Blue Roots: Avatar Dreams (III of III)

When Jaguar Paw and his fellow enslaved villagers pass through a massive Mayan lime quarry, the imagery is of industrial ghosts. Animated corpses. Bodies caked in white lime that clouds the air and ground, clings to everything that passes, rises from mills in a great premonition of some horrible fate.
Set in early 16th century Yucatan, Mayan culture is in decline. Unbeknownst to them, European settlers are on the way. A blood frenzy has gripped the cities -blood to appease the gods and alleviate failing crops and spiraling birth rates. Oceans of blood, a scarlet tide fit to match its blue sister, the sea, the very thing bringing their new masters and echoed in the paint that covers sacrificial victims.
Blue is the color of apocalypse.
Jaguar Paw and friends, dripping blue, are dragged to the top of a ziggurat and before masses writhing in dark ecstasy await a gruesome fate. What happens next in Apocalypto, in my feeble consideration Mel Gibson's best film as a writer and director, won't be ruined here. I don't want to give the whole thing away. I will say, however, that it is worthwhile. As a film about cultural decline, it is inspired and resonates not a little with our contemporary situation.
It makes Avatar, its box office-conquering counterpart, look like a simple and simplistic morality tale.
I'm impressed for several reasons. Mel Gibson is not well versed in that little thing called nuance, and his deft use of it is unprecedented in the career of a man usually associated with blockhead dialogue and torture porn. With Apocalypto he comes across the sensitive artiste. That said, let's circle back to the original notion that you haven't seen Avatar until you've seen this.
You can't appreciate it without a film like this one, with depth and historical detail and even, yes, nuance.
Because as much as Apocalypto is at its roots a chase story -Jaguar Paw spends half the movie on the run- it dodges the shallow spirituality and mass destruction of Avatar; it has the same kind of blue bombast, but with the vital difference of creating a deeper look at cultural decay. Where in Avatar the threat comes from marauding humans bent on obtaining material wealth with runaway greed, a clear and present danger on this or any planet, granted, the native Navi are presented as undivided in wholesomeness and purity. That works for a special effects bonanza, if that is what you are going for, yet I find it intriguing that Mel Gibson has produced a film as bombastic as it is thought-provoking for its portrayal of people suffering from their own, enslaved by their own, wiped out by their own -in the name of survival.
And it is exactly at the end that a very different question is asked. What will survive? The lens of history, as opposed to that of a 3-D camera, would suggest that what survives is blindness to true threats. We can see in Apocalypto a caution from Mayan decline, but also to all societal decay; that it comes in painted pleasantly blue but marks the end of something that wishes it could be eternal.
It is widely reported that James Cameron has an Avatar trilogy in mind and it may be that he has not shown us the depths of exploring the question of native peoples' futile attempts to stave modernity. Even so, Mel Gibson, of all people, has beat him to the punch.

Blue Roots: Avatar Dreams (II of III)

World, I don't believe we finished discussing dancing smurfs. Deep subject. For one thing, they're blue. As it turns out, we like blue people. We like just about anything that's cerulean or navy or periwinkle. Of course these are shades, pigments, variations on a theme, and we should go to the source to gauge their positive influence.

The color blue is woven throughout Avatar, as is bombast: blue bombast, let's say, is the defining motif of the film. James Cameron traffics in blue bombast and has done quite well for himself by it. The writer/director of the film I find myself carrying on at great length about (second part of three!), Apocalypto, is in the same club, with a thing for telling stories in wide strokes about people colored blue.

Is Mel Gibson blue? He could have a little blue man inside him, for all we know. On the flipside, I'm sure he's feeling blue for his misdeeds of late, if the man has a heart at all. When it comes to emotions, feeling bluesy is not so hot. We'll restrict our interpretation to aesthetic.

Superman dresses in blue. The Virgin Mary has a closet of blue linen. Smurfs, they've got it in their skin. The flags of several nations are red, white and blue...

Blue is good.

Mel Gibson painted half his face blue in Braveheart. He kicked butt in a bombastic fashion.

Blue bombast is good.

However.

In Apocalypto blue is not so great. It's even quite bad.

