XPost: alt.mexico, alt.movies
From: pub?@?li.us
On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 19:41:55 GMT, Al Smith wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 17:16:08 GMT, Al Smith wrote:
>>>What stake do you have in smearing Mel Gibson?
>>
>>
>On 20 Dec 2006 09:35:25 -0800, "TODD TAMANEND CLARK" wrote:
>> Absolutely none.
>>
>> Based on advanced previews of the elaborate sets and beautiful
>> photography, my family and I went to the movie with hopeful
>> expectations, but what we saw was an inaccurate hate-filled
>> depiction of Native Americans.
>>
>> Not being christian or Jewish, we had never seen Passion Of
>> The Christ and were only mildly aware of the controversy of how
>> he portayed Jewish people in a negative light. But now we wonder
>> if they might not have had a legitimate complaint after seeing how
>> Mel Gibson smears the Maya people so viciously in Apocalypto.
>
>
>Oh, I get it, you thought you'd see the politically correct,
>sanitized version of the natives that Hollywood is so (in)famous
>for, such as "Dancing With Wolves" where the white man is the evil
>monster, and all the natives are saints. In reality, native
>Americans were barbarians who liked to torture and murder anyone
>outside their own tribe, who practiced slavery and cannibalism.
>That's the way it was. When the Spanish came to the New World,
>what they saw the natives doing turned their stomachs. That the
>reason they were so merciless toward the natives. They regarded
>them as demons from hell.
I think you are still upset because the American 'Indian' culture of liberty
and
generosity began to rub off on the European invaders/immigrants and they
wanted such
freedom and happiness for themselves, which lead of course to the colonial
rebellion and
the French revolution.
Life in Utopia [America] before contamination by the spiritually diseased
Europeans:
"A life lived free of toil and tyranny, free of masters, free of greed and the
struggle
for gain, became so much the key picture presented by the first historian of
the New
World, Peter Martyr of Anghiera, that his English translator summed it up in
the repeated
word 'liberty'. Their "aunciente libertie" (says this translator, Richard
Eden, writing
in the 1550s) had made the New World people "most happye of all men." They
were living in
the golden age, wrote Peter Martyr (and explained Richard Eden, "of whiche
owlde wryters
speake so much: wherin men lyved simply and innocentlye") without even weights
and
measures to cause disputes, free of lawsuits and law enforcement, free of
calumniating
judges and the resultant learned professions of craft and deceit, free of
books, free of
the pernicious presence of deadly money, content only to satisfy nature --
and, added
Richard Eden to his translation, incapable of servitude, having "been ever soo
used to
live at libertie, in play and pastyme." [p.6]
"Among the people there, he wrote, "Myne and Thyne (the seedes of all
myscheefe) have no
place . . ." (In his origin Latin, "necque meum aut tuum, malorum omnie semina
. . .")
Land was held in common, as free to all as the sunlight or the sea, "in open
gardens, not
intrenched with dykes, dyvyded with hedges, or defended with waules. They
deal trewely
one with another, without lawes, without bookes, and without Judges." They
lived without
toil, he was informed, so bounteous was their fair country and so innocent
their wants, in
their "free kynde of life" that was "given to Idlenes and playe." [p.7]
"In his Journal entry for Christmas Day 1492, Columbus declared with some
solemnity that
in all the world "I do not believe there is a better people or a better
country; they
love their neighbors as themselves" and was moved to add that "they have the
softest and
gentlest speech in the world and are always laughing." [p.8]
Of the book 'Utopia' by Thomas More [1516], several historians have noted that
the reports
of the culture of the 'Indians' in the 'New World' contributed to the novel's
concepts of
equality, liberty and justice, especially perhaps the letters/reports of
Amerigo Vespucci.
"... passages speaking of American natives living together in perfect
equality, each his
own master, sharing everything in common, without private property, despising
pearls and
gold. Sydney Lee came many years ago to the even more single-track conclusion
that
'Utopia' owed its "foundation" to the "letters of Amerigo Vespucci . . ."
[p.9]
"The Spanish historian José de Acosta, writing in the 1580s after a number of
years in the
New World, chiefly Peru: "Surely the Greeks and the Romans, if they had known
the
Republics of the Mexicans and the Incas, would have greatly esteemed their
laws and
governments. We today only enter there by the sword, giving them no heed, no
hearing, no
more consideration than a venison in the forest . . . Men more profound and
diligent, who
have penetrated the secrets of their customs and their ancient government,
have an
entirely different opinion, and marvel at the order and reason that existed
among them."
[p.12] [Why did this passage make me think of the USA and countries like Iraq
that it is
so intent on attacking/invading?]
"Geoffroy Atkinson, a specialist in the "geographical" literature of this
period in
France, cites a long list of French language works of the sixteenth century
that dwell
largely on the accepted "fact" that a land enjoying a real live Golden Age has
been
discovered in America. Great names joined this chorus of revelation, as in a
little book
in French based on a few pages from the famous cardinal Pietro Bembo's history
of Venice,
with a ring already familiar: the people of the isles of the New World "for
the most part
live a life of the age of gold, they don't know what it is to set up
boundaries and
distinguish possessions. They have no lawsuits, no law, no books of writing,
no
merchandise . . ." The same familiar ring was sounded in the works by one of
the
best-known mapmakers of the epoch, Jodocus Hondius: "The people of this
Country are
content with the bounty of nature, neither doe they know what belongs to mine,
or thine,
or money, but have all things in common, even as nature bestoweth the light of
the Sunne
and the water on all men equally; therefore their Gardens are open and
unfenced, and
nature teacheth them that which is right without lawes." ... typical is Jean
Macer,
summing up the New World: "Those who live there exceed and excel all other
peoples in
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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