by Alan Hall
The grumbling message of social mood is growing louder. America’s icon of family entertainment has heard its tone, and decided that blood, guts and gore are a suitable side dish to their family fare buffet. Walt Disney Studios is distributing Apocalypto, Mel Gibson’s new, hyper-violent film about Mayan culture collapse.
Apocalypto is also a Greek verb that means, “I reveal,” which the now-contrite Mel certainly did recently, way more than he wanted to. No problem; the chairman of Walt Disney Studios said, “Moviegoers will likely look past Mel Gibson's off-screen behavior when they view his new film.”
The chairman may be right. Viewers should be too overcome by graphic horror to worry about Gibson’s public personal life. One prominent reviewer says the movie is a, “torture-fest so violent that women and children will be headed to the doors faster than you can say duck.” And -- “Indeed, Apocalypto is the most violent movie Disney has ever released, with so much blood spurting out of orifices that even Martin Scorsese would blush.”
The reviewer goes on: “Apocalypto surpasses The Passion in every way as a movie about pain, flagellation and wounding. The grotesqueries are almost numbing, and at some point they become laughable. But all the while, you're thinking, what's the point here? If Apocalypto was supposed to be about that [Mayan] transitional civilization, where is it? After two hours and several minutes of squirming and covering eyes, you start to think that Apocalypto exists just to show violence for itself. The point is lost.”
In an interview Gibson says, “Apocalypto is an action movie, but it's got a political point. It's about a dying civilization — a great culture destroyed by fear and corruption. A lot of people are going to wonder if it's a metaphor for our own society.” “We're all afraid.” “I've been finding out more recently — how racked by fear we are as a society.”
So what is the point… of Gibson making such a violent movie, and Disney distributing it? Well, they’re both savvy entertainment producers who know how to give audiences what they want. That must be the point… $$$.
This is strange, spooky ground for America’s family entertainment icon. We are talking about Disney, a company so PC that it modified its decades old “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride at Disneyland in 1997 after visitors complained that animatronic pirates chasing buxom women suggested impending rape. The act was cleaned up, and now the women carry trays of food so the pirates appear hungry instead of horny.
Social scientists studying urban transformation use a perjorative term, “Disneyfication,” to describe sanitizing the original character of a real place or event by removing negative images and diluting facts to make the subject more palatable and easily grasped. Perhaps society is growing suspicious of sanitized imagery and Mary Poppins make-believe… and is ready to focus on darker themes.
Don’t get me wrong; I wish the best for Disney. We had some good times growing up together. But when I wrote recently that it is easy to imagine a “Disneygate,” it’s because icons like Disney become targets when social mood turns negative. Floridian Carl Hiassen has already drawn a bead, in his book Team Rodent.
The philosopher Jean Baudrillard has too, as he writes about the nature of reality and hyperreality in his book America. "The whole Walt Disney philosophy eats out of your hand with these pretty little sentimental creatures in grey fur coats. For my own part, I believe that behind these smiling eyes there lurks a cold, ferocious beast fearfully stalking us."