Two hundred and thirty-two years ago, today, we declared ourselves independent of the British Empire. We further declared we, as a people, had no need for aristocracy and that we would govern ourselves.
Eleven years later, in Philadelphia, we recomposed our government in the form of the Constitution. This amazing document unified the states under a strong federal government and made two amazing laws (of many, many amazing laws):
The First Amendment
The "No Religious Test" Clause
It is no coincidence that we cut both church and king out of any involvement in our government. We cannot depose one without deposing the other.
And how is that?
The European model for governance (for several centuries) worked like this: the church of the nation (typically Catholic) would declare God's support for the king, granting him divine right over his subjects; in turn, the king would see to it a healthy chunk of change from his tax base would divert to the church's coffers.
A nice, symbiotic relationship, eh?
If you don't believe me, consider this: when Henry VIII of England didn't get his way when he wanted to divorce and remarry, he did not just cut ties with Rome... he established his own church. He needed divine legitimacy to keep his seat of power, otherwise, the Vatican would have started pressing other nations to replace him with someone more suitable (for their own pockets, that is). Kings need divine backing for their subjects to buy into their right to govern. Churches need Kings (or some other form of political figurehead) to keep the money flowing in... because sometimes passing the plate just isn't enough to "pay the bills."
And just look at what is happening today. We have a "man of God" in the White House, and he's making sure our tax money is funneled to religious organizations. And men like Dobson of Focus on the Family are given legitimacy by men like President Bush... and in turn, men like Dobson are treated like they have a right to be political pundits, picking and choosing who is more "suitable" to administrate the United State of America.
And next thing you know, too many people are claiming there is no such thing as "separation of church and state," despite the fact it is written as the first item on the Bill of Rights!
Everyone: if you love your country (as I do), read the Constitution. Read the Federalist Papers. Read the letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists. Keeping religion out of government is more than about taxes and affiliations: it's about keeping dictatorship at bay.
As long as all human beings in this nation may believe (or not, in many cases) as they wish, then no one may persecute them for disagreeing. The atheist and the theist can co-exist, as long as each group is managed by a completely secular government; one devoid of interest in showing preferential treatment for one group over another.
Yes and no. Yes, “Apocalypto” matches in spectacle, but it is nowhere nearly as horrific in its violence. Instead, it goes for something different: an average action/adventure/chase story loaded with more subtext than the average Congressional bill has pork.
WARNING! The rest of this entry is loaded with spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.
Okay, now that we have that out of the way, I’m going to walk you through the movie and take you through my thoughts more or less as I had them.
“Apocalypto” opens with a bunch of Happy Pre-Columbian Jungle Dwelling Villagers engaged in a tapir hunt. When they finally kill the tapir, there is a gratuitous slow-motion shot of the trap going of that told my spider-sense that we were experiencing foreshadowing. (And was it ever, as we shall see.)
The Happy Pre-Clombian Jungle Dwelling Villager Hunting Party gather around that tapir and Our Hero, a hunter named Jaguar Paw, distributes pieces of the animal to others in the party. They all appear to be brothers hunting with their father (named Flint Sky), but this is never made absolutely clear. Three of the hunters are given the heart, the liver and the ears, but one hunter (named Blunted, for all too obvious reasons) is given the testicles. Blunted is disappointed and offended, and lets his brother Jaguar Paw know it while their father, Flint Sky, looks on.
Blunted is embarrassed because he has not been able to father a child. Jaguar Paw insists Blunted eat the tapir’s testes to give him virility an potency, claiming Flint Sky did the same thing to father all his children. Flint Sky nods solemnly, but in such a way as to tell the viewer it’s a setup… and Blunted is the Big Dumb Galoot of the village.
We are then entreated to an all too graphic scene of Blunted attempting to eat the testes, and almost barfing from it, to the amusement of the others. Eventually, Blunted starts laughing too, delighting in the joke.
