…and ask for FA readers’ forgiveness.
I thought about whether or not I should come clean with this. After some soul-searching and hand-wringing, I decided that it is best that I clear my conscience. If I didn’t, I don’t see how I could ever blog here again without feeling shame for keeping a dirty little secret.
In a moment of weakness I slapped down $10 bucks and saw “Avatar”.
Forgive me fellow conservatives, for I have sinned.
My impressions of the colossal-budget movie? If you’re a tree-hugging Howard-Zinn-raised liberal, you’ll love it. If you’re a pro-war-on-terror-American-exceptionalism-muscular-foreign-policy-believing conservative, you’ll love it and feel dirty for doing so. But hey! All you have to do is suspend reality and just lose yourself in the fantasy that is the liberal worldview.
The movie’s impressive in scope and special effects, but the storyline’s just cliché-predictable….like watching Dances with Wolves in Space meets every Hollywood anti-(Iraq)war movie in the last 8 years.
Thanks James Cameron, for the overt political messages! [/sarcasm]
Also blogging:
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
I thought you were going to admit rigging caption contests or voting for a Democrat!
how were the 3-D effects?
ROFLMAO!!
@Mike’s America:
I did vote for a Democrat: Jimmy Carter, when I was 8. I lived on Wright Patterson Air Force Base and felt sorry for Jimmy, because all the other military brats around me were Rah Rah Ford, so I felt sorry for the Peanut prez, and voted for him in our school version of the election.
Smart-ass ticket-stub taker told me he was sorry but they were having trouble with the movie projector and the screening was cancelled. Viewers complained of blurriness. I didn’t catch on right away that he was pulling my leg. Smart-ass…
3D Effects were ok. I’m not big on the 3D experience, and could take it or leave it.
I understand the movie will leave a lot of conservatives feeling “blue”!
Wow. And I thought paying money to see Kung-Pow was bad. I’m still trying to make it up to my girlfriend for making her see it with me.
FA, I suggest self flagellation as pennance.
W/S; Spending $10 on Avatard so I don’t have to.
Your sacrifice of time and money is appreciated but you now must be punished.
Your sentence; You must now watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the complete series of “Deadwood”. It’s not so much a punishment as a brain cleanser.
LOL!
Saw it myself today.
Pre-warned is fore-armed on the politoco theme.
You have to ignore some glaring holes in the plot and remind yourself that it is entertainment and the movie is geared around the special effects. If Cameron hooked into the eco trend to put bums on the seats, well, that is marketing, I dont believe it is intentional propoganda. This theme has been done several times in Sci-Fi over the last thirty years at least. Suspend your disbelief and you will have a good time. Visually beautiful movie.
It looks like a video game to me. If I wanted that, I’d just play Call of Duty.
But if you enjoy it, thats cool too. I just know the movie ain’t for me.
What a relief! For a minute I thought you had sex with Tiger Woods.
I will skip Avatar. Dances with Wolves in Space… no thanks!!
@DavidR:
He wrote the script and included such phrases as “shock and awe” on the natives….pre-emptive strike to “fight terror with terror”….? Sounds like blatant political commentary to me. Could have done without it. But whatever. When they used the phrase about preemption and fighting terror with terror, some laughter rippled through the theater. Don’t know if it was laughter of delight and approval or ridicule.
@Steve In Tulsa:
You mean YOU haven’t?! 😉 We’ve ALL had sex with Tiger Woods.
Someone should make an update of this commercial with all the famous politicians and celebs who have cheated, saying “I’m Cheetah Woods”.
WALL-E comes to mind as a movie that started out fun and interesting, but once WALL-E was on the spacecraft it was lefty environmental preaching about destroying the earth and man being fat and lazy. In the end I was put off.
My son is in town for the next two weeks, and he’s going to take me to see it today. We both know it’s anti-everything premise, so as an antidote, we’ll watch They Were Soldiers and Young, after we get back.
Wordsmith, glad you came clean. You know, the first step towards rehabilitation is admitting you have a problem. Now go watch ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and clean out your brain a bit.
For how long is my brain going to be tainted? Does it count for re-education courses?
