Skip to main content

What critics will come to acknowledge

What critics will come to acknowledge, about their draw to the simple

Sitting in a theater being dazzled by James Cameron, I found myself suddenly feeling pretty good about the future. The technology behind "Avatar" is amazing -- but even more incredible is the artistic creativity inherent in the good old human mind. (Andrew Leonard, “What the news biz can learn from ‘Avatar,’” Salon, 4 Jan. 2010)

But it seems to me, this is the story from Avatar. Out of ruin, dispirit -- genuine uplift and communal embrace: the answer. I predict that, eventually, people will drop this it's the technology cover they're using to excuse / understand their being dazzled by the film, while they gradually acclimatize themselves to an awareness of the fact that they are now finding themselves drawn to the simple and reassuring, to what hereto they would have, without remorse, lambasted with scorn. The film did the miracle of laying out the storyline for our future -- in the end, being ungrateful to it would amount to keeping company with Selfridge, way distant from the excusing embrace of Ewya.

"What have you people been smoking out there? It's just a god-damn tree!," is the voice of the critic, of an era, that is passing. Crazily, it is -- alas.

Link: What the news biz can learn from “Avatar” (Salon)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Watch out, liberal extremities!

Watch out, liberal extremities! websmith says: “White people and an increasing number of minorities are tired of being called racists by the true racists and more appalled that this loony bleeding has spread from the heart to the brain." This is what many progressives are going to have to get used to hearing -- that THEY are the true racists! I've said this before but '60's liberalism goes down when enough people have decided that, in sum, it was never truly about what minorities, impoverished people wanted/needed, but instead what certain AFFLUENT WHITE PEOPLE wanted to believe those they ostensibly spoke for wanted/needed. They (progressives) will be made to seem, not the most caring, but the most negligent, most truly self-serving. Of course, most democrats in power will not be too afflicted by this, because they're ready to turn on the ’60s too. Why? Because, sad to say, they're getting in mood to want to see the weak and needy set-up as punishment-worthy a...

Conversation about Agulis at the Gene Wolfe Facebook Appreciation Club

James Pepe New Member  ·  20 hrs I’ve been rereading BotNS (this is my second read of it) and I just finished the part where Sev fights Agulis with the avern. I’m interested to hear what people think of the accusations Agilus levels agains Sevarian. Agilus says Sev has wronged him three times. Are we meant to take these accusations seriously? They're very strange. Is this just a last ditch attempt by Agilus to get out of being killed, or is Sev actually guilty of something, either legal, moral, or cultural. Are the powers that Agilus refers to simply that the avern didn’t kill Sev when it wounded him? Here the quote, “First by entrapment. You carried an heirloom worth a villa about the city without knowing what it was you had. As owner it was your duty to know, and your ignorance threatens to cost me my life tomorrow unless you free me tonight. Secondly, by refusing to entertain any offer to buy. In our commercial society, one may set...

Discussion of Short Sun, at the Facebook Gene Wolfe Appreciation site

Mike Bennewitz January 15 at 5:56 PM Some thoughts on the themes in Book of the Short Sun [Spoilers] I've just finished a re-read of Book of the Long Sun and Book of the Short Sun. Short Sun infected my mind more than Long Sun, I guess. I don't have as many questions about LS as I do about SS. Wolfe is very obsessed with doubled identity throughout Short Sun. It's woven into so many aspects of the book that unless there is a transubstantial meaning I'm missing, I'm going to have to take it as a big clue that the narrator's identity is doubled. You could be forgiven for not realizing that the narrator has two mind/spirits inhabiting his body throughout half of the series. While Wolfe obscures this a little bit, he's telling you nearly everywhere that things are doubled. • A Binary System of two planets • Two quills in the pen case • Neighbors are like doubled humans, 4 arms and 4 legs. • Animals of Blue are doubled. 8 legs, 2 trunks, 4 eyes...