Avatar Makes the Circuit of the Jokers

And some serious debate too


Everyone is making fun of Avatar. The Late Night jokers, Youtube videos, and even at the Oscars.

Cameron took his movie VERY seriously. He even wrote a whole book depicting Pandora, the Na'vi and the language. I am not sure that he is taking this joke making with stride.

At the Oscars, right in front of Cameron, several people dared to squeeze a laugh out of Avatar. The funniest was Ben Stiller coming out in full Na'vi gear to present the Best Costume category. He then looked straight at Cameron, went into his imaginary Na'vi monologue, and ended up saying in English, "I See You." If Cameron were the Queen, I am sure he would have declared "We are not amused."

There was a more serious discussion on Avatar on Steve Paikin's The Agenda at TVO. The leftists and the rightists on the show equally hated it. The leftists say it wasn't overt enough about discrimination, oppression, colonization etc., while the rightists say that there was nothing racist about Avatar, it was just too simplistic and sweeping about race. The clever and astute Paikin simply lets the ball roll where it may, with a mischievous grin on his face. This must be the panel of his dreams, where all his hosts agree, but for different reasons.

Here is the TVO video. It is about 45 minutes long, but I think it is worth watching.

A Middle-Aged Man Still Adrift on the Sea of Life

And what the simple cure is


Since I have posted comments at Mangan's blog, and have been quoted once at his blog, I think I have earned my right to make these observations about him.

Actually, my observations started a long time ago, when he admitted on his blog that:

[I] do not find a rational proof of God's existence of much use because it doesn't tell me how to live my life, find that the doctrines of the world's religions mutually conflict, and therefore remain adrift - I'm not ashamed to admit it - on the sea of life.

It was a shocking revelation, in the midst of thousands of words of commentary on that particular thread. I duly noted it as a strike against atheists, who appear for all purposes to be functioning, confident human beings, but whose inner thoughts are full of turmoil.

Another reason I bring this up is that this supposedly conservative blogger lists his interests in his blog profile as "Women Money Drink." This is from a man who admits that he is near retirement age. There's nothing wrong, essentially, with liking women, enjoying money and having those glasses of your favorite spirits, but it is odd that they are the ONLY three interests of a relatively mature male.

But then, Mangan is a great proponent of the "Alpha-Beta-and any other that may fall down the list" depiction of men (this link provides all the posts on alpha males at Mangan's blog). Primal alpha man, like his cousin the ape, rules the clan, including all those betas. Yet betas can learn to be alphas too, by participating what is called "Game," which was invented by someone called Roissy, who rose from beta to alpha status using "Game" techniques, and who isn't too stingy to share his methods. The idea behind "Game" is to get at all those females who scorn betas. Such betas get the females by acting alpha, i.e. by humiliating and degrading the females to desire the beta-now-alpha male, who dares to use such tactics. So, perhaps it is not so surprising that Mangan's interests lie at the level of an adolescent.

Often I think that people's deepest problems will be resolved, at least their psychological contradictions, if they would anchor their lives on something other than atheism. No one has to remain adrift forever.

Is She Bored Already?

And the answer appears to be "Yes"

Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni at the
Elysee Palace in Paris to meet Russia's
President Dmitry Medvedev and his wife
for a state dinner on March 2, 2010

A couple of days ago, I was going to post this photo of the fashionista (not) Carla Bruni with the caption: "Is She Bored Already?"

Bruni, along with Michelle Obama, has received accolades of praise for her fashion sense. But, I never saw it, and posted on her here.

But, this weird jersey dress, with its even weirder color, surpasses even sartorial mediocrity. Along with Bruni's expression, which looks supremely bored as though (temporarily) supressing great pains to be her husbands', the President's, escort (as in wife), this dress is the choice of someone who is not quite right in the head. It is ugly, unflattering to her body, and the color doesn't go well with her skin - as we fashion followers like to say. What normal woman would wear a dress like this?

Well, the French news are throwing out a bomb. Sarkozy and Bruni are supposed to be in the middle of affairs.

I've always said you cannot change a leopard's skin. Both Mr. and Mrs. have been in multiple affairs, married and not, in their previous non-Presidential lives. And now, they are back at it again.

Bruni is rumored to have moved in with her musician friend, and Sarkozy has fled into the arms of his Minister for Ecology.

Don't let anyone tell you that fashion (and dress) is unimportant. It gauges sensitive, hardly observable, truths of a person.

Finding a Culture Which Makes Sense to Their Being

Children of immigrants in the West

"Peaches of Longevity" by Qi Baishi (1864 - 1957)

I haven't written for a while about the cultural adoptions that immigrants and their children make. The untold story is that a larger percentage of immigrants' children feel alienated from their "country," and many end up interacting in ethnic enclaves with like-minded immigrant children to connect with their ancestral cultures. This seems the case in Canada, where multiculturalism and difference is celebrated, and in the U.S. which has more of an assimilationist policy. Here is a post I wrote on Indian immigrant's children, and their incessant activities to connect with their Indian heritage.

I think the reasons are clear. How can children of Chinese immigrants, for example, find a connection with American or Canadian (Western) culture? Their whole experience growing up in their immigrant parents' homes is an Eastern one.

