Earth’s a distant second to the world of “Avatar”
In my “Avatar” post, I wrote:
[The movie] fits in so nicely with the current notions of many of the AGW and PETA folks””that humans (especially of the first-world variety) are the scourge of an otherwise wonderful earth””that it makes me think the idea of humankind as a cancer on the planet has gone mainstream.
Well, I wasn’t too far off. CNN reports (hat tip: Artfldgr) that a number of “Avatar” moviegoers writing on an “Avatar” forum page are having post-Pandora letdown. Among them is Sweden’s Ivar Hill, a 17-year-old who writes:
“When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed … gray. It was like my whole life, everything I’ve done and worked for, lost its meaning,” Hill wrote on the forum. “It just seems so … meaningless. I still don’t really see any reason to keep … doing things at all. I live in a dying world.”
Well, Ivar does live in Sweden in the wintertime, and it’s pretty dark and cold this time of year. But still, this is an extreme reaction. Ivar added, when reached by CNN via e-mail:
“One can say my depression was twofold: I was depressed because I really wanted to live in Pandora, which seemed like such a perfect place, but I was also depressed and disgusted with the sight of our world, what we have done to Earth. I so much wanted to escape reality.
Hill is not alone. Some fans have even contemplated suicide, fantasizing that they will be reborn on Pandora. Others [emphasis mine] “have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality.”
[NOTE: And because we just can’t seem to leave well enough alone, now the movie is being charged with racism. Not because it’s against the human race, either, a point I asserted in my earlier post on the subject. And not because it’s against the white race, although the majority of the white people in it are villains in comparison to the noble blue Na’vi.
No; apparently it’s racist because a white man is a hero who saves the blue people—even though most of the other white characters are villains, all the blue ones are good and participate in their own “saving,” and the white hero inhabits a blue body for most of the movie and at the end of the movie decides [spoiler alert!] to permanently go over to the blue side.]
[ADDENDUM: As if that’s not enough, in another outbreak of bizarre and convoluted racism, ex-governor Ron Blagojevitch is accused of racism—for calling himself black: “blacker than Barack Obama” is the actual quote. Or is it that he’s calling Obama white?
You can’t make this stuff up. At least, I can’t.]
My father used to say, “These folks need a job.” We have far too many people who spend their time with their heads in the clouds.
Our high school did such a terrific job on “Brigadoon” that I was depressed for days that I couldn’t get there.
Is that the sort of thing…?
It’s the simple extension of modern liberal thinking. They’ve gone from “America=bad” to “white people=bad” to “humans=bad.” The depressing thing is how many people seem drawn to this attitude.
I gave my 12 year old son the choice this past weekend of which movie to go see. Surprised he didn’t try to talk me into Avatar, I asked why.
His response – he’d heard it wasn’t any good….
I’m so proud! 😀
I’m reminded of the determined efforts a friend and I made in elementary school to find our way into Narnia through every wardrobe, closet, cupboard, or cabinet we could find. It didn’t work, and the real world did seem, in some ways, limited and diminished by comparison to the magical world of the books — but oddly enough, we were not plunged into suicidal depression. Instead, we kept right on pushing coats aside and knocking optimistically on the back walls of closets for quite some time, between efforts to create our own Narnia in fantasy-world stories of our own that we fondly thought were almost as good as Lewis’s. Were we lamentably dreamy, unrealistic and unclear on the boundaries between fact and fiction? Yes, of course — but unlike the gloomy young-adult Avatar viewers quoted in the article, we were, after all, nine years old.
maybe since the left liberals (with the 7th column feminists) destroyed the stability of the family? Mrs Whatsit, you liked LWW because they come back to their families. unlike the more recent fair for children in which we generally see parents abandoned, mentally absent, or murdered for the plot.
i guess leaving the kids with strangers that dont care for them as mom makes tax money for the state, and breaks even… just wasnt a road to utopia.
