When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"?

Which one do you love? and Why? (maybe we should move this discussion to another thread. Especially as, elsewhere on this board, I've blathered on about thread derailment in a snotty tone. )

500_Apples wrote:

ebodyknows wrote:

"The biology/ecology on Pandora is much more interesting than that on Earth."

I find this comment particulary disturbing. 

¨

You should watch the movie.

Basically, they had more evolved communication skills, by merging tails and that sort of thing. Very neat.

Okay, so after the christmas celebratiions I was totally in the mood for being a vegitable last night.  So I went down to the scotia bank theatre, doing my best to weave around the massess of kids lined up for something nearby, walked in to see a long lines, and busy automated ticket machines and a pixel board stating avatar was sold out till 11:15.  Even if it wasn't, I don't think I could have brought myself to do it. The final straw might have been the awkward looking groups of people dressed in their standardized black winter citizens uniforms seemingly waiting for more friends but all silent with nothihng to say to each other.....but who knows maybe they've learned something from watching these movies and had learned to communicate amoungst themselves utilizing a method which I was unable to detect.  As for myself I've given up on the idea of investigating, even just for curiosities sake, what the masses are into these days after this attempt.  I'd rather spend more time continuing to learn about how honey bees communicate.

Quote:

It's not an either/or. (Unintended?) repercussions of this approach would mean the end of film-making although stage theatre and local musicians would undoubtedly benefit.

there's tons of people with camera making movies...we don't need big studio...even simple point and shoot still camera come with HD video options that can, with a little ingenuity, produce very acceptable results.

I may very well being going too far into idealism, but I don't really think it's just the 'artists' that benefit. I think it benefits community as a whole to have a closer, more personal relationship with their entertainment, not that glimpses into far off, or even close-by places that you might not otherwise be exposed to don't have their positive qualities too,  but it is possible as an audience member to enter into a relationship with artists, wherin the produced works of art are only a portion of a dialogue and the true value of a work can not be evaluated without exposure to the whole dialouge.  'the Money Project' descibed as "a collaborative production of individual works" is a great example of this.  Anyone who wanted to make a video was invited to do so and technical assistance was offered, community screening were had in Toronto's junction neighbourhood this summer along with an open discussion and an open call for more videos to be submitted so as to continue the discussion....but ya maybe some kids with good imaginations will continue the avatar discussion on their own with the action figures...maybe it is the best they can get till they get older and have the freedom to seek out other options on their own.

Feministing responds to the article mentioned in the thread's title and opening post, in an article called count the "isms".

At FWD (Feminists With Disabilities), Esté Yarmosh posted a thorough roundup of the ableism in Avatar.

When I saw that Jake (the protagonist) uses a wheelchair, I wondered, "Will this be the first time I've seen a movie where a main character with a disability hasn't been magically 'cured' by the end?" Jake endures harassment by fellow Marines for his wheelchair use, and we learn that his disability can be "cured" with a costly surgery--when offered the surgery free, he refuses, to continue traveling into the Na'vi world against the wishes of his military superior. Just like the hundreds of teen movies of the "Ugly Duckling" genre, the Sci-Fi plot phenomenon of characters who miraculously regain their able-bodied privilege is pervasive. On i09.com, Charlie Jane Anders chronicled "20 Science Fiction Characters Who Got Their Legs Back," a brief modern timeline of Sci Fi's denials and avoidances of living with a disability through the eventual "salvations" of main characters. In Avatar, Jake abandons his wheelchair to be permanently installed in a Na'vi body. The underlying theme is that his human body is inadequate; instead, he achieves some type of salvation by entering his new body."

SNIP

"And later, even the human bodies in the movie seemed unnecessarily sexualized. After being shot, head scientist Sigourney Weaver was stripped, carried to the base of a tree, draped in leaves, and positioned to display her curves and her milky-white skin while dying. Perhaps the one empowering woman character, Trudy Chacon, played by Michelle Rodriguez of Fast and the Furious fame, martyred herself for the Na'vi. And even while she flew into battle on behalf of the Na'vi, she had abandoned her military uniform for war paint on her face and aircraft, and a feathered headband. What makes this different from doing modern-day racial justice work in blackface? The attempt to imitate the Na'vi culture is insulting at best."

