My favorite review of Avaturd
Skipper
lurking crow
> http://www.doczero.org/?p=13880
What's going on here? Is James Cameron a liberal, or what?
lurking crow
wrote:
> On Dec 26, 11:06 am, Skipper <skipSPAMpr...@yahoo.not> wrote:
>
> >http://www.doczero.org/?p=13880
>
> What's going on here? Is James Cameron a liberal, or what?
I read the review, but haven't seen the film (maybe I don't want to).
This is the most damning part of the review, IMHO:
"For one thing, if the fate of humanity rests on the Pandora mission,
you�d think the governments of Earth could find someone other than a
backstabbing middle-management weasel and a blatantly psychotic
colonel to run the show."
I hate it when an opposing POV is presented as idiotic. That's just
stupid.
Schlockhack
plunked down my $12.50 to see it. What bugs me is the notion that
peace-loving, stone-age people with no military experience at all can
demolish 23rd (or whatever) century military hardware. Sure they have
right on their side, as James Cameon sees it, but come on. Bull.
Shit.
Look, the Conquistadors were genocidal, greedy assholes. But that
didn't stop a couple of dozen of them from defeating hundreds of
thousands of morally justified Indian warriors. Because the Spaniards
had friggin RIFLES. The Spaniards were totally evil and the Indian
were totally justified, but, RIFLES BEAT BOWS AND ARROWS.
In much the same way, a race of pacifists with no technology to speak
of CANNOT defeat the best military technology that the 23rd century
has to offer. Even if ONE soldiers goes native, and shares his game
plan with them. It's just complete and utter nonsense.
I saw the first two Star Wars movies and enjoyed them immensely.
Didn't catch the third one because the notion that nice little teddy
bears with stone hatchets could defeat fighter-bombers was COMPLETELY
FUCKN NONSENSICAL.
BTW, at the time, I read in a science fiction magazine that Jerry
Lucas came up with the idea of selling the cuddly widdle teddy bear
aliens first, as a lunchbox and toy, and then came up with the plot of
a movie incorporating them.
What kind of message is Cameron giving? If you're only pure of heart
and have right on your side, reality and hard cruel facts don't
matter, a team of 11 year olds can face the Super Bowl champions and
win because pluck and courage counts for more than reality and
because, shucks, one side you root for and the other side you want to
see go down in flames.
Purely infantile fuckn nonsense. Yes it's a fantasy, but one as far
opposite to life as anyone knows it as anyone could possibly go.
Mysti Berry
> http://www.doczero.org/?p=13880
Does this guy have an OUNCE of proof that Cameron is what he says he
is, other than the story of Avatar?
Cameron's stories are often thin, simple, and cloaked in melodrama,
and he has a reputation for a bad temper
and high standards, but I've never heard anyone call him a flaming
environmentalist...
Even if he was, he's seen a hell of a lot more of the ocean floor than
me, you, or the blogger.
>Avatar was written by a man who thinks those who disagree with his environmentalist obsessions are so blind that, in the future they will create, the last decent man in the universe will lead a far more noble alien race to victory over us, and literally renounce his humanity as part of his reward. James Cameron invites you to join him in the most beautifully rendered adolescent daydream of suicide ever created, and share his sense of righteous superiority over those who refuse to applaud at the end. I�m a
sucker for good-looking dragons, so I gave him a golf clap for those.
It's a rather agenda-ridden blog posting.
Mysti (not a Cameron fan, but fair is fair).
Ovum
now seen it in both 3-D and Regular-D.
(I don't think one is offers a superior experience to the other.
However, I think the theater we saw the 3-D version in had a better
print or something, because the colors looked more vibrant, and I
don't know if that's wholly attributable to the 3-D.)
I think I liked it better on second viewing. Maybe because I wasn't
arguing internally about the unlikeliness of pre-industrialized
nations achieving miliatry victory over extremely technologically
advanced combatants.
[minor spoilers]
[minor spoilers]
[minor spoilers]
At any rate, the movie makes it work. The final battle happens in a
geographic location with a weird energy field that renders the
tracking systems on the human weapons inoperable. The bombs and
bullets still work, but the missiles have to be fired line-of-sight
instead of using heat sensors, etc. It's like setting a horror movie
in a remote region where cell phones don't work -- it's believable
because most of the audience has experienced no-cell-reception areas.
Plus:
I look at it like the wars we've had in Vietn*m, Ir*q and Afgh*nist*n.
We're supposedly the most superior, technologically advanced fighting
force on earth going up against populations that may not even have
indoor plumbing. And yet (please oh please oh please don't take this
is an invite to a political flame-fest) we didn't really "win" in
S.E.A., and we're not "winning" now.
o
Schlockhack
> We're supposedly the most superior, technologically advanced fighting
> force on earth going up against populations that may not even have
> indoor plumbing.
North Vietnam got modern weaponry from China, Iran supplies IEDs to
Iraqi insurgents, Whenever the Afghan warlords face western armies on
the battlield they get their asses whupped -- so they blow up girls's
schools instead. It's not analogous to Avatar's grooviness-conquers-
meaniness fairy tale, because no earthlings are supplying them with
weaponry.
Ovum
>
> >Avatar was written by a man who thinks those who disagree with his environmentalist obsessions are so blind that, in the future they will create, the last decent man in the universe will lead a far more noble alien race to victory over us, and literally renounce his humanity as part of his reward. James Cameron invites you to join him in the most beautifully rendered adolescent daydream of suicide ever created, and share his sense of righteous superiority over those who refuse to applaud at the end.
(Side note: the first time I saw "Avatar," the audience actually did
applaud at the end.)