I remember reading something about Lucy Liu, the famous Asian movie star who was in the Charlie's Angels remake. She was born in the U.S. from immigrant Chinese parents. I was shocked when I read that she had never listened to a Beatles song growing up. The Beatles! By age ten, I had a favorite Beatles song. In fact, that has led to a life-long admiration for the Beatles (yes, I am a Beatles people, and more Paul than John).

But, I think there is something more fundamental than simply not accepting the cultures in which these immigrants live. I would think that Chinese immigrants' children prefer Chinese things because they are more suited to their way of thinking and being.

I took Chinese brush painting for about nine months. It was actually a wonderful experience. It is very calming to use those brushes to make different shapes and compositions. But, it never went beyond that meditative experience for me. Chinese brush painting always seemed one-dimensional, flat and unadventurous. Yes, there are beautiful watercolors of flowers and landscapes, but they always seemed more decorative and pleasing, and frankly a little boring. Compare that with a Van Gogh, or a Caravaggio, which push one's intellectual as well as artistic limits.

Here is an article which describes a cultural center for Chinese immigrant children in California. The students are school-age, and it is clearly a case where the parents want them to be immersed in Chinese culture from a young age.

But, I think it goes deeper than that. It goes deeper that wishing to communicate with a Chinese grandparent, or traveling to China with adequate Chinese language skills. Even if the parents had not provided these cultural centers, these children would still search for those things that make sense to their being.

Merging Colors

The watercolors of Emil Nolde

My version of a Nolde watercolor. (From this original).

Emil Nolde, described as a German Expressionist, was a master of watercolor. I think his landscape and flower watercolors have the perfect balance of color and form. I tried to replicate one of his paintings. It was an quite exercise in speed (time I had before the paint dried up, and was no longer manipulable), and improvisation (allowing the various colors to merge and mingle).

Conservatives Still Cannot Get Away from the Noble Savage Myth

Despite (their own accumulated) evidence to the contrary

One of the analogies between Avatar's fantasy world and our real one is that the Navi (blue people) of Avatar's world are the Indians of ours. Actually, I thought the blue people looked more Masai then Sioux, and the landscape more South American rain forest than Kenyan rift valley, but that is the nature of a filmmaker's prerogative. Especially, if as James Cameron says, he saw it all in a dream.

Dan Gagliasso, who does a two-part review [1,2] of Avatar in the "conservative" Big Hollywood, certainly equates these blue people with the red skins of North America. But he seems to want it both ways, as is the problem with mainstream conservatives these days: He wants the Noble Savage myth of the non-conservative side, and then he wants to adhere to the more factual picture of Indians who were the ruthless enemy of whites. Part of the reason for his preference for facts is because he is a historian. I suppose a borderline conservative historian will still pay attention to those facts.

Here is a quote from Gagliasso, where he excuses the savage and atrocious methods Indians used to annihilate their enemy:

[Such things as] gang rape of female captives [and] genocide against ones enemies…wasn’t because Indians were evil, terrible people but because they were primitive stone-age warriors. That’s how primitive warrior cultures react to their enemies and if you’re not one of "the people," i.e. their specific tribe like Cameron’s Na’vi tough luck, you’re out of luck.

He then writes that Indians were not only vicious to their white antagonists, but behaved in a similar manner in their endless inter-tribal warfare:

In 1841 American missionaries traveling with the Sioux were shocked as they watched Lakota warriors casually wipe out a Pawnee Village including all the women and children.

He later on (in part 2) writes:

[A]t the battle of the Washita in 1868 against the Cheyenne from Sand Creek… George Armstrong Custer went out of his way to stop any killing of women and children.

Gagliasso’s two part, long-winded, themeless (is it about Indian cruelty, Avatar’s resemblance to leftist Hollywood directors' visions of the Noble Indian, a critique on films mixing facts with fantasy?) review is perhaps typical of today’s conservatives, whether they be film critics or politicians.

Historically, whites have been far more respectful of Indians than our leftist film directors and their entourage will ever give them credit for (think of all the rivers, mountains, cities, towns, states and provinces that have Indian names). But no one would have eulogized the Indians then. They were savage fighters, and they would have been called terrible for the way they conducted their warfare.

Conservatives of our age, following that liberal disease of elevating "the Other" will equate the savage strategies of the Indians as simply a different way of fighting, and not as what it is: savage. Gagliasso was swayed by historian T. R. Ferenback's words which he faithfully reproduced in his article, "If you’re looking for good guys and bad guys during the Comanche Wars, you won’t find them. It was a clash of two completely disparate cultures that just didn’t understand each other."

Such desire to reconcile the clash of "two completely disparate cultures" in the recent Vancouver Olympics opening and closing ceremonies elevated four tribal chiefs to the same plane as Canada’s Prime Minister. We are all equal in our differences, but some are better.

Posts at Our Changing Landscape

Please note that if I'm a little slow with my posting here at Camera Lucida, I usually have posts going on at my other blog Our Changing Landscape. I have an RSS feed link there too.

In the next while, I will be posting my final impressions on the Olympics, a (quick) review of a review of Avatar, and some more thoughts on the "live-in" partner of the Toronto mayoral candidate, as discussed by Toronto "conservative" TV host Michael Coren.