--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Michael Jackson mjackson74@ wrote: > > > > its all rather confusing to me as I really didn't > > understand the incident re refered to - but it doesn't > > matter anyway - according to some here I don't really > > understand that much of anything - I am a confused > > Southerner > > It's not that important, Michael, just an example > of How Judy Thinks. She read a review of the film > "Apocalypto" by someone who wrote disparagingly of > it and so, NOT having seen the film itself, passed > along the information in her normal way, as if it > were definitive. The subject line of the post, > calling Mel Gibson a "Christian bigot" for making > the film THAT SHE HAD NEVER SEEN was all her idea, > NOT anything that was in the review she read. > > She's STILL never seen the movie, but my bet is > that she will STILL claim to "know" that it's an > example of Mel Gibson's "Christian bigotry," and > that she's RIGHT, damnit. She makes up the defamatory > subject line of the post, and adds this at the end: > > > To highlight what the writer tactfully leaves > > implicit, Gibson has slandered the Maya and > > mangled history for the purpose of exalting the > > purported superiority of Christianity. > > Judy doesn't NEED the actual experience of something > to know all about it, you see. Same with Maharishi. > Having meditated TM-style for decades, she made > *one* feeble attempt to go see him, failed at that, > and never felt the need to try to make another. But > she'll tell you *exactly* how to interpret and > understand every little thing that this guy she > never met said, and claim to be RIGHT about it. > > I just like bringing up the "Apocalypto" thing > because it's such Classic Judy -- making slander- > ous statements about the director of a film she > never bothered to see.
Just because I love this example of Judythink, I'll expand on it. :-) http://www.salon.com/2006/12/15/maya/ <http://www.salon.com/2006/12/15/maya/> She glommed onto this Salon article, written by an anthropologist who was apoplectic because a film that was intended to be a popular entertainment didn't portray the facts about the historical Maya *as he wanted them to*. The author takes himself and his study of a dead civilization SO seriously, and can't stand anyone using it as mere backdrop to a story. One gets the feeling all throughout his article that he really thinks that people should have saved the ten bucks they spent on the movie and paid it to listen to him talk, talk, talk about stuff they weren't interested in. That's just SO Judy...I can see why she glommed onto this guy, and his article. They're a lot alike. Because she never bothered to see the movie before using it as an excuse to dump on someone she already disliked (Mel Gibson), Judy also has no idea that the pedantic author she is citing *missed the whole point of the movie*. It was basically an adventure tale plus the thing Mel Gibson *always* puts in *all* of his movies -- a love story. The hero spends almost the entire film trying to find and rescue his wife and children. The rest of the film, including all the violence that people harped on, is just scenery, backdrop for the foreground story. But Judy wouldn't know that, because she never saw the movie. One gets the feeling that the author of the Salon piece didn't really see it, either. He says stuff like, "In Apocalypto, the arrival of the Spanish signals 'a new beginning.' Remarkably, the event is portrayed as tranquil, as if the Spaniards are the adults who have finally come to rescue the 'littleuns' stranded on the island of William Golding's "Lord of the Flies." This is total bullshit, and did not happen in the film. The pedantic professor is *projecting* this onto the movie. The line "a new beginning" clearly refers to the hero's new life now that he has rescued his wife and children, and escaped his pursuers. It has *nothing to do* with the arrival of the Spanish; they are mere backdrops. The pedantic professor goes on, with even more *pure projection*. He says, "But in the movie, after two hours of excess, hyperbole and hysteria, the Spaniards represent the arrival of sanity to the Maya world. The tacit paternalism is devastating." Again, NONE OF THIS IS IN THE MOVIE. HE *PROJECTED* IT THERE. In the movie itself, there is only a 3-4 second shot of a European ship and sailors heading towards the shore, and then the *real* protagonists of the movie turn away from them and go back to their lives. The idea that Mel Gibson was trying to say that the Spaniards brought civilization to a savage world IS NOT IN THE MOVIE. Finally, the pedantic professor ends by revealing what the bug up his butt *really* is. He's pissed off that people are watching Mel Gibson's movie and not listening to him and other pedantic academics like him: "I can only hope that audiences seeing this movie will be motivated to learn about the Maya present and past rather than be sated by Gibson's sacrificial offering at the altar of entertainment." People who take themselves too seriously and overrate their impact upon the world -- whether they be pedantic university professors or agraphobic old women in front of a computer ranting about Christians she doesn't like -- often miss this idea of "entertainment." It was a fuckin' MOVIE, ferchrissakes. It was *supposed* to be an entertainment. It was NOT supposed to be a dull, boring academic treatise on the Maya, like the ones the author of this hit piece probably bores his students with. He just dumped on the movie and its director because he was jealous that they were getting more attention than he was. Judy took his jealousy and infused it with something that *wasn't there* in the original article -- "Christian bigotry" -- and used it as an excuse to rant about someone she already didn't like. She should "hook up" with the professor. They could work as a team and bore people together, while believing that THEY are the smart ones, the ones who "matter" in the world, while others just pursue "entertainment." Give me entertainment any time. Mel may not be the most pleasant person in the world, and may in fact BE a Christian bigot at times. But he WASN'T one in this film. What he was was a storyteller, trying to craft a good entertainment. I think he did so. What the detractors are really pissed off about is that they couldn't tell an entertaining story if their lives depended on it. They have no creativity, and not enough empathy with other human beings to craft a tale that anyone would be interested in. The only "talent" they have, in fact, is putting down other people they're jealous of. "Apocalypto" is not the best movie Mel Gibson ever made, but it's NOT what Judy and this pedantic old poop tried to portray it as. It's an entertainment, and a pretty good one, and that is all it was ever intended to be.
