Defending Avatar

A friend of mine wrote a scathing review of Avatar. He despised it. I loved it.

I had made a conscious decision not to review the film because I knew everyone was desperate to have their say, and I doubted I could add anything new by way of compliment or critique. When I made the mistake of volunteering to my old college friend that I loved it, I had the distinct impression that I had instantly shrunk in his estimation. In a matter of seconds it seemed like I had gone from being an intelligent friend, to an idiot.

Maybe not, but he did hang up on me very soon afterwards. He’s a busy guy, so I’ll stop being paranoid now. But my paranoia did motivate me to offer something of a rebuttal to his bashing of the film.

I cut and paste my comment to his blog post, Avatar Sucked. His words are in bold.

The story and plot are retarded and predictable.

Retarded? That’s an insult, not a critique. The story IS predictable however, but Cameron wasn’t writing a thriller. The film was intended to be a simple morality tale about goods and evils.  Evils: 1) destroying one’s planet (Earth in the film); 2) making an enemy out of a people if they have something you want (literally stated in the film); 3) corporate exploitation of the natural resources of a people without regard for the wellbeing of those people; 4) the use of overwhelming force to take what you want; 5) the disregard of ‘alien”, plant and animal life; and 6) racist, supremacist ideologies based in absolute ignorance of a people who you couldn’t bother to understand.

Cameron very consciously had the humans use the most offensive of racist labels to illustrate the evil of racism in the film and in the real world. It’s just a morality tale, and like most science fiction, it challenges xenophobia (while ironically using positive ethnic stereotypes to flesh out its Na’vi characters.)

UPDATE: 20th Century Fox describes the film thus:

“The themes of protecting the environment, respecting life, and yearning for a peaceful planet have united moviegoers worldwide…”

The dialogue is incomprehensible. You kind of have to stop listening to what the characters are saying in order to enjoy the visuals.

I disagree. I found most of the dialogue fairly straightforward and comprehensible, albeit banal. Much of it wasn’t bad, just not good. However, the one-liners put in the mouths of “the main dude” and the villainous head of security were horrendously awful. I physically cringed. Those you DID have to ignore to enjoy the predictable plot ride and the visuals.

The visuals are amazing…but so fucking what?

You sound like you have a lot of anger towards this film (which I can understand), or a tepid appreciation for cinematography (which I highly doubt). The visuals in this film were fantastic. Cameron showed remarkable creativity in drawing another world in such minute and original detail. The night scenes on Pandora were magical. The flora and fauna were strange but familiar, silly but intimidating. See the New York Times article about how the world Cameron created invites us to look at the natural world and science with wonder:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/science/19essay.html

The directing of the visuals was also spectacular. Pretty much every scene involving the flying animals was directed to perfection, as were the scenes with the “main dude” and the Na’vi princess hunting in the forest.

This movie is racist as fuck. I mean gut twistingly so…to the point that my friends and I were dying laughing by the end at how disrespectful it was.

Hmmm… Like you, I avoid like the plague most films that feature a white saviour to the colored masses. You couldn’t pay me to see The Blind Side or that old Michelle Pfeiffer movie where she is a teacher in the inner-city, or many other films of the genre. I think both of these examples are true stories and I honor the white women in them who tried to make a difference in their areas of influence, irrespective of the color of those they helped. We need people of whatever color helping others in need of whatever color. However, I don’t enjoy watching “white man saves the day” films. I think we need more stories of people helping themselves, in film and in life.

The thing about Avatar, though, is that you see what you want to see and you judge Cameron in the way you are inclined to judge writers who tell such stories.

