Another Little Rant...

I went to see Apocolypto on it's opening weekend. I wanted to go see Blood Diamond, but my friend Nic refused as he doesn't like war movies... I guess he didn't know what Apocolypto was about. In any case. I went to the movie despite the fact it was directed by Gibson (who I have to say has revealed himself to be a less than impressive person in recent years). Overall I thought it was a good movie. A bit too bloody perhaps. One thing really bothered me though. Before the movie starts there is a quote: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. ” The implication being that the reason the Mayans fell to the Spanish is because their civilization was in decay. I cannot say whether or not this is true (it's not like I was there and I am not an expert on Mayan civilization past or present), but I suspect that a civilization as complex and advanced as the Mayans was not conquered due to any internal moral deficiency (or the moral superiority of the Spanish), but rather due to the new diseases introduced by Europeans, and the superior weapons technology they possessed. It set a bad tone for the movie, even though you don't see a single white face (at least not an obvious one) in the movie until the end. The atrocities perpetuated against the aboriginal peoples of the Americas can not be justified by claiming native civilizations were self-destructing. It's simply not true.
o.k.
I feel a bit better now.