Conquest Of Paradise
1492, Conquest of Paradise: The
misrepresentation of the Film The movie,
Conquest of Paradise is very
inaccurate in its portrayal of Christopher Columbus
and what he brought to
the so called "New World". The movie shows
Columbus to be the first person to
discover America and to cross the Atlantic
Ocean when it is known that
others had accomplished this miracle years before he
did. Also, the movie
doesn't completely show the difficulty of the first voyage
and the fears of
the never reaching land after losing wind. Third, the movie
shows the
Spaniards and the Natives getting along peacefully and as one when
in
actuality the Natives were very unfairly mistreated. Lastly, the movie
only
shows the good things that Columbus brought to the islands and doesn't
show how
diseases were brought by the Spaniards. The movie portrays Columbus
to be the
first person to set foot on the Americas which is not true. Fabers
writes,
"Other explorers, notably Norsemen from Norway, Greenland, and
Iceland,
touched the shores of America many years before Columbus. More
importantly, when
Columbus first came ashore, he was greated by people he
called
"Indians." How could anyone "discover" a land where people
already
lived." (ix). Although Columbus was the first to cross the ocean
and keep a
written journal of his day to day travels many give him far too much
credit
and mistake him to be the discoverer America. In the movie Conquest
of
Paradise, the first voyage is shown much shorter and simpler than it
was. In
Roger Eberts review of Conquest of Paradise, he says, "What
disappoints me
a little about Scott's version is that he seems to hurry past
Columbus' actual
voyage of discovery. There is intrigue in the Old World and
adventure and
violence in the New, but the crucial journey that links them
seems reduced to
its simplest terms: The three ships sail, the crews grow
restless, Columbus
quiets them, and then land is sighted"
(*http://www.mrqe.com*). The actual
first voyage took over three month and
was much more difficult and agonizing
than shown by the movie. "On August 6,
four days after departing, the fleet
suffered its first mishap when the
rudder of the Pinta jumped its gudgeons. This
had been claimed as a
deliberate act of sabotage by the caravel's owner,
Christobal Quintero,
or by some of her crew who had already lost their
enthusiasm for a long
voyage in strange and dangerous seas" (Rienits 38).
The movie shows the
Spaniards and the Natives getting alone well and working
together as one
without prejudice. In the movie they say they claim to come in
peace and with
honor, that they don't look at them as savages, that they will
treat them as
if they are their own wives and children, and the they respect the
beliefs.
In actuality, the Natives were severely mistreated and viewed as
uncivilized
beings for not believing in the same God. Many of the Indians were
often
enslaved or killed for no reason, and the women were captured and
raped.
Sale tells how Columbus was, saying, "We have seen how he
conquered and
ruled the Indians by force, killing fellow beings with no more
compassion than a
butcher for his beasts. (201)" The Natives who didn't agree
with Columbus
on his building a colonial outpost were called "very wild".
Those who
were decided ate human flesh were called "brutish faces". The
Natives
of Jamaica who helped many of the sick Spaniards giving them food and
drinks,
Columbus wrote that he was "surrounded by a million savages full
of cruelty
and our enemies." Finally, in the movie, Conquest of Paradise,
Columbus and
his men are shown bringing many good things to the islands when
he really
brought more bad than good. The movie shows the Spaniards bringing
all good
things such as carpenters, priests, noblemen, laws, horses, cattle,
foods, and
the word of God. The bad they brought actually out-weighted the
good also
bringing diseases, starvation, crime, slavery, and harsh cruelty
towards the
Natives. In less than fifty years after the arrival of the
Spaniards the Natives
were already suffering great losses. "In Hispaniola,
the cruelty policy
begun by Columbus and disease brought by the Spaniards
resulted in genocide-the
mass deaths of the kindly, peaceful Taino people. In
1492, the population was
estimated at two hundred and fifty thousand. By
1538, only five hundred Taino
people were still alive" (Faber 56). The
Natives had no real enemies until
the Spaniards arrived. Once they arrived
the Natives felt that their land and
beliefs were being stolen from them and
viewed the Spaniards as beasts. The
Natives that did try to protect their
land were only killed because their
weaponry consisting of mostly bow and
arrows didn't even closely compare to the
advanced weapons of the Spanish
such as guns, knives, and swords. In conclusion,
the movie Conquest of
Paradise, falsely represents the actual story of
Christopher Columbus and
his voyages. The movie shows the brighter sides of the
story and doesn't show
quite how hard it was to cross the ocean and how the
Spanish really were
once the reached the islands. Most importantly, the movie
doesn't show the
way the Natives were severely mistreated, enslaved, and killed
by battles and
disease.
Bibliography
Ebert, Roger. 1492: "Conquest of Paradise".
9 Oct. 1992 http://www.mrqe.com.
Faber, Harold. Discovers of America. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992.
Rienits, Rex and Thea. The Voyages
of Columbus. New York: Crescent Books, 1989
Sale, Kirkpatrick. The
Conquest of Paradise, Christopher Columbus and the
Columbian Legacy. New
York: Knopf, 1991.