Okay, I’m thinking, this must be more foreshadowing: Blunted is going to be instrumental in the plot and he’s going to get some form of vindication later on.
But it doesn’t stop there: his father, taking pity on him, gives him some special leaves to rub on his genitals the next time he performs his Marital Duties with his wife. Of course, I could already guess where this is heading.
By this point I’m thinking the director must have big plans for Blunted as a supporting character. Maybe use this social abuse as a means of working in a metaphor about brotherly love, christian forgiveness, etc. That, and by the end Blunted will probably knock up two or three women in one night, showing up his brothers and old man, right?
Sigh… sadly, that is not the case. But we’ll get there.
Before the “burning balls” scene, the hunting party encountered a bunch of other villagers on the run from unnamed pursuers. These same pursuers, of course, come to destroy the village, kill a bunch of people, and take the survivors (save for the children who are abandoned and never seen again for the rest of the film) to their city. Jaguar Paw also hides his very pregnant wife and their young son in a dry well, which succeeds in providing both a sub-plot (how the mother and child survive down there) and a motivation for Jaguar Paw to escape from his captors.
Some issues I had with the destruction of the village:
Problem 1 - Blunted’s wife is killed during this. Okay, maybe Blunted will find new love in the Mayan city to which they are being taken…
Problem 2 - Blunted appears to be mortally wounded, but on a slow decline. How is he going to survive the hole in his belly?
Problem 3 - The bad guys were painfully clearly Bad Guys. They sneer, laugh with evil joy, and are only lacking Snidely Whiplash mustaches to twirl, they are so damn evil! How boring. We are also given a “noble bad guy” named Zero Wolf. He leads the raiding party and becomes Jaguar Paw’s main nemesis. Zero Wolf starts out as a guy with a dirty assignment just doing his job. He later becomes driven by vendetta when Jaguar Paw kills Zero Wolf’s son during his escape from the Mayan City. At times I liked Zero Wolf better than Jaguar Paw; to the point that I was almost sorry to see Zero Wolf die, later in the film. Mel Gibson take note: it’s never good to have your villains more sympathetic than your heros. But I digress…
Anyway: so the bad guys come and destroy the village, kidnap the viable adults and walk them to a Mayan city (I won’t go into the historical inaccuracies portrayed there).
In the Mayan city there are plenty of gore-filled sacrifice scenes. In fact, the sacrifices were kind of Catholic in their pageantry, but I doubt that was Gibson’s intent. The now Not So Happy Villagers are brought up, one by one to have their hearts torn out and heads cut off.
When it’s Jaguar Paw’s turn, he is saved by a timely solar eclipse: the eclipse is the signal that the sun god is satisfied with the sacrifices. Jaguar Paw and the rest of the survivors are then to be disposed of via target practice. This is where three things take place:
Jaguar Paw escapes, setting the rest of the film in motion.
Jaguar Paw kills Zero Wolf’s son, giving the antagonist reason for his pursuit.
Blunted is killed, making this viewer ask: “Why did his peers torture him, only to have him killed off? It doesn’t make storytelling sense!” (It did later, I realized.)
In an interesting twist, there are still two bad guys left pursuing Jaguar Paw after Zero Wolf dies. I wondered why Gibson would do that… the answer? For the sake of the climax. Our Hero Jaguar Paw is saved by… the Catholic Church!
I am not making this up.
Jaguar Paw and his two pursuers reach the beach and stop dead in their tracks at the sight of sailing ships moored just off shore. A rowboat full of soldiers and priests, brandishing a very large, very visible cross, rose towards them. The two remaining bad guys forget about their quarry and walk, mesmerized, towards the rowboats.
Our Hero sees his chance and breaks for it. Jaguar Paw rescues his family from the well and they run off into the forest to hide - but not before his wife looks imploringly at the sailing ships and asks her husband if they should not go to them. Jaguar Paw, quite intelligently, says “no,” trusting no one after his brush with the Maya. His wife looks back with some regret and then they walk into the jungle… …roll credits.
