La ultima cena-Blog 2

La ultima cena- Blog 2

Mass Paranoia

“To be considered ‘historical,’ rather than simply a costume drama that uses the past as an exotic setting for romance and adventure, a film must engage, directly or obliquely, the issues, ideas, data, and arguments of the ongoing discourse of history.”

This movie very directly involves the issue of slavery and confronts it with great historical accuracy. It is a startling portrayal of ignorance, influence, and most of all the power of freedom. Through plain and unclear symbolism it is able to depict all of the points of view whether they were right or wrong.

The strongest use of symbolism is through religion. The movie is full of religious symbols especially through the use of Holy Week to portray all of the events. The symbolism is also comparative, between what the Count believes and what is actually occurring. For example at the end of the movie the Count portrays Don Manuel as Jesus but Jesus is actually symbolized through the twelve slaughtered slaves and especially the slave Sebastian. Sebastian is raised again at the end of the movie through his freedom being symbolized through birds, and other animals. There is also symbolism through the Count’s bird at the beginning of the movie. He has it caged up and is trying to make it sing. This symbolizes all of his slaves who he tries to make convert to Christianity but like the bird it is not easy for them to forget everything they have always known.

The three strongest elements involve the three white men and their delusions about slaves. There is the Count, the foreman, and the priest. The Count plays the typical plantation owner who is out of touch with his plantation. He thinks that he can come in and make radical religious changes and in turn be seen as a good slave owner who has never done anything wrong. He does not see that his ignorance about the interactions on the plantation and even of the slave itself will lead to his demise. The foreman in the movie typifies what John Mraz described in his piece; he is forced by the demand constraints. But, he also is influenced by enlightenment thinking and does not see the importance of teaching the slaves religion. He above all sees the slaves as producers and nothing else. The priest is the most ignorant of all, he believes that by teaching the slaves Christianity and obedience through religion that they will see that their situation is actually somehow meant to be. All three of these men are delusional.

Through the research of Sergio Giral he is able to get into the heads of these men and describe what they were really thinking. He is able to describe to the audience how these men see the slaves as having the intellectual capacity of lower than a child. They do not see them as humans. What is even more surprising is the dehumanizing within the priests eyes. Through his eyes the slaves did not have a culture or religion before becoming slaves.

A surprising well-done portrayal in the movie is of the slaves. They do not seem like cultureless machines. They have a story of their own, and Giral describes what their lives were like before being captured. In one of the readings this week, from the website entitled “The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas,” it was very interesting to see the images of slave life. One category, which contrasted well with the movie, was the Pre-Colonial Africa. Because, one thing the movie emphasized that is so overlooked when studying the miseries of slavery is the culture that these slaves left behind in Africa. It is referenced many times in the movie especially during the dinner scene. The Count asks one of the slaves about his culture back in Africa. He responds by stating that he was a King. He describes how the culture of slavery became rooted in their culture of war with other tribes. Through the images on the website, the rich culture even civilization that these people had is witnessed. The idea that through slavery the white man was saving Africans from a life of barbarianism is not true. Comparatively the destructive factor of slavery was much like the destructiveness of the encounter with the Indians. Men and women of rich heritage were stripped of all of this and forced to work for the white man. In return the white man expected that the African conform to his customs. This forced custom is seen in the movie through the scene where the priest is making the slaves bath to make themselves clean. He gets angry with the women because they are bare-chested while washing clothes in the river. He says that they are sinners. This is what they are accustomed to, what they have done for centuries. For a white man to first force them to come to his country and then expect them to change to his needs shows the true ruthlessness of slavery from every dimension.

The most powerful element of all is the power that the slaves figure out that they have and through that take initiative. The slaves have more power than they even know they have. That is one point that Giral tries to make throughout the movie is the paranoia that the white man had. Especially the influence of the Haitian rebellion on the mindset of these people. As Kirsten Shultz points out in the example of Brazil, in the country of Brazil which was much like Cuba the sheer mass population of slaves created a climate of paranoia. This sense of paranoia would become to backbone of the way the slave owners communicated and punished their slaves. As Kristen Shultz gives the example in her article about Brazil, “Slavery dominated early nineteenth century Brazil’s economy and society, and at least half of the population was of African descent.” Through this movie Giral portrays slaves as being in a dire situation, but he does not paint a hopeless population. He shows that through the use of sheer numbers and imbedded paranoia that the slaves in many cases could succeed to freedom.