Study: Youth now have more mental health issues
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_stressed_out_students/print
A new study has found that five times as many high school and college students are dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues as youth of the same age who were studied in the Great Depression era.
imagine that…
back then 95% had two parents
today only 25% have that, with more than half in single family homes rife with abuse from step parents… (with step dads they combine the stats with blood dads so as to disparage the safest by contaminating the numbers with the least safe)
however you have to like that they make up answers.
Though the study, released Monday, does not provide a definitive correlation, Twenge and mental health professionals speculate that a popular culture increasingly focused on the external – from wealth to looks and status – has contributed to the uptick in mental health issues.
notice how they avoid social engineering as the means of change and experimentation in the lives of these people…
when feminism asserted its marxist false idea of reality, it then acted on it to mold the population by other means than natural progression, while at the same time saying it was all natural. (yes, pre teens are clamoring to know how to fist each other anal)
of course the biggest things that changes between 38 and 2008 were socialist policies, and anti religion policies, and sexualizing of the kids, and raising nihilism to the dominant theory of life
Overall, an average of five times as many students in 2007 surpassed thresholds in one or more mental health categories, compared with those who did so in 1938. A few individual categories increased at an even greater rate – with six times as many scoring high in two areas:
– “hypomania,” a measure of anxiety and unrealistic optimism (from 5 percent of students in 1938 to 31 percent in 2007)
– and depression (from 1 percent to 6 percent).
Twenge said the most current numbers may even be low given all the students taking antidepressants and other psychotropic medications, which help alleviate symptoms the survey asks about.
so in this light.. .pandora is just the impetus kicking off the results of social engineering and pushing the kids made unstable by being experimented on by mengele’s… (mengela was searching for a way to make new socialist man too)
The study also showed increases in “psychopathic deviation,” which is loosely related to psychopathic behavior in a much milder form and is defined as having trouble with authority and feeling as though the rules don’t apply to you. The percentage of young people who scored high in that category increased from 5 percent in 1938 to 24 percent in 2007.
that is, they have changed the game to produce more sociopaths.. and that woudl then bring them out and allow the system to gather them. or has any one else noticed that the ideal that they are heading for is a SOCIOPATHIC UTOPIA…
[where torture, and pain, and doing things to good people are considered normal and they are there for your sport and to provide for parasitical cargo cult sociopaths… the whole marxist thing has been casted into the ideal state for sociopathic control]
Sarah Ann Slater, a 21-year-old junior at the University of Miami, says she feels pressure to be financially successful, even when she doesn’t want to.
“The unrealistic feelings that are ingrained in us from a young age – that we need to have massive amounts of money to be considered a success – not only lead us to a higher likelihood of feeling inadequate, anxious or depressed, but also make us think that the only value in getting an education is to make a lot of money, which is the wrong way to look at it,” says Slater, an international studies major who plans to go to graduate school overseas.
they are depressed that they have a false image of success and such… and who gave them that? oh yeah,, the people who were affected by the policies of bella dodd and others back when. no?
the point and depressions are real
but the people have no way to give an empirical answer since that would conflict with the ideology
walla can describe it much better than i can
Walmart Greeter Punched By Customer Gets Fired
Greeter Terminated For ‘Gross Misconduct’
“They told me I did a good job of defending myself,” said Bauman. “Then they turned around and fired me. I guess they just wanted me to stand there and get beaten.”
when police arrived at the property in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, they told Myleene that she should not have used the knife because it is still classed as an ‘offensive weapon’, even if you use it in your own home. Jonathan Shalit, Myleene’s spokesperson told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘Myleene was aghast when she was told that the law did not allow her to defend herself in her own home. ‘All she did was scream loudly and wave the knife to try and frighten them off. – UK
Half these people yammering about the wonders of nature would be completely lost if they had to live with their damn iphone for a week. If they really want to live in such a paradise, they can always go to some nice third world country with a jungle and live off the land…and hope the land does not return the favor. Nature can be brutal.
Terrye,
I grew up in the country – it always gives me a laugh when the urbanites I’m around now pontificate about mother earth.
