The Rise and Fall of… We Ourselves?
August 18, 2007, 1:49 pm |
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By Andrew L. Jaffee
Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them… Did the great Maya — masters of astronomy, architecture, poetry, hydrology, engineering, mathematics, art, written language, agriculture, road building, politics, pageantry, propaganda, weaponry — see the end coming? Were they so different from us? Millions now sit back indulging in perversions masquerading as “entertainment,” like Saw, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The Beginning, Xtreme Fighting, Grand Theft Auto, and Top (Dead) Model’s beautiful corpses. Are we so different from them? Look at this Classic Age fresco, from National Geographic, most assuredly a piece of mainstream Mayan propaganda and/or art (below).
Are we at the edge now? Not yet. Is the precipice in sight? I would say that prime time porn and violence is a bad sign. Don’t remember the Mayan ball game? How about the Colosseum or Circus Maximus? It hasn’t been that long since Andy Griffith was considered mainstream. Look where we are now. Why repeat the mistakes of the past when they are enumerated in text books?
In a terrifying expression of royal power, a stucco mural at Toniná shows a turtle-footed skeleton grabbing the hair of a severed head—with portrait-like features, perhaps of a real person—and a mythical rodent holding another head in a ritual bundle. These characters were the wayob, the affliction-spewing alter egos of kings that were used to curse enemies. They work here amid a scaffold bearing the heads of human sacrifices.
Related: Society, Archeology, History
August 19th, 2007 at 2:09 am
I agree. I’m a horror buff and avid Haloweenie but I find some of the modern stuff a little too dark. I remember when monster flicks had heroes in them, now movies like The Devil’s Rejects lionize evil and villiany. There’s a change in the culture, a hopelessness and cynicism I don’t like, and I say this as a man who love fin de sickle poetry and Tim burton movies.
Bernal Diaz was with Cortes during the conquest, and he wrote a book about ut called (I think) The Conquest of New Spain. For first hand accounts of how blooody the Aztec empire is, you can’t beat it. Oddly, when I took a class in Meso American culture, I learned the Aztecs are widely assumed to have been aping Myan rituals they didn’t understand. Almost reminds you of our “modern primative” youth culture today.
August 19th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
I usually get trashed for making this historical analogy — i.e. movies are free speech, it is all virtual therefore harmless, etc. But I don’t think people can immerse themselves in horrors (”entertainment”) without being affected by it.