The blogger posts a misleading summary of the film's plot. The human
colony on Pandora definitely had a home planet to go back to, so it
wasn't like the film's hero was the last human in the universe.
Secondly, the humans basically invaded Pandora and decided to commit
mass genocide so that they could freely mine a substance called
"unobtainium." The film didn't make it sound like without unobtainium
the human race would die. Unobtainium was just a way to get rich.
Thirdly, it *is* annoying to be constantly beat over the head with the
eco-preservation message in films. But then I read up on things like
trash island. It's about three miles long, several yards deep -- a
literal floating island of trash that's killing marine life out in the
Pacific ocean.
Things like that make me think I should put up with the constant "go
green" harrassment.
o
Ovum
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
Well, but, they kind of did.
In "Avatar," one of the helicopter pilots, who's friends with the
hero, goes rogue to help him fight against The Bad Guys. So she uses a
fully-equipped military chopper to wipe out some of her former
colleagues.
Plus, one of the nerdy scientists (the same actor played the skinny
nerd guy in "Dodgeball"), who's also a friend of the hero, grabs a
machine gun and starts wiping out his former colleague.
And, the hero himself not only swipes a machine gun from somewhere,
but he also manages to nab some hand grenades. So there is that.
But then there's the herd of massive, rhino-esque beasts with bullet-
proof hides who take out some ground forces, alongside some native
wolf-like creatures. (This was all appropriately foreshadowed when the
hero first gets lost in the forrest.) And the flying dragons do
spectacular work taking out some of the choppers and whatnot.
It was a cool battle. Pretty believable, properly set up.
o
RonB
> Look, the Conquistadors were genocidal, greedy assholes. But that
> didn't stop a couple of dozen of them from defeating hundreds of
> thousands of morally justified Indian warriors. Because the Spaniards
> had friggin RIFLES. The Spaniards were totally evil and the Indian
> were totally justified, but, RIFLES BEAT BOWS AND ARROWS.
I think that's the simplified version. The Conquistadors would have
never won if the blood-thirsty, human sacrificing Aztecs hadn't been
taking all their fellow Indian neighbors, enslaving them and sacrificing
them to their gods. Sure the Conquistadors turned the tide, but they
didn't do it by themselves -- the other Indians joined them as their
allies. No matter how superior the Conquistador weaponry, 500 were not
going to beat hundreds of thousands.
--
RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"
Schlockhack
Oh, that's different then. I was going by the trailers, and the
reviews I've read.
nmstevens
I think that the key element that most people leave out of the
equation -- and it's true on both sides of the continent, has very
little to do with either the blood-thirstiness of the invaders, of the
bloodthirstiness (or lack of it -- depending on the native Americans
in question) of the locals.
It has everything to do with their immune responses.
As Cortez and the others penetrated the New World (and the same was
true with the first colonizes on the Atlantic seaboard) -- their
diseases preceded them and absolutely devastated the local populations
-- to an extent that made the black death in Europe seem mild by
comparison.
By the time the Conquistadors arrived at the great Aztec cities they
had, in large measure already been overthrown by conquerors far
greater and far smaller, that had easily killed something like seventy
percent of the population.
You ever been to Plymouth Plantation? You all hear about it -- you
know that whole Thanksgiving story? What they don't tell you is that
there's a reason why the settlers made a decision to go Plymouth
rather than down to Virginia which was already settled.
It's because they knew that the area around Plymouth was essentially
empty of local inhabitants. Why? Because they'd been wiped out by
small pox.
You here about that tough first winter, about that first settlement
and all of that? What they don't bother to tell you is that those
first settlers built that first settlement on the remains of an Indian
village. Only there weren't any Indians in it. Because they'd all died
from small pox. You can also read some lovely accounts of those first
settlers digging up the graves of Indians, removing any grave goods
they found that might be useful to them and tossing away the remains.
Anyone ever wonder why Europeans had to go to all that trouble,
importing slaves from Africa. Well, strangely enough, they started off
by enslaving pretty much every Native American they could get their
hands on (those that hadn't died from small pox). But silly Native
Americans -- they had the unfortunately habit of dying under hard
labor. In fact, whole populations of native Americans died so quickly
that the Europeans essentially ran out of them -- at any rate they ran
out of Indians who'd trust 'em, or who wouldn't basically kill them on
sight, which made them slightly harder to enslave. Which was when
they looked back toward Africa for a full selection of slave-holding
needs.
None of which makes the Aztecs nice. But they didn't lose because they
weren't nice. None of those Meso-American empires were nice. And so
far as I can tell, none of the comparable European civilizations -- if
you compare them, say to the times of the Romans, the Carthaginians,
the Persians, etc, were exactly sweetness and light in practice either
(although admittedly they did go a bit lighter on the "tearing the
living hearts of their victims" bit).
NMS
nmstevens
wrote:
> On Dec 26, 11:06 am, Skipper <skipSPAMpr...@yahoo.not> wrote:
>
> >http://www.doczero.org/?p=13880
>
> What's going on here? Is James Cameron a liberal, or what?
What the reviewer fails to understand is that this isn't "James
Cameron's" message -- it isn't some little boy's message about
"environmentalism good -- big corporations bad."
It's a message *from* a big corporation. This is a movie made by a big
corporation, financed by a big corporation, it's technology developed
by vast corporate enterprises.
This is exactly the same as Republicans telling us how bad "big
government" is -- while they sat in power for eight years, making
government not one microscopic particle smaller -- in fact, they
enacted laws that expanded its powers.
Avatar is "big business" getting people to pay them to hear the
message that big business is bad in the form of a quarter-billion
dollar 3-D sc-fi omni-max extravaganza, full of sound and fury,
signifying profits for their stockholders.
