Sony's 2012 media event- the facts and the fiction

Sony and 2012: the facts and the fiction.

Indigenous elder calls for a media boycott of the new 2012 disaster movie

This week, on Thursday October 1st, between 10:50 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. EDT/PDT, Sony Pictures are planning an unprecedented media campaign across nearly 450 TV stations in the US in support of their forthcoming Roland Emmerich directed film “2012”. Three of the major US TV networks and dozens of cable stations will near simultaneously show a two minute preview from the film depicting what the film-makers describe as the largest “roadblock” scene ever filmed.

This will effectively be the largest film preview in history shown on more stations than the Superbowl, and potentially reaching as many as 110-140 million viewers. The Sony film, as you would expect from the director of “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow”, is a glossy, high budget, effects-laden disaster movie that uses some of the more dire predictions about what may happen in 2012 as its back story.

Is this really what we can expect in 2012? The Sony media campaign has already involved a widespread poster campaign that simply states: “We were warned. Search: 2012.” What do you get when you put 2012 into Google? A few weeks ago you may have found Geoff Stray’s excellent independent website, www.diagnosis2012.co.uk; an exhaustive and informative compendium of 2012-related research. Now instead, you will get the Sony website, www.whowillsurvive2012.com- of course, promoting the film. If you navigate this site and click on the box marked “the experience” you will also find a number of links to other websites including www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org and www.thisistheend.com

Both of these are “fake” websites created by Sony to promote the film, but neither is explicitly branded as associated with it. The goal is obviously to suggest to the casual clicker, drawn in by the poster campaign or the preview event, that these are real source of information. Of course, the moderately amusing Woody Harrelson videos on www.thisistheend.com should give the game away pretty quickly. However, the website for the “Institute For Human Continuity”, is much more invidious. For example, on its home page it offers the opportunity to sign up and register for the “survival lottery” which offers an opportunity to win a place in an underground bunker, subterranean city or even a place in space on a “free-floating space colony” so that the lucky few can survive the immanent apocalypse of 2012 .

All of this desperate survivalist fear-mongering is based on a totally unsupported statement found on the website that “We know that in 2012 there is a 94 percent probability that any number of global catastrophes will threaten all life on Earth.” Of course, careful analysis of this sentence renders the idea of there being a 94% chance of “any number” of events as being absurd, not to mention mathematically impossible. However many casual surfers will be taken in by this. This marketing strategy seems somehow resonant with the great Orson Wells radio production of War Of The Worlds. i.e. create fear and panic using authoritative fakery, sit back, and laugh at the dupes who lap it up. For many, the first exposure to the ideas, theories and prophecies associated with 2012 will be through this channel. Sony’s huge promotional budget will make sure of this.

The height of absurdity is reached on the Institute for Human Continuity’s website with their competition to become “leader of the post-2012 world”. Entrants will apparently compete for “the best scores in a few games designed to measure leadership abilities.” In the small print at the bottom of the page, it reads, “The Contest is open only to permanent legal residents of the 50 states of the U.S. or D.C.” Residents of the other 194 nations that comprise the world will probably find this notion strangely familiar.

Obviously the Institute for Human Continuity is fiction. So why should we care? It’s just marketing right. Well, in actuality, for better or worse, it is actually quite difficult to tell Sony’s hype and hoopla from many of the other sensationalist 2012 websites that seem to now dominate the Google ranking in the hope of a little overspill from the media giant’s table. Search 2012 and you will find any number of sites proclaiming true knowledge of the end of the world and/or “exclusive” insights into what will happen in 2012. Many of these seem substantially less grounded in reality than Sony’s slickly produced web media fictions.

None of this would matter if there weren’t good evidence that something significant may well be happening around 2012. For example, there are many prophecies from a number of indigenous traditions that suggest that around this time very significant changes may occur both on our planet and in the structure and purpose of human civilization. The tag line for the main Sony website is “The Mayans predicted it. But we never imagined it could happen.” Is this really what the Mayans are predicting?

From looking at the “2012” website and its emphasis on the “Mayan ruins”, you could be forgiven for assuming that the Maya were an extinct or lost civilization. In fact, especially in the highlands of Guatemala, there are many tribes of indigenous Maya still living in the traditional way. They are still keeping alive their remarkable calendar, still exact to the day and have done so far at least fifteen hundred years.

Last year the National Council of Mayan Elders created a commission of twenty-five of their most knowledgeable tradition keepers to condense their prophecies about this time into a form that could be easily shared with the rest of the world. This was released this year with a lot less media attention than the Roland Emmerich film. What they said was that we are now living in a period they call “the end of time” and during this period, which could last as long as seven years, we should prepare for a great darkening of the sky. During this period, which will last about thirty hours or more, it will be unsafe to travel, or to be outside. At this time, there may be substantial earth changes, including earthquakes and flooding. However, most people who are prepared and stay put will be OK. The changes will pass and life will resume, albeit in new way. The key message of the Maya, which has been emphasized by Don Alejandro Cirillo, the leader of the National Council of the Maya, is “Don’t be afraid”. This is exactly the opposite message of the “2012” film.

It is possible, according to Don Alejandro that those who are unprepared for the coming changes, may die just from fear itself. These changes may come at any time and will not specifically happen just on December 21st, 2012, when the 5,125 years cycle of the Mayan calendar system known as the “thirteen baktuns” comes to a close. It is also possible that these changes will not happen until as late as 2015, according to the author and “spiritual teacher” Drunvalo Melchizedek, who has been appointed a spokesperson on the Maya’s behalf by Don Alejandro.

We could hardly expect Hollywood to resist this opportunity to share what Derek Harrar, General Manager and Senior Vice President of Video Services for Comcast has described as “compelling footage”. The rollercoaster thrills of a big budget disaster movie “events” are big business and “2012” is throwing its hat into the ring as the contender to be the biggest disaster movie of them all. On the other hand we have the elders from traditions like the Hopi telling us that the “hour has come” and our collective intent and focus at this time is creating and shaping the new reality we will very shortly be living in. Not a great time then to be binging out on fear!

At the recent Earthdance event on September 26th in Laytonville California, in a presentation of the indigenous prophecies, grandmother ChoQosh Auh’Ho’Oh called for a television boycott of the October 1st broadcast in response to the fear-mongering and distortions of native prophecy that are included in the film. What is required, in this time, she said, is for people to look to their highest possibilities, not the worst and that whatever our collective vision of 2012 is will be largely instrumental in creating what actually happens. Earthdance is a globally networked event that unifies over 200 locations in 50 countries through a synchronized “Prayer For Peace”. It is events like this, according to ChoQosh, that are required to pass through the “birthing process of 2012”. Events that unify people and allows us to collectively transcend the fear associated with the far-reaching changes that are happening at every aspect of life. “Come together and celebrate”, she said, “the time of the lone wolf is over.”

Perhaps the film “2012” is in some way also part of the prophecy of this time. Certainly, many millions more people will now know about this date and the associated predictions. It is now up to us, according to these indigenous elders, to take this opportunity and to transform it from a disaster movie into a happy ending.

Mark Heley
Author The Everything Guide to 2012, Adams Media