Extra-judicial Killing?

Errr... shouldn't it be just called plain murder?

The term has been a buzz around Philippine media these past months, when some activists and journalists getting killed. Groups representing both blame the government for their deaths. Thus, they use the term "extra-judicial killing" to imply that the government has a hand in their deaths. But is the government alone capable of these things? If circumstances present themselvs (hopefully not), perhaps I would be capable too.

Of course anyone's death is a sad and unfortunate thing, especially if it is violent. But all the protests and denunciations give me the impression that these guys think that they are excused from death because of their status. Farmers, accountants, soldiers, children, wet market vendors, butchers, high school students and others die just as much as them but they shouldn't suffer because they're "journalists and activists?" Wow!

I for one think, it's over the top. Lots of people, including me unfortunately, would love many of these journalists and commies to meet their just ends soon, mercifully. Many of them style themselves liberators and advocates of the poor and oppressed. I for one think they're simply highly successful manipulators of the poor and knaves who have been handed a hugely unbalanced share in influencing the hearts and minds of many Filipinos with their tempting tongues. Knowing this full well, they corrupt the power in their hands. Corruption is not the exclusive property of politicians.

I'm sure many ordinary Filipinos have been victimized by journalists and communist activists. I'm sure people felt swelling hatred and impatience against journalists when have been slandered by them in public. I'm sure the lefties have had their fair share of enemies within their organizations or people they ticked-off when they try to impose upon them their Communist agenda.

So when another one these people bites the dust and then their colleagues call for the of "extra-judicial killings", cynicism overwhelms me. I'm sure they're thinking they're next. I certainly hope so. God have mercy on us all.

I totally agree:

The Media is the plaything of a few rich men.

Do you need an accountant?

Another Case of Twins Separated at Birth

Controversy has erupted over pictures of Communist Party founding chairman Jose Maria Sison partying with sexy star Ara Mina in the Netherlands. I couldn't care less about Sison, but why would a communist be celebrating Christmas in the first place?

Anyway, Sison reminds me of another devil-tongued idiot, Eliseo Soriano.

Ouch!

"Bullet bounced off"

I want one!

Mic-mic doing his thing

Apocalypto, take 3

Amy Welborn's post last year simply shows I haven' been paying attention.

Apocalypto, take 2

This review from Slant Magazine proves that there are others who noticed the Christian imagery in Apocalypto, though this particular reviewer isn't happy with the movie nor with Mel Gibson. But at least he mentioned some of the things I forgot to mention in my previous post:

Gibson views Jaguar Paw as a Christ-like figure, staging his kidnapped people's journey from their village to the Mayan stronghold not unlike Jesus's journey to the cross. Gibson has no interest in extolling the riches of the Mayan culture, only its vile decadence (to the director, this was a culture that deserved to be conquered), [...] On their journey, they will encounter a little girl who is shrouded in mystery (she hovers over a dead woman, ostensibly her mother, marks on both their bodies that may or may not have come from the white man) and who throws a fierce prophecy to the wind. It is as if she were warning of Christ's resurrection. Indeed, when Jaguar Paw escapes his captors, who hold court like Herod and celebrate the day like the people of Babel, or the Temple of Doom (take a whiff the emperor's fat-little-piggy son, then dig that shot from the point-of-view of a decapitated head!), Gibson imagines Jaguar Paw like Jesus at the very end of Passion of the Christ: the original last-action hero. But there is a difference between Christ and Jaguar Paw: Though he busts a move like a sick motha, Jaguar Paw doesn't so much itch for vengeance as he thrills for survival. Apocalypto finds something spiritual in dramatic juxtapositions of emotion. As Jaguar Paw, a lethal weapon of a man, returns to his village, his vigilance is contrasted with that of his wife, who struggles, on the brink of giving birth, in her stone pit against the forces of mother nature—killing an ape-like creature, ingeniously stitching up a wound on her son's leg with decapitated ant jaws, and trying to stay above water when it begins pouring. [...] When Gibson allows for scenes such as Blunted's mother-in-law, after she isn't sold into slavery by the Mayans, connecting emotionally for the first time with her son-in-law in the face of their hopeless spiritual depletion, the director recalls the great Mary-Jesus flashbacks from Passion of the Chris, offering us a glimpse of that heart he otherwise delights in ripping from people's chests

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Vestments

Allusions in Apocalypto

I finally saw Mel Gibson's Apocalypto last month. Twice actually. The first time I saw it was an opportunity to enjoy a film for its cinematic and artistic qualities. I won't go into the details for that one. For the second time, I was struck by the Christological and sacramental allusions in the movie.

I don't know if Mel Gibson really intended the character Jaguar Paw to be a Christ-like figure and if anybody else noticed it. The sacrament of Baptism was also notable, at least for me. In fact, I thought I was just seeing one or two coincidences in the movie but as it went on, the numerous sprinkling of Christological and sacramental allusions would be so difficult to discount. I feel that I shouldn't be surprised to see sprinkling of such Christian imagery in the movie of a guy who made the Passion of the Christ.