Let’s see, cameron is a flaming moonbat, but it’s not propaganda? Riiiiiight.
I’ll pass thank you.
I voted for mcgovern in 1972. It was the first time I voted at the tender age of 18. By the time the next one came around in 1976, I had learned my lessons after three years on active duty. It also cut down on going to movies. I pretty much quit.
Thanks for the confession. I wouldn’t go see it if it were free. Sometimes you just have to take a stand against the propaganda machine and my friend you just fed it $10 bucks and a ticket purchased that tells them to make more of this junk.
Yes! It was Dances with Wolves performed by the Blue Man Group, written by Cliche de Cinema. Beautiful and wondrous to look at, as if Cameron was doing a doc on the people of Pandora, then decided to turn it into a dramatic narrative.
Key lines >
Male Antagonist > “How does it feel to betray your own people?”
Female Protagonist > “Enyutu does not take sides.”…….. (Yet, she does)
Is this a movie about betrayal or transition?
greed or evolution?
self love or belief?
Knowing what has happened, with Obama in the last year.
Would Obama best be characterized, for his betrayal, greed and self love or his transition, evolution and belief?
Should you pin the tail on the donkey? or not.
@Lisa:
In this case, since the political overtones (pretty direct slam on Bush) were so blatantly gratuitous, I’d lean over in agreement with you. Shame on me! But if Cameron (or the producers) merely wrote a movie expressing a universe in which the liberal worldview applies, I’d lean the other way. Otherwise, shame on anyone who listens to Wagner, Springsteen, Beatles, etc.
But merely withholding $10 bucks isn’t enough to get the message across that the reason their film made $10 less is because you’re in protest over the political alienation. After all, every anti-Iraq war movie Hollywood came out with the previous 8 years flopped at the box office. Did Hollywood get the message? Did James Cameron during the 4 years of reflection he had, as he held off from making the movie? No. They still produce the same crap pushing liberal messages.
In general, I think it’s “ok” to support good products, regardless of the politics of those behind the product. If Ben & Jerry’s ice cream put a message out there linking their liberal politics to their ice cream, or when Springsteen campaigns for Kerry and Obama, or when Matt Damon and that one Dixie Chick opens their cakeholes, then yeah….send ’em a political message back.
But it’s hard for me to fault anyone who wishes to lose themselves in Sean Penn’s on-screen character, and go see a movie that he’s in. He’s a good actor. Don’t have to like his politics or the fact that his celeb stature gives him a platform from which to pontificate. But I don’t think you’re “supporting Sean Penn” simply because you went to see a movie of his, anymore than you’re supporting your liberal friend by giving his child a birthday present that he no longer has to get the kid…thereby freeing up his money to go to some leftwing cause.
I had to go watch the movie because it was my duty as a friend and, I confess as well, I was curious even though I knew about the liberal vibe the movie has. Half way in I am already ticked off. The only thing that kept me in the theatre was my boyfriend and common decency towards our friends who bought us the tickets. They were more than $10 (by the way, where did you find a cinema with $10 3D movies? ) By the time they bomb the tree, I tell my boyfriend (Marine with two tours in Iraq) that I want to leave. I was not whispering that into his ear.
James Cameron, just like any other liberal ignoramus, chooses destruction to appeal to the basic and easiest to achieve emotion: sympathy. The guy next to me kept waiving his head in outrage over the actions of the military. People who go watch his movie should feel insulted that the director tells them how to feel and how to react rather than entice a thought from them. I felt like a dog who is getting trained: if you see this color, bark once if you see the other, bark twice. Even the glorious views of a magnificent world could not appease me in my deep anger.
Has anyone seen Inglorious Basterds? In this piece of art (I think it’s brilliant and I hate to disclose some snippets of it) they have the premier of a movie that was made possible by Joseph Goebbels, the man in charge of Nazi propaganda during WWII. If you buy the DVD, which I obviously did, you can actually watch the whole short movie. It’s about a German soldier who manages to kill hundreds of Allied troops in a few days. The way Cameron separates good and evil in his Avatar is no different from the way the German soldier and the American troops are differentiated. There is a very clear line between those two: the good stays good without any effort and the bad has no chance to redeem itself. It’s called propaganda and I am scared that many people cannot read into that. The applause at the end of the movie scared me even more.
