avatar \/\/ the inevitable backlash begins (began)
There’s something called the “Tall Poppy Syndrome”. If you’re avant-garde enough to live outside the States, then you might have heard of it. It’s a term most commonly used in the Commonwealth countries, so you wouldn’t really be that avant-garde. Everyone’s lived in a Commonwealth country. (The term does originate from Aristotle, if that makes you feel any better.)
Would you hack and slash these pretty flowers?
Tall Poppy Syndrome occurs when people have an irresistible urge to cut down those that rise above them. You want to cut all the tall poppies. No one stands above you. In Australia, this is one of their many interesting cultural features, along with a desire to drive while drunk and travel the world (occasionally while drunk).
In America we haven’t installed a true version of the Tall Poppy Syndrome yet. We have something called “Inevitable Backlash”. Whereas people with Tall Poppy Syndrome cut their poppies as soon as they inch up over the others, we like to admire our tall poppies for a moment, then attack them with our Inevitable Backlash.
The size of the window between admiration and attack varies based on some key personal attributes: impatience, cynicism, and schadenfreude. If you have high levels of all three, your window is probably the span between hummingbird heartbeats. If you have astonishingly low levels of all three, you’re probably still listening to “Who Let the Dogs Out” on your way to work. You might be driving a Cadillac Catera.
Most of us are somewhere in the middle, and our personal aesthetics and opinions influence our window more than anything else. It took about thirty minutes for me to wish Napoleon Dynamite never happened, but I still get a kick out of quoting Anchorman. To each his own.
Is Avatar just an excuse for James Cameron to twiddle his new technology?
But right now we’re entering the fat strikezone of Inevitable Backlash for Avatar. It’s the middle of Awards Season, a time when different groups of people try to objectively discern which piece of art is The Best when compared to Not Quite As Good pieces of art. Golden Globes, BAFTA, Writer’s Guild Awards, Director’s Guild Awards, Producer’s Guild Awards. The grand-daddy of them all is the Oscars, and the nominations were just released. Guess who’s on there nine times? Avatar. We’re in for a swelling of cinema snob nose-thumbing at James Cameron’s long-gestating filmbaby. It’s just begun.
The anti-Avatar word of mouth started spreading immediately. Even AvantGuardian Ari G was swept up in the pat dismissal of Avatar’s script. A professor of mine recently called the film a collection of clichés on par with an average Bruce Willis movie. (How far has our esteem of Bruce Willis dropped that he’s now a standard on the Barometer of Crap?) A college friend trumpeted on Facebook, “I’m not even going to bother watching the Academy Awards this year… I mean, why bother? I don’t care to see Avatar [win]10 million awards it doesn’t deserve because a few talentless clowns think that it was a ‘game-changer.’”
And so it goes.
The main gripes I hear about Avatar: it values spectacle over substance and the writing is weak.
I disagree on both counts. And I think people are falling prey to anti-Avatar word-of-mouth and Inevitable Backlash to decide that Avatar is a shitsicle without really considering what they’re saying.
Please, in the comments section below, explain to me why Avatar stinks.
Photo credits: Veitchsmith, ScreenRant
The professor speaks back. I found a reason why being a collection of cliches might be OK: “The movie ‘Avatar’ strikes me as Mannerist through and through, generating terrific sensations of originality from a hodgepodge of worn-thin narrative and pictorial tropes. Ours is a dissolving, clever culture of mix and match.” [A clipping on my Kindle, 1/3/2010.] “THE ART WORLD Then and Now Bronzino at the Met.” by Peter Schjeldahl. See his review of this exhibit for a discussion of “Mannerist,” which describes the 16th C painter Bronzino, and according to the reviewer, “best befits creative culture today.” Let me know what you think. Lilly
[...] I’ve been thinking lately on the subject of poetry contests, trying to figure out the ancestry of poetry slams (shouts to Bob Holman and his Bowery Poetry Club for many a fine evening), and literary magazine competitions (no one here to really shout out, and would they be listening). I guess I wonder about Tyler’s question: what does it means to be the “best” at an art (re: avatar backlash)? [...]
I didn’t care much for it because, simply, it didn’t hold my attention. My mind was wandering and I kept trying to check my watch, which was difficult in the dark and with 3-D glasses on, and I felt no connection to the characters.
Of course, that’s pretty much the same reaction I had to the Iliad (minus the 3-D glasses), so maybe I’m just not an epic battle kind of girl.
My preference, of course, is just that. It’s not a universal statement on the quality of the movie. But it *is* based on what I saw and felt (or rather didn’t) when I watched the it–not just what everyone else is saying about it.
Excellent comments, both.
Lillian, I agree that Avatar is a collection of tropes mashed together to create new sensations. You’ve got the stranger in a new world, gets involved with the chief’s daughter, his exile, his glorious return by capturing an uncatchable totem, the requisite minor character deaths to remind us that anyone can die! (but that’s not really true). Etc. etc. Throw in a hard-to-kill soldier, the nerdy scientist sidekick who finds some courage, etc. etc.
Storytellers have been working with the same tropes forever. Star Wars follows “the hero’s journey” schema. Joseph Campbell laid all this stuff out. Monomyths, etc. The Lord of the Rings trilogy doesn’t offer many surprises, either, but Tolkien did a great job of world-building and recombining bits of the monomythic soup to great effect. As an audience, we can feel where the story’s going, but we’re in tune with the ride.
Becky, we’ve had our disagreements with the glory that is the Iliad. But I can understand how Avatar could actually dull you into boredom. It’s like whenever I go to a mall–sensory overload, I want to leave. I’m just not prepped to enjoy that experience. But I have been prepped to enjoy Avatar through my enjoyment of action movies, videogame-type experiences, and James Cameron.
I’m glad you weren’t swayed by our unnamed facebook friend who has yet to do discussion board battle. Or swayed by anyone else’s opinion. I feel that the amount of media/culture (high or low) that we’re exposed and expected to interact with on a secondary level almost forces people to get swept up in the swells of positive or negative opinion without any first-hand experience. Like if I tell people that Pynchon’s new novel is supposed to be good without having read it. I’ve aligned myself with an opinion through shorthand means: blurbs, Pynchon’s name, all the dashes and dots of information that I’ve heard about the book without having read a single sentence of it.
More discourse!
I love the Avatar 3D movie, particularly the story line, not solely it brings a totally new sensation but eye opening ideas of humanity. I heard the New Avatar 2 is comming soon, can’t wait to watch it again…!
it is really exciting to watch 3d movies. i hope that there would be 3d sexy movies too.,*.
3d movies are so cool, i just wish that we could watch 3d movies on TV”~