NMS
Skipper
<Sar...@aol.com> wrote:
Bingo. Besides, shouldn't we Earthies do anything at all to obtain
UNOBTAINIUM? (GROAN)
RonB
Actually Cortes marched into the Aztec capital (the first time) *before*
the smallpox epidemic. And when the smallpox did hit, it also hit the
Spaniards and their Indian allies. It basically lasted three months
while the war was put on hold. When the war started up again, Cortes
still had to regroup, and get his allies ready for war -- and they were
still vastly outnumbered. The Aztecs weren't that popular amongst the
native peoples and, apparently, Cortes was good at splitting off former
allies and getting them on his side.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Tenochtitlan
> By the time the Conquistadors arrived at the great Aztec cities they
> had, in large measure already been overthrown by conquerors far
> greater and far smaller, that had easily killed something like seventy
> percent of the population.
Everyone gives different numbers. The article cited above says 40% of
the Aztecs in the capital city died -- and a large percentage (again,
according to this article) may have died of starvation because the
supply system had been disrupted. At any rate, there were still a lot
more Aztecs than the natives and Spaniards in Cortes' army.
<snip>
> None of which makes the Aztecs nice. But they didn't lose because they
> weren't nice. None of those Meso-American empires were nice. And so
> far as I can tell, none of the comparable European civilizations -- if
> you compare them, say to the times of the Romans, the Carthaginians,
> the Persians, etc, were exactly sweetness and light in practice either
> (although admittedly they did go a bit lighter on the "tearing the
> living hearts of their victims" bit).
No argument there.
Betterduck
> Even if he was, he's seen a hell of a lot more of the ocean floor than
> me, you, or the blogger.
>
Ocean floor? I used to dive wrecks to salvage other boaters lost
Anchors for scrap metal money. That pasty nerd hops on a few excursion
vessels and rents a few subs and thinks he knows something about the
water. He probably can't even get bait. No worries, they sell bait
down at the marina for all the rich guys.
I get alot off hate e-mail and comments for my Youtube fishing vids.
Most of the complaints are because we hold the trophy fish vertically,
and gravity can really damage the organs of these heavy fish, so they
say. They want me to support the belly of the fish and hold it up
horizontally. Other haters dont want me taking the fish out of the
water at all, and think we should grab photos of the fish still in the
water. Other haters are mad that we are fishing for sport.
All I can do is say, hey thanks for the comments. I will consider your
suggestions.
But I don't.
BD
Alan Brooks
> Secondly, the humans basically invaded Pandora and decided to commit
> mass genocide so that they could freely mine a substance called
> "unobtainium." The film didn't make it sound like without unobtainium
> the human race would die. Unobtainium was just a way to get rich.
Purely as an aside, the joke-substance "unobtainium" has existed since at
least the '50s, and perhaps earlier. In 2000-2002 it was used extensively
to describe the material used in the constructions of the BMW Z8, because
nobody could get on the waiting list to buy one. It has a storied and
interesting history intimately tied to the history of "wishalloy" and
"handwavium":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium
It strikes me as a sort of stupid idea to use a known joke as your central
macguffin. Sort of like naming your mobsters Sleepy, Sneezy, Happy, Dumpy,
Dopey, Doc and Bashful... like that's not going to pull people out of the
story at all the wrong moments and in all the wrong ways?
Alan Brooks
---------------------------
A Schmuck with an Underwood
-- Plotthinkenium
MWSM FAQ: http://www.panix.com/~mwsm/faq.html
Filtering Trolls: http://www.panix.com/~mwsm/trolls.html
Your Mom
> It was a cool battle. Pretty believable, properly set up.
spoilers
spoilers!
SPOILERS, DAMMIT! WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN?
There's also an implication that the aliens outnumber the humans. They
say there's more than 2000 blue-asses, they don't give figures for the
humans but they all live in a tiny little compound. Their briefing
room looks like it holds maybe a hundred people and we only see a
dozen choppers and maybe one platoon of infantry in the final battle
backed up by a few dudes in big hydraulic robot suits.
As for the review, the critic's thoughts on the movie don't completely
jive with the actual film. The bad guys are dudes who'll spend
something like 15 years of their life in transit or on the planet,
during which time their families and friends age a dozen years more
than them, because the pay is good and they get to shoot things.
There's very little to imply that the Earth is doomed and their only
salvation is the mineral they're fucking up the blue natives to
procure is our planet's only salvation, it's just said to be extremely
valuable. Are the good guys shallow? Fuck yeah. How about the Indians
in Dances with Wolves? How about Russell Crowe in Gladiator? Not a lot
of depth or flaws there either. It's not ideal, but it's not the worst
thing ever.
It's less a review of a film and more a revue of the critic's
political thoughts. My only response is that, as the tawdry lie of
Piltdown man didn't mean that the theory of evolution was a fraud, the
filthy Copenhagen deception doesn't mean AM radio demagogues can
dismiss human-caused global warming as a global conspiracy perpetrated
by those endlessly corrupt educated people intent on robbing us of
$45,000 a year in filthy lucre through their salaries as college
professors. I'm not saying that global warming is absolutely for
certain caused by people, just that the vast, vast, vast majority of
scientists believe that it is and the people who say it's not are a
tiny minority given a forum largely by loudmouths whose livelihood is
fanning the flames of divisiveness. Scientific thought seems to move
like an oil tanker, you have to really lean on the rudder to change it
and you won't see the results for a long time. The tiny minority might
be right, but it's a longshot.
