You know, things like this shouldn't even merit a minute of my attention. In one way or the other, it's common in our ultra-rich culture where people can obsess on whatever subject they happen to fancy at the time. I couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting an example.
Even so, I can't help but see things like this and think that an asteroid wiping out mankind might be a kindness. Who takes a movie this seriously?
"When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed ... gray. It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning," Hill wrote on the forum. "It just seems so ... meaningless. I still don't really see any reason to keep ... doing things at all. I live in a dying world."
It's enough to make me agree that it's a dying world, well maybe if I wasn't actually alive. After that passing thought I want to slam the guy upside the head with a two-by-four. He so freakin' deserves it. Oh, by the way, the quote above is from Ivar Hill- he's studying game design.
Really, game design. And I thought the Forge guys were screwed up.
We've seen this same sort of thing in gaming before, even more directly. Especially online gaming where people have actually killed themselves and endangered others by refusing to get up from the computer.
And I think many of us have seen table-top gamers just take things too far.
In fact we can visit just about any online forum and find examples without looking. I've seen the author of Little Fears claim his game helps victims of child abuse by playing it out again in a different setting. I've seen others claim you can gain important insights into rape, sexuality (of a type not your own) or racism by playing rpgs. The author of Poison'd spoke about how games can remake our culture and allow it accept... neck raping of corpses I suppose.
Movies are movies, games are games. They certainly reflect their makers, their viewers, and their players. But they don't control us unless we're so weak we allow it.
And many of us it seems are very weak indeed.
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6 comments:
I had a "WTF, clue-by-four" moment as well. This planet has so much undiscovered beauty and so much accessible life and joy in it, it's ridiculous.
It's a dangerous place, but with that in mind it's magnificent even in the common things.
I love thunderstorms for example. They have produced a deeper feeling of wonder in me than any movie.
I mean when I watched Avatar, I was stunned by the visuals too, and it was really cool how a movie can take you to another world not yet seen.
But did it make me sad to live on this planet? People gotta get out more. I for one love how where I live I get to see sundogs, and I have regular access to starry skies without having to escape the light pollution of cities.
Heck, even the cities are a treat. There's just something about Fargo on a cool and rainy spring day.
That guy really needs to get out of the house.
I'm sorry, I know a lot of people (some of them dear friends of mine) really love this movie, but...I thought it was the most ham-fisted, cliche-ridden, shallow piece of tripe I've seen in a LONG time. An absolute joke. Sure, the visuals were amazing - but the story SUCKED (not the message, which is a good one, but the story itself). All just my opinion, of course. And what Gleichman said about thunderstorms - right on the money. MUCH more moving and beautiful and incredibly humbling than any fictional doggerel. If people are gonna go stupid over something, I wish they would at least pick something meaningful. Want to get all depressed? Get depressed about world hunger.
It is a sad state of affairs, but it is to be expected. From the most affluent country in the history of the world, the next step towards ultimate hedonism. My greatest fear is the realization of the holodeck from Next Gen Star Trek. If Avatar has this effect, down what road will VR take us? Hedonism at it's pennacle is a self programable alternate reality that I cannot differentiate from the real world. Or perhaps natural selection will rid us of these loathesome weaklings before then. I wouldn't mind being a superhero. Hmm.....
[forgie]
I have no interest in seeing Avatar.
I've got to say - I can relate to having brief, if intense, existential crises because of movies that really "hit" me, but for a film such as this, one that's so basely "pure entertainment", it seems a little pathetic for the guy to be moved by it so much.
If, say, Planet Earth, or Syriana, or, I dunno, a movie that was ABOUT something, something real and tangible that addressed the human or planetary condition, then the guy's despair and thrashing about might be understandable. This is like getting really broken up over playing Kid Icarus or something, you know?
On the subject of game designers thinking that their games themselves are really Going to Change the World, I can only say... le sigh.
[/forgie]
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