'AVATAR' GIVES FILM FANS THE BLUES (MOVIEGOERS DEPRESSED, SUICIDAL)
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
By Stephen Jones
Epoch Times Staff
The Epoch Times
January 31, 2010
A luminescent, idyllic world populated by peace-loving aliens may
have captivated cinema audiences across the world, but for some the
'immersive' experience of watching the film Avatar has threatened to
overshadow their own lives.
[Caption] In the new James Cameron directed film Avatar, Neytiri
(Zoe Saldana) and Jake (Sam Worthington) make final preparations for
an epic battle that will decide the fate of an entire world. (WETA)
Hundreds of fans of James Cameron's blockbuster 3-D epic have
complained that they feel despair after leaving the cinema that they
can never live in a world like the mythical Pandora, in the film.
An online discussion board, titled "Ways to cope with the depression
of the dream of Pandora being intangible," has received more than
2,000 posts from fans beating their breasts over their relatively
more pallid life on Earth.
"After I watched Avatar for the first time, I truly felt depressed
that I was awake in this world again," one post reads.
Another says, "It�ｿｽs so hard, I can�ｿｽt force myself to think that it�ｿｽs
just a movie, and to get over it, and that living like the Na�ｿｽvi will
never happen."
On a separate forum, on the Web site Naviblue.com, fans have even
considered more extreme action.
"I even contemplated suicide, thinking that if I do it I will be
reborn in a world similar to Pandora, and that everything will be the
same as in Avatar," one post read.
[Caption] In the James Cameron film Avatar, Jake (Sam
Worthington) meets his avatar, a genetically engineered hybrid of
human DNA mixed with DNA from the natives of Pandora. (Mark Fellman /
WETA)
It has been speculated that the reason behind the widespread
depression may have been due to the release of the bright and
visually stunning film during the middle of one of Europe's bleakest
winters on record.
But U.K. psychiatrist, Dr. Jacqueline Scott, said that it was
unlikely that a film could trigger seasonal affective disorder.
"I think that the people who are feeling depressed may have already
had a predisposition toward this," says Dr. Scott.
The film is based around the story of how humans wage war on eco-
friendly aliens of an idyllic planet called Pandora, for a rare
mineral substance called "unobtainium."
Avatar, which took 14 years to make, has been lauded as a revolution
in filmmaking�ｿｽnot least because of its presentation in 3-D.
However, some say that the effect of 3-D cinema on audiences has not
been fully accounted for.
In his latest book, "The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes it
Hard to be Happy," Michael Foley argues for a reappraisal of the
effect of film on our emotional state.
[Caption] Director James Cameron at the premiere of 'Avatar,' at
the Grauman's Chinese Theatre, in the Hollywood. (Robyn
Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
"With Avatar, the technology has become so highly sophisticated that
it makes the screen world seem more vivid than reality can ever be,"
he told the Times Online.
"What you�ｿｽre absorbing is so stimulating, and what it offers is so
frenetic, giving you a new stimulus every second, that it makes real
life feel sluggish, slow, and impossibly dead in comparison."
In a bid to recapture the same emotions of the film, a group of fans
in Florida have announced that they will create a commune inspired by
the ecological principles of the Na'vi.
The bizarre fall out from the film has even prompted the eccentric
London Mayor Boris Johnson to pen an opinion column in a U.K.
newspaper titled 'Stop pining for life on Pandora and come back to
planet Earth.'
He predicts that in 10 years�ｿｽ time the U.K. census will show more
adherents of Eywa, the earth goddess of the Na'vi, than there are of
Jedi.
"I can't believe that many of these gloomy post-Avatar Westerners,
when they really think about it, would want to up sticks to Pandora
and take part in Na'vi society, with its obstinate illiteracy,
undemocratic adherence to a monarchy based on male primogeniture, and
complete absence of restaurants," he said.
"The final irony, of course, is that this entrancing vision of
prelapsarian innocence is the product of the most ruthless and
sophisticated money-machine the world has ever seen. With a budget of
$237 million and with takings already at �ｿｽ1 billion [$1.6 billion],
this exquisite capitalist guilt trip represents one of the great
triumphs of capitalism."
End of forwarded article from:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/28846/
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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