I flere land er filmen om Maya-rikets fall allerede blitt slaktet og blitt anklaget for rasisme. Litt forsinket begynner nå debatten om Apocalypto i Norge. “Kinosjefen i Fredrikstad slakter Mel Gibsons nye drama og nekter å vise filmen på kino”, skriver VG. – Dette er en blodsmørje av verste hakke, sier han og legger til at filmen “passer best for «blodtørstige antropologer»”.
Det er jo alltid interessant å få vite hva slags forestillinger som folk har om faget vårt. Men saken er nok at filmen ikke falt i smak hos antropologer. Tyske antropologer fra Universitetet i Bonn gikk ut med en pressemelding der de protesterte mot filmen. Filmen kan være farlig, skriver de:
In his latest movie ‘Apocalypto’, director Mel Gibson creates an image of the Pre-Hispanic Maya as a brutalized and religiously misguided society whose bestiality seals their demise, and whose only salvation is the arrival of the Spanish conquerors and Christian missionaries. While Gibson uses the Maya simply as an analogy for today’s Western society and it’s inescapable faith, he creates a distorted picture of the Mesoamerican civilization which is historically largely unfounded.
(…)
Here, the author mixes a – likewise distorted – Colonial Spanish devaluating propaganda of conquest-time Aztec culture with the presentation of Classic Maya society which had collapsed 300 years before. Cultural achievements of the civilization, such as the evolution of a totally independent writing system and a calendar system which is based on arithmetics which included the concept of “zero”, go unmentioned.
(…)
Not only that this disqualification creates an image of the Pre-Hispanic Maya as an uncivilized and primitive people; the movie has moreover potential to provide new grounds for racism affecting approximately 8 million Maya in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador.
>> les hele pressemeldingen (den engelske oversettelsen er nederst på siden)
Antropolog Liza Grandia er ikke opptatt av historiske feil, men framhever spesielt filmens rasistiske budskap:
1. Native Americans are all interchangeable.
2. Mesoamerican cultures are all the same.
3. Indigenous people should remain noble savages, since attempts to build cities and more complex political organization will bring their inevitable demise.
4. The Spanish arrive as if to save the Maya from themselves.
Hun skriver:
Gibson’s slanderous film reinforces the same stereotypes that have facilitated the genocide of Maya peoples and the plunder of their lands starting with the Spanish invasion of 1492 and continuing through the Guatemalan civil war to the present.
>> les Liza Grandias tekst: The Sober Racism of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto
En oversikt over reaksjoner i den engelskspråklige verden leverer Savage Minds og WAYEB – European Association of Mayanists. Enda mer informasjon fins på Wikipedia.
OPPDATERING: Antropolog Monica Five Aarset har skrevet en kommentar om filen i relasjon til boken ”Harry Potter and International Relations” og debatten rundt ”Vesle Hoa” >> les Mel Gibson, Harry Potter og Vesle Hoa
Filmen ser ut til å føye seg inn i en viss tradisjon, se blant annet Disneyfilm framstiller indianere som kannibaler eller også “Statoil siviliserer Afrika?” eller “Vi trenger en ny Afrika-journalistikk!”