Mother earth would eat them alive if they were to leave their safe little cocoons in the city and REALLY get close to nature….
Yes, frustration with the world as it is, and resentment at being stuck here, drive a great deal of liberal desires to make other people do the right thing. World peace, climate control, universal justice – if only the rest of us wanted those things with the same aching longing that they do, everything would be fine.
Therefore, they assume that we don’t want nice things for the world at all, have no right to an opinion among decent folk, and should be made to do the right thing. Whereupon we will all be content and have to admit they were right all along.
I guess that once you go blue, nothing else will do.
Earth First!
Then we kick Pandora’s Ass.
WHEW…!
Ivar, focus, yootful Dude. You live in a Scandinavian Paradise with–again, focus–the MOST BEAUTIFUL chicks on the freaking planet. You’d rather live with bug eyed ladies?? My faith in the resiliency of yoot is badly challenged by this news, Ivar. First your vacuous American contemporaries elect The Bamma…Now, you reject the tall, blond Viking Babes.
How about a trip to the Sudan for some what’cha’call perspective, Putz.
“have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality.”
Excellent. All we have to do is give them a little push like commit suicide, you’ll help save the world! and poof over the edge they go.
What? why are y’all looking at me like I have two heads growing out of my neck?
Notice how the faux-religion of environmentalism resemebles the faux-religion of al Queda: the high muckety-mucks are never on the bleeding edge of the struggle. Just saying…
I R A Darth Aggie,
The eloquence you expressed in your last post has left me in tears….lol.
Just think, generations of future democrat liberals being canceled out in one fell swoop – by their own hand no less!
Scottie…I, Evil Nefarious Cunning Neocon, weep as well.
Yeah, I’m depressed and frustrated that I will never bone one of those hot, blue, supermodel cat-girls….
In an artistic way in harmony with hot, blue, supermodel cat-girl tradition, of course.
ever since whats her face was blue and danced for kirk geeks have pondered sex with the aliens.
but given the vagaries of sex in the wild, i would think that humans are very lucky.
given that they live in harmony and a long time means they have the sex drives of wonderbread. for all we know, the males genitals may be ripped off in the process, that might slow things down a tad in a higher species.
OK folks, here’s my review of Avatar . . .
The plot is trite but the scenery is gorgeous. It’s definitely worth seeing, if you like nature and imaginative nature.
Sam Worthington is a very good-looking guy. I loved him in Terminator: Savation and thought he was far more attractive than the so-called hero, Christian Bale. Worthington’s a masculine man, not a childish boy, like most of Hollywood’s current crop of losers.
Anyway, here’s the way to approach Avatar: If you like opera or long symphonies like Mahler’s, then you’ll know how to approach Avatar. Enjoy the fabulous and gloriously beautiful effects, including land-based polyps, lush ferns, and humanoids who move like cats along tree branches or riding on colorful flying creatures that move like insects.
This is a film for people who like nature and opera. It’s not for people who have short attention spans or who look for meaningful plots.
What? Tristan und Isolde isn’t meaningful? Siefried and Die Walkurie don’t make sense?
Who cares? I rest my case.
What? Tristan und Isolde isn’t meaningful? Siefried and Die Walkurie don’t make sense?
Who cares? I rest my case.
Of course! That’s why the Jews so love Wagner and Teutonic mythology! It was just pretty music, nothing more….
Who cares? I rest my arsch.
but given the vagaries of sex in the wild, i would think that humans are very lucky.
Blue Supermodel cat-Girls Gone Wild?
Worthington’s a masculine man, not a childish boy, like most of Hollywood’s current crop of losers.
No. He does a good job pretending to be a masculine man. That’s why it is called acting?
In reality, he has never done shit.
If he was really a masculine man, he wouldn’t be a Hollywood studio cosset.
(Horrible we have to use the modifier “masculine” in front of “man” nowdays…..)
Oy, now I have to talk about whether Jews should listen to Wagner?
