Have you seen the movie Avatar?
Beautiful special effects and all the women, as a friend pointed out, are strong characters. Cameron understands powerful women and almost always--maybe always--does a good job portraying them.
But the film is thin, thin, thin in terms of story. Noble savages living at one with nature and the nature goddesses on an alien planet are saved from a rapacious military-industrial-complex Earth invasion by a strong, good white man. I was reminded of 1985's time travel movie, Back to the Future, in which WASPy white Michael J. Fox "gives" rock 'n' roll to a black band ... and as I watched the swaying aliens praying to the goddesses, I thought: 1930s Tarzan movies.
I was also reminded of a Star Trek episode from 1968 in which Captain Kirk is hit on the head and loses his memory while on a planet populated by aliens who are very much like Native Americans (we find out later that a master race has seeded these simple natives throughout the galaxy; hence the similarities.) Anyway, the driven organization man-- Kirk --embraces the simple life and falls in love with the chief's daughter, Miramanee. The natives take him for a god when he uses mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to revive a young boy who has drowned. Because of his status, he's able to marry Miramanee. Well, things end badly, as you might imagine .. but what struck me was how much better this mediocre Star Trek episode was than Avatar.
The Star Trek episode was better because Kirk has an articulated inner struggle, and in this episode, as in others, he's embracing a gentler, happier, non-striving life, which he wants but would never seek while serving as captain of a starship. You believe in the anguish of his conflicting desires and root for him as he, temporarily, achieves his suppressed goal of domestic bliss. Even while he's suffering amnesia, Kirk is experiencing inner conflict, dreaming anxiously of the "great lodge in the stars" and feeling he should be there. In Avatar's hero, you have none of that. The hero seems entirely unconflicted about throwing his lot in with the nature-loving aliens. All through the movie, I kept saying to myself--perhaps the Quaker in me coming out--don't you see you are killing HUMANS? Wouldn't making that choice be a natural vehicle for some kind of questioning, anguish or self-doubt? Wouldn't you be at least a little torn between your own species and aliens? Wouldn't there be at least a little concern over being a Benedict Arnold?
Additionally, the Star Trek episode, with a few camera shots, shows us the jealousy and torment of the man who is displaced by Kirk in Miramanee's affections, setting up the conflict that will come to a head at the end of the episode. This man is a real character and you can't help but feel his pain, just as you can't help but have an uncomfortable sense that Captain Kirk is trodding roughshod into other people's lives. In Avatar, there's also a jealous displaced alien, but you don't feel his pain in any realized way. He's just another obstacle in our hero's path--a thing.
So what is the point of this? That it takes soul more than money to create art? Did you like Avatar?
Showing posts with label popular culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label popular culture. Show all posts
Monday, January 11, 2010
Sunday, August 30, 2009
A Law Abiding Citizen
Yesterday, I went to the movie "Taking Woodstock." Before it came on, I saw a trailer for a movie called "A Law Abiding Citizen."
This is what I gathered the movie to be about: A man (the law-abiding citizen) loses his pretty elementary-aged daughter and his wife to a home invasion. Apparently, the two are clubbed to death, as the trailer shows one of the invaders swinging a thick wooden bat as soon as the front door is opened to him.
The murderers are caught and as best I could gather, due to a plea or a deal, one got the death penalty, but the other a lighter sentence. The law-abiding citizen was upset. The prosecutor told him this is how justice is served in the United States.
The trailer cuts to the electric chair on the day the condemned murderer is to die. When all the witnesses have assembled to watch the execution, they find the condemned man already strapped to the chair, already dead, his body contorted into a pose of agony, as though he had been tortured. Then we see what is presumably the other murderer strapped to a table, with the law-abiding citizen approaching him with a circular power saw whirring.
Then we cut to the law-abiding citizen back in the prosecutor's office, this time presumably arrested for murder. For a moment, it doesn't look good for the citizen but soon there's an explosion, and all the cars in the courthouse parking explode in a dramatic chain reaction, apparently orchestrated by the citizen. A law enforcement person asks, what was he, a spy? and someone else answers that he was more than a spy, he was the brains behind the spies. Someone also says, if he's in jail, that's because he wants to be. The citizen himself tells the prosecutor that he is going bring the system crashing down on his head.
This is not a movie I plan to go to see. It seemed to me, from the trailer, that it was channeling the frustrations of many, especially males, who might feel powerless and unsafe in a society that seemingly cannot protect their families or bring justice to criminals. I was disturbed that we seemed to be expected to identify with the ironically named law-abiding citizen as he orchestrates a spree of ultra-violence to enact the justice denied him. I was unsettled, but not surprised, that violence was the one and only avenue explored for confronting injustice or changing the system and that the "lone hero" was, once again, Rambo style, going to singlehandedly bring the system "down." Clearly, we already have enough people out there with guns and not afraid to use them. Do we need to encourage this behavior? And what kind of powerlessness do people feel when they indulge in these vicarious fantasies of almost supernatural power and violence?
Interestingly, when I read about the film on the Internet, apparently the law-abiding citizen, whom I was led to believe was the hero, is a dangerous sociopath who must be stopped. The real hero of the story is the prosecutor, who was apparently forced by his superior to make the deal with one murderer to get his testimony against the other. According to the Internet, he must match his wits to the citizen's to stop him, especially after his own family is targeted. However, the trailer depicts him as a cold tool of a corrupt system.
I imagine I should have identified the citizen as a sociopath when he went after the strapped-down murderer with a circular power saw. Certainly, I found that disturbing. But I am so used to being out of sync with the rest of the world on the subject at violence, that I thought, OK, it must be me. The rest of the world must be OK with the powersaw revenge scenario. I was glad to find that apparently this is not so, and that the actions of the citizen are not meant to be heroic.