As for being a suicide fantasy, characterizing the opposition as
social outcasts who receive sexual pleasure from their own forecasts
of doom is ridiculous and childish no matter which side of the fence
you're picking on. I don't believe that Posse Comitatus militia
members take out their bedroom issues on deer and I don't believe that
the Earth First guys imagine New York flooding as they nail their
hirsute, patchouli-caked girlfriends. He illustrates his thesis that
anyone who'd write Avatar is stuck in 10th grade by using sophomore
year slander.
I don't want anyone to think I'm defending this film because it's
great. It's worth seeing if you like action and spectacle. I just
couldn't read that review, posted on our group by someone who hasn't
seen Avatar and who very likely will defend this decision with vitriol
and personal attacks, without responding. If you're going to review a
movie, review the movie. Don't tell us why the sun orbits the Earth.
Alexei
Paulo Joe Jingy
> "Ovum" <lk1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Secondly, the humans basically invaded Pandora and decided to commit
> > mass genocide so that they could freely mine a substance called
> > "unobtainium." The film didn't make it sound like without unobtainium
> > the human race would die. Unobtainium was just a way to get rich.
>
> Purely as an aside, the joke-substance "unobtainium" has existed since at
> to describe the material used in the constructions of the BMW Z8, because
> interesting history intimately tied to the history of "wishalloy" and
> "handwavium":
>
>
> It strikes me as a sort of stupid idea to use a known joke as your central
> Dopey, Doc and Bashful... like that's not going to pull people out of the
> story at all the wrong moments and in all the wrong ways?
I just saw the trailer and I think "Unobtainium" is gobs more subtle
than "Pandora" <oh, I get it!>. (Or maybe not to the market James
Cameron is going after.) After "GI Joe" and "Transformers" it's
probably considered *real deep*.
My wife took a Panasonic cassette recorder, with a music cassette to
teach a couple songs to the kids in her catechism class. Around
fifteen, 9 or 10 year-old kids and none of them had seen a cassette
recorder before. They were fascinated and kept wanting to see the
cassette tape. Geeze, I wonder what whould have happened if she'd
brought in a reel-to-reel.
So maybe Pandora's Box is deep after all.
Betterduck
> Scientific thought seems to move
> like an oil tanker, you have to really lean on the rudder to change it
> and you won't see the results for a long time. The tiny minority might
> be right, but it's a longshot.
Its not a longshot, cause neither side knows what the daily weather
was really like 300 years ago. They just make it up. None of them can
tell me tomorrow what the weather will be, therefore they cant tell me
what the temperature was 5,432 years ago. The data is garbage. They
take the official temp at the airport. Where is the data coming from?
Nowhere. Somebody is just making up numbers based on what? Question,
when did the reliable thermometer come about? Never cause the guy
thats got it, cant be everywhere. Maybe when we all have weather
gadgets connected to a global database we will get decent data a few
million years later. Oh well.
What was the surf temperature in Fort Lauderdale on Dec 25th 4,500,000
BC?
Or are we going on the 6,000 year model? How hot was it on Grand
Bahama Island in 36 BC? Nobody knows! The whole thing is stupid. We
got cloning. Start Cloning Polar Bears. What can I tell ya. I'm
jumping planets with Skip and Matrixx Ent. as soon as Mars opens for
biz anyway.
DOUCHE
Hey man, your boat engine is totally
uncool for the environment, man.
DUCK
Yeah? Do you know the current local water temp?
DOUCHE
I can look it up on my iPhone! Its 76.
DUCK
Really? At the surface is just below it?
DOUCHE
What? Its 76, man.
DUCK
Oh. Ok. Suck on this!
Duck extends his arm releasing the TAXI
DRIVER forearm contraption. A barometer appears
in his hand.
DUCK (cont)
Pressure is rising. Youre cooked motherfucker.
DUCK slams the throttles.
The Douche turns red and his face expands.
SEVERAL ANGLES
The Douche explodes.
The Duck whips out his thermometer to record the relevant temp
from the blast as the boat speeds away form the fireball in the
background.
THE END
BD
Skipper
<chip.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
Some people should be fed to fishes.
nmstevens
It's an interesting thought -- trying to place what happened to the
Aztecs -- to try to make it understandable in European terms. When you
say something like 40% in three three months -- and the infra
structure of the surrounding empire breaking down -- most likely due
to comparable level of deaths throughout the empire (if the death rate
due to small pox in the rest of the Americas is any guide that's not
at all unlikely) -- think about it this way.
Suppose it were Rome during the time of Caligula or Nero -- and over a
period of three months forty percent of the Roman world just died of
disease, which would have led to the entire collapse of the Roman
infrastructure -- because Rome, like the meso-American empires,
depended on food and other goods being shipped in from outlying areas.
At the same time some five hundred warriors of an unknown race, riding
on the backs of armored tyrannosauruses show up, carrying laser
weapons, abruptly show up, with the armies of Gaul at their back
asking if maybe you have a few thousand tons of gold lying around that
you didn't need.
You might just get a picture in your mind of what it might have been
like for the Aztecs when Cortez showed up.
NMS
Martin B
>> What's going on here? Is James Cameron a liberal, or what?
>
> What the reviewer fails to understand is that this isn't "James
> Cameron's" message -- it isn't some little boy's message about
> "environmentalism good -- big corporations bad."
>
> It's a message *from* a big corporation. This is a movie made by a big
> corporation, financed by a big corporation, it's technology developed
> by vast corporate enterprises.
I've just been reading someone's memories about living on an eco-commune
in the 70s, and he mentioned their little wind turbine going
whuppeta-whuppeta in a good breeze.
And it reminded me of all those eco-tracts I used to read then. How to
make a Savonius rotor from two oil drums cut in half and welded together
etc.