Till next week,

matteavs

             

The Mission-Unchanged

Week 1-The Mission

“Thus have we made the world…thus have I made it.”

The movie we watched this week ends with this closing line. It is very fitting ending for an apologetic movie. But, at the same time it is not void of the same stereotypes that enveloped the society in which it is set in. The movie continues the always-relevant principle of the white man saving the uneducated native. This does not just apply to the Spanish invaders but also to the Jesuit missionaries. The fact that writers of the movie decided to stray from the true history of the Guarani’s self revolt to a revolt led singularly by the Jesuit priests shows that they were wanting to portray the Jesuits as solely saving the Guarani. But, were they saving them or just creating another interruption to their lives?

As Altamarino states himself maybe the natives would have been better off if none had them come. I agree with the movie that the Jesuits were trying to do better than the slave traders. But, what the movie does not explain is the ulterior motives that the Jesuits did have. They were in it for economic benefit also. Their missions were also supposed to be just a transition for the indigenous people before they would become “civilized.” What the movie forgets to portray is the culture that the people had before it. Christianity was not their first religion. They would not have given up their local religions completely and take up Christianity. It would have most likely been a combination of both of them.

Furthermore, I agree completely with James Sahoefield Saeger about the beginning of the movie. The beginning makes the Guarani look barbaric without any explanation. It is carrying on the ethnocentrism that already exists. It gives no Indian side to the story of what it would be like to have a white man come into your village and try to start changing things automatically.

The movie in general relies too much on the old plot line that has been used in movie after movie. It is seen movies from Pocahontas to Avatar. But, what is burned at the alter of this old Hollywood trick is the real story and the real history. To give the movie a heroine they do not choose one of the Guarani but a white man specifically Robert De Nero an upcoming popular actor. I feel that this movie felt that it was setting itself apart from all the others in trying to teach the viewer a lesson. It is trying to make the viewer more aware of the imprint that he or she is leaving in the world. How he or she has shaped the world and the suffering within it. While this is a wholly ethical goal, it was not reached in this movie. The viewer is left with the unchanged story, the white man’s martyrdom for an indigenous population that he himself has already altered.

Till next week,

matteavs

Historiography 1

Historiography I

Leopold von Ranke stated, “the purpose of history was to clarify our notion of the origin and nature of the state.” What are the roles of the writers of history, historians? What makes them qualified to do this?

These questions were all answered by the reading this week and through our class time. Historians are not supposed to just explain history but interpret it. What this actually means has evolved since the professions birth in the nineteenth century. One evolution that has made an extreme impact on myself is what James Harvey Robinson describes. He gives a very good descriptive analysis of the shift in the history field from what we described in class as the Great Man History to wanting to learn about the everyman and how he lived his life. He also describes the shift from the interest in the sensational to the interest in the normal.

William Cronon, in his essay listed the qualifications that make up the profession and then presented his own thoughts on what should make up the training to be admitted to the historical guild. What makes Cronon’s thoughts interesting and challenging are not the list of qualifications but his own ideas. For myself they challenged my own ideas of training I will need. Cronon specifically talked about the Public History field, which is what I want to go into. He challenged the divergence that many public historians feel separates them from academia. He believes that public historians could have an academic training to understand the beginnings of the history in which they are presenting.

One topic that was discussed in a majority of the essays was the role of bias in history and accepting the natural bias that occurs in the writing of history. For me the bias of history is what makes the profession interesting and fresh. It is what keeps the profession going and limitless. Topics such as the Civil War and World War II are written about over and over again. But, what makes each work refreshing is the bias that occurs which makes it different from all works that came before it. Historians then analyze these works and write their own that will be analyzed in the future.

The key part of this is originality for the historians to keep asking new questions and interpreting in new ways. As William Cronon states, “Interpretation is as important as explanation.” Historians can all explain the events that they study. But, what sets them apart is how they analyze them and present it to the reader. Out of this interpretation questions are asked such as: “What is the larger picture?” or “Why is this important?” We also learn about the historian’s own time from their writings. For example we were able to learn about the nineteenth century and the moral codes of the time through Lord Acton’s writings.

As Carl Becker states, “History is the memory of things said and done.”

Till next week,

matteavs