What is wrong with disabled people being cured?

Because in order to be truly happy, you need to be able to accept yourself, and your body, as it is, and not constantly dream of being "normal"

The prospect of curing disability dangles a medical carrot in front of the disabled, a carrot that the vast majority of us will never be able to eat, while showing us that our bodies are inadequate, broken and ugly.    Rember how gorgeous the Na'vi bodies were?  How gray and indusrial his gimpy life was?  He was in prison.  Inside his Na'vi body, he was free.  This is a bad message to send.     

Boom Boom wrote:

Don't see how I can agree with that. I'm hard of hearing to the point of having to be on disability since 2002. I'd love to be able to hear better, and one day go off disability. F*ck accepting my body as it is. I want perfect hearing, dammit!

I'm with Boom Boom. I have hearing loss, and so do members of my family having hearing loss. Hearing aids suck and are not nearly a substitute for what we were born with.

Some people are born without eye sight. And they say it's not so bad for them, because they've never known a visual sense of the world. A young relative of mine is slowly losing his sight due to a genetic condition. Scientists are working on it, but because it's such a rare disorder in the world, not nearly enough people are studying the disease. It might take decades or longer before they even identify the genes responsible, and longer to come up with a treatment. Our stupid economic theorists have prodded some of the world's best minds into banking, economics, and finance over the last 30 years, and what a waste of time and effort it was with Stalinization of that science since the 1980's.  Scientific and technological advancements are way behind where they should be today. We need young people wearing lab coats at work not chalk stripe suits. 

Fidel and Boom Boom: I was born with CP. Chances are I will always have it. If treatments are developed, they'll be for the rich. Movies like Avatar don't help gimps born with challenges cope with being disabled. They just reinforce the idea that a gimpy body is a cage and a burden, something that makes you weak and unfinished.

It's a self esteem issue more then anything else.

I don't think of anyone as "a gimp", and I apologize for implying as much.I don't think of anyone as "a gimp", and I apologize for implying as much.

Gimp has been reclaimed by many disabled people. It's like the word queer. Of course one can be gimpy and gay.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but what's being described puts me in mind of the often-used literary and filmic device of a physical transformation denoting a psychological, internal or ideological change, a chrysalis kind of idea.  It's not entirely original, but it's something that within cinematic language has more than simply an ablist meaning.  Of course, I can't make that judgement until I see the film.  I simply offer it as a possibility.

It's also true that new technological breakthroughs often lead to changes within the industry that become less expensive as they are adapted and adopted, leading to greater flexibility for other, lower budget films down the road.  That's not to say that effects should ever trump story, but it gives you some options on how to express the story you may be writing. 

I have a screenplay, for example, that would be very difficult but that some CGI effects may make more readily attainable.  I'm glad someone with more means than I have pioneered CGI.

Thanks for coming back and saying that CMOT. It needed to be said.

Are romantic comedies offensive to people who are chronically lonely?

Are you kidding!? Romantic comedies rock! The geeky outsider gets to meet the love of his or her life. Classic stuff.
However, being lonely in and of itself does not cause you to loose privilage. Disability does.

Thanks for sharing CMOT.

I've read something similar. Hollywood's heroes and heroines are nearly always perfect human specimens. On the other side are the villains. Villains almost always have a physical defect of some sort, whether it's a facial scar or limp, the villains are rarely the attractive people with near perfect physical symmetry.

True. Captain Hook DOES rock hard though.

500_Apples wrote:

I'm in fundamental disagreement with part 2, but first, part 1 because it's quicker.

Wait a few weeks to watch the show. Don't watch it in 2D, that would be a fail.