See the New York Times on this very thing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/movies/20avatar.html

Or Australia’s Ann Coulter having a bitchfest about the anti-Americanism in the film:

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/hit-by-the-leftie-sledgehammer-20100101-llpp.html

I didn’t see the main character in this film as a white hero who saves the inferior natives from themselves. I saw him as a flawed human with an initially inferior and ignorant worldview (shared by all humans), who helps save the natives from his own race. The message here is that it takes someone intimately familiar with the evil of his own, to defeat that evil. The evil humans (and the humans are undeniably portrayed as evil in this film) attempt to “civilize” the natives with human schools and human infrastructure (as mentioned by the CEO) and these attempts are portrayed as culturally inappropriate and useless overtures to a highly developed culture and ecosystem that doesn’t require improvement. The film actually explicitly states that the people of Pandora require and want nothing from humans. The film argues that the civilization of Pandora is almost utopian: superior. The humans represent an inferior culture, worldview, way of being, and way of living. I think it’s highly significant that the human who is rehabilitated by adopting the Pandoran worldview goes so far as to deny his humanity to become a native. If that doesn’t argue for the inferiority of human culture, I don’t know what does.

Not only does the white guy have to save the stupid colored natives…but of course the best woman the natives have, the hottest, smartest most capable woman…falls for the “outsider”.

This is debatable. I certainly understand your disapproval. They could have easily made the girl in the film less noble to her people. He didn’t need to get the princess. I thought the film did argue well enough why she would be open to him though. She is shown as being among the few Na’vi who attended the human school and learned English. She was obviously open to learning about them. She is also the only female and only one of two females discussed as a hunter. The larger impression is that males are still the primary hunters. She would be attracted to a fellow hunter like her intended mate, and like the human warrior. She was visibly impressed with how quickly he learned to hunt in the Na’vi tradition. She was initially annoyed but also impressed by his reckless bravery. He was by definition the most attractive human because he was the only one who sought to learn their ways.  I think she was also depicted as being fairly free-spirited and independent, albeit loyal to her people to the point that she was going to witness his execution after his betrayal was disclosed.

Finally, you’re a man. I’m a woman. I always fall for the outsider. Give me the one that’s not like the others every time.

The acting is a mixed bag. Main dude and Sigourney are okay but the rest suffer under the burden of the shitty dialogue.

Yes, a mixed bag. I thought the Na’vi princess was pretty good. All the Na’vi were interesting. Michelle Rodriguez was annoying, and the “main dude” was actually the weakest actor when he played his human character. But the acting was good enough to carry the story.

UPDATE: Well at least one person agrees with me and argues further that the actress Zoe Saldana, who played the Na’vi princess, was damn good:

But the most egregious “Avatar” snub was for Zoe Saldana. Her turn as Neytiri, the blue-skinned alien huntress, is truly the heart of “Avatar.” Neytiri’s every movement and facial expression was created by Saldana on a motion capture stage. She went through months of training for the physical demands of the role, along with learning an entirely new language for most of her dialogue. Cameron told New York magazine he feels she deserves recognition for her work: “Every second of the performance is Zoe. To carry a film on her shoulders and to step up every day for over a year is no small task.”

3D is OVERRATED! I’ve now seen two movies in the new 3D. It’s not that good. the corners are fuzzy. and while the old 3D made it look like the movie was coming for you…the new stuff makes it look like you’re IN the camera watching…kinda cool, but ultimately not good enough to be trumpeted.

This is a matter of taste I think. What was good about the 3D in this film is that it wasn’t employed to make things jump out into the theatre. It was employed to take you into the forest. I thought it did that well. I would be curious to see the film – yes, again! – in 2D to see the difference.  I like 3D. I like the idea of movie-going being an event that may require equipment. I like surround-sound and getting lost in sounds and images.

I now feel about James Cameron the same way I feel about Spike Lee and M. Knight Shyamalan…”You’re an amazing director, but for the love of GOD…let someone else do the writing.”

I agree. Movies by these directors with better scripts would be off the chain.

Avatar sucked.

Couldn’t disagree more. It was a fun ride. I loved it.

If it makes a single blindly pro-war citizen more conscientious about the use of force…

If it makes a single oblivious polluter or energy-guzzler more conscientious about the environment…

If it makes a single soft-bigot more conscious about his prejudices…

If it makes one adult fall in love with a trip to the movies again…

Then it succeeded in doing what Cameron wanted.

