by Neil Vodavzny

The costume I wear is so mythic it belongs to every culture of a warrior society ... It’s like, is this an animal or a man?
Raul Trujillo, Zero Wolf

I’m replying to comments indirectly as there’s a lot of ground to cover, some of it left-field (my favourite). It is remarkable the number of similarities between Apocalypto (Gibson) – set in a re-imagined Mayan kingdom at the time of the Conquistadors – and the original Conan film of 1980 (Milius), based on Robert E Howard’s prehistoric Hyborian age of bejewelled kingdoms and barbarians.

Apart from the visual resemblances which I’ll get to, they are worlds of spirits and living gods. Over the course of Apocalypto, Jaguar Paw becomes imbued with the spirits of the jungle, enduring swamps and racing through greenery, his naked skin changing colour accordingly, using mud, hornets’ nests, poison toads, blow-darts as weapons to defeat Zero Wolf and his henchmen. He calls on the forest to give him strength, which it does.

Conan may be of a less superstitious bent, but when the ‘living god of Set’, Thoth Amon, tells him, “I am your father, you are nothing without me”, his resolve is almost fatally compromised. Milius’s theme is that his belief in the power of his sword-arm is stronger than the superstitions of Set-worshippers, but without his belief he is still nothing.

Both heroes are primeval, in living close to nature and relying on their wits. In other words, they are savagery personified, highly intelligent and resourceful, almost the Superman of Nietzsche’s poem, physically and mentally coordinated with surroundings, mind attuned to a pitch of keenness unknown to modern Man.

You really have to have read Howard to get a sense of the zest. These men are the best that nature has to offer, irrespective of race or creed. They are warriors born, and you get the same feeling from Braveheart and Spartan epic 300.

All of these societies, of whatever era, are tiered. So you have peasants living with the land, aristocracy or Squires (landowners), kings or rulers. This is very apparent in the look of both films, obviously with hamlets and hovels dotting the landscape. The journey through ford and forest to the great Mayan city is a ferocious contrast, a pell-mell fandango of fantastical body-ornament, dancers, drummers and pitiless crowds, through which the hapless sacrifices are led up the steps of a giant pyramid to where the demi-god sits, where their living hearts are dutifully torn out by the high-priest of Kukulcan.

The other common ingredient is that sets (not Set) are real constructions – vast edifices with a great sense of weight and tactility, cameras roaming around in them as our eyes and ears. Now, there’s an odd similarity to Conan when the heads clatter down the steps of the pyramid. At the end of Conan, he beheads Thoth Amon, casting his head down the processional stairway to his appalled followers.

The Mayan society is a fantastically ornamental, baroque affair, Conan is more grim. But, the idea you get is these great spectacles are the product of tiered societies, of peasants and rulers, demi-gods and high priests, whether nefarious or more benign. So, they are very unequal societies, as is true of most (on the other hand, you can be born a slave and then kill your master).

I’m not saying we don’t get spectacle nowadays, but these are socially significant spectacles, like a coronation. Roles are socially/mythically validated, between ruler and ruled (or follower). Now, these societies are irrational and extremely structured. You can almost see it in the architecture. What I’m saying is that modern Man is in a type of Enlightenment trap – irrespective of race. The Randian creative intellect is still a product of that rationalising, and thereby limited.

The more holistic society is ornamental, even fantastically so. The structure of the society is the means whereby creative-intellect functions, not in a vacuum of problem-solving - the brain is not like a computer that just works on problems, it’s put to dynamic use.

The societies are also based on peasant farmers and the land, without which nothing can thrive. IQ is not the be-all-and-end-all and any arguments to the contrary belong to a rational world, which cannot see what is truly vital. Zest, spirit, the active process of living with the land, and thereby using intellect to some good purpose.

All the products of Man that have stood the test of time are part of that world - the picturesque heritage sites tourists flock to. I suppose you could say our products may endure, but not the sense of belonging to the geography and climate of the land, as with a Mayan temple.

The entire romantic movement in Europe would be unthinkable without this connection to geography and climate – the Alps, the Scandinavian myth-cycles, Byron’s pilgrimage to Italy in Childe Harold. They are poetic responses to a world that is not capable of being tamed. In order to view this world of iconic forces, we have to see beyond a rational one of genes, IQ, cyber-tech (or all three!) The context is never rational. That’s not to say all is chaos – nothing to excess. See image of Cimmeria by Robert E Howard, illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith.

Have a look at this link.  This is the rationalisers at work, blind to the spirit being trampled. I’ve no strong opinion as to miscegeny, except that it may be part of the same rationalising process that on the one hand ignores race, and on the other deems it capable of scientific investigation. It’s the same argument advanced by Clifton, applied to spirit – not to question the answers we’ve intuited, but to challenge the questions of the doubting mind.

Gibson makes a comment on the “old soul” in the eyes of a Mayan youngster (playing the prophetic witch). That is the spirits of her ancestors. Lineage and dynasty are a mysterious form of communion with ancestors, something not as rational as race, and to my mind more interesting. At worst you’re a snob. It’s something you find in Edgar Allan Poe (no friend to the demos), and is indefinable.

In that living societies have inherited customs, the endurance of tradition is completely key. “Without traditions we cease to exist”

Connecting with the spirits of the past takes us out of what I see as the ideological trap which both sides seem to inhabit.

The year revolved around the village, the festivals round the year, the church round the festivals, the Squire round the church, and the village round the Squire.The Squire was ourcentre, a crumbling moot tree; and few indeed of our local celebrations could take place without his shade.
Cider With Rosie, Laurie Lee