And what do we have today? SERIOUS wind turbines. That generate useful
amounts of power. And that took big corporations to research and produce,
and big trucks to deliver to site, and big cranes to erect, and big money
to finance. Very different from a couple of old oil drums.
My heart is with those 70s eco-enthusiasts and their appropriate
technology, but my head says, when it comes to delivering the goods on a
big scale, bet on a big corporation over a bunch of hairy people chanting
kumbayaa.
--
Martin B
Martin B
> My wife took a Panasonic cassette recorder, with a music cassette to
> teach a couple songs to the kids in her catechism class. Around
> fifteen, 9 or 10 year-old kids and none of them had seen a cassette
> recorder before. They were fascinated and kept wanting to see the
> cassette tape. Geeze, I wonder what whould have happened if she'd
> brought in a reel-to-reel.
Friend of mine says he recently saw a 78 rpm record player in action.
He said he wanted to stand back in case the record took off like a flying
saucer.
I can still remember the first record I ever bought. It was a 78 rpm
called "Organ Grinder Joe." My mother, a very arty type, was disgusted at
my lack of taste.
--
Martin B
Skipper
<mart...@mweb.co.za> wrote:
I think that's fabulous taste.
Skipper
<nmstev...@yahoo.com> wrote:
It also helped that they apparently thought he was Quetzacoatl returned
to save them from everything.
RonB
> It's an interesting thought -- trying to place what happened to the
> Aztecs -- to try to make it understandable in European terms. When you
> say something like 40% in three three months -- and the infra
> structure of the surrounding empire breaking down -- most likely due
> to comparable level of deaths throughout the empire (if the death rate
> due to small pox in the rest of the Americas is any guide that's not
> at all unlikely) -- think about it this way.
>
> Suppose it were Rome during the time of Caligula or Nero -- and over a
> period of three months forty percent of the Roman world just died of
> disease, which would have led to the entire collapse of the Roman
> infrastructure -- because Rome, like the meso-American empires,
> depended on food and other goods being shipped in from outlying areas.
>
> At the same time some five hundred warriors of an unknown race, riding
> on the backs of armored tyrannosauruses show up, carrying laser
> weapons, abruptly show up, with the armies of Gaul at their back
> asking if maybe you have a few thousand tons of gold lying around that
> you didn't need.
>
> You might just get a picture in your mind of what it might have been
> like for the Aztecs when Cortez showed up.
Except, as mentioned in an earlier post, the smallpox epidemic came
*after* Cortes had already marched into the Aztec capital for the first
time and put Montezuma under house arrest. There had been skirmishes
with the outlying tribes (who could have wiped out Cortes and his men at
the beginning) but somehow they had become allies. I'm guessing they saw
the possibility of getting back at the Aztecs. It was only after Cortes
left the capital (to put down a European enemy who had landed at Vera
Cruz, whose ship carried the man with smallpox) that the Aztecs
rebelled. Cortes, after defeating his European enemy, attempted to
rescue the Spaniards at the capital, which ended in a massive defeat for
the Spaniards and their allies. It was while trying to regroup his few
hundred men surviving men, and rebuild his native forces, that the
smallpox epidemic hit. And it hit both the Aztecs and the other native
tribes. The Aztecs wanted the local tribes to wipe out Cortes, but they
refused -- again choosing to ally themselves against the Aztecs and with
Cortes. When they finally did attack the capital, the Aztecs put up a
fierce fight, but one of the first things Cortes had done was shut down
most of the Aztec's water supply. (Tactical siege.) As Cortes defeated
the outlying tribes, most of them allied themselves against the Aztecs.
But even then, the final battle was not guaranteed. The Aztecs still had
the will to fight and numbers on their side. If I remember right, there
were some 20,000 to 30,000 natives on Cortes' side and about 200,000
Aztecs left in the city (many of the others had already escaped to other
cities).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that there was a lot more involved
here then smallpox. The Aztecs had made a lot of enemies on their way
up, it was now "payback" time. And I've also read that the Aztec empire,
like other great empires, was already rotting from the inside out before
Cortes showed up. Apparently there was already divisions and factional
infighting.
I have no idea how much any of this is guesswork by the historians. The
numbers vary all over the place.
Hercule Platini
"Skipper" <skipSP...@yahoo.not> wrote in message
news:hh5ms3$ce0$1...@reader1.panix.com...
> http://www.doczero.org/?p=13880
Too long, didn't read. Did he like it or not?
Paulo Joe Jingy
You could imagine almost anything, or you could actually read the
journals of the Spaniards who were with Cortez. They weren't written
in a lost language and there are English translations if you don't
read Spanish. (Of course you can assume that the Spaniard historians
were biased, but I've read a lot of biased writing (including most
current newspapers) and you can read between the lines.
The Aztecs were hated by all the other people they subjugated
(dragging off your people for human sacrifice tends to do that). The
first battles the Spaniards fought were not against the Aztecs, they
were against the enemies of the Aztecs. These people later joined
Cortez to fight the Aztecs.
One group of people (I forget their names now) were "nominally" at war
with the Aztecs. This was a rigged thing between their own leaders
and the Aztec leaders. "I get some goodies, send my men out against
you, they get beat, now I have to pay a tribute to the Aztecs of those
warriors and some more of my people for human sacrifices." These
people were getting screwed from both sides. It's not hard to
understand that they would side with the Spaniards. From their
viewpoint -- what did they have to lose?
And as my brother mentioned, smallpox infected the Spaniards too. (At
least according to the Spanish historians who were with Cortez.)
nmstevens
I bow to your greater knowledge of the events, but what you also have
to remember is that human sacrifice, for reasons that I've never quite
been able to understand, seems to have been just about universally
practiced among Meso-American civilizations. So it's not as if the
people the Aztecs were fighting weren't doing their own human
sacrificing.
