Apres Guerre

Before you make any decisions about anything in life, you need to listen to this song.

Unexpectedly short on time to-day. I'd hoped to have finished all my Christmas shopping by now, but there's one more thing I need. I've already pencilled and inked a page, though, so I'm feeling good.

A couple nights ago, I watched Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog again, which was a perfect antidote for Avatar, though maybe any film noir would be. Maybe this is key to why I'm missing the point--I need heroes who are flawed, people we don't necessarily hate if they're bad. I guess Avatar is, at the end of the day, for kids, and it's not one of those shrewd kid movies with things for adults as well, but maybe the kids, and the childlike adults, deserve movies just for them now and then.

I'm still not as incensed about the racial elements as a lot of people seem to be. Yes, it's a fantasy about escaping white guilt and proving that the natives need the white man to show them what to do. But only if you watch the movie with a certain functioning knowledge base. There are other perspectives. For example, the way I read it, the Na'vi aren't as smart as the humans because they don't need to be. Think about it--as Sully learned, many of their acrobatic skills are sort of encoded in their bodies, the planet provides everything they need to survive comfortably and receive feelings of validation. In fact, this is why the movie annoyed me so much.

So they're not dumb because they're secretly black people--they're dumb because they have all the intelligence they've evolved needing. Well, then I guess we'd get into issues of eugenics since the colonial/native dichotomy still rather asks one to think of foreign powers subjugating indigenous peoples.

Okay. So what if it's a racist movie? Are we non-racists really so great? There's a racist clown on The Howard Stern Show named Yucko and, you know what? He's pretty funny. Of course, integral to his humour is pointing out the absurdity and repulsiveness of racism.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't want to ruin the movie for you.

Wait, why am I apologising to racists? Unless you're not racists, and I'm still just missing something. Sumimasen!



Last night's tweets;

Plastic makes cups of water for bottles.
Lunch is a Subway sandwich with chow mein.
In the shade of Rupert Murdoch's wattles,
No robot blue bug light burns in vain.