I guess what I most want to talk about with you in this post is Avatar. Now, I’m not going to underline it or italicize it or anything ridiculous like that because proper grammar is aside the point. Aside or beside? I guess it can go either way. Grammar’s pretty bisexual when it wants to be.
Anyhow, let’s talk Avatar. Have you seen it? Obviously, I can’t hear your answer, even though I sure would like to, but if you haven’t, I suppose you should go out and do it. I mean, I don’t suppose it, I highly recommend it. In fact, you can adopt it as your sole duty in this lifetime.
Yeah, it was that important.
I could go on a tangent about how those effects really did blow my mind and made me feel like I was witnessing that one level from Unreal Tournament circa 2003, but I don’t like to think of them as effects. It’s sort of the same feeling I got during the Opening Ceremony for the Olympics in Vancouver. Bob Costas kept going on and on telling me about how everything was working. He was getting all technical. Here’s what, Bob: I don’t wanna know. That sort of ruins everything. Cause that part when those whales swam across my screen was epic. Yeah, Bob. I know they’re not real, but shhh! you’re ruining it. I can still get all Disney and imagine that yes, whales really did just swim across the floor of that place. Yes, yes they did.
Especially with Avatar. In my mind: yes, Pandora exists.
[SIDENOTE: One negative: why “Pandora?” I mean, I know the story. Hell, I took and thoroughly enjoyed “Greek Mythology” with Ms. Lacy back at the old stompin’ grounds of high school. Hm. Anyhow, I just sort of felt like - in a movie that was in production for what? something crazy like, a whole bunch of years and where you hired someone to create a language that was indigenous to this place alone, why couldn’t you be a little bit more original with the name of the planet. Was it a planet? I guess it was.]
Anyway, back to it: the reason why Avatar was so incredible had nothing to do with the effects and everything to do with that big metaphor hanging around the sticky floors and questionable stains of the theater chairs.
Let me just pull a jump-ahead and tell you that I cried. But, it wasn’t that sort of cry that I adopted during Marley and Me (which was, by the way, probably the most intense cry of my life. Because here‘s what: if you‘re gonna get a pet, get a dog. And if you’re gonna get a dog, get a golden retriever; there is absolutely nothing in this world that could ever compare) And, again, I’m growing tired of punctuation, so please forgive that that wasn’t properly done. I don’t come here to show off any sort of grammar skills. Those are only for special occasions.
At any rate, back to the tears:
I was mad. And I was frustrated. I have never been so angry at a life-size model of that character from Small Soldiers demolishing a huge-and-very-important tree.
And they were so upset. About a tree. It was incredible. And the kind of people, or, well, beings that I would totally want to hang with.
James Cameron: you are so great at what you do. I can’t imagine possessing that amount of talent. Again, you are so great at what you do. Let’s meet up later and shop-talk about you and your mind. Better yet, write a movie where I can come into your mind. It seems like it would be an awesome place to chill.
Anyway, guys, this could go on and on and there may be at least two of you out there that would keep on reading, but I think that, for the majority, I probably need to be winding it on down.
[but if you’re one of those two that would, in fact keep on going for as long as I could talk about this movie: let’s meet up. You just name the place and time. And let’s talk into the wee hours of the morning and see where it takes us.]
I don’t want to get too into it because maybe you haven’t seen it or maybe you’re rolling your eyes at the idea that a movie about big blue avatars with tails and glitter on their noses should be a metaphor for our world. But it really is. And I know that, if you’ve seen it, you had to have noticed.
And what really got me was that one line when he’s telling them that the sky people are coming to kill their mother. And he tells them that they’ve already killed theirs.
Let that sink in for a cool second. Cause, that’s some pretty heavy stuff. You can guarantee that I’ll be thinking a lot about how I hope that we’re not a complete lost cause, but it’s pretty true of who we are, or rather, who’s in charge.
And, really, who is in charge?