I mean, sure, when you captured enemies you sacrificed them, but you
also had to perform human sacrifices within your own community because
all of these gods needed blood. If you didn't kill somebody the sun
wouldn't rise, the crops wouldn't grow.
The spilling of human blood was at the heart of the all these Meso-
American religions.
The fact is, so far as I can tell -- all of these empires -- the
Aztecs, the Mayans -- every one of them was, by our standards,
unbelievably brutal.
That doesn't make Cortez a nice guy -- but by any application of any
reasonable standard, it's just seems like a hellishly nasty sort of
world view.
Along those lines, I recently saw something when I was passing through
one of those cable "discovery" type channels that really sort of
annoyed me along these very lines.
Some woman was talking about this very issue and she was describing
this process where, in one of civilizations (I forget which) they
needed to sacrifice a child as part of this ritual to cause the sun to
come back -- and she went on about how honored the parents of the
victim would feel, having their infant be chosen to have its heart cut
out and offered to whatever freaking god it was --
-- and I just wanted to say, "This is such horse shit. This is like
those Nigel Crapwhite pseudo-documentaries where the guy is peeking
out from behind a bush and whispering, "Shhh, the brachiosaurs are
mating." No, fuckhead, you're bending down in front of prop bush,
staring at a fucking green screen and you're not looking at shit and
this isn't a nature documentary so stop fucking whispering."
This is the same thing, only instead of "Walking with Dinosaurs" it's
"Walking with Aztecs" -- how the fuck does this woman claim to know
whether the parents were honored, or horrified, or indifferent or just
smiled and nodded and pretended to go along when the guys in the
feathered hats came and took their kid away to the blood-washed stone?
This is just the worst kind of self-serving projection, calculated to
something something that was inherently brutal and sweeten something
that was inherently bitter. "Oh, sure, they cut the hearts out of
their children but for them -- it was fine. They liked having the
hearts cut out of their children."
And you know this how? You have diaries written by the parents? You
have accounts carved into stone indicating the inner life of the
people whose children were sacrificed? As if the kings and priests
doing the sacrificing would even have given any consideration to such
a thing?
"Say, Umlatl, I've been thinking about this carving the hearts out
little babies, thing we've been doing.'
"Yes, My king, what about it?"
"Do you think that the people are okay with it? I mean, I wouldn't
want to upset them or anything."
"Oh, no, no. They love it. I get stone carvings in my In Box all the
time. Sacrifice more babies. It's very popular. They look forward to
it."
"And the parents?"
"Oh, especially the parents. They have extras just so that we can
sacrifice them. There's a back log in fact. They bring them here.
Here, can you sacrifice our baby? I mean, sometimes we just have to
hit them with a rock or something and just tell 'em we're sacrificing
them. Seriously, don't even worry about it. It's totally cool."
"Right. Okay. Good to know. Thanks."
Yeah, right.
>
> One group of people (I forget their names now) were "nominally" at war
> with the Aztecs. �This was a rigged thing between their own leaders
> and the Aztec leaders. �"I get some goodies, send my men out against
> you, they get beat, now I have to pay a tribute to the Aztecs of those
> warriors and some more of my people for human sacrifices." �These
> people were getting screwed from both sides. �It's not hard to
> understand that they would side with the Spaniards. �From their
> viewpoint -- what did they have to lose?
This sounds painfully like the poor sods from the highlands who had to
pay tribute to their Scots Lords in the form of military service
fighting in battles often fought with pro-English low-land Scots that
ended up profiting the interests of the lords who owned estates in
Scotland and England while it pushed countless soldiers (some as young
as thirteen) in front of cannons.
But in all fairness, it's not as if those same poor bastards had their
interests served after Cortez took over. They ended up (if memory
serves) enslaved, raped, brutalized, and put to work in the mines.
Admittedly, no more hearts being cut out, but one could hardly call it
tea on Sundays.
> And as my brother mentioned, smallpox infected the Spaniards too. �(At
> least according to the Spanish historians who were with Cortez.)
The whole story of the effects of those diseases when they reached the
Americas is one that you hardly ever hear told. There's no doubt that
Cortez's troops were infected and suffered from them, but it's clear
that what happened when small pox and other infectious diseases from
Europe hit the Americas that the results on this side of the pond were
simply catastrophic. The effects were not at all comparable, even in
terms of percentages.
There are a few reasons for that.
First, European populations, especially around the Mediterranean, had
done a lot of travelling and conquering, so they'd been mixed up
genetically for thousands of years -- different blood lines came in
and mixed from all over the place and that meant that they were
immunologically diverse. You were pretty much bound to have a
percentage of people immune to any disease, so a single disease
wouldn't tend to kill everybody in a population and those that
survived would pass on their increased immunity to subsequent
generations (by the way -- there are accounts from the middle ages of
people passing through territories, during the times of the black
death, where, in fact everybody had succumbed -- the disease had
literally wiped out entire communities, leaving not even a single
survivor, so it can happen that a disease has that kind of effect on
isolated communities -- that is, immunologically identical
communities).
Second, Europeans were constantly being exposed and re-exposed to
these diseases for the very reason that they did travel so much and
many of them came back into Europe from ships that traveled from
distant parts of the world and back again so having lived constantly
with those diseases for countless generations had, by virtue of those
who had the strongest natural immunity surviving and passing that on
tended not to be as vulnerable to the diseases when they hit. That's
obviously a relative thing as they certainly died in large numbers
from any number of diseases, but something like the plague in England
in the seventeen hundreds, terrible though it was, was nothing like
the Black Death of the middle ages.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, you had the Amer-indian
populations, who are not genetically diverse. They are stem from (I
believe) two small seed populations that initially colonized the New
World. All the diseases they had, other than those that may have made
the jump from other animals that lived in the New World, were those
that came with them in that small population.
