Bob Wildbood said: " As the beloved Bobby Burns said, 'Wad Power but hae the gift to gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us.' I think that Avatar gives us that gift.'
Exactly the filmmaker's point- at least that is what they often say. But I see Michael's point as well- couldn't they put just a *little* ambiguity or complexity in there! The criticism I had of Dances With Wolves II, I mean Avatar, and the one my student's saw, was the over-simplification Michael points to - of course they recognized it as a device- In the defense of creative folk, this is a very common literary and film practice to quickly establish a character by making them fit a stereotypes. Which, of course, often translates to "spend all my time and effort rendering weapons and creatures on the tree trunks rather than on developing complex or ambiguous characters". . . But we have to remember that films are also evaluated on whether the story fits together and introducing ambiguous characters and making us think might well just make it more and more complex and less fluid till finally the story gets lost- and apparently that happens quite easily. I do agree that such movies can seem to become interchangeable after a while. Not having made films or, therefore, any of these decisions I can understand why they tend to "take the easy way out" more times than not. But, yes. The familiarity of this or similar movies does provide a teaching or discussion device. I do think that this "moment" may get lost in some students who defend the creative decisions etc. rather than engaging the topic you wish them to discuss so I don't think I would tend to use it for that purpose. :) Perhaps the effectiveness of doing this would depend, as it usually does, on how well we developed the exercise, the class itself, professorial style, etc. Tim _______________________________ Timothy O. Shearon, PhD Professor, Department of Psychology The College of Idaho Caldwell, ID 83605 email: [email protected] teaching: intro to neuropsychology; psychopharmacology; general; history and systems "You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." Dorothy Parker --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7555 or send a blank email to leave-7555-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
