Avatar is the Massage
So, via The NY Times, I just learned that James Cameron is planning a novel “providing back stories for characters” who splash along on the big screen to box-office success in all of their dazzling 3-D glory.
What’s remarkable to me is the interplay between the two media. The novel becomes the site of significance. The film becomes the playground for awe. Given the digitization of the book, and how keenly that’s felt in the library world, this re-inscription of meaning to the analog, to the book (as it’s still imagined), seems to set these terms up in ways that they’re beginning to resist.
Like I wondered yesterday, are epics now devoid of allegorical meaning? This dovetails into the same concerns. The major criticism of Avatar is that it lacked substance. Is substance really only necessary for the literate? Even worse, is this substance a byproduct of other media?
I think there’s something more going on here that my cursory reaction doesn’t quite nail.
Retroactively assigning meaning to pyrotechnic displays of technical expertise and situating it in a book as THE SITE for narrative also does a disservice to books. It excludes them from the realm of real significance, making them contingent on digital factors, rather than substantive on their own. Books have value to us as the Kindle and other technologies make them disposable and drop them into our palms.
I’m all for more widespread literary. For enjoyment in reading. I’m just not sure about the vehicle being the message. Oh, Marshall McLuhan. Wish I knew what you’d have said. Until then, I’ll bide my time until Henry Jenkins weighs in. Ah, participatory culture… explain my passivity.
Allegories of Halo?
Okay. Back with a vengeance?
Trying to clear out some of my reader is like plowing through some of these city streets: huge globs of material, not going anywhere, fascinating but ultimately intrusive.
This time a post on Ta-Nehisi Coate’s blog made me think.. do video games really fail to offer up significant allegory? They seem rife with possibility. Games do manage to be epic (though not in the parlance of the times defines “epic”), but what is it about this distinction and disconnect between epic and allegory? I used to think that an epic work necessarily had to be allegorical, but now I’m not so sure.
I’m fascinated by this because of the linkages with film and games — and the potential of both to tell stories in significant ways. But what do the failures tell us?
Edit: I should add that the original question stems from a guest post on Ta-Nehisi Coate’s blog by Evan Narcisse. Credit where credit is due.
The Orient of Business
So, it’s been about a year since anyone has touched this blog. I was content to let it fester in the murky muck, as perhaps we’re all too busy with more important things and the blog never hit its mark.
That is, until I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Sociological Images, and it struck me how amateur one of the posts is. Don’t get me wrong, most posts are great — but I thought we were ready to move past a post-colonial theory 101 class’s first take on Orientalism. In a series of topical postcards, they present it as though it’s all about exoticizing the foreign, specifically the non-Westerner.
This article actually made the case to me that I would’ve probably taken part in objectifying the Other, rather than showing how insidious the ways consumption and identity work (construction of Self through Other, blah blah blah). If you were living in a relatively closed and industrial society, wouldn’t you be fascinated by something, gasp!, new? People going out to seek that new may have had a hand in producing that novelty, to the detriment of the oppressed and personified Other, but the superior sense of self that came about wasn’t the product. Rather, it was the byproduct — and that’s what makes this so treacherous. So festersome.
All this is to say, that it made me realize that I wanted to focus on venting about the business class that I’m taking (in an attempt to market myself better as a good worker bee).
I’ve censored myself in my business 101 class a few times, unwilling to dig into the essentialist statements, like, for example, “women are more likely to follow an ethics of care while men tend to prefer an ethics of justice.” Do business folk even realize what that means? Why it might mean that? And why is it so judgmental when it talks about arbitrary women who make decisions based on empathy but avoids saying much harmful about men who follow rules blindly, except that their standards are sometimes too rigid? Or does rigid not have the same stigma that arbitrary does?
Should I bring in the Phallus? Rigidly? (Note to self: don’t look up “phallus” while at on a public CPU, even if you’re intending to link to a wiki article about the symbolism within psycho-analytic & feminist theories).
But I hesitate to be too strident in the face of folk who base their findings on studying categories like “white men, ages 16-18″ and “Hispanic single moms, ages 25-32″ without interrogating what these categories mean or how the data relates to the category it is supposed to represent. Taxonomies, rather than systems. I’m there to learn from them for now… I think that this ties back into Orientalism in that it figures one set at normal and that there’s a mixture of identity and product at play.
The study of business, itself, may be one of the last great frontiers.
Taken Takes the Cake
I was sitting in the theater before Taken started, reading me some Location of Culture (well, the prologue to the Routledge Classics edition) and Michelle was out buying some popcorn and I was thinking, “I can’t wait to put away this Homi Bhabha and watch me some torture porn!”
Torture porn was the least of my worries.
(Spoiler! Spoiler! Since I know the hoards of you are going to see this movie!)
Dude, like it’s not enough that the audience cheered while Liam was on his torture mission. That, I expected. But … his daughter, a rich white chick from LA, was not taken for some ransom. Oh no. Some Albanians wanted to sell her into the sex trade, which turned out to be particularly lucrative given she was a virgin.