***SPOILER ALERT***

The setting is 16th century Mesoamerica. Jaguar Paw lives in peace and harmony with family and friends -until Mayans raid their village and take them for slaves. That always happens, doesn't it? After an arduous jungle slog, they pass through a giant lime quarry before reaching the city, where they are immediately painted. You will never believe what color.

But it's very bad for them to be colored blue.

Tune in next post to find out why.

Blue Roots: Avatar Dreams (I of III)

I'm talking to the world now. Hey world, remember Dancing With Smurfs? You saw it under a different title. Everybody and their cousin, if the cash cow numbers are any indication, saw it once, twice, thrice. But let me tell you, world, you haven't seen Avatar, the biggest box office smash of all time, not yet, you really haven't. You haven't seen it until you've watched Mel Gibson's magnum opus, Apocalypto.

I know. I know what's going through your mind. You're thinking: Mel Gibson?!? Give us a break, right? He's fallen out of favor, kaput; he's yesterday's news, out to pasture, a has-been.

But wait.

His last film is Apocalypto. His most recent film. Mel Gibson isn't dead, he could make more. Nice title, catchy but instantly forgettable, sounding more like a cornball superdude in spandex than a film of any significance. You didn't see it. I know I didn't. From the Oscar-award winning director of Braveheart. Also, let's not forget, the star of four Lethal Weapon movies. Think about that. There were four chapters in the Lethal Weapon saga. How did that happen? But if that were all, he would still be our darling Mel. People found it in their hearts to forgive him that mullet.

Lately it hasn't been so easy to appreciate the guy, bad hair or not. He's on the record saying awful things. A few years ago he drunkenly spewed some racist bile. That was almost forgotten when a couple months back it came out that he said some awful things. Again. Mel Gibson has a problem with his words. Hateful words. He said them on the record. And that's not the worst thing.

There are allegations that he struck his girlfriend, that he not only hit her but did it while she was holding their infant child. Vile. Does Mel Gibson do anything halfway? He's not content to be a bad man; he has to be a monster.

An alleged monster. We don't know what really happened until the man himself comes clean, either by his own volition or in a court of law.

His ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorievna recorded him on the sly and we can question the dubious nature of what would make someone do that, but there it is: the entire world has heard just how ugly Mel Gibson can sound in real life. It is bad. Regardless of the circumstances, it is very bad. He comes across an ugly son of a gun and I can't blame people for hating and dismissing the jerk.

It wasn't always like this.

I'd never heard of Grigorievna before the recent mess, but Mel Gibson has been in the public eye for decades. It wasn't until the last few years that he exhibited his dark side. It might have always been there, but I am willing to give him the benefit of doubt.

What he said is too horrible to repeat, and I'm not excusing the man. He needs forgiveness, of that there's no doubt. The illusion of celebrity, especially in our Age of Instant News, is that we know anything of substance about people in the spotlight, when in truth they are hidden behind glamors like the rest of us albeit on a much larger scale. Mr Gibson is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. Whoever he is behind the persona, that is the man who needs forgiveness. I don't care if he makes another movie, but he should be confronted with what he has done and an accounting made. Since it has been aired out in public, we should know what to believe and if he truly is the monster he appears to be.

Anyhow. We've strayed far from dancing smurfs, haven't we?

Let's get back on track.

When Avatar hit the big screen, it went off in popular consciousness like a bomb. Consider the size of screens these days and that's about what it takes to make any kind of impression at the movies anymore: the spectacle has to be leviathan. Avatar delivers that kind of spectacle and people continue to see it in droves, but it is standing on some big shoulders, like Dances With Wolves, which hordes of folk loved and won Best Picture that year, and Apocalypto, recognized in significantly smaller numbers as a work of importance.

***SPOILER ALERT***

A soldier on an alien world learns to love their culture and ultimately turns against his own kind to defend them. The choice is not a hard one: humans are greedy scum while the innocent, spiritual, and respectful of all others race of Nav'i just want to live in their tree in peace. He's going to choose to stay human; yeah, right.

Which is my beef with Avatar: it is exactly what you expect it to be. Apocalypto is not, but it tells a similar tale...