My Final Comment

To think that anyone who likes this movie must be an idiot would be ungenerous and arrogant. Just as thinking people can be Republican (though I’m no Republican), thinking people can like this movie too.

With much respect,

humanb

UPDATE: My review of another blockbuster special effects extravaganza, 2012, stands in stark contrast to my review of Avatar, and clearly demonstrates that I can appreciate the kind of criticism Avatar has received.

UPDATE: I’ve seen The Blind Side. It wasn’t my idea, but there it is. It was actually pretty good, primarily because it was a true story about a group of remarkable people – black and white – with a limited amount of Hollywood cheese.  In the film and in real life, the white people AND the black guy saved each other.

Exercise your brain

I’m away from Sydney at the moment, spending a month in Ann Arbor doing a rotation in geriatrics. Today I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon at a Day Care Center for seniors suffering from mild to moderate dementia. Among the day’s activities were painting class, coffee hour, role play and brain games.

Painting Class was great fun. The attendees all had moderate dementia and required considerable instruction and encouragement to complete a Mark Rothko-like painting. Every step – from picking up the brush, to using a glass of water and a towel – required repeated explanation. But the attendees were focused, active and diverted.

Mark Rothko, Untitled, No. 10, 1950

The gentleman with the most severe dementia expressed mental exhaustion at one point and stopped painting. A painter myself, I reassured him that “The trick to art is knowing when to put down your brush.” His painting was actually the truest to Rothko’s style for its simplicity. He was also the slowest painter, and would painstakingly fill in every spot of white canvas with color – always being mindful of the direction of his brushstrokes and the straightness of his lines. The teacher later explained to me that he was once an engineer.

Coffee Hour is reserved for people with early memory loss. Many in this group are highly educated; a few have PhD’s. Conversation flows freely over coffee and lunch. I had an interesting conversation with two gentlemen and a lady about the current economic crisis and the fate of the Great Lakes ecosystem since the introduction of the flying carp.

Role Play was surprisingly funny. Participant enthusiasm was lukewarm at first, and tempered by some confusion as to what in the world was happening. The game today was telephone role play. The first two players had to act out ordering a pizza for delivery. The second two acted out a woman calling off sick from work because she secretly wanted to go to the casino. The third pair were discussing one woman’s recent date. The challenge for the players was to maintain attention as to the point of the exercise and to generate relevant conversation. I’m not sure to what extent the players were deliberately being facetious, and one player may have lost the plot at one point, but everyone had a good laugh without hurt feelings.

Brain Games is a wonderful session open to people with various types of memory problems as well as to interested people from the community. It involves completing puzzles and brain teasers at the session, and for homework. The point of it all is to challenge the players to use different parts of their brains with each game, to find new patterns and connections, and to engage in rational, creative, and lateral thinking.

The warm-up exercise involved the entire group creating a narrative sentence, with each participant contributing one word. If I recall, our sentence was…

Today – he – climbed – the – stairs – alone – to – get – a – book - which - would – help – me – to –  find – and – learn – about – American – thought – on – how – to – do – magic.

Or something like that.

We then reviewed homework tasks. These were simple math equations and more creative challenges like the assignment to draw an “amphibian car”. One man had drawn a car with wings in water. Another man had drawn a car with its front tilted into a lake.

The following mind-bending challenges are called Stickelers, created by a woman named Terry Stickels. These were the most fun. Here are four, listed from easiest to most difficult.

•

 

S T I C K E L E R S

What common four-letter word can be placed in front of each of the words below to form four new words?

BOW

COAT

DROP

FALL

Below are five names followed by a curious, but logical code. See if you can crack the code and assign the appropriate number to GUS.

KIM = 11913

ART = 11820

DEB = 452

POP = 161516

GUS = ?

Each of the following abbreviations, in everyday usage, can stand for two completely different things. What?

Example: C.D. stands for “certificate of deposit” and “compact disc”.

A.C.

P.C.

M.P.

B.C.

P.R.

O.T.

T.M.

V.J.

I.R.A.

E.R.A.

Reverse the first two letters of the answer to the first clue to get the answer to the second.

