 |
|
A Mayanist at the Movies In the mid-twentieth century, Saturday afternoons were reserved for movies. They were always double features, and there was always a cliffhanger of a serial. They weren’t very good, but boy! Were they full of action! Well, that’s kind of the way I feel about Apocalypto, except that the cinematography is superb. The plot has less logic than a Saturday afternoon serial. But I haven’t been asked to comment on the movie as art. Instead, as one who has some knowledge of ancient Maya civilization, I’ve been asked to give my opinion about the way the Maya and their culture are presented. In a way, that’s like asking a paleontologist to comment on the authenticity of Godzilla. Gibson has taken bits and pieces from various groups and time periods and mixed them together with a large dollop of his own feverish imaginings into a Chinese menu of “one from column A and one from column B,” with no attempt at accuracy. The actors are Native Americans from the Great Plains and Southwest in the United States, and from the non-Maya regions of Mexico, and it shows in their clearly non-Maya physiques. Eventually, we see fewer than a half dozen people who are recognizably Maya in appearance. In several scenes there are fleeting evocations of figures torn from Maya art that made me wish the cinematographer had been turned loose on a real story, one with a plot and characters with some dimension to them to do justice to his eye. But if you’re not interested in the pre-Columbian Maya, or plot or character, and want to spend two hours watching a long bloody massacre followed by a long bloody sacrificial ceremony followed by a long bloody and unbelievable chase that’s exhausting for runners and audience alike, by all means go to Apocalypto. If you’d like to learn something about the real lives of the Maya and other peoples of Mesoamerica before the Europeans arrived on these shores, go to the Mesoamerican galleries at the Penn Museum. Dr. Elin Danien, Research Associate in the American Section, was curator of the Museum’s renovated Mesoamerican Gallery. A long-time event coordinator at Penn Museum, she founded the Museum’s annual Maya Weekend, which each year features leading Maya experts in talks and hieroglyph workshops, plus films, tours, and a Maya banquet. Dr. Danien is author of numerous publications, including Maya Folk Tales from the Alta Verapaz and the Museum’s Guide to the Mesoamerican Gallery.
|
Penn Museum's Mesoamerica Gallery is dominated by five famous grand stone monuments, or stelae, and two monumental circular altars from the Museum’s early Maya excavations at Piedras Negras, Guatemala, and Caracol, Belize. Other cases feature 8th century burial materials, including sting ray spines and ritual blood drawing instruments. There are also cases on writing, personal adornment, architecture, and the Mesoamerican ball game.