Parts of this movie were just not making sense to me until I saw the ships at the beach. Then it all started coming together.
First, let’s talk about the opening scenes involving the hunters, village life, and the social maltreatment of Blunted, the local pariah. Ostensibly these are the scenes of the “idealistic simple happy life” the forest dwellers have before the bad guys came and destroyed everything. It left me uneasy, because the cruelty - outright cruelty - shown to the big guy was wrong. It departs from formula, here, because no lesson of tolerance is given. The abuse is accepted, even by Blunted, who finds it funny… but this is not about realism. It’s about subtext. It is actually a scorn shown by the filmmaker for his characters: they are, when you get down to it, dumb savages who enjoy torturing one another. The are so dumb they even enjoy being tortured by one another, to an extent. Clearly they need to be taught about Right Living and How to Play Nice With Others.
That’s why so many get to die. That’s why the children are abandoned and never heard from again. That’s why, at the end of the movie, all the women and men who are not killed during the raid are sold as slaves, sacrificed to the gods or used as target practice: they deserve it for being such cruel savages!
And the clearly dying urban Mayan culture we are entreated to are part of the film’s centerpiece? THey deserve their outbreaks of syphilis and leprosy, the failing corn crops, the civil unrest: they are just as much savages as the Now Not So Happy Forest Dwellers! In the end, we learn, it is only Jesus that can save you. That’s what caused the two remaining pursuers to stop their chase of Jaguar Paw. Even Jaguar Paw’s wife realizes this as she reluctantly follows her husband into the jungle.
With “Passion” Mel Gibson was way too overt.
“Apocalypto” may be a little to subtle. Most viewers will see the Rambo flick, and not the tortured Christian message underlying the story.
So I mentioned my Irish buddy for the last two entries. (Hey! That could be a toy! "My Irish BuddyTM!" New from Hasbro!)
Well, I am going to mention him again.
Some months back he told me about an acquaintance of his who runs an Irish-themed bar and restaurant, plays guitar and sings at this establishment, and for all intents and purposes could not understand how this individual is capable of making a living as a "professional Irishman" (as he put it). He was even more fascinated - and more than a little disturbed - at how great an audience there was for his acquaintances' establishment.
"C'mon!" I remember him declaring. "We're the (bleep)ing Irish! We're a bunch of drunks who've been the collective punching bag of a nation of inbred wankers! Who wants to be celebrating that?"
Well, that question got me thinking. That, and I had a long flight home from Seattle to contend with, so I tried putting my old anthropology training to use (that's my real background, not information technology - I picked that up after grad school) and wrote an off-the-cuff analysis of the American notions of ethnicity and national identity and e-mailed it to him the next day. I've decided it might be worth reading, especially to see how others may or may not react to it in comparison to My Irish Buddy (I may post his reactions if I get his permission), but also to see if I made any glaring historical/sociological errors in my analysis.
So here it is, warts and all. I hope you enjoy it.
By the way: while I still stand by my definition of "Constitutionalist," I have since regretted using that term. Here's why.
And another thing.... since I am presenting this "as is" and cannot guarantee its accuracy, I'm not providing any verification or supportive links. Check this stuff at your own leisure. At a later date I may (or may not) revise it and correct it.
-------))
[My Irish BuddyTM] –
Your statements about Americans and our obsessions with ethnicity really got me thinking (dangerous thing). I find myself with nothing to really do on this long flight home from Seattle so I thought I would take the time to jot down some of my thoughts about the notion of the "American Identity" from a personal and anthropological perspective. You don't have to read this, and you probably have much better things to do (sitting in your underwear watching TV?) but should you continue… consider yourself warned.
And I'm doing this all from my head, so I cannot guarantee the accuracy of some of the following material. In fact, just the fact that you did not have an American education leads me to believe you're going to find some errors in what you read here. But let's give this a try anyway, shall we?