I wonder why the trailer gave a distorted view of the movie, leading me, in any case, to assume the narrative was on "the side" of the citizen? I also wish, as I often do, that we could produce more movies which explore alternatives to violence and in which the showdown doesn't come down to who can better mastermind using the various weapons of destruction that happen to be at hand. Also, I wish so much we could move beyond the "home invasion" scenario, which, I understand, is rare in real life but seems to inspire all sorts of ideas about stockpiling arsenals of weapons.
I think we have all seen this movie before, in one guise or another. Why do you think this movie keeps getting made?
This is what I gathered the movie to be about: A man (the law-abiding citizen) loses his pretty elementary-aged daughter and his wife to a home invasion. Apparently, the two are clubbed to death, as the trailer shows one of the invaders swinging a thick wooden bat as soon as the front door is opened to him.
The murderers are caught and as best I could gather, due to a plea or a deal, one got the death penalty, but the other a lighter sentence. The law-abiding citizen was upset. The prosecutor told him this is how justice is served in the United States.
The trailer cuts to the electric chair on the day the condemned murderer is to die. When all the witnesses have assembled to watch the execution, they find the condemned man already strapped to the chair, already dead, his body contorted into a pose of agony, as though he had been tortured. Then we see what is presumably the other murderer strapped to a table, with the law-abiding citizen approaching him with a circular power saw whirring.
Then we cut to the law-abiding citizen back in the prosecutor's office, this time presumably arrested for murder. For a moment, it doesn't look good for the citizen but soon there's an explosion, and all the cars in the courthouse parking explode in a dramatic chain reaction, apparently orchestrated by the citizen. A law enforcement person asks, what was he, a spy? and someone else answers that he was more than a spy, he was the brains behind the spies. Someone also says, if he's in jail, that's because he wants to be. The citizen himself tells the prosecutor that he is going bring the system crashing down on his head.
This is not a movie I plan to go to see. It seemed to me, from the trailer, that it was channeling the frustrations of many, especially males, who might feel powerless and unsafe in a society that seemingly cannot protect their families or bring justice to criminals. I was disturbed that we seemed to be expected to identify with the ironically named law-abiding citizen as he orchestrates a spree of ultra-violence to enact the justice denied him. I was unsettled, but not surprised, that violence was the one and only avenue explored for confronting injustice or changing the system and that the "lone hero" was, once again, Rambo style, going to singlehandedly bring the system "down." Clearly, we already have enough people out there with guns and not afraid to use them. Do we need to encourage this behavior? And what kind of powerlessness do people feel when they indulge in these vicarious fantasies of almost supernatural power and violence?
Interestingly, when I read about the film on the Internet, apparently the law-abiding citizen, whom I was led to believe was the hero, is a dangerous sociopath who must be stopped. The real hero of the story is the prosecutor, who was apparently forced by his superior to make the deal with one murderer to get his testimony against the other. According to the Internet, he must match his wits to the citizen's to stop him, especially after his own family is targeted. However, the trailer depicts him as a cold tool of a corrupt system.
I imagine I should have identified the citizen as a sociopath when he went after the strapped-down murderer with a circular power saw. Certainly, I found that disturbing. But I am so used to being out of sync with the rest of the world on the subject at violence, that I thought, OK, it must be me. The rest of the world must be OK with the powersaw revenge scenario. I was glad to find that apparently this is not so, and that the actions of the citizen are not meant to be heroic.
I wonder why the trailer gave a distorted view of the movie, leading me, in any case, to assume the narrative was on "the side" of the citizen? I also wish, as I often do, that we could produce more movies which explore alternatives to violence and in which the showdown doesn't come down to who can better mastermind using the various weapons of destruction that happen to be at hand. Also, I wish so much we could move beyond the "home invasion" scenario, which, I understand, is rare in real life but seems to inspire all sorts of ideas about stockpiling arsenals of weapons.
I think we have all seen this movie before, in one guise or another. Why do you think this movie keeps getting made?
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Dan Brown: Has he measured the pulse of the times?
The quote below is from Ross Douthat’s op-ed piece, “Dan Brown’s America,” in the New York Times, 5/18/09:
“In the Brownian [this is Dan Brown, author of the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons] worldview, all religions — even Roman Catholicism — have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea that any one of them might be particularly true. It’s a message perfectly tailored for 21st-century America, where the most important religious trend is neither swelling unbelief nor rising fundamentalism, but the emergence of a generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.”
What do you think? Is Douthat right about how Americans increasingly view religion? Do you see any pitfalls in a “generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition”? (Anyone who knows me knows that I do!) I believe the claim in favor of a generalized faith experience is so that we can all "get along without fighting." Or that all religions are "the different paths up the same mountain?" (Think about that one: doesn't the path you take form who you are and what you are going to see at the top of that mythical mountain we all share?) But surely I am in need of enlightenment. Go to it.
“In the Brownian [this is Dan Brown, author of the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons] worldview, all religions — even Roman Catholicism — have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea that any one of them might be particularly true. It’s a message perfectly tailored for 21st-century America, where the most important religious trend is neither swelling unbelief nor rising fundamentalism, but the emergence of a generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.”
What do you think? Is Douthat right about how Americans increasingly view religion? Do you see any pitfalls in a “generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition”? (Anyone who knows me knows that I do!) I believe the claim in favor of a generalized faith experience is so that we can all "get along without fighting." Or that all religions are "the different paths up the same mountain?" (Think about that one: doesn't the path you take form who you are and what you are going to see at the top of that mythical mountain we all share?) But surely I am in need of enlightenment. Go to it.
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