In response to Chelsea's post earlier this month about Avatar.

In response to Chelsea's post earlier this month about Avatar.

Firstly, if you have not seen the movie, only see it in 3D.

I wonder how seriously we should be taking this film in the first place. It seems to me that in 20 years our kids are going to be seeing this movie and laughing at the goofy special effects and how it's all about 'going green.'

To:

“Reality and fantasy are too intertwined to actually send the message of embracing a "new lifestye." We will constantly be asking ourselves what is the best way to be humans--and this is a good thing--yet the movie is offering that the best way is a way completely other than our own...He completely renounces his humanity. I argue that this is fundamentally different than our struggle to discover the best way to live as humans and has a tragically hopeless and irresponsible undertone.”

I respond that Mike gave a sufficient (literary) answer, saying that indeed the Navi are more human than the humans in the movie. I don't think that Joe Plumber on the street is going to go out and try to become a blue monkey.

The movie is creative, yes. I have a hard time considering this movie as great art since it is primarily a sugar coated piece of propaganda, a mere analogy. It has potential in its appeal to myth and heroism—Avatar brings up questions of heroism, the human heart in conflict, and the good life, but more like Disney's approach to Heracles or Robin Hood.

The movie is creative and has novel artifice, by which I mean that the special effects are never-before-seen, well rendered, explosive, and inventive. But I do not think that the movie approached any level of profundity at all. The tragically hopeless undertone that you were sensing Chelsea, is what I took to be the movie's [not so] hidden message: Jake says something to the effect of “We destroyed our mother (earth).” I guess that means we as humans today seeing this movie ought then to save the earth from being destroyed. Trite—we all picked up on that.

Artistically irresponsible, yes. Worth making a big deal about, perhaps.

Why is it that Avatar was the straw that broke the camel's back?  There have been many artistically irresponsible movies than this in the past. If this is simply a smaller piece of a larger irritation, Chelsea, I would like to know what that is. Can you flush this out a bit more?

Happy (or Distracted) New Year! from First Things' PoMo Con Blog

Here's an article that decries the modern celebration of New Years; Ivan has a peculiar style in his writing: he has excellent diction.  If you try to read it as a smug group of observations rather than coming from the gingivitis'd mouth of a vindictive street corner preacher, then you might enjoy it better (thus having distanced yourself properly from the accusations it tenders).

Here's the link to the article itself.

Here's a juicy except that might pique your interest.

Simon Winchester complains the typical New Year’s celebration has reduced to little more than an excuse for unrestrained drunkenness and revelry. He lays blame for this woeful development partly on the example of the Scottish who have long treated the occasion as an opportunity for drinking themselves into a state of “catatonic incapacity”. Also, some culpability lies with the creation and popularization of modern public clocks that have allowed us to meticulously track and therefore exaggerate and fetishize the grand drama of the exact moment. The combination of chronological exactitude and Scottish bacchanalia gives us the now generally expected annual ritual of “midnight debauchery”.

post script: To Dave Chuck: Thank God the Ball dropped on New Years.

I noticed about this comic strip:

There is art within a comic (comics are somewhat related to art); I call that Art within an Art.

Both the painting and the Comic are non-representational, but one is mocking the other for its

non-understandability (I'm thinking of a word that rhymes with pie-rony).

The painting is a surprisingly good example of analogous and complementary color schemes.

The emotion of the painting is somewhat related to the emotion evoked by laughter. I feel myself tickled and squeezed a bit by the comic and the paining in the same manner.

Oh yeah, and I didn't go to Art School...per se...

The man(?)/ogre standing to the right of the painting is strangely floating. Notice that he has no cast-shadow. By the absence of a shadow I can only gather that he is either a strange ghost dwarf-manchild, or a floating jellobaby. Floating things and ghosts don't usually have distinct shadows like normal people on the ground.

To whom do the words in the comic belong (there is no speech bubble)? Is it the jello-dwarf-manbaby? Or is it the omniscient narrator?

From

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/031707/you-went-to-art-school.gif