The American Revolution The North American continent, especially what is now considered the Eastern Seaboard of the United State was settled by primarily Western Europeans from the northern regions: the Dutch, the French, the Germans, and the English. Especially the English. In fact, by the time ill feelings began to foment among the colonists, all other cultural groups had been subsumed by the English and homogenized into a fairly recognizable English-derived culture.
Thinking of ourselves as Americans did not happen, however, until the Declaration of Independence came onto the scene. As we declared ourselves a separate nation and set up the temporary Continental Congress to see us through the transition (and the oncoming war), we defined ourselves as Americans not so much by our ideals as expressed in Jefferson's document so much as the fact that we were no longer English subjects. You read right: the earliest American identity was founded on not being British.
This is a very important distinction: after we won the Revolutionary War, the deciding factor for where one got to live – remain in the new United State of America or emigrate to Canada – was one of loyalty; did one see the Crown and Parliament as the seat of governmental power or the Continental Congress and its eventual inheritor (first the Articles of Confederation and later the Constitution). It always bothers me how this is not taught in American public schools: the transmigration between the US and Canadian territories immediately after the war, in terms of percentage of population, was not rivaled until India created Pakistan and had the Hindus and Muslims shuffle around. This was a big deal in which many people lost land and other property, and many families irrevocably dissolved - and I'm actually referring to North America, here!
The War of 1812 served to further this form of the American identity notion… but it was not to last.
Colonization Practices, the Louisiana Purchase and Rogue Sates Before I go any further, I must point out something concerning the remaining dominions under the British Crown after the American Revolution. Those dominions fairly empty of natives (when compared to, say, India or Burma) were settled by colonists carrying the Union Jack who considered themselves British subjects – for the most part. This phenomenon presents a flavor to their colonization and the formation of their eventual sovereignties that is completely lost on most Americans. You see, we Americans tend to think of the way we handled colonizing (or "settling," in our historical parlance) the rest of our part of North America as "normal;" which is certainly not the case.
Unlike such Brit-derived nations such as Canada or Australia, we gained our independence early on and then became a colonizing force in our own right. With the purchase of the Louisiana territory form France during the Jefferson administration – for a whopping 2¢ an acre! How's that for a deal? – we developed a philosophy known as "Manifest Destiny." Manifest Destiny was the notion that the United States, as a nation, would eventually extend from the Eastern Seaboard to the West Coast; an achievable goal thanks the the Louisiana Purchase. Unfortunately, this notion also gave most Americans a feeling of entitlement, allowing them to rationalize the practice of marching in and displacing natives left and right for the purposes of settlement.
Sadly, but not surprisingly, the Federal Government turned a myopic eye to these shenanigans, which were in many ways in opposition to the ideals of the Constitution.
Sidebar: the Federal Constitution is well worth reading, if you have not already done so. If you haven't, you'll get to do so with [your daughter] when it's time for her to take her proficiency tests in 7th grade. Assuming you and your family are still in Illinois that is…
In any case the practices of the settlers and the hesitation of the developing federal government lead to a disconnection of identity between the settlers and the notion of being "American." This was not such a big deal for states such as Illinois, which grew out of the settlement of the Louisiana Purchase acreage: everyone submitted to the statehood process without a peep because the land was explicitly intended to be incorporated into the United States from the point of sale on.
However, territories from outside this acreage (mostly stolen from Mexico) were another story. Would you believe that California and Texas were briefly their own separate countries for a while? It's true! The California Republic and the Republic of Texas grudgingly submitted to statehood out of necessity. They both needed help with the damn pesky Indians and all the rambunctious displaced Mexicans, and the U.S. Army was the only force with the resources to do something about it.
But I digress…
The Late 19th Century/Early 20th Century Immigration Swell Okay, this is where things get interesting; which is to say, more recognizable as what America is like today.
