such as slave raids and the sacrifice of prisoners to the gods were happening, there and of course in Tenochtitlan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ever since I took a graduate seminar in Mesoamerican religion with Dav\u00edd Carrasco<\/a>, I have been suspicious of cultures with large, astronomically aligned buildings. They always seem to reflect a society where the king is the Son of Heaven and the Few rule the Many with a heavy hand.<\/p>\n

I suspect that Stonehenge might have been produced by a Neolithic version of that cultural template too, for all that Pagans revere the place. <\/p>\n

Or you might say that polytheism + imperialism = imperialism.<\/p>\n

Along with prisoners of war, the Maya apparently favored sacrificing boys<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gibson being Gibson, the movie’s final message apparently is, “The world is a corrupt and violent place, so you are better off dying as a Catholic.” Extra ecclesiam nulla salus<\/a> and all that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not one to rush into things, I finally watched Mel Gibson’s slightly a-historical movie of Mayan imperial collapse, Apocalypto, a gory but amazing adventure story. My father was a big fan of historian Will Durant, so I got the impact of the Durant epigram about the fall of empires at the beginning. I know that […]<\/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":[20,41,36],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-archaeology","tag-mexico","tag-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-fJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7282,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7282","url_meta":{"origin":975,"position":0},"title":"Review: “The Sisterhood of Night”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 15, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan film critic Peg Aloi has interesting things to say about a new movie, The Sisterhood of Night. Not only does it have the traditional element of teenage girls, secrets, and occultism (see, not coincidentally, Salem, Mass., 1692) but there is a social-media element too: The film cleverly allows us\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":1823,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1823","url_meta":{"origin":975,"position":1},"title":"A Movie That Takes Dreaming Seriously","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 11, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The best part about watching movies in the little mountain town is that after driving the four-block length of Main Street, we enter the darkness, winding through hills and a long canyon, then a mile of gravel road, and then home. It lets the movie's spell slowly fade, which is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreams\"","block_context":{"text":"dreams","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreams"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1145,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1145","url_meta":{"origin":975,"position":2},"title":"Jack Chick, the Movie","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I have my own collection of Jack Chick pamphlets, but to make collecting more sporting, they have to be found in public places: left inside a library book about Wicca or on a public park bench, that sort of thing.Maybe God's Cartoonist: The Comic Crusade of Jack Chick will create\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":898,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=898","url_meta":{"origin":975,"position":3},"title":"Eight Things You Did Not Know","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I was kicking around the idea with some Pagan bloggers of posting \"eight things you don't know about me -- and two of them are false.\"It's almost a direct steal from the movie Breach, which I loved. (Big Chris Cooper fan that I am.)Someone took me up on it, so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1916,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1916","url_meta":{"origin":975,"position":4},"title":"San Francisco, Market Street, 1905","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A few months before the great San Francisco earthquake and fire, someone mounted an early movie camera on a street car and filmed as the car rolled down Market Street toward the Ferry Building. Pretty much everything in this movie was destroyed on April 18-19, 1906. It's a lost world.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"California\"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=california"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1000,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1000","url_meta":{"origin":975,"position":5},"title":"Gallimaufry to Fill Space","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Back from a week on the road to a full inbox and a desk covered with bills to pay, I offer a few links for your kind attention:\u00b6 Attention Kemetic reconstructionists: Don't let your temple-builders become anemic.\u00b6 A list of things that offend Muslims. Anyone want to try the Pagan\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","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=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}