Now for part 2, I think blockbusters play a role in promoting literacy. Hear me out. The good thing about blockbusters, or rather movies with wide audiences, is that an individual can discuss them with others. Avatar here is being discussed by thousands of people between babble itself and the links posted, leading to a vastly superior understanding of the story than any one of us could achieve individually.For me this is definitely a large part of the fun I've gotten from Avatar, as it is for other shows/movies I like such as Dollhouse, Smallville, Buffy, etc.

The same is true of popular shows and novels. They're not just good products in and of themselves, but they allow people to dioscuss the product with tons of others, and to be introduced both non-interactively and interactively to modes of literary analysis. While this cannot happen when you go watch an indie movie alone, what can happen is you'll take those new skills with you and get a better understanding than you would have had.

The other aspect is financial. I presume independent filmmakers benefit from the technologies developed by large filmmakers. What Cameron spend 250 million developing no longer costs 250 million, and will one day be sub-million.

But you do have to draw a line somewhere right?  There must be some movies and some context/settings in which you would say I can't subject myself to this right?  Or are you game for spending a few dollars on anything anywhere as long as you can apply literary analysis to it afterwards and use it as a cheap conversation starter with for a fairly broad audience? Given the comments I've read here I am yet to be convinced that the content of the movie is actually worth discussing. I mean the discussion around disability and hollywood is interesting but I think that has more to do with the people holding the discussion as I haven't been given the sense that the movie deals with those issues in any way that really make me want to see the movie. This is why I've taken the 'When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"?' question and tried to push the discussion in the direction of 'when will people stop watching movies like 'Avatar'?

You may be good a pushing a conversation into interesting territory, but that doesn't mean the majority of people will do that. I'm reminded of a time I was subjected to a pop culture conversation between 2 strangers while in transit between Winnipeg and Calgary. At first it was nice these two strangers were able to take what would otherwise be an anonymous trip of people grouped together in isolation and fairly quickly forge real human bonds out of it. However, as we approached Calgary and I realized these people had been name dropping for hours and exchanging knowing looks without actually discussing any ideas or telling each other anything about themselves other than the fact they liked watching the same stuff. If I invested a lot of time, money and energy into it I could keep up with pop culture and could interject into conversations like that and try to probe their minds for ideas and personality. If you're able to do that then great! I'm perhaps a little lazier and find it much simpler to simply do things I actually enjoy. If you sitting beside me between winnipeg and calgary I could probably spend the entire time talking to you about keeping honey bees and maybe a little about golden rod too, you might not know much about honey bees, you may even find it dreadfully boring...but I'd be telling you a bit about myself and potentially about something you might not know much about. I have crossed the prairies a few times(I actually don't think they are that boring to look at btw), once writing and reciting poems with a draft dogging poet/artist who happened to be on board, hearing the life story of a native christian farmer who wanted to do missionary work on reservations and once with a man who'd been working as a outdoor experience guide and dealing pot on the side but was now heading back home...sure there is potentially room for someone who can reveal a bit about who they are to me through their love of pop culture too, I'm just really glad there are the idiosyncratic people out there as well making it a little more normal for people who actually still want to do things and have first-hand experiences(even if I don't necessarily want to have those experiences myself) in the 21st century....I just came to this site hoping for something a little different than usual culture items that get disproportionately amplified and drown most other things out...

Are you arguing that by supporting big block buster movies we might be indirectly making it cheaper for independent artists to make movies using similar technologies and therefore it is good to support big industry entertainment? If so you're going to have to convince me a bit more.

The Soloist was interesting.

I think a lot of gender and disability analysis of the film are misguided, perhaps intentionally so. Among snobs and critics, hate can sometimes be an expectation.

Can't sexism, racism and ableism exist in the same film?

http://imgur.com/JmRmb

don't worry you'll all chortle.

That was certainly not his attitude. He fought that mentality. Otherwise, why would he sign up for the mission at all? 

He was promised new legs. 

Another thing: Why does jake have to be a man alone.  Why couldn't he have brought a caregiver with him, instead of having to rely on scientists on the base for his  care?

Let's continue this here, since someone started a new thread and this one is almost at 100 posts.