Example: ’60′s hairstyle / casino card game  = afro / faro

Monster / Vice President Al

Hearty brew / Rags-to-riches writer

Most unusual / Take into custody

Choice / Magical drink

County in Northern Ireland / Shine

Blue jeans / 1950′s-60′s singing sensation

Shade tree / Enough

Height / Degrees from the equator

Kind of energy / Hard to understand

Storefront cover / On the way out

Beneath / Less clothed

The act of making a god / Moral improvement or guidance

*     *     *

Several of the players did extremely well, or, at least better than me. As often as not, my mind went blank - evidence that we could all benefit from exercising our brains.

Welcome to Ann Arbor

My American vacation ends in Ann Arbor, Michigan where I’m doing a one month rotation in geriatric medicine. I don’t know the American Midwest, so the novelty of this visit somewhat ameliorates the reality of being in Michigan in the dead of winter instead of Sydney at the height of summer.

I’ve been in town a week, and for five days I’ve been exposed to absolutely no sunlight. The sun rises after 7:30am (after I’ve already gone indoors), and sets at 5:30pm (when I finally venture out again).

Michigan is on the border of time zones, and its residents are particularly prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder. I haven’t been depressed so much as suffering from an incapacitating drowsiness: a mental fog. That hasn’t served me well at the University of Michigan medical school, where I’m hoping my Aussie education stands up to American expectations.

This 3-day weekend is therefore being thoroughly appreciated, if only for the opportunity to partake of the scanty sunlight that struggles to filter through the clouds. The sky is a blinding white here – not very pretty in itself – but it casts a bleak but mysterious light upon an admittedly charming college town.

Ann Arbor has sporadic elements – buildings, shops and alleyways – suggestive of its gritty urban neighbor, Detroit.

The alleys were my favorite spaces.

These gritty spaces are so arresting because they catch you by surprise in an otherwise sleepy, well-kept town of trendy shops and quaint, old-fashioned homes.

I’m staying in the Historic District in the Armory Building, an historic building of converted loft-style apartments only a few blocks from the university.

The undergraduates may still be away for the holidays, and the recent snow and bitter cold may have further dampened activity, for there’s a dreamlike quality to walking these streets at the moment.

The people of Ann Arbor (if I may generalize) are exceptionally friendly – chatty even. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re warm, but they’re sincere and open. Their smiles are genuine, and there’s a modesty to their manner. These qualities are no doubt exaggerated by an accent stripped of any pretensions. They speak plainly – taking pains to pronounce every consonant and vowel – in such a way that not even the most impressive of people could sound intimidating.

All this to say that Ann Arbor is a very pleasant town, and I feel welcome here.

The healing power of crafts

As a med student, I’ve seen enough sick and isolated elderly to conclude that the secret to a happy and healthy life is activity. There are few things more damaging to the mind and body than physical or mental torpor.   While a social life is a great prescription for happiness, it becomes increasingly more difficult to maintain with age. Friends die off. Disability confines you. The young withdraw from you. And everyone condescends.

But a hobby can be yours til you die.

It can give you a reason to wake up, to move, to smile, and to feel good about your life. It’s something to do with your energy, your mind and your time.  And through a hobby, there’s something of you left behind.

I recommend everyone find a hobby. Preferably more than one, each requiring different skills, so that disability never prevents you from pursuing some kind of activity.

My mother is a woman of many hobbies. Work has kept her from all of them in recent years, but she has recently returned to one. She’s begun to crochet hats, scarves and blankets for fun and for a nominal profit, and has been delightfully surprised by the ease with which she has learned new techniques, by the popularity of her creations, and by the joy that comes from creating.

I’ve designed her a blog to showcase her work. The picture below is of the hat and scarf ensemble she made for me.

GaGaOriginals.wordpress.com

I hope this lights the hobby flame in you.

A new home

The blog has now moved to this web address so that the URL is more consistent with the blog title. From today you can find the full blog being updated here.

All old posts can be found here, so the old blog exists only to redirect readers.

Happy New Year