Did you happen to catch the meaning behind the second line in that article, i.e., “By characterizing this assumption as a “fallacy,” a critic suggests that the author’s intention is not important.”
Notice how the word ‘fallacy’ is in quotes? It’s because the term “logical fallacy” is a device used to criticize the notion that an artist’s intent is important (or perhaps paramount). Clearly this means its use is subjective and not a matter of fact.
I have a passing acquaintance with art, and apart from that which is merely decorative, the thing most people want to know when they look at a painting or some other piece of art where the meaning isn’t clear, is what is this work of art supposed to represent? Would you claim that Picasso’s intent in creating Guernica is of no importance? People who don’t know better look at it and scoff, thinking a child could do better. But that’s because they don’t realize Picasso’s intent. What he intended to do was create a visceral emotional reaction to the violence that took place there in order to firmly implant in the viewer’s mind the horror experienced by the victims of the bombing there. Look at the horse or the woman holding her dead child and wailing to the skies. Could Picasso have possibly created a representational* (“realistic”*) painting of horses or people as they actually are that would have telegraphed anywhere near the anguish and pain that those characters are feeling? No, they wouldn’t. But explain to them what Picasso was trying to say and why he went about it in the way he did, and people who were originally scornful of the painting often begin to develop an appreciation of it. That’s why it’s important to know what the artist intends with a particular piece of work, and what I hope to accomplish by making people aware of what James Cameron intended to convey with his particular work of art rather than making it more “realistic” in the sense of deeper character development, story line, etc.
*(And as an aside, if anyone remains of the opinion that Picasso only painted the way he did because he couldn’t paint any better, take a look at this painting, which he started at the age of 14 and completed the following year later.)
Says you. The Godfather explored issues of character, morality, legacy, economics, history, and community. It won’t convince anyone that Crime Isn’t Bad, but that’s not really the point of the film, is it?
You are speaking in a narrow results-oriented paradigm. Entertainment may be results-oriented, but Art typically is not. Art evokes, challenges, explores, and enlightens, but what it actually ECEE will vary based on the consumer and the amount of time he/she takes to consider their reaction.
Entertainment is simply calibrated to deliver. There’s nothing wrong with that, and there’s nothing that says that a film can’t be both. But essentially, you’re saying Avatar is great because it is calculated to create a simple response among a large enough percentage of the population, and it did just that. Well congratualations–by that metric, so did Transformers 2 (but just to a lesser degree).
As Homer Simpson once said: “Barney’s movie has heart, but Football in the Groin has a football in the groin.” Avatar is Football in the Groin. Just because it accomplished what it set out to do successfully does not inherently make it great.
If A = boring and B = Interesting, provocative, and original, then yes, that’s exactly what criticism is all about.
Dude, you aren’t talking about Star Wars. Star Wars was made in 1977, and has no character in it named Count Dooku. Stop making your own arguments look even more ridiculous than they already do.
No, Avatar’s plot was shitty. Period. Star Wars plot was at least acceptable, in that is a time-tested, nearly universally known plot that has been used throughout human history in nearly every recorded culture on the planet. Avatars plot is recycled from a handful of movies and books and is based on notions of romantic primitivism that were largely discredited and laughed at almost as soon as they were written down, and which served primarily as a facade which allowed writers at the time to make thinly veiled protests against the monarchs they lived under. In other words, it was as shitty a plot device 300 years ago as it is now.
I don’t think it was simple to create that response at all. YOU try concocting a film that has people so immersed in it that they don’t want to eat their popcorn because it will take them out of the movie and put them back in the theater, that has people contemplating suicide because they can’t live in the world the movie depicts (Cite), that causes even hard-core righties like me to at least begin to appreciate the concerns of environmentalists where before I largely had scorn, and has more or less the same kind of effect on people the world over, and then maybe I’ll be willing to accept that what Cameron did was “simple”.
And you wonder, Starving Artist, why people sometimes find you frustrating to debate with.
ArchiveGuy never said that creating the response was simple. He said that Cameron’s aim was to create a simple response. Quite a different thing. Your response to him is a complete non-sequitur, because it addresses a completely different question than the one he was raising.
“He created a simple response” is not the same as “It was simple to create a response.”
Well, as i suggested earlier, if this movie causes people to change their views on environmentalism, i think it says a lot more about their level of political and civic understanding than it does about James Cameron.
Yeah, so shitty that as of this date people have coughed up over 2.6 billion dollars to subject themselves to it. The fact of the matter isn’t that the plot was shitty, merely that you found it so. Plenty of other people, the kind who don’t regard themselves as junior league film critics, as many of this board’s posters do, have found it perfectly engrossing, entertaining and satisfying.
I’ve mentioned before about reading once that a prime human drive is to seek out a perch from which to look down on everyone else, and the kind of thinking being displayed by the movie’s critics here is a perfect example of that. “Yeah, all these people may have coughed up money to watch this stupid movie and now they can’t talk about anything but how great it is! Dumbass plebes!”
Christ. “Darth Vader” is a stupid name. They could have used “Bad Guy” as his name with utterly no effect. In later movies, “The Emperor” had no name – to utterly no effect on the movie.
It is your argument that is ridiculous. Your contention is that, because you do not remember the names of characters from Avatar, it is a bad movie. Even if we apply this to others, in general, this is a ridiculous argument.
For example: probably most people who came out of The Phantom Menace remembered the name “Jar-Jar Binks”. No one thought this meant that The Phantom Menace was a good movie.
Ah, yes. Well of course we all know that this is true because you have been proclaimed the One And True Arbiter Of All That Is Acceptable In Movies. Much like your fellows in this thread relying on nothing more than your own declarations as support for your arguments.