Starting in the 1880s the United States experienced an influx of immigrants for other regions of Europe and the rest of the world, most noticeably Eastern and Mediterranean Europeans, Chinese and, of course, the Irish. The still relatively homogeneous U.S.A. exhibited a rather passive-aggressive reaction to this phenomenon. On the one hand we accepted the gift of the Statue of Liberty from the French and proudly displayed its welcome sign proclaiming we wanted the unwanted, the "wretched refuse" of other lands. And as soon as we got them in we put them to work under horrid conditions in factories and slaughterhouses and shunned them as something almost worse than "the Negro."
Out of necessity these immigrants settled into neighborhoods they made their own. These became the famous ghettos of what is now yesteryear: New York's Little Italy, Chicago's Bridgeport, and the Chinatowns found in various major metropolitan areas. These ghettos became the bedrock of the curious ethnic pride you seem to find so peculiar about America, Mike. True, similar quasi-ethnically segregated communities can be found in other countries – like Toronto's well-known Greektown – but none have the same sense of ethnicity as being a link to identity as one finds here in the States. This is due to a rather interesting thing humans do when faced with rejection by society at large: they will either change to assimilate into the greater whole or reinforce and take pride in their difference as a means of succor and survival. And this really has not changed all that much in the intervening decades.
The Great War (World War I) By the time things were getting hot and heavy in Europe during the early 20th century, how "American" one was tended to be defined by how long one's family has been in this country. This was usually deduced by the ethnicity of one's family name – unless it was Anglicized by choice or by accident at Ellis Island. Of course, this only applied if one was white. Black? Latino? Asian? Oh, Sweet Jesus, let's not even go there!
As the war on the Continent progressed, the U.S. went into business and charity mode. We cheerfully sold arms and supplies to all players in the conflict. Also, plenty of 2nd and 3rd generation German-Americans were setting up charity funds and money-raising events to support the Kaiser's war effort. And no one batted an eye.
Well, when the U.S. entered the war just in time to mop up the mess (and look like heroes in the process), a small reawakening of the notion of an American identity took place. Suddenly, German-Americans were changing their names and/or shouting at the top of their lungs: "Hey! My parents were Prussians, but I was born here! I'd never get upset if some fat, inbred Hapsburgian aristocrat got his brains blown out!"
But this, too, did not last all that long…
The Great Depression and World War II Interestingly enough, when the Stock Market crashed and briefly considered joining a monastery, it was the ghettos that held themselves together better than the long "established" communities. Thanks to the rampant xenophobia experienced by the more recent immigrant groups, they had stronger social bonds and were already heavily community-focused than their WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant) counterparts. Unemployment was still a problem, but fewer people went cold or hungry thanks to sharing of what was available.
The Second World War changed all that, of course. Once again, we went in to clean up Europe, but this time we had Japan to contend with, as well. This time, it was really personal.
As American soldiers traveled the various theatres of the war, they found themselves identified by others as Americans. Not German-Americans, not Italian-Americans, not Irish-Americans, but simply Americans. Couple to this the use of the notions of the Declaration of Independence – Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – as a focal point for Americans to rally around as we battle the fascist totalitarians (hey! Let's conveniently ignore the fact the Stalinist Soviet Union is our ally!) created again a renewed sense of American identity. This sense of American identity during the Forties and Fifties is probably the strongest it ever was in my country's history.
And, once more, it was not to last.
The Cold War After WWII, America became powerful, affluent, and on the move. The ghettos began to dissolve and the suburbs began to grow. However, you can take the boy out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the boy. Our never-ending pride in our ancestral, pre-immigration heritage still holds us. It was during this period that the development of ethnically themed restaurants with entertainment became not a novelty item for WASPs, but cradles of nostalgia for average Americans wanting to reacquaint themselves with "their roots." Never mind the cultural practices of Italian-Americans do not really resembles those of actual Italians. Never mind that corned beef is originally a Jewish foodstuff. Never mind real sauerbraten would make most German-Americans want to puke from the smell… it's all about what we want to think life was like for our ancestors in "the Old Country" and not think about the uncomfortable realities that drove them to our shore in the first place. This, more than anything, [My Irish BuddyTM], is what makes it possible for your acquaintance to be a "professional Irishman."
