Mel Gibson--The Director as Torturer

been gone from here for a really long time. but now i want to rant.

i went to see mel gibson's apocalypto last week. as an enthusiast of historical fictions (books and movies), i thoroughly enjoy seeing or reading how other minds try to reinvent the cities, the customs, the dress, the conversations, the uses of technology, etc., of socieites long ago, and here was the first major film to take up a recreation of a part mesoamerican history.

i should have known not to expect much from the box-office's leading snuff filmaker. in fact, i went to the film already skeptical and highly guarded, but that was not enough.

mel gibson is an extremely deranged man who has made yet another outrageously inaccurate, ideologically absurd and insulting film (see this excellent commentary here) that is full of blood and gore.

since the article linked to above covers all of the ideological bullshit and obfuscations of gibson's latest peice of shit--labelling the film with anything more than a cuss word is to give it too much praise--i will comment briefly on gibson's indulgence of his passion for blood and guts. gibson has no qualms about subjecting his audience to his private fascination with cruelty while telling them his (flawed, racist, and ignorant) story.

gibson relishes in splashing blood on camera lenses and in conjuring the most minute, second-long glimpses of gore that he can throw at an audience to disrupt an otherwise flowing moment. he is far more affective than any horror movie director, the latter of whose gore usually is fanciful and removed from reality. with gibson, there is an air reality to the gore, but crucially, there is no critical distance in the portrayal. gibson does not for a moment intend to critique human cruelty--it is rather clear that this director delights in the bloodletting he portrays and derives juissance from his affective representations of cruelty. gibson's two latest movies present the director as torturer--and not in metaphor but in real affect, pure and simple. the passion of the christ was more about the testosterone level and sadomasichism of the director than it was about spirituality and a real, historical and suffering figure of world history, while apocalypto is. . .fucking ridiculous (as was the passion, too).