Let’s try this one:
Star Wars’ plot was shitty. Period. It is recycled from an earlier, better-crafted movie and cribbed from Campbell’s monomyth which itself is not only criticized as invalid but mocked for encouraging weak use of cliched plots in movies and other works. In other words, it was a shitty plot device when Campbell threw it together, and remained one after Lucas stole it lock, stock, and barrel.
No, actually it’s you seems to wonder why I think that. All of us find it frustrating to fail to convince people to come around to our own point of view.
Yes, but it also smacks of going for the cheap strike, something easy to do and therefore of less merit.
Oooh, SNAP! I bet you think you really got me with that one, huh?
In actual point of fact I’d bet that Cameron’s ability to get people to look at things from a different perspective by skillfully making his point without beating them over the head with it is a better explanation for how to what degree people may change their POV with regard to the environment or any of the other points the movie makes. And besides, I doubt that you’d find my own perspective has changed all that much; it’s just that I now have more sympathy for the other side, not that they are necessarily correct.
Duh, yes, of course it’s subjective, as is all critical theory.
However Wimsatt and Beardsley, in their original essay, point out that if you adopt “Did the artist accomplish what he set out to do?” as your primary aesthetic criteria, you wind up shifting your engagement with the work away from the immediate experience of reading/watching/looking at the piece and toward psychology/sociology/history/economics whatever. Instead of finding justification for your appraisal of worth inside the art itself, you try to tie it to some external metric. The result is a denial of the inherent worth of the aesthetic experience.
Who cares what a work is SUPPOSED to represent? I care about what it DOES represent … to me, to a wider audience, to posterity. Good art is not about the good intentions of the artist, but about the potential for that the work to create for viewers/readers/spectators a useful or meaningful experience.
No, that isn’t my contention. Like SA you are getting things all backwards. I’m saying that most good movies have memorable characters, even when they are stereotypes or archetypes. Avatar doesn’t have that. Star Wars did.
Yep, even some shitty movies have memorable characters, even if most people just remember that they sucked. Avatar didn’t have them.
Your argument might have some weight to it, if it wasn’t just a half-assed pathetic attempt to show me up. But just like Avatar’s flaws dull it’s CGI shine, your overall execution fails.
Well, the artist for one. And the viewer if he cares about anything more than surface appearances or whatever pops into his head as an explanation.
Good art isn’t solely about the artist’s intentions, but the artist’s intent, if known, can add to both greater understanding and appreciation of the art itself. Certainly most art is intended to stand on its own, as the artist is rarely available to explain what he meant…if he or she is even inclined to do so, which is far from always the case. Still, insight into the artist’s intent can only help to inform the viewer’s experience in looking at the art in question.
Exactly! Avatar does create a meaningful experience for most of the people who see it. And it’s been successful in doing that to a degree that no other movie in history has been able to match. The fact that you or mhendo find it wanting does not mean that it isn’t a meaningful film; it just means that you don’t appreciate or find meaning in that particular piece of art. In other words, the fact that so many people have found it meaningful is the criterion by which it should be judged, and not by the values of the minority who find it wanting.
ETA: It’s interesting to note that it’s the anti-Avatar posters to this thread who seem most inclined to try to portray their opponents as backward or somehow incapable of thinking straight. How’s the weather up there on that perch?
But that’s irrelevant to my point, which was simply that you changed the meaning of ArchiveGuy’s words in order to respond to an argument that he never made.
Again, we have the issue of subjective perceptions.
In my opinion, one of the reason that Avatar’s story was so awful is precisely that it DID beat the audience over the head with the message. It stood out like dog’s balls; it was as subtle as a sledgehammer; as nuanced as a punch to the throat.
It’s interesting that you accuse the critics of being condescending and smug in this thread. I’ve never once suggested that someone else should view the film the same way that i do. I’ve been very clear that my opinions of the movie were precisely that: my own subjective opinions. I’ve been giving the reasons why i don’t like the movie, not arguing that everyone else should feel the same way. I haven’t argued that those who like the movie are wrong, or that they’ve missed something, or that they don’t understand the movie. You’re the one who has been doing that.
If I have it’s been unintentional. Remember when I said:
What I’m trying to say is that the movie does certain things for those of us who appreciate it and that the fact that you or other of its detractors find it wanting for one reason or another doesn’t mean it’s a bad film, it just means we have a difference of opinion. Clearly I’ve been posting certain information in the hopes that it will perhaps cause some people to look at the movie differently and come to appreciate it more, but I’m not insisting they do so. And I haven’t made snide remarks as to their level of political or civic understanding or claimed they were getting things backwards either.
Your argument might have some weight to it if there was anything to it. You have given no support, other than ‘Avatar sucks, because it suxxx!’
“most good movies have memorable characters, even when they are stereotypes or archetypes” – Your argument is, Star Wars has memorable/good characters that are stereotypes because you say they are good, while Avatar does not have memorable/good characters… because you say so.
Whatever. That’s not an argument. That is your preference. You want to convince anyone that Avatar is a “bad movie”, try an objective argment.
My argument re: Star Wars is that it’s stood the test of time, just like the basic archetype story it tells. It’s almost 35 years old, everyone still knows who the characters are when you say their names.
I could go to a theatre that was just letting people out of Avatar, and I bet less than 20% could tell me the name of The Corporate Boss or The Science Sidekick.
I don’t need to convince anyone it’s a bad movie. That’s my opinion, sunshine. I’m just pointing out what I thought was wrong with it and why I thought that. You and SA are the only ones here trying to convince anyone of anything.
Isn’t that the reason he started the thread, after all? I mean, the thread did start out with SA declaring that in his view, everyone who criticized the movie was either stupid, ignorant, or just plain wrong:
What I, and others, keep saying is: No, we get it, and he failed.
