False Depictions of Atahualpa in The Royal Hunt of the Sun
Michael Sherman
In the film "The Royal Hunt of the Sun", Christopher Plummer, playing the role of Atahualpa, uses strong/controversial characteristics to display this leader. This sparks quite a bit of controversy because a non-native actor plays a role in which character traits are misrepresented in translating the character over to film. I believe that these misrepresented traits are misleading and stereotype a group of indigenous peoples.
("The Royal Hunt of the Sun" Atahualpa & Pizarro)
Interpretation and Reaction
I believe one of the most important misrepresented traits given to Atahualpa in the movie was the intelligence of the leader. One example of this was the scene in which Atahualpa took ahold of the Bible given to him by one of the foreigners. In this scene, Atahualpa was shown to have little intelligence by his understanding of the book. When given the Bible, he held it up staring at it, knocked on it, listened into it, then licked it. This shows that the movie wanted to display these foreign peoples to be less intelligent than the conquistadors taking over. Although, one argument against this could be that books were foreign to the natives, this scene over exaggerated Atahualpas response to the book itself. There is an article on ThoughtCo that describes the life of Atahualpa: The Last King of the Inca. In this article, the author Chirstopher Minster states, "Atahualpa was very intelligent and soon learned of the Spanish love for gold and silver." (Minister) This quote shows that Atahualpa was, at the time, capable of understanding situations and reacting to them. Furthermore, this proves the argument that the movie displayed an over exaggerated depiction of the unintellegence of Atahualpa.
Language and Mannerism
Another example of the film displaying false traits on Atahualpa also occured during the scene of Atahualpa in control of the bible. Although, this false depiction was the choice of language and attitude during the scene. When Atahualpa goes through trail-and-error trying to understand the bible, instead of speaking in language, he makes short moans and ghasps to show his anger towards the book. This proves that this movie was attempting to display Atahualpa as one of lesser intellegence and maturity through his short burst of short temper throughout this certain scene. In conclusion, the movie "The Royal Hunt of
the Sun" uses false representations of Atahualpa in an attempt to prove them inferior.
Topics Relevancy to Modern Day
This argument in relevant because the film is fasely representing a group by showing the leader to have an inferior intellegence and maturity. Furthermore, this impacts an outsiders thoughts on natives by displaying an over exaggeration of bad traits on the leader. I believe this story shall reconsider its efforts of displaying Atahualpa for the future of its shwoings. These reconsiderations should include making Atahualpa's intellegence equivelent to what Atahualpa was known for having rather than a twisted depiction.
Work Cited
"The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969)"
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