So you've got a very large population in the New World that had had
essentially no exposure at all to any of these virulent Old World
diseases in, at least, many thousands of years and that had extremely
low immunological diversity.
And bringing any pathogen into contact with a population like is
generally a recipe for a really bad day.
In much the same way that bringing a technologically superior
imperialist power in contact with a less technologically sophisticated
civilization is generally also a recipe for a bad day - for the
latter.
NMS
Uncle Arnold
> I'll tell you what bugs me most about Avatar ... and no I haven't
> plunked down my $12.50 to see it. What bugs me is the notion that
> peace-loving, stone-age people with no military experience at all can
> demolish 23rd (or whatever) century military hardware.
What kind of pathetic, dribbling shitwit does someone have to be in order to
write that paragraph in the nation that lost in Vietnam; lost on 9/11; and
is about to find out that it fucking lost in Afghanistan too...?
A.
nmstevens
There's a world of difference between a military victory and achieving
a particular political objective by the use of military force. There
are a whole range of political objectives that may be achieved through
the use of force -- like conquering a neighbor or overthrowing a
hostile government, and others that simply cannot be achieved in that
way.
There was never any way, so far as I can see, that any amount of
military force could ever have led to a stable independent North and
South Vietnam, once we packed up our guns and bombs and went home.
Likewise, I don't see how the application of any amount of military
force, wherever you aim it, could ever serve to absolutely prevent
terrorist attacks against American targets, whether at home or
abroad.
And as far as Afghanistan is concerned, until somebody tells me
exactly what "winning" there means (beyond having overthrown the
Taliban and installed a weak, corrupt but reasonably pliable pro-U.S.
government, which we did years ago) then it's difficult to see just
how we can achieve any particular objective by the use of military
force. At best we can simply push some ill-defined security bar from
wherever it is now to some other point on a continuum, hopefully
further toward the "less dangerous to us for now" end of the scale.
And maybe not even that.
But none of that has anything to do with a conflict between forces
with highly sophisticated weapons and a clearly defined military
agenda going up against aboriginals with stone age weapons. For that,
you have to look at conflicts like the European settlers vs. Native
Americans, or Europeans in Africa, or Europeans pretty much wherever
they came in contact with local aboriginal populations. And it's not
as though it was always a breeze (as the Zulu nation certainly
demonstrated) -- but at some point, even enormous numbers of fierce
warriors armed only with spears and leather shields coming up against
relatively few soldiers armed with gattling guns and enough ammunition
-- they will lose.
NMS
Skipper
<Arn...@xmas.com> wrote:
You're projecting your own crap again, A for Asshole.
Martin B
> But none of that has anything to do with a conflict between forces
> with highly sophisticated weapons and a clearly defined military
> agenda going up against aboriginals with stone age weapons.
Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.
--Hilaire Belloc
--
Martin B
Avoid normal situations.
> > Secondly, the humans basically invaded Pandora and decided to commit
> > mass genocide so that they could freely mine a substance called
> > "unobtainium." The film didn't make it sound like without unobtainium
> > the human race would die. Unobtainium was just a way to get rich.
> Purely as an aside, the joke-substance "unobtainium" has existed since at
> least the '50s, and perhaps earlier. In 2000-2002 it was used extensively
> to describe the material used in the constructions of the BMW Z8, because
> nobody could get on the waiting list to buy one. It has a storied and
> interesting history intimately tied to the history of "wishalloy" and
> "handwavium":
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium
Let us not forget "balonium".
> It strikes me as a sort of stupid idea to use a known joke as your central
> macguffin. Sort of like naming your mobsters Sleepy, Sneezy, Happy, Dumpy,
> Dopey, Doc and Bashful... like that's not going to pull people out of the
> story at all the wrong moments and in all the wrong ways?
You mean like how nobody would ever name an object-oriented programming
language after a British comedy team? :-)
--
alt.flame "strongly in favor of geek humor, as always" Special Forces
"The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull. That is not always
easy to achieve." -- Dean Acheson
Avoid normal situations.
Skip Press
<byend.removethis...@eskimo.com> wrote:
> http://www.bigempire.com/filthy/avatar.html
SI.
Alan Brooks
wrote:
> Alan Brooks <ch...@panix.com> wrote:
>> Purely as an aside, the joke-substance "unobtainium" has existed since at
>> least the '50s, and perhaps earlier. In 2000-2002 it was used extensively
>> to describe the material used in the constructions of the BMW Z8, because
>> nobody could get on the waiting list to buy one. It has a storied and
>> interesting history intimately tied to the history of "wishalloy" and
>> "handwavium":
>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium
>
> Let us not forget "balonium".
Indeed. Only 3 electrons lighter than hogwashium and sharing many of the
chemical features tommyrotium.
>> It strikes me as a sort of stupid idea to use a known joke as your central
>> macguffin. Sort of like naming your mobsters Sleepy, Sneezy, Happy, Dumpy,
>> Dopey, Doc and Bashful... like that's not going to pull people out of the
>> story at all the wrong moments and in all the wrong ways?
>
> You mean like how nobody would ever name an object-oriented programming
> language after a British comedy team? :-)
But... but that's a *functional* name. All sentient programmers know that
Python is a joke.
Alan Brooks
---------------------------
A Schmuck with an Underwood
-- Canon,
Nikon,
Canon,
Nikon...