I’ll let you ponder that while I share with you a poem I just read by W.S. Merwin. It’s so apropos:
A MESSAGE TO PO CHU-I
In that tenth winter of your circle
The cold never letting go of you
And your hunger aching inside you
Old ones and infants and animals
Those curtains of bones swaying on stilts
And you heard the faint cries of the birds
Searching in the frozen mud for something
To swallow and you watched the migrants
Trapped in the cold the great geese growing
Weaker by the day until their wings
Could barely lift them above the ground
So that a gang of boys could catch one
In a net and drag him to market
To be cooked and it was then that you
Saw him in his exile and you
Paid for him and kept him until he
Could fly again and you let him go
But then where could he go in the world
Of your time with its wars everywhere
And the soldiers hungry the fires lit
The knives out twelve hundred years ago
I have been wanting to let you know
The goose is well he is here with me
You would recognize the old migrant
He has been with me for a long time
And is in no hurry to leave here
The wars are bigger now than ever
Greed has reached numbers that you would not
Believe and I will not tell you what
Is done to geese before they kill them
Now we are melting the very poles
Of the earth but I have never known
Where he would go after he leaves me
[“A Message to Po Chu-I.” W.S. Merwin. The New Yorker: taken from the 8 March 2010 ed.]
^ I realize that was a sad interpretation of what would be on a works cited page. And I don’t care. Four years of Honors English and look where it’s taken me.
Well, I think that pretty much says it. I don’t think I have to sit here and draw the correlations between Avatar and that poem. I think you should try and do it yourself. And if you can’t find any, well, what a pity that must be for you because I sure did.
Here’s the bottom line: Avatar did not feel like a movie. I have never had that sort of a feeling while sitting in a movie theater. Ever. It could have had something to do with the fact that I sat there for, like, three hours and my legs were numb and I think I got a little shaky because my blood sugar was getting to be low. It’s not like I didn’t have any candy. I just couldn’t eat it. I would have felt a little guilty eating sugary delights while an entire race of nature-loving and appreciating beings were getting completely wiped out by obnoxiously buff marines.
And that’s another thing. It may not seem like a big metaphor to compare to Avatar, but son-of-a- b. I paid $6.50 for cokes. And it kind of ticked me off. And it also ticked me off that there I was, just coming down from my Avatar high, the credits were just barely rolling and BAM in walks two dudes with a trash receptor. And just like that, I had to come to terms with the reality that it was time to leave and that no recycling would be allowed.
I hope that you understand the importance of it all. I mean, it’s not really for me to be telling you, it’s not my place, and I sure don’t have any real authority, but it sure did seem super important. And if there’s anything I love in this world, it’s a good tree.
I don’t want to get all psycho-Liberal here because that’s not the point. The point is that we’re really good at screwing things up that never even needed the screw. The Regime sleeps, all snug in their beds while visions of themselves making it rain dance through their corporate heads. And all we can do is sit and wait. Wait for the next line of bull we’ll be fed in order to go on being screwed. One day, we’re gonna have to rise up and I don’t care if it’s on bicycles or giant bird-like-Jurassic-Park-lookin’ creatures that we connect to with little neuron synapses at the ends of our braids. We can’t keep getting rid of what was already here. And we can’t go knockin’ on doors to houses that we cannot understand and expect them to let us in. But, at the same time, we can’t help ourselves: it’s the American Way.
gees. I sure hope not.
Oh, and I also loved how they didn’t show the title of the movie until the very end. Something about that gave me chills. Avatar: high five. Or, I guess high four. Since, on each hand, they only had three fingers and one very large, very blue, opposable thumb.
Now that you’re done reading, I’d like to go on making use of those videos over there. Click that one by The National. For some reason, it was stuck in my head at the end of the movie. I’m pretty sure I know the reason why and I sure hope that you do, too. Otherwise, this may have been a total waste. Go outside and plant a tree.
Yours,
katie beth
No comments:
Post a Comment