A Refresher Course on Reality

I just heard a news report on James Cameron's latest *cough*-billion dollar movie, Avatar, that truly disturbed me. The report stated that the movie was having a strange effect on many audience members. Besides having "racial undertones", "hidden political agendas", and "a over-zealous focus on saving the planet", this movie also needs the warning label that it might cause severe depression or even, in some extreme cases, suicide