Posted on 01/31/2010 3:44:36 PM PST by DogByte6RER
Avatar Gives Film Fans the Blues
By Stephen Jones
Epoch Times Staff
A luminescent, idyllic world populated by peace-loving aliens may have captivated cinema audiences across the world, but for some the 'immersive' experience of watching the film Avatar has threatened to overshadow their own lives.
Hundreds of fans of James Cameron's blockbuster 3-D epic have complained that they feel despair after leaving the cinema that they can never live in a world like the mythical Pandora, in the film.
An online discussion board, titled “Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible,” has received more than 2,000 posts from fans beating their breasts over their relatively more pallid life on Earth.
“After I watched Avatar for the first time, I truly felt depressed that I was awake in this world again,” one post reads.
Another says, “It’s so hard, I can’t force myself to think that it’s just a movie, and to get over it, and that living like the Na’vi will never happen.”
On a separate forum, on the Web site Naviblue.com, fans have even considered more extreme action.
“I even contemplated suicide, thinking that if I do it I will be reborn in a world similar to Pandora, and that everything will be the same as in Avatar," one post read.
In the James Cameron film Avatar, Jake (Sam Worthington) meets his avatar, a genetically engineered hybrid of human DNA mixed with DNA from the natives of Pandora. (Mark Fellman / WETA) It has been speculated that the reason behind the widespread depression may have been due to the release of the bright and visually stunning film during the middle of one of Europe's bleakest winters on record.
But U.K. psychiatrist, Dr. Jacqueline Scott, said that it was unlikely that a film could trigger seasonal affective disorder.
"I think that the people who are feeling depressed may have already had a predisposition toward this," says Dr. Scott.
The film is based around the story of how humans wage war on eco-friendly aliens of an idyllic planet called Pandora, for a rare mineral substance called “unobtainium.”
Avatar, which took 14 years to make, has been lauded as a revolution in filmmaking—not least because of its presentation in 3-D.
However, some say that the effect of 3-D cinema on audiences has not been fully accounted for.
In his latest book, “The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes it Hard to be Happy,” Michael Foley argues for a reappraisal of the effect of film on our emotional state.
Director James Cameron at the premiere of 'Avatar,' at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre, in the Hollywood. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images) “With Avatar, the technology has become so highly sophisticated that it makes the screen world seem more vivid than reality can ever be,” he told the Times Online.
"What you’re absorbing is so stimulating, and what it offers is so frenetic, giving you a new stimulus every second, that it makes real life feel sluggish, slow, and impossibly dead in comparison.”
In a bid to recapture the same emotions of the film, a group of fans in Florida have announced that they will create a commune inspired by the ecological principles of the Na'vi.
The bizarre fall out from the film has even prompted the eccentric London Mayor Boris Johnson to pen an opinion column in a U.K. newspaper titled 'Stop pining for life on Pandora and come back to planet Earth.'
He predicts that in 10 years’ time the U.K. census will show more adherents of Eywa, the earth goddess of the Na'vi, than there are of Jedi.
"I can't believe that many of these gloomy post-Avatar Westerners, when they really think about it, would want to up sticks to Pandora and take part in Na'vi society, with its obstinate illiteracy, undemocratic adherence to a monarchy based on male primogeniture, and complete absence of restaurants," he said.
"The final irony, of course, is that this entrancing vision of prelapsarian innocence is the product of the most ruthless and sophisticated money-machine the world has ever seen. With a budget of $237 million and with takings already at £1 billion [$1.6 billion], this exquisite capitalist guilt trip represents one of the great triumphs of capitalism."
The pathetic state of these people is absolutely breathtaking.
If someone came to me and told me they were considering suicide over a fantasy film,i’d have to slap the crap outta them & tell them to snap out of it.
Ah... but to be able to convert it into tangible assets, that would make it a true gift!
Geeeeeeeeeeez....they must have forgotten about the continuous hunt that went on....the wild animals in the kill or be killed world of Pandora. Geeeeeez.
Losers.
You guys are hysterical.
Uh oh.
What piece of computer equipment are we directly responsible for destroying via liquid intrusion this time?
;-)
This is not going to end well.
At one time in my life, I seriously considered joining a commune with my wife. (Yeah, I'm dating myself)
This commune we almost joined was based on reality and real spiritual concerns not a fantasy dreamed up by some Hollywood radical
The main reason we didn't join was the simple realization we could not run away from what real or perceived issues we needed to address within our world.
You are 100 % correct this will not end well at all
Very true
My deespest apologies to tripe
I guess I shoulda said sewage :)
Don’t worry, diet soda doesn’t gum up the keyboard like stuff with sugar. And it’s too cold for ants.
Had me worried there.
Lotta luck with that.
"The final irony, of course, is that this entrancing vision of prelapsarian innocence is the product of the most ruthless and sophisticated money-machine the world has ever seen. With a budget of $237 million and with takings already at £1 billion [$1.6 billion], this exquisite capitalist guilt trip represents one of the great triumphs of capitalism."
Even without being so dramatic in the statement of it, the irony is that the fantasy of a beautiful all-natural world of beauty and harmony has only been made possible by the development of highly advanced, capitalism-enabled, post-industrial-era computer and imaging technology.
Actually, the story of how that project goes ought to be almost as entertaining as the movie.
Menudo. Famous Mexican hangover cure.
I do not doubt that Obama's highly irrational campaign activated many of these stunted people. But it did not begin with him.
One fundamental expression of the liberal mind is an infantile wish to be reunited with Mommy. Nirvana, the ultimate dissolution of the indiviudal, merged with everyone else. You see it in the "commune" impulse noted by others above. You see it in the iconic "Kumbaya." "We are the world." "I'd like to teach the world to sing." On and on it goes.
On the macro scale, it is seen in the intensely pathological "One World" impulse, It is made real by the traumatized Europeans, huddling together in the EU, hoping that by shacking up they will finally keep from killing each other. On and on it goes.
It is driven by the fear of separation and abandonment, which normal people resolve by the age of about six, and who go on to become adults and political conservatives.
An admirable quality. Good on you.
I thought the same thing. Most people who yearn to live in pristine nature have never actually tried it. It can be pretty deadly.
“I read a Book one time about a place where there was no crime - no wars - no pain and that people worshiped their God in a place called heaven. It didn’t make me suicidal though but instead gave me hope after this life there was something better.”
Excellent.
Wasn’t this posted here about two weeks ago?
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