Because there is a huge problem with Albanians kidnapping Americans and selling them into the sex trade.
The whole final sequence basically involved the audience holding our breath while we waited to see if Liam could get to his daughter before she lost her virginity. To an Arab sheik. While wearing a white veil.
I’ll leave it to you to figure out if he did, but I will say I think they had a great time at the Purity Ball upon their return to the United States. After Liam Neeson killed like a million people. I think the US traded him so France would keep Roman Polanski. Or else the Christianist right has completely taken over our media and we just don’t know it yet.
Robert DeNiro vs. George Clooney
I was supposed to watch The Deer Hunter for a class I’m auditing on contemporary memorials. See, it’s a funny story. The Deer Hunter actually inspired someone to be inspired to build a Vietnam Memorial, and that’s how we wound up with the whole Maya Lin debacle following by the whole Three Fighting Men debacle. Of course, this was all followed by the Women’s Memorial debacle.
One might argue these were, ahem, artistic quagmires.
What movie would inspire someone to memorialize the first Gulf War? Three Kings?
Stalker Movies as Romantic Comedies
If I could make a Doc Film series based on stalker movies I’ve seen with Renee, these would definitely be on the list:
Wicker Park (2004) — People going in through the windows, pretending to be people they’re not, and, generally, creepiness.
Addicted to Love (1997) — An amazing movie wherein I remember Meg Ryan spying on the guy she wants, spending exorbitant resources to do so, in spy-vs-spy fashion.
I’m sure there are 8 more, so I’m submitting the proposal.
HJNTIY, Take 309
Just when I think I can’t love Rebecca Traister on Broadsheet any more…
So if anyone else out there has a sentence they want to get off their chest, but especially if it’s about how women should just pull themselves together and stop being so damn crazy, get ready to ride the American Dream Train all the way to movie theaters!
Last night I was forced to admit my obsession with this book to someone I’d actually like to have a little respect for me in the morning. When it came down to it, there was no back-tracking, there was stumbling over words. His reaction was an undeniable what-the-fuck moment.
I’m a woman, I obsess. Maybe the book just isn’t that into me.
Chocolatey Racial Political Goodness
I first saw this ad when Julia and I went to see Rachel Getting Married, but that was a good movie that didn’t put me to sleep so I sort of half put it out of my mind. Last night, Calgary and I were on our way to see He’s Just Not That Into You (sold out! at every theater!) and I started talking about this ad. Lo and behold, all of a sudden everything that was wrong with the ad hit me. (What can I say? I am slow) and we got to talking about the racial implications of the ad. You know, like the idea of white women consuming a chocolate man. The complete objectification of him as he breaks pieces of himself off for the hoards of white women who find him irresistible.
Yea. It’s called “Dark Temptation.” There isn’t a single woman of color in the whole ad. A woman bites his ass on a subway. Um, it’s called “Dark Temptation.”
Then, at a 9:50 showing of The International (the only movie still available for viewing in New York City) I got to see the ad again. As soon as it came on the black couple in front of us looked at each other, sort of a little freaked out, and Calgary said “It’s like a minstrel show!”
Seriously. It is.
Foxy time
So, this video is beginning to circulate on the interweb, and it’s amazingly exuberant. It’s foxes on a trampoline!
What’s amusing, though, is the poster’s response to all of the attention that her video is getting. She is the polar opposite of exuberance, claiming ownership of the video, and, counter to the EULA of youtube, denying anyone permission to link or use her video. She has gone to places and belligerently lambasted those who use her video.
This is MY video, it is taken by ME, do not use or take this video, don’t post it anywhere else, or link it to anything without giving me credit, and linking it BACK here to it’s original posting. Thank you.
Why is it so hard still to figure out what this internet thing? I’m all for imaginative uses, but our imagination seems limited by a debate on which real meme we want to apply.
What’s missing?
Okay — So I’m looking for some feedback. Been working with Scrapply to come up with a Chocolate Beer tasting menu for Jen’s arrival. We have the beers somewhat settled (although the idea of adding a kriek is still in the works). The beer lineup is Young’s Double Chocolate Stout, Ommegang Chocolate Indulgence, and Southern Tier Choklat.
We will be making chips out of some Idaho russets, garnet yams, sweet potatoes, purple fingerlings, and possibly some parsnips. These will be accompanied by a number of dips, along with some fresh vegetables (sweet pepper, carrot, celery, at the moment).
I think I’ve come up with enough dips for this. Might want to add another that balances the creaminess overload, but I’m loathe to go too tomato-y.
- White Bean Hummus
- Mango Salsa (possibly with avocado to diminish the acidity)
- Chipotle-Honey Dip
- Pan-fried Onion Dip
- Tzatziki
For dessert we’re having a upside-down honey cheesecake.
I’m at a loss. What’s the main course?? I have a Pea Pesto Salad planned. I’ve tossed around the idea of a seafood stew. Or some non-fishy fish? Or have Scrapply prepare some meat? A roast?