But let's get back on track.
During the Cold War we Americans came full circle with out identity. Now we defined ourselves as "not being Communists." Which was an unfortunate thing. It also meant the rest of the world started seeing us as one of two bullies on the block – the other being the U.S.S.R. – and sooner or later they would have to kow-tow to one of us.
But the Soviet Union collapsed. So where does that leave us today?
America is the New Rome, and We're the Only Game In Town (or so we like to think)
How does the world see us? In my opinion, the rest of the world, with some merit, sees us Americans as fat, obnoxious, insensitive boors who own too much, want too much, and use too much (SUVs and iPods, to name a few). We're seen as God-obsessed and power-mad, thanks to our current president, and not that much better than "the Terrorists" in that regard. We also have an annoying tendency to not appreciate what we actually do have via to the Constitution and capitalist innovation.
How do we see ourselves? If you are to believe the news, we're all down-to-earth folk with everyday lives, values and problems. We are a people of great faith and great tolerance for those who are different from us, and we're ready to place our initial trust in our fellow man. Think "fresh-faced Midwestern farm boy/girl." In reality, it's our desperate attempt to keep the Norman Rockwell mythos alive long after its corpse has become so much worm [manure].
How I see us. We are a nation that has always struggled to find our identity practically since our inception. We still define ourselves by our ethnic heritage, which is best left behind so we may embrace ourselves as Americans. I am guilty of this myself. I find it hard not to classify myself as "German-American" first… which is funny since I can barely speak German!
At this point in my country's history, I see two groups that could be considered truly representative of the "American identity." One is actively reaching for that title. The other, I feel, is much truer, but to disparate to ever rally for attention and mindshare.
Group 1: "Redneck Republicans" These people are ones you've seen on T.V. and seen all around the [local] area. The are hard drinkin', god-fearin', football-watchin', country-&-western-music-listenin', [poop]-kickin', "I love my country!" types. They to be rather ill-educated and ignorant, very involved in their churches but not well-versed in the theology of their faith, like their toys and tend to vote conservative in politics. They feel they own the title "American" and are as a whole disturbingly middle-to-upper class, Protestant and white. In other words, the devolved descendants of the WASPs.
Group 2: "Constitutionalists" This is my own ad hoc term for this group.
These are people like me who feel the Constitution is only thing that really binds us together as a nation. People like me who feel the Constitution is one of, if not the most, brilliant governmental document ever composed. We tend to think of being American as "someone who has a duty to understand our foundational documents and protect them from abuses." We belong to all walks of life and faiths (or lack thereof, in my case), and we tend to belong to watchdog groups that seek to keep Constitutional abuses or disregards in check (ACLU, FFRF, Americans United, People for the American Way, etc.)
But in the end we're a minority, which is ironic in that we tend to value being Americans most of all. I also fear people like me are then only thing that's keeping this country from turning into the horror described in Sinclair Lewis' fine novel It Can't Happen Here. (Lewis, by the way, was the author who stated that when fascism comes to America it will be "wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Sound like any politicians you've seen since coming here?)
Wrapping it up. If you've gotten this far, thank you for putting up with this rant.
Once again, I don't claim to be an expert, but you got my wheels spinning, and I needed something to do during this flight. I ran out of reading material a while ago and if I look at another document for [my boss], I'm going to strangle someone. This gave me some much-needed diversion, and I got to use my noggin for something other than technical or process issues, for a change, which is a great relief. Believe me, it really is.
I also wrote this because you seem to have a genuine interest in what I have to say… Bog help you, on that one.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this, and I look forward to your reaction and comments at a later date.
