We’re Doomed!
link Audiences experience ‘Avatar’ blues – CNN.com
I can’t make this stuff up, this material streams in and just begs for comment. CNN reports that an online web site called “Avatar Forums” have people expressing feelings of sadness or depression because they cannot live in a world as beautiful and perfect as depicted in the movie “Avatar”. A writer by the name of Mike:
“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it,” Mike posted. “I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.’ ”
Other fans have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality:
“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.”
As an aside, the writer is 17 years old. Everything that he’s “done and worked for” may include math and english homework as well as a half finished collection of Pokemon cards. Of course he does live in Sweden, so the 11 month winter may be getting to him.
If these heart wrenching sentiments don’t crown James Cameron as the greatest filmmaker of all time, I’ll be the uncle of monkeys. To be able to craft a movie so rich in convincing detail, that people are tempted to off themselves because reality is so miserable is unprecedented to my knowledge. Heads up to the lawyers, Cameron will need a team of you guys when the lawsuits come pouring in for wrongful death suits.
Maybe people like this unfortunate young man should stop believing the biased propaganda that is being peddled by governments and media alike. Under the cover of science we are constantly fed a bleak stream of negative and alarmist views. The looming horror of global warming, imminent nuclear warfare, disappearing forests, depleted fish stocks, missing polar bears, African killer bees, spread of AIDS, hijackings of ships, oil prices soaring, rain forests shrinking, violent drug wars, airplane terrorism, excessive salt intake. He has to stop watching MSNBC.
If his bleak assessment of the state of the world is based on the diet of information fed to him at school, maybe the education system should stop sourcing texts from the Goth School collection; maybe turn a few lights on at the school.
Back in the 60’s there was an campy TV series called Lost In Space, whose special effects didn’t quite approach the richness of Cameron’s epic. One of the characters, Dr. Zachary Smith, was notable for his eternal pessimism and on nearly every episode, he was able to wail, “We’re doomed I tell you, doomed!” This guy was way ahead of his time.