Some folks don’t get the point: You have to come home when it’s over.
James Cameron’s completely immersive spectacle “Avatar” may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.
These people vote.
Of course, they could maybe be forgiven – some of the politicians that the suicidal Avatar voters chose are persisting in a fantasy of their own:
Among the astonishing things about the ObamaCare debate—or lack thereof—is that Washington is inundated with warnings about the destructiveness of this plan, and it doesn’t matter. The agency that runs Medicare rung the latest alarm bell on Friday, and good luck finding any media mention.
Richard Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, reports that under his analysis national health spending will rise under the bills by $222 billion over the next 10 years. In other words, ObamaCare really does “bend the cost curve”—up.
We were told by our president that “doing nothing” with respect to burgeoning health care costs was not an option. I’m not sure that this is what we had in mind.
It’s funny how much traction this is getting. I saw the thread a few days back when it made Boing Boing – and got a kick out of it. This is really nothing new – it was like this with Star Wars, Star Trek before that and any other number of films, television shows, radio shows, books, etc.
What’s funnier to me is the number of people walking around totally buying into Hollywood fabrication that’s a little less obvious. But that’s a whole different matter.
Right now I think the thing that’s giving this thing so much attention is that Cameron appears to have again created something that will exceed all expectations in revenue. I thought Titanic would be a flop (and I thought it was a pretty terrible film) and I really thought this wouldn’t do well either. Now we know why I sit in a cube all day and he’s the rich director.
Avatar is an amazing display though by the way – any fan of Sci-Fi owes it to themselves to see it on a big screen in 3-D.
Magic hope and change is what Obama and his minions are all about.
Jake Tapper is referencing a memo from mid-December from the OMB – and the new-and-improved way job savings are being calculated:
The memo, first noted by ProPublica, says that those receiving stimulus funds no longer have to say whether a job has been saved or created.
“Instead, recipients will more easily and objectively report on jobs funded with Recovery Act dollars,” Orszag wrote.
In other words, if the project is being funded with stimulus dollars – even if the person worked at that company or organization before and will work the same place afterwards – that’s a stimulus job…
It’s the new math folks – in 3-D.
I think that Avatar is building on several underlying trends that already exist in popular culture.
One of the fastest growing trends in entertainment is the “massively multiplayer online game” (MMOG), which wikipedia defines as a videogame supporting hundreds of thousands of players simultaneously. If you are familiar with “World of Warcraft” (by far the most popular MMOG with millions of players) you will recognize the world of Pandora is largely borrowed from environments that exist there. Anyone suffering Pandora withdrawal is probably a potential addict to MMOG.
The futuristic military gear in Avatar is also largely borrowed from popular video games such as Halo or Mechwar.
The notion of an an Avatar living in an alternative world was also a theme in the popular Matrix series. Avatar of course takes it to a new level with 3D.
The future of entertainment may be an MMOG in 3D. Arguably it’s already the present in military flying, ie, remote piloting.
Reading the news reports of those Avatar viewers contemplating suicide the thought “Thinning out the gene pool” came to mind. It’s bad, I know, but neverless…
“nevertheless”
Yes, I too miss the edit opportunity.
“Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible,”
I spent most of my teenage years trying to cope with the dream of Claudia Schiffer being intangible… but it never drove me to depression and thoughts of suicide. I even grew up to be a decent, well-adjusted person. Well, I grew up, at least. Okay, I got older, anyways.
Yes… my wife kept referring to me as “Her oldest child”.
I enjoyed Avatar – easily the most mind-blowing film I’ve seen to date in terms of realism and detail. What messed it up for me was the over-the-top pantheism – the idea that Nature=God – present throughout the movie.
It’s scary to think how someone with enough money and CGI skills can so drastically affect the minds of today’s youth that they would contemplate suicide rather than live life in the real world.
It’s not pantheistic. The planet is a living being, not a god. It is one giant organism with littler organisms living in/on it. Sort of like us. The natives think of it as a god because they don’t have the capability to see it for what it is.
Special effects will not make me go to a movie with a propagandist plot line.
And the plot line was already used, anyway … see …
http://failblog.org/2010/01/10/avatar-plot-fail/
I don’t need to go to a movie to not want to live in this world. But its the only one I have so I deal.
Deal in an immature way at times but deal it is. Vx you buying?
Major – I believe we are steadily reverting to pantheism as a culture. One of the features of pantheism is that you can pick any of many gods to worship – whichever best fits your experience/profession/personality/whatever. All religions are valid – just pick one.
I believe this is the message that is delivered in many so-called Christian churches these days. The Unitarians have become explicit about it – they no longer claim to be a Christian church and are openly pantheistic (though they don’t call it that.) Many churches are now almost indistinguishable from what Unitarianism was 50 years ago, Christian in symbol only.
Personally, I always thought Athena was cool, but only on Tuesdays.
Wow,did you ever hit the nail on the head. It does seem that we live in a make your own religion era, where you pick and choose whatever makes you feel good about yourself. It’s like they don’t want to admit that God is somewhat higher on the food chain than they are, and they can feel free to ignore anything that they don’t like. Thank you, ’60′s kids, you really have screwed up an entire planet.
When I saw the Avatar story, I thought of the Chinese opium dens.
While were largely inhabited by coolies whose lives were so invisible that their desire to disappear in dreams was understandable.
But what are these Avatar audience members running away from so desperately?
But what are these Avatar audience members running away from so desperately?
Reality.