🚀 go-pugleaf

> Mikel Morrisek:
>
> >Dr. Zhivago was probably the greatest box-office hit that Russian cinema
> >ever had.
Luistxok:
> Yes, Mikel, but regarding "Viva Zapata" you should be more politically
> correct. That is Native American cinema, more precisely Zapotec cinema.

** I don't see what you are getting at, really. I was trying to make a
point that supported what you had said earlier. If I failed to do that,
sorry.
     Of course Marlon Brando's film was neither Mexican or Zapotec or
even American. It was pure Hollywood gloss designed to make money.
>
> You did see the film and did not notice that Marlon Brando was a Oaxaca
> indian speaking Zapotec?

** Hardly, since Marlon speaks English so well in it and all the
Mexicans in it, even in the original version, are Mexicans who say "si
Seqor" instead of whatever they would say in Zapotec.
    Besides, most Americans (or most Westerners for that matter) prefer
to cling to their simplistic vision of the world. All Mexicans are
mariachis, all Spaniards look like Curro Jimenez or El Zorro and dress
like the Ku Klux Klan during Easter, all Frenchmen are Maurice Chevalier
clones, all Germans are stiff-armed disciplinarians, all Chinese sly,
money-grubbing and shifty, Englishmen are either perfectly charming
gentlemen or perfectly digusting Cockneys. The Irish are almost never
shown to be speaking Gaelic.
     To explain to them that not all people in Russia are Russian or not
all people in Turkey are Turkish, etc. is an impossible task since that
would require a bit of background knowledge and most people,
unfortunately, could care less. Knowing about the details of Leonardo di
Caprio's life or sports seem to be more worthwhile.

     I have seen many more films with my mother's people, the Cherokees,
in which their language is never heard. They all miraculously speak
fluent English that would put most English philogy professors at the
EHU  to shame. That is as miraculous as the peasant woman in the
"Basque" film Akelarre who scoffs at the Grand Inquisitor in flawless
Spanish (which puts my best efforts at Spanish to shame) even though
hardly anyone, if anyone at all, actually spoke Spanish in Zugarramurdi
in the 16th century.

> Well, then, perhaps someone drew a line in the script, and the poor
> zapotecs ended in the wrong side of the line. The writers were not very
> purist, probably.


** I don't think one in a million Americans even knows what a Zapotec
is; especially a Philistine script writer from Hollywood. Hollywood is
rarely accurate at anything in the films except when it comes to
spinning money from them. For instance, I have seen many films which
purport to be set in Brazil but the people speaking some choice words in
Spanish, for crying out loud. In the film "A man who would be King", the
Afghans from Kafiristan speak in Morrocan Arabic, not in Uzbek, Dari
Persian, or Pushto. This is not a question of being purist, it is a
question of being accurate and when there is money to be made and a
deadline to be met, art and truth are the first casualties to go.





> Have you seen Montxo Armendariz's Navarrese films? Can anyone suspect
> Basque was ever spoken in Navarre after seing those films?

** I have seen "Tasio" which is said to have taken place around Lizarra,
an area of Navarre where Basque tragically disappeared two centuries ago
(though, thanks to the big ikastola there, it is now returning). Thus,
one can hardly have expected poor old Tasio to be much of an euskaldun
since the film is set about 70 years ago.

> My mother tongue is to those films like Zapotec to Viva Zapata.

** Not quite. In a 1953 version of "Titanic" starring Clifton Webb and
Barbara Stanwyck, Clifton Webb asks a family of Basques, in English of
course, if they could sell him the father's ticket to America.
Inexplicably, they understand him even though they are poor peasants who
have never been to America or even heard English. Even more
inexplicable, and plain miraculous, they answer him in simple, but
correct English. They then discuss the matter among themselves in a kind
of Basque. It is mostly American-accented gobbletygook but it is
recognizably Basque. Obviously the director went to some effort to have
someone come up with a genuine Basque dialogue which the non-Basque
speaking actors then memorized with limited success. I doubt that has
ever been done for Zapotec but then maybe I'm wrong. I hope to stand
corrected.


Mikel Morris,
who pines for real Basque cinema