I don’t think so. Good night, all. I’ll take this up with you in the morning.
Enjoy the fabulous and gloriously beautiful effects, including land-based polyps, lush ferns, and humanoids who move like cats along tree branches or riding on colorful flying creatures that move like insects.
You’ll come for the land-based polyps!
You’ll stay for the military-bashing!
Oy, now I have to talk about whether Jews should listen to Wagner?
Or whether Soldiers should see “Avatar”.
Who cares? I rest my case.
“Some place where there isnt any trouble. Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? There must be. Its not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. Its far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain.”- Dorothy, from Wizard of Oz .
Cue Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Seriously, though… I wonder if this sort of thing happened back in 1939 when that movie came out…. or have we become so put-of-touch nowadays ?
Escapism always was the main motivation of movie going or reading, nothing new in it. But when escapism becomes an endemic obsession for some societies, they really are in precipice.
Forget football and boxing – Hollywood seems to be the modern answer to Rome’s gladiatorial events….
Mrs Whatsit, that’s the sort of thing that came to my mind.
Have these folks no imagination, or have they just never heard or read a story that could be an escape?
Betcha they all are down on geeks who have fun with their fandoms, though.
Madrussian,
your assertion is completely wrong. study books and literature and you will find that for a long long long time it was only for studies, education, history, and religion…
it wasnt till the tiny books of the french court that were illegal that they started really writing for entertainment. and that writing was illegal as those tiny stories were faulted for making people too depressed!
people PLEASE study history and actual facts, stop making them up along the way based on what you feel and waht sounds right. its really getting annoying as its a fancy way of putting idiots together with their heads in fish bowls singing la la la to each other. (which is why they get really annoyed when their play time is intrupted by facts)
Due to the influence of Ian Watt’s seminal study in literary sociology, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (1957), Watt’s candidate, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), gained wide acceptance. But with the rise of feminist criticism in the 1970s and 1980s and its concomitant rediscovery of forgotten writings by women, it is now often argued that Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688) is the “first English novel.”
the writings of the egyptions were history and records. the writings of the romans and greeks were mostly the same (with some plays and things but they were supposed to be historicals not entertainments in the sense of making up things completely)
in fact, it wasnt till tolstoy that the whole category of fantasy fiction was invented.
and science fiction, fiction set inthe future, was also a modern thing.
i do not agree that oroonoko is the first, i do agree that crusoe was. why?
Oroonoko is a short novel by Aphra Behn (1640—1689), published in 1688, concerning the love of its hero, an enslaved African in Surinam in the 1660s, and the author’s own experiences in the new South American colony.
authors own experiences… that is, it was not fictional in the way crusoe was.
Literature and writing, though obviously connected, are not synonymous. The very first writings from ancient Sumer by any reasonable definition do not constitute literature – the same is true of some of the early Egyptian hieroglyphics or the thousands of logs from ancient Chinese regimes. The history of literature begins with the history of writing and the notion of “literature” has different meanings depending on who is using it. Scholars have disagreed concerning when written record-keeping became more like “literature” than anything else and is largely subjective. It could be applied broadly to mean any symbolic record, encompassing everything from images and sculptures to letters. The oldest literary texts that have come down to us date to a full millennium after the invention of writing, to the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are Ptahhotep and Enheduanna, dating to ca. the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, respectively. In the early literate societies, as much as 600 years passed from the first inscriptions to the first coherent textual sources (ca. 3200 to 2600 BC).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing
writing for entertainment and money really didnt take off till many years after the gutenberg press.
otherwise, books were incredibley expensive!!!
today we dont realize that books were luxury of the elite… before they became a drug for the common middle class man… and then became a means of fomenting revolution to return feudalism.
artfldgr, I disagree that there’s anything new about escaping through the story. Long before books were commonplace, stories were everywhere. Spoken stories, sung stories, stories handed down through the generations, stories made up on the spot. Escaping — or illuminating — reality by imagining the lives of others has been a human pastime almost as long as there have been humans.