Ovum
> http://www.bigempire.com/filthy/avatar.html
You'd trust a review from a guy who gave five fingers to "Glitter" and
a 2000 remake of "Godzilla"?
o
Remysun
> You'd trust a review from a guy who gave five fingers to "Glitter" and
> a 2000 remake of "Godzilla"?
Godzilla 2000 was 100 times better than that Mr. and Mrs. Matthew
Broderick crap.
Steven J. Weller
Hey, I gave at LEAST five fingers to Glitter!
Just, y'know... one at a time.
--
Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary
Steven
Avoid normal situations.
> On Dec 29, 4:18???pm, "Avoid normal situations."
> > http://www.bigempire.com/filthy/avatar.html
> You'd trust a review from a guy who gave five fingers to "Glitter" and
> a 2000 remake of "Godzilla"?
I didn't say I trust it, or agree with it. I merely laughed frequently
while reading it.
Your Mom
<byend.removethisbityousillyper...@eskimo.com> wrote:
> Ovum <lk1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Dec 29, 4:18???pm, "Avoid normal situations."
> > >http://www.bigempire.com/filthy/avatar.html
> > You'd trust a review from a guy who gave five fingers to "Glitter" and
> > a 2000 remake of "Godzilla"?
>
> � I didn't say I trust it, or agree with it. I merely laughed frequently
> while reading it.
I did too. I think that everything both he and the nephew say is true.
The story is dumb as a bag of rocks -and- the action makes it
worthwhile. Then again, he also gave American Psycho 2/5, Attack of
the Clones 3/5, and stillborn crapfest 3:10 to Yuma 4/5, so I think we
can mock his taste just like he mocks Avatar.
His nephew's Facebook account says he went to high school at John
Cheever Tech and is getting a PhD in Lycanthropy. LOL, as the kids say.
Ovum
>
> Then again, he also gave American Psycho 2/5, Attack of
> the Clones 3/5, and stillborn crapfest 3:10 to Yuma 4/5
Wait a minute! "3:10 to Yuma" was an excellent film!
o
Hercule Platini
"Avoid normal situations." <byend.removethis...@eskimo.com>
wrote in message news:hhdrmp$eq1$1...@reader1.panix.com...
> http://www.bigempire.com/filthy/avatar.html
>
Oh.
Well, I enjoyed Avatar, for what it was: a big 3D spectacular on the biggest
screen in reasonable driving distance. Yes, the dialogue is fairly poor.
But James Cameron wrote it. The dialogue in most of his stuff is pretty
average. Everyone quotes "Game over, man!!!" from Aliens as a great line,
but is it really? Are we still going to be playing arcade games in X
hundred years time? And I LOVE Aliens, it's one of my favourite three
movies ever made.
Yes, the thing's flimsy as drama; it's not Macbeth, let's be honest. But
it's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be a visual experience, an
entertaining action ride and on that level it works. Criticising Avatar for
not being a searing depiction of human conflict is like criticising Vicky
Cristina Barcelona for not having enough car chases. It's not perfect: it's
too long for a start. And for me, as 80% of it is CG with little or no
actual human presence, it gets like watching Shrek or Toy Story. Which are
fine in their way but personally I'd rather have live-action stuff in 3D.
Is James Cameron an obnoxious git? Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. Does that
make a difference as to whether his films are any good? No it doesn't.
Apparently Otto Preminger was a bit of an obnoxious git as well, so
presumably Anatomy Of A Murder must suck and everyone who says it's actually
a really good film is just wrong. On the other hand, apparently Fred Olen
Ray is a really nice guy, yet he clearly can't direct his way across a room.
Your Mom
Aw man, don't make me go into why I disagree again. After the
Gladiator thing I feel like I'm just harshing your buzz every time I
post. I thought it was long, bland, and lacking in originality.
Ovum
>
> Aw man, don't make me go into why I disagree again. After the
> Gladiator thing I feel like I'm just harshing your buzz every time I
> post.
There's got to be something we agree on. Did you like "Up," arguably
the best film of 2009? Did you hate "All About Steve" with the white-
hot passion of a dying sun? Did you think "2012" was best when Woody
Harrelson was onscreen?
o
Mysti Berry
> None of which makes the Aztecs nice. But they didn't lose because they
> weren't nice. None of those Meso-American empires were nice. And so
> far as I can tell, none of the comparable European civilizations -- if
> you compare them, say to the times of the Romans, the Carthaginians,
> the Persians, etc, were exactly sweetness and light in practice either
> (although admittedly they did go a bit lighter on the "tearing the
> living hearts of their victims" bit).
>
> NMS
They were nice when Patrick McGoohan was their leader.
Mysti Berry
> It strikes me as a sort of stupid idea to use a known joke as your central
> macguffin. �Sort of like naming your mobsters Sleepy, Sneezy, Happy, Dumpy,
> Dopey, Doc and Bashful... like that's not going to pull people out of the
> story at all the wrong moments and in all the wrong ways?
You wouldn't do that if you had any respect for your audience.
Just sayin'
Steven J. Weller
Oh, c'mon - he said it once, in passing, toward the beginning. I
doubt most of the target demo recognized it or really so much as heard
it. We went with one of my nieces - she's chronologically 18, but
she's 7 or 8 and she always will be. My mom asked her 'Really?
Avatar? Are you sure?' and she responded 'Grandma! They have
TAILS!' "Unobtainium" went right over her head without so much as
mussing her hair, and mom missed it too.
There's so much ELSE to hate about that screenplay.
Martin B
> There's so much ELSE to hate about that screenplay.
Yeah, where were the laughs?
I can't believe James Cameron didn't give us four-armed shit-throwing
monkeys.
--
Martin B
A 'shit-throwing monkey' is an example of a gerund
in an adjectival phrase modifying a noun, so it's
really quite intellectual.