Skip to main content

Awakening-mother Ewya

@geometeer

Geometeer: "Perhaps the most wonderful thing in Avatar is that the hero when human has a hand-rolled wheelchair -- two-century-old tech at the story's date, in a tech-worshipping culture! -- just to have him seem more sad and pitiful."

The movie explained this with the reverence to how cheap the government was when it came to veterans' benefits. (Xrandadu Hutman, response to post, “What the news big can learn from ‘Avatar,’” Salon, 4 Jan. 2010)

Xrandadu:

It did that. But it also worked to set him up as sad and pitiful -- to the rest of the "core." The point is also made, in the way the other (let's call them) marines reacted to his disability, that they're now much more paid grunts (the fallen) than they are military men: military men may have teased him, but would have more readily appreciated his I-can-do-what-you-can-do attitude. That the colonel looks past this, baiting him with new legs but focussing entirely on his mental-makeup, makes him a bit apart from the rest of the rangy crew. That is, the colonel is never in the end the military man who went corporate soft, but an old-style patriarch -- the devil? -- whose formidableness can't match that of awakening Mother Ewya. In a way, the last fight is a replay of what we saw in Aliens -- with a mother and her colony against a lone, independent, let's-dance warrior (Signourney, in Aliens) -- but with a reversed outcome. Felt that way to me.

Right-wingers who complain about the film, see it as leftist, should note that Cameron takes extra care to make the military grunts seem like ill-groomed anarchists. That is, when people see them, they may as quickly think anarchist street-youth -- or even, disspoiled tree-huggers -- as they do military men. Got the Olympics coming to Vancouver, and the public seems in mind to imagine its leftie protestors as this kind of foul. The mountain-loving folk who just can't wait, can't imagine why anyone would want to spoil their outdoor, innocent, sporty fun.

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

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Discussion over the fate of Jolenta, at the Gene Wolfe facebook appreciation site

Patrick McEvoy-Halston November 28 at 10:36 AM Why does Severian make almost no effort to develop sustained empathy for Jolenta -- no interest in her roots, what made her who she was -- even as she features so much in the first part of the narrative? Her fate at the end is one sustained gross happenstance after another... Severian has repeated sex with her while she lay half drugged, an act he argues later he imagines she wanted -- even as he admits it could appear to some, bald "rape" -- but which certainly followed his  discussion of her as someone whom he could hate so much it invited his desire to destroy her; Severian abandons her to Dr. Talus, who had threatened to kill her if she insisted on clinging to him; Baldanders robs her of her money; she's sucked at by blood bats, and, finally, left at death revealed discombobulated of all beauty... a hunk of junk, like that the Saltus citizens keep heaped away from their village for it ruining their preferred sense ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Salon discussion of "Almost Famous" gang-rape scene

Patrick McEvoy-Halston: The "Almost Famous'" gang-rape scene? Isn't this the film that features the deflowering of a virgin -- out of boredom -- by a pack of predator-vixons, who otherwise thought so little of him they were quite willing to pee in his near vicinity? Maybe we'll come to conclude that "[t]he scene only works because people were stupid about [boy by girl] [. . .] rape at the time" (Amy Benfer). Sawmonkey: Lucky boy Pull that stick a few more inches out of your chute, Patrick. This was one of the best flicks of the decade. (sawmonkey, response to post, “Films of the decade: ‘Amost Famous’, R.J. Culter, Salon, 13 Dec. 2009) Patrick McEvoy-Halston: @sawmonkey It made an impression on me too. Great charm. Great friends. But it is one of the things you (or at least I) notice on the review, there is the SUGGESTION, with him being so (rightly) upset with the girls feeling so free to pee right before him, that sex with him is just further presump...
3 comments
Read more