Wow, this post is running like horses over the hills, so I'll stop here and see you again soon for the second of three parts in a series. Be good.

Got Avatar?

Nope, not the movie, but I got you to look, didn't I? I'm asking if you have an avatar, like all the kids are doing these days. I do, but the thing is, it isn't me. Let me explain...

She whom you see pictured to your right is not a real person. Sally Parker is the main character in my novel, Narchitect, about which you can read much more at the brand spanking new blog I set up to market it. In preparing introduce the world to Sally, it struck me that I wanted an image to accompany her bio. Since the technology doesn't exist (yet) to snap images of characters out of novels, I had to come up with an alternate way to show what she looks like. That's when it occurred to me to create an avatar for her, and I have to say, the result is a pretty decent approximation.

Cool thing is -or eerie, depending on how you look at it -Sally resides now as a 3-D character on my desktop. She hangs out down by the toolbar with her polygon hair waving in a digital breeze. If Narchitect were a kitchen sink drama or Regency England Romance, it wouldn't make any sense to craft her appearance this way. Since it is a novel set in the 23rd century, where everybody has analog lives in a game realm, this was the logical way to go. Kind of fun, too.

There are many other characters in the book, and I enjoyed creating an avatar for Sally so much that I imagine I'll give them the same treatment. This will give me an excuse to research myriad social sites online, where 3-D avatars are de rigeur. Stop in at the Narchitect blog to see the results!

Which reminds me...

The final installment of my first serial over at Vault of Story is now up and you can read the complete tale of Danny Bates as he deals with the consequences of being late to school. Not everything is as it seems in Danny's world....

It was fun transfering the short story to the blog in sections, transcribing it from my scrawl on college-lined pages and editing on the fly. The end result needs some work, I think, and it will be a while until I commit to another lengthy tale. After all, I should be devoting all my writing time to the manuscript, not short stories! They are such a nice break, even so, that I will not neglect to continue posting regularly. Already I've a slew of miniature, "flash" fictions to offer, which you'll be able to view presently.

Word to Entrecarders: Vault of Story is now droppable!

Stop by and check it out, everybody's welcome.

Dances with Smurfs

James Cameron's Avatar is a long movie about a soldier at the end of his rope who falls in love with an oppressed tribe and fights to protect them from his own war-like, culturally-insensitive peoples. Does this sound like another overlong blockbuster? I might have been the only person in the theater wondering if there would be a Kevin Costner cameo, because this film is very similar to his Dances with Wolves, another tale of a soldier who goes native.

That said, if you go to Avatar for the story, you are going for entirely the wrong reason. This is a visual film. The narrative structure exists in service to lush, black-light jungles, incredible flying beasties and floating mountains straight off a Roger Dean album cover. James Cameron waited ten years for the right technology to showcase his ideas -and it shows.

My biggest gripe is length. The sustain of one visual bonanza after another gets to be too much of a good thing. Running nearly three hours in length, having a more substantial tale to tell would have helped, like, say, Dance with Wolves. Emotional investment is missing from Avatar, pretty much from the start we all know exactly how the story will end. Not that Dances with Wolves has a twist ending, yet it told a familiar tale with unexpected poignancy in scenes and characters that exceeded our expectations.

See Avatar for the visuals. They will blow you away. The 3-D effects are top-notch, so subtle you are barely aware of them but that fully immerse you in a fantastic new world.

It also doesn't hurt to admit from the get-go that this is a film about smurfs. Sure, the ham-handed allegory of Iraq makes it seem that our heroes are ripped straight off the headlines -the military in Avatar has a mission, and I quote, of shock and awe, and is determined to fight "terror with terror" (lazy writing or self-loathing?) -the noble tribe are in truth magical beings of love and togetherness, and the "jarhead clan" is run by none other than Gargamel in camo gear, intent on nothing more complicated than smash-kill-explode-rinse-repeat. Dances with Smurfs is a freebie for Seth McFarlane or whoever*; it is also the level of seriousness that should be brought to Avatar. See it for the eye candy, not the brain candy.

*I've been informed that Dances with Smurfs originates from a South Park episode. Who knew?