Revelations, the Maya, and Mel Gibson

The cat’s out of the bag. The question for Mel Gibson, whose new film “Apocalypto” is due out before the end of the year, was always “Why make a movie in an obscure dead language about an ancient kingdom and run the risk of box office failure, or worse?” No, we’re not talking about the Amharic version of the last day of Jesus’ life, “The Passion of the Christ”, but a movie set in the mists of pre-Columbian time in Central America, a movie whose dialog is all in reconstructed Mayan. Ironically, the answer is pretty much the same for Apocalypto as it was for The Passion: Gibson is a believer, and he’s bringing the message of spiritual end-times to the multiplexes in a vainglorious effort to conflate the Book of Revelations with the Popul Vuh. (Read this recent MSNBC story.)

Such audacity is on the one had to be commended, on the other somewhat laughable. The sad thing is, it’ll probably work – or would have had not Gibson’s anti-Semitic rant upon being arrested for drunk driving not confused the issue. Although, truth to tell, it’s probably the drunkenness more than the anti-Semitism that will cut into his audience for “Apocalypto.” His previous film “The Passion” attracted criticism for its portrayal of the rabbis of Jerusalem as the parties responsible for Jesus’s crucifixion; it’s no surprise that a drunken tirade would reveal a suspicion if not hatred of Jews.

There are no Jews in “Apocalypto,” at least not overtly. (Full disclosure: I have not seen Apocalypto yet, which is set for release in the Christmas season [!], nor did I see “The Passion,” though I did think “Road Warrior” was really cool. And no, I’m not a Jew, either.) There can’t be for a movie set in Central America 600 years ago, since the first Jew to come to the New World was probably Columbus himself.

But enough digression. Here’s the deal: “Apocalypto” is a thinly veiled saga of the “end-times,” as fundamentalists like to call the age we live in, and Gibson hopes to build big box office numbers and spread his paranoid message of the coming apocalypse by linking John the Revelator with the ancient Mayan calendar, which is due to run out in 2012. (There’s a plethora, a veritable plethora, of web sites on the topic – just do a Google search.)

Fact of the matter is, 2012 is the new 2000, or perhaps 2001 – whichever millennial fantasy caught your fancy. Get ready for the yet another onslaught of cosmic paranoia from the religious right, the middle earthers, and the drug-addled (see the feature in the Aug. 21, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone on the “psychedelic revival,” not available online).

Such was the furthest thought from my mind when I heard of an upcoming movie about the Maya, that mysterious Central American culture which is a source of much speculation, and recent discovery. I went to Mayadom first in 1978, to report for Adventure Travel magazine on the Usumacinta River. I went again 13 years later, in 1991; I guess I’ve got time for one more trip before 2012, and I hope to the largest Mayan site, Mirador in the coming months, and possibly painted tombs of San Bartolo.

So I thought the movie would be cool – and it still may be – but it’s not without subtext. Just seeing the trailer for Apocalypto reveals its Revelationary roots. “When the end comes,” the titles read, “not everyone is ready to go.” This pronouncement is followed by a rapid-fire montage of personal, social and cosmic catastrophe, in the midst of which the quick-eyed can spot a bearded Gibson smoking a hand-rolled as he’s draped around his white-as-ghost extras.

As Gibson himself notes, “I just wanna draw the parallels…I just looked at it, and thought, we display that stuff here. I don’t wanna be a doomsayer, but the Mayan calendar ends in 2012,” he chuckled. “So have fun!”

We’ll try, Mel, but it's clear you've already started having fun...maybe a bit too much.

Adventure can be fatal

The Crocodile Hunter was out of his element. Best known for his land-based taunting of deadly reptiles – crocodiles, cobras, and more – he was swimming off the Great Barrier Reef in preparation for another television show. This was his specialty, putting his life at risk to demonstrate the natural order of things, and his own cleverness (and perhaps by extension, the human edge) survive. His viewers, which included television fans of his “crocodile hunter” show for Animal Planet, visitors to his family Australia Zoo park north of Brisbane, and the audience of the advertisements he did for sponsors.

So Steve Irwin was out of his element, Still, he should have known better. He was closing in on a beautiful creature, but it was one which could hurt him, and he and his cameraman had him cornered. From the accounts – and the video, which one of these days we’ll see – the ray panicked, turned, and struck.

True, stingray stings were painful but not fatal. And Irwin had been stung, or bitten, before. (If you're feeling morbidly curious, there's a page of Close Call Clips available on his web site.) But someone failed to take into account the 17 fatal stringray attacks in the past 30 years, a number of which resulted from a stinger through the heart. Once could have been luck; twice coincidence. But a third time, and you better realize it might just be a pretty useful defensive reaction. A dart to the heart sounds like one of nature’s most efficient weapons.

Among his viewers to these stunts was his own family - and the new program he was filming was to co-star his 8-year old daughter Bindi. And this raises an inevitable question about responsibility. Of course, if Irwin lived entirely in his own dream world (and there’s every indication he did), the idea that he might die on one of his stunts would have seemed dramatically powerful, if technically impossible. But what about the kids, the wife? Two children – Bindi, and 2-year old Robert, whom he famously put in harm’s way several years back while feeding a crocodile with one hand and holding the baby with the other – are left behind; his wife Terri too is bereft of her companion and business partner. This is an ethical question that has presented itself in other adventure sports as well, in particular climbing.

Several years ago I was covering on a web site the climb of Great Trango Tower by a team that included Alex Lowe, at the time the greatest living American climber. He too had a wife and two children – they were older, at the cusp of adolescence – and she would not willingly participate in our coverage of the climb. Somehow, one got the feeling she would become complicitous if she were, should Alex fall.

Eventually she allowed some modest involvement, but stayed out of sight for the duration of the climb – which was successful, and produced some great stories, and added to Lowe’s luster in the media world. But two months later on his next expedition Lowe was one of three climbers killed by avalanche in an approach to Shisha Pangma, one of the 8000 meter peaks on any mountaineer’s list.

In the end, it probably didn’t matter to Lana Lowe that the web coverage we did for Trango Tower ended favorably, or that the Outside Magazine story planned about her husband’s Shisha Pangma attempt didn’t come out as scripted. What mattered was her loss, and the loss to her children.

It’s the same in the Irwin camp, I’m sure. He will be missed, for his wit and daring and good-humored goofiness. And nationally, Aussie’s will miss him as a representative of their colorful national character, an ambassador of Oz and lover of natural history.

There was something transcendent about Steve Irwin, as if he were possessed by a higher power. One that pushed his own skin forward that the lot of us would be less intimidated, less afraid. The bleeding edge, if you will… as indeed he was, at the last. The public interest in and grief over Irwin's death signals his importance to the public imagination, if nothing else. (A recent article from Australian Broadcasing Corporation discusses this aspect of the event.)

Maybe we need people like Steve Irwin. Our kind, our species needs examples of the edges, needs to know what is possible and what is just ordinary. Nothing Steve Irwin did was ordinary, he seemed above the usual, tougher than the rest (though his self-effacing humor and evident giddy nerves in the face of his deadly adversaries endeared him to us). His was a well-crafted character, media-savvy and appealing.

Now that he’s gone, we have to ask ourselves, Are we complicitous? Did we buy into the myth by gluing ourselves, grinning, to the tube as he wrestled with crocs and our fears? And did Steve Irwin himself buy into the myth of Steve Irwin? "I thought you were immortal," at least one wreath commented. "How I wish that were true!"

Yet at the end, even given how it ends, aren’t we better off for the life he led? Maybe he didn't die for our sins, or even our entertainment, but he died for our curiosity, as well as his own.