Hmm.
This was gonna be a comment, but TypePad won't let me post a comment on my own site – the system thinks it's comment spam! I guess there are too many links and instances of HTML formatting in there; maybe it's the machine's way of telling me that this should be a post and not a comment. The Matrix has me, indeed.
So I've been looking around the 'net and comparing my reasons for heavily disliking what I had heard about Apocalypto and why I found the political readings of 300 somewhat uncompelling, at least in my gut. This is in relation to the post – "Fascism Isn't a Mere Aesthetic" – which generated a really interesting conversation thread. Thanks all, to those who joined.
I guess I've been putting the problematic aspects of the film (300) into the stylistic/Orientalist category that isn't too surprising to me, as opposed to the category of the more political reading that might be applied to the everyday. As I look around and read more and read up on the debates, I have to concede some more ground with what I see in my head; still, for some reason, my alarm bells don't ring nearly as much in my gut with this film. Perhaps because the message is so pat and simple that it's easily dealt with and done away with, at least in my head?
For me, I find the much more subtle cultural arguments that I hear are being put forth in Apopcalyto more problematic, because it's so much harder to pick out what the problems are, unless one is a real expert in the field, or at least has a bit of exposure to more enlightened learning about Native cultures. The egghead opposition to this film is heavy (read here and here and here and here), along with the people who simply feel directly slighted. This is not to say that people feeling directly slighted is any less important - I just think the arguments being leveled here are much more subtle, pervasive, and hence, dangerous.
I think of it sort of like the awkward political message put forward in another fantastic universe, through Anakin's character in Revenge of the Sith, when he turns evil and faces off against his own master to defend his "new Empire." He paraphrases Bush in saying, "You're either with me or my enemy" and gets ready to thrown down with the saber, looking drunk on power and positively Bushwhacked. But it's so obvious and ham-handed that it's better left ignored.
I guess maybe why I'm not feeling this could be because I saw the Persians in the film as so far removed from any reality in Iran/Iraq or Leonidas as Bush (at least the character of Leonidas is a man of honor and character, to a fault, something that the American president presently lacks) that it just doesn't register as anything that I could take seriously. I'd heard about these interpretations before seeing the film – I just can't see them as very compelling in the long run. It's sort of like the enemy you see coming – it's not sneaking up on you; you can easily know how to counter it.
Which is the problem with Apocalypto, if its critics are to be believed, and they sound pretty credible and make some compelling arguments. At least the general facts of the Battle of Thermopylae are in order in 300; in Apocalytpo, it seems as though the historical reality of the Mayans and their culture are almost completely out of step with what you see on screen; it's sort of like the Disney film Pocahontas: in general, some of the things in that film could have happened, probably did; but it strays so far from historical fact that it would have just been better to not call it "Pocahontas" and just tell a good yarn that coulda happened, maybe. As it was, Pocahontas just pissed people off.
But reading the Slate review, then an Iranian reviewer's digestion of that review, then hearing about Frank Miller's new take on patriotism on NPR, and his more recent interview on that network, and further reading around guided by the comments in this thread, I see the point that perhaps there was more intention than I had made room for. Still, I have to be honest when I say that this film will do less to vilify Iranians (I still think that the link between Persia and Iran is not a so in the gut as something a lot of moviegoers are hearing about as a debate and going "Oh, I see" over) than any film that has your standard crew of radical Islamic terrorists yelling "Jihad!" and "For Allah!" and blowing up the plane.
Just a few more thoughts on the matter, as I continue to mull over it. Thanks all, for a good conversation.
And now, on to more thinking about my "ethnicity" reading of Lord of the Rings...