Why am I scared and is this normal or an overreaction on my part? I grew up in Eastern Europe. I had an extraordinary childhood surrounded by my books and a very vivid imagination. I was also raised by my grand-parents and great-grand-parents, survivors of the 1st , 2nd World Wars, sudden poverty imposed by Stalin and in 1947 the Great Famine. Sometimes I wish I had a more open ear to all those stories my great-grandpa used to tell me during those cold winter days. I was fascinated but could not fathom the extent of hardships they have endured. Then I went to school. This is when my utter confusion and separation from the society started. I was an outspoken little girl who was forced to shut up and do what she was told. I asked questions but was told not to. I wanted to be great but could not be greater than the other student. I spoke one language: direct communication. I managed to make most of my school teachers my enemies because of that. Sadly, I consider that an honor.
After the USSR broke we had an influx of Western culture. I soon realized that is where I can feel free to be the way I am and not be afraid of getting in trouble because of my character.
I will not elaborate on how long and what it took me to get here and how it felt to receive that letter from the immigration officials saying: Congratulations on becoming a Permanent Resident Alien.
I want to hold on to what I’ve earned: my right to that freedom that I battled for. I could not vote last year but I got the chills when they announced the winner. It’s scary to me to watch a bunch of ignorant and vicious people who under the mask of sainthood, declare themselves the protectors of the weak and even worse, people who actually follow them.
@RuthLess: What a great comment! Thanks for sharing a bit about yourself and your experience!
I only had to pay $10 because I caught a matinee.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it an “overreaction”. But I’d keep in mind most of us can distinguish the difference between fantasy and reality. Still, when one isn’t on guard against being fed propaganda, it gets digested in subtle ways of influence. Heck, one gets influenced in some manner by anything one experiences or watches, irregardless. In our case, fortunately, we were turned off by Cameron’s script and reject the premise of his universe, as it applies to our own.
And this sort of thing happens every single time you turn on the tv or go see a movie. There’s a liberal message in just about everything out there, all the way down to Sesame Street.
Yeah, I went and saw it too. My review is only slightly different than yours.
http://www.vamortgagecenter.com/blog/2009/12/26/the-avatar-post-show/
CJ… you’ve been on my mind. How ya holding up there, guy? The entire blog world is right here at your side, ya know.
How true:
I wouldn’t doubt it if Adam Kokesh and Ehren Watada are applauding the film’s message.
Thanks, MH. That is why I’ve started blogging again. I’m going to have a post up about that decision soon.
Well, welcome back, CJ. We in the blog world have missed you in the times you prefer to remain quiet. And hope that you draw on each and every once of us, in addition to your regular support system. We may be here behind keyboards…. but we are here none the less. Merry Christmas! And many abundant joy and blessings weave their way back into your heart, surplanting the dark that attempts to take over.
God Bless and Enrich the Milbloggers
I haven’t seen Avatar yet. I like animation, but so far it just hasn’t sounded like it has that good of a plot.
I did watch Wall-E and I enjoyed it. I simply accepted the “embedded eco-message” as turning the plot into a parody. An even further exaggerated lampoon of far-left wackyness. Especially funny was that the society was like a mommy controlled herd of human sheep. All being kept unaware of the truth by their feel-good propaganda spewing, socio-fascist autopilot.
Those far-left Hollywood liberals truly are hilarious with their hypothetical ideas of where the human race is headed.
Well I liked Avatar…a bit slow at first, but I have enough real life depth and drama in my life I just want the visual and entertaining factor. When you have a kid…you see it through their eyes…not our adult tainted view….oops did I just say that? Sorry you kids had such a bad time.
I can appreciate your reading all those messages in it though, I’m sure they were there, but for me, like I said…through the eyes of a child…makes life simpler sometimes.
I actually have seen some of the Airbender cartoons and will see the movie. If nothing else, it looks like some wicked eye candy.