So let me enumerate below some of the points of Christological allusions I've observed in Apocalypto:

1. During the village-raid scene, the men were bound to bear bamboo poles together. The entire scene was reminiscent of Christ carrying the cross.
2. A wikipedia contributor noted that the march of the captives to the temple took place during a full moon. Christ's Passion took place during the Passover festival which always takes place during a full moon.
3. The weird kid prophesying that Jaguar Paw will be bringing their world to an end. It indeed ended. Christ inaugurates a new creation.
4. There was a crowd witnessing the ritual hoping to get some of the blood of the victims. There's also a scene there where mothers are smearing their babies with blood from the victims' severed heads. The scene feels like the mob at the Via Dolorosa and Calvary asking for Jesus' "blood to be upon us".
5. Christ's crucifixion and the sacrifices took place at a height. The pyramid is reminiscent of Mount Calvary.
6. When Christ died on the Cross, there was darkness during the midday. When Jaguar Paw was about to be sacrificed, though he does not die, a lunar eclipse occured.
7. A very prominent point of convergence, I think, is the common conviction of Jews, Christians and Mesoamericans and others that a bloody sacrifice is required by a Divine Being from its worshippers. I heard from a religious documentary years ago that during Spanish colonial times, many natives were attracted to Catholicism because it also had a ritual involving blood sacrifice, though it was sacramental in Catholicism's case. So at the onset, I already had that in mind while watching the movie. In fact, it was with this perspective that led me to see the other Christological elements in the movie.
8. When the captives were to be disposed by being made into moving targets at a ball field, Jaguar Paw manages to escape though wounded by an arrow at his side. His side wound be an allusion of Christ's side wound.
9. An interesting image is that of Jaguar Paw emerging from a pit of quick sand. I may be over-imagining things but I think the scene has several layers to it. First, this looks to me a nice visual of the creation of Adam from the mud of the earth. Second, it could also be seen as Christ rising from the underneath the earth as he Resurrects. The scense also served as a turning point in the movie. Jaguar Paw isn't just running away from his pursuers, he's fighting back.

For the movie's allusions to Baptism:

1. The scene at the waterfall, where his blue paint was washed off. This would be a pretty standard imagery for baptism where sin is washed off, if I were to direct. The addition of one of his pursuers dying in the waterfall clued me to something I wouldn't have otherwise noticed: of the 9 raiders originally pursuing him, 7 died for various reasons, including 1 in the waterfall. (I counted them during my second view of the movie.) I dunno, should I be seeing Christ, as personified by Jaguar Paw, killing off the Seven Deadly Sins through the Pascal mystery and Baptism or something like that? Perhaps.
2. The scene of Jaguar Paw's wife giving birth to their second child in a pit-like cave while being immersed in water is especially wonderful for me. If you didn't see the Baptismal imagery here, you should get your Catholic eyes checked. What I see is an imagery of a Christian being born as a Child of the Spouse of Christ (the Church) through the waters of Baptism and then raised into salvation from the pit by Christ himself.
3. Finally, the waters of the sea brought salvation by bringing men who distracted Jaguar Paw's 2 remaining pursuers.

Of course, not all items in the movie above had striking point-by-point similarities with the Gospel account of Christ's passion or of the theology of Baptism. I would posit that the Apocalypto story is an exciting, action-packed re-imagery of the Pascal mystery and the Sacrament of Baptism according to the Christian-myth-making tradition of JRR Tolkien. It's certainly proves that salvation history is anything but boring. One might consider it a good movie for your Lenten mediations.

If Mel Gibson was consciously trying to do a Tolkien, he really did a good job with it.

I'm back!!!!

I'm sure my fans (total 0) would be happy to know that I have returned to blogging. Why? I need to keep myself sane again! So here goes...

LET'S EAT THE ODDS!

Guess where I was last Monday

I'm one of the rare Filipinos...

who need this

Projectile motion is fun!

Here's how some people look at Pope Benedict

A mere thought

Discrimination doesn't discriminate

A friendly reminder

Random thoughts:

freedom is a humbling experience; one realizes one's insignificance with respect to the bigger world that reveals itself upon one's experience of freedom.

bondage, meanwhile, inflates one's ego, it's a natural means of defense for the person who needs to strengthen his inner most self against the crushing weight of the lack of freedom...

Just an experiment

to test google: Patty Elemos

And now the latest in Papal fashion:

The Camauro is back (nicely described by Yahoo as a papal santa hat)

Catholic Nerds Rejoice!

Web-Based Messaging

using yahoo messenger through your internet explorer... interesting...

My friend and business partner Micmic

being clobbered in the SEA Games

the vietnamese was too tall for micmic...

Saddam?

apparently not

Franciscan monks in Assisi -- considered too leftist by some Italian Catholics

man, would jose rizal be surprised.

Something worth blogging:

Italian man "understood everything" during 2-year coma

It says here... (warning PDF file)

Tens of other studies have confirmed Kuznets’s finding showing no clear link between population growth and economic growth. Similar conclusions have been arrived at by the U.S. National Research Council in 1986 and in the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Consultative Meeting of conomists in 1992.

so the UN knows?

I know somebody who's just as annoying

More Flips to Euro

someone at mark shea's blog commented on bringing more filipinos to europe to save it from being "eurabia." i agree fully. i would support any movement that would advocate such a thing. european and philippine interests would complement each other. the phililppines is said to be suffering from "overpopulation" (although i've challnged this thesis its premises before). so sending our "excess" population to a underpopulated area would be a interesting solution to our "population problem." plus filipinos can provide cheap but highly skilled labor that european entreprenuers need. there are more bonuses, in that filipinos are more sociable than their muslim counterparts. there are millions of filipinos working around the world trying to earn a decent living to feed their families back in the philippines and we haven't seen any major incident of filipino terrorism so far (hehehe). and filipinos, as the late pope john paul ii envisioned, would be the light of asia and the world. filipinos have brought the faith with them and have in many instances revived faith in the areas where they find themselves, as proven by the success of apostolates and groups like the Couples for Christ.