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The Mayan Calendar Portal calls on Hollywood to get 2012 right

World’s top Mayan Calendar portal web site offers global audiences a positive alternative to messages of apocalypse and "end of days" promoted by "2012"

The Mayan Calendar Portal calls on Hollywood to get 2012 right

World’s top Mayan Calendar portal web site offers global audiences a positive alternative to messages of apocalypse and "end of days" promoted by "2012"

Published 11-18-09

Submitted by LUCITé€

Mayan Calendar Portal

November 18, 2009-Roland Emmerich's special effects extravaganza 2012 has taken up the baton in the latest leg of humanity's millennia-spanning race toward the End of Days. But for many, it's running the wrong way. Representing a much more balanced and positive discourse on the 2012 phenomenon, the Mayan Calendar Portal is calling on Hollywood to help lead the change in the portrayal of the Mayan Calendar and its message and meaning for modern society. The message to Hollywood is, "Get it right!"

Following the footsteps of the other big-budget Maya-related film in recent memory-Mel Gibson's Apocalypto (2006)-2012 falls much deeper into the chasm of misrepresentation of the legacy this ancient culture has left us. This time, the motive for hijacking the Mayan calendar is neither religion nor geophysical conquest, but rather simply, mass entertainment and box office receipts. And riding the tsunami of 2012 are countless survival web sites, pundits and even real estate agents peddling everything from canned food and survival kits to your very own underground bunker.

"With so many serious issues weighing down our political and economic discourse, from unemployment and a growing national debt, to climate change and and health care reform, I don't think our national psyche-nor that of other nations-has room for more fear and anxiety," says Birgitte Rasine, producer of the Mayan Calendar Portal and chief evolution officer of LUCITÀ, the company that maintains the site. "People are burned out from the constant worry about their future; why not give them a future they can actually look forward to? It would cost the same."

And despite strong box office receipts, audiences are not impressed; some are boycotting the film outright. The Mayan Calendar Portal is experiencing an influx of web traffic, emails and fans on its social media platforms looking for objective information about the 2012 phenomenon and the Mayan Calendar, as well as requests from networks planning their own 2012-related programming. Citizen movie reviews have been pouring in, calling on the director and SONY Pictures to use their massive production and marketing resources to produce movies that celebrate the more complex drama of the world we live in rather than rampant, wanton destruction, or at the very least an accurate representation of what the Mayan Calendar stands for. The citizen movie reviews can be viewed online at http://www.maya-portal.net/reviews/2012.

In his review of the film, Robert Sitler, Director of the Latin American Studies Program at Stetson University, says that the "misrepresentation of Maya ways has now reached new extremes in the 2012 phenomenon, the rapidly growing social movement surrounding the December 21, 2012 date on the Maya Long Count calendar. The stunning computer-generated apocalyptic images of the richly entertaining "2012" movie will no doubt draw even greater public interest in this extraordinary date in a way that may already exceed the dimensions of the earlier Y2K phenomenon. Unfortunately, the film only adds to the confusing amalgam of misinformation concerning the date’s significance."

"Creating fear about the future is irresponsible," agrees Mayan scholar and author Dr. Carl Johan Calleman. "Inherent in the Mayan calendar is a hope for the future, the advent of a renewed or better world, not the apocalypse."

"Equating the Mayan Calendar to doomsday, '2012' misinforms and distorts the true meaning of the Mayan sacred calendar which is about transformation, not the end of the world," says Michael Shore, director of Mayan Majix, another key international web site dedicated to the Mayan Calendar.

The living Maya themselves have been conspicuously quiet-if only because they prefer to attend to their affairs rather than fight against the massive torrents of Hollywood's marketing muscle. One of the few representatives of the Maya, Don Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj, Head of the National Maya Council of Elders of Guatemala, and the first Ambassador of Indigenous Peoples ever appointed to a formal government office, has consistently expressed his peoples' incredulity at the West's tenacious fascination with the end of the world. For the Maya, the end of one 5,125-year Long Count cycle is simply to make way for the next: in 2012, the world is going to transition from the fourth to the fifth Sun, which many consider a "shift of the ages", an evolutionary step toward higher consciousness.

As for the recent reports that Mr. Emmerich plans on developing a television series about the post-2012 world, he and the studios would be well-served by consulting the vast collective expertise of the international community supported by the Mayan Calendar Portal-and it is very willing to collaborate.

About the Mayan Calendar Portal
The Mayan Calendar Portal is the world’s most active portal web site dedicated to the sacred Mayan Calendar. Independently funded and maintained by LUCITÀ, the Portal provides information and resources about the Mayan Calendar, posts daily Tzolk'in energies for individuals and businesses via its social media platforms, features blogs from authors and other personalities working with the Mayan Calendar, displays photography, art, music and videos from its communities, and serves as a platform for a broad variety of voices from all over the world on issues related to the role the Mayan Calendar plays in modern society. For more information about the Mayan Calendar Portal, please visit http://www.maya-portal.net.

About LUCITÀ
LUCITÀ is a socially responsible visual communications company providing high-end design, production and communications consultancy services to domestic and international business, non-profit, academic and government entities that strive to improve the world we live in. A signatory member of the Global Compact, the company is based in Milford, Connecticut. For more information about LUCITÀ, please visit http://www.lucita.net.

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