Avatar or an exploration into the word gratuitous

I realize that I say this at risk to my own well-being, but I did not like Avatar. This is not to say that I did not enjoy myself or find it entertaining, but it did not live up to its hype and as a work of cinema I found it overly epic.

To be honest,  parts were pretty damn good. I will admit that. I'm impressed that they spared no expense to get what they got right, right. The Na'vi language was an impressive linguistic endeavor (I await the day people start speaking it like they do Klingon/Elvish). The graphics and animation were by far some of the best I've seen  in quite a while, but…

watching it in 3-D didn't really add anything to it. Sure there was depth, and?  I cannot justify why any movie would ever be 3-D. I think I'll wait until someone comes out with a full on hologram image movie before I spend the extra money on this again.  Do something new, something interesting with the medium or spare me your special effects and keep it flat. If it's good, it should speak for itself.

A plurker, angst4less made some pretty good points here: http://www.plurk.com/p/3bae0d

This was a movie made to appeal to the masses and to get their attention with its message. It did this, the whole environmental thing was played off far better than the cutesy Disney-Pixar Wall-E, but would it kill them for some subtlety? Ooh, wow, big bad militant corporate machine is gonna kill the beautiful world. Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but give me a twist, give me a story, give me something unexpected! I'm spoiled from my literary endeavors, I need depth.

What bugged me the most though was that the entire movie was such an etically spawned creation of the xenoist humans that made it. Yes, it's a fucking movie, get over it, Danny, but if you're going to realistically depict an alien culture and ecology, stick with that. Why do the sentient species have to be so goddamned human?

To explain my displeasure, if you paid attention to the biology of the fauna on Pandora you would likely have noticed a few common traits amongst the various species shown that do not translate over to the Na'vi. Most noticeably it can be seen in the eyes and legs. Almost all the creatures encountered are hexopodal and had four eyes. The fact that they all have some kind of tentacles/antennae  carrying a  direct cerebral interface of nerves suggest a common ancestor. So why do the Na'vi look so human?

To quote a Wikipedia article on the creatures of the movie:

"In addition to feline features, the species was redesigned to look more like humans so audiences could relate to them better. Cameron said that Avatar was more "science fantasy" than true science fiction and said that he would explain in the novel for the film why in the fictional universe the Na'vi look like humans."

Someone please get me this book adaptation, because it bugged the crap out of me. The way I see it, they're watering it down for their mainstream audience that can't stomach something being different and original and, oh yeah, maybe a little realistic in their fantastic little playworlds.

Still, I did get something interesting out of this movie, and that was the idea of the moon essentially being a giant neural network. It was a superorganism of the most badass kind. Based on the movie, it seems Avatar's creators claim the planet is not conscious, that as the character Neytiri said at the Tree of Souls, Eywa does not choose sides.

This may be well and true, but as an interconnected ecosystem, the natural response would be to fight back against intruding systems. It's the immune system of white blood cells and lymphocytes, etc on a macro scale. Stir the ant's colony or the hornet's nest and they will swarm you. 

Feed them with pretty imagery and empty plots and they'll remain the docile creatures they are, shelling out money for more. Insert some culturally and universally exhausted "message" that people might respond to because they've been conditioned to agree with it otherwise they're horrible human beings, and you're golden.

Okay, now that the ranting is out of my system, let's take another look at this.

Humanity are the bad guys in this movie. Ooh, now that's different. Usually in alien movies, it is the outsiders with the giant machine coming in to wipe out the technologically inferior human race. But it's a harsh truth on our Western culture that we are the destroyers. If history has proven anything, it's that we live up to this capitalist image. We are the invading conquerors.

And so the only enemy we face is ourselves. If nothing else then, this movie puts up a fun house mirror showing humanity at our worst. But the question is, do we see this? Like the animalistic vampire, are we incapable of the introspection necessary to overcome our downfall? Are we, as a race, as a species, blind to our own capabilities?

For a movie like this to come out, clearly not on the individual levels, but what of the superorganism of humanity? Governments and societies and cultures. I think enlightened, or gaining that enlightenment. We know something is wrong and needs to be fixed, but as I'm learning in my health class, fixing the problem is only a temporary step. For there to be long term, sustainable change, you must change attitudes and all the small actions that led up to the problem in the first place.

Taken on the macro scale of a civilization, it means we must start with ourselves. It is why I laugh at all this news about Peace Talks and Environmental Summits. They won't work because they do not address the issue at hand. And we see this in Avatar. Diplomacy fails and the two clashing cultures resort to war.

So war is the only answer we have. Or rather, the only one we choose consistently. So no, we are ignorant beasts no better or worse than the savages we claim to lord above. But at least we know what we are.

Were The World Mine

My thoughts on Were the World Mine
In case you can't read my handwriting:

Yesterday, when Josh from my English class posted links on Plurk and Facebook about Were the World Mine, I decided I had to see it. There are few enough quality films with openly gay protagonists that actually have a relevant, interesting plot. I liked it to say the very least, but less so for the basic storyline so much as the interruption of Status Q the actions of Timothy cause.

Based on A Midsummer Night's Dream, Timothy quite literally takes on the role of Robin Goodfellow, creating a mixed up world where the lines of love are redrawn according to his whim. In that respect, the story of the film is very much based off the story of the play the characters in the film are participating in.

Puck has always been known as a character of chaos and trickery. And we are but mortals subject to the will of those above us, so when we suddenly find ourselves in that position, of having that power, we become the anti-person.

Timothy makes the star rugby player fall in love with him, but in doing so alienates and aggravates his community.

Movies like this make me sad. Yes, there was a happy ending, but it comes across as contrived to me. I always wince at the smiles and the kiss at the end. It's unrealistic and creates an illusion of possibility. There are no magical love flowers in real life.

A sunflower in a cornfield

On some level, I've always been uncomfortable interacting with other gay men. By and large I think it has to do with intimidation. Most of the queer community is far more open to new and different things than the rest of our heteronormative society.

I'm all for that, and have even been told that I'm open with myself and sharing who I am more so than most. But I'm not used to being surrounded with it. So it's a stark and scary difference when I cross that threshold.

I've been pretty isolated from what we call the gay community, mostly because I've lived a pretty sheltered, suburban life in general. And I think the fact that having never experienced the queer community combined with never having experienced any kind of hardship for my sexuality puts me in a limbo of sorts. I'm dancing in that greygoo (not Grace) between the alternatives. I don't mind this. I don't usually think about it actually. But so much of what defines the queer community is that solidarity. They (We?) are united because we aren't the same as "normal" society, and we're treated differently for it. I have a hard time identifying with that.

I'm hopelessly oblivious to homophobia in part because of my personality. Stress and negative emotions don't last for very long. I'm too much the optimist to both notice and care when insults are thrown my way. There was this one time in high school where I was wearing my ocean shirt, and as some jock-type and his girlfriend walked past me in the hallway, the guy said "Nice puppets, fag." The first thing to go through my mind was that they weren't puppets. They were Beanie Babies. People laugh at that story because I'm offended at probably the least offensive part of what that guy said, but that's truly how I think.

And in this way, I'm not really all that unique, but I think without meaning to I defy Status Q because of it. I don't follow what is expected. I revel in observing controlled chaos, not for the chaos' sake but for the reactions people have. Puck, Loki, Eros, Mercury, Anansi: so often they're tricksters causing mischief and mayhem, but usually only as it serves their purposes. It's not madness for the sake of madness but a message or a show of power.

There is always something to be learned in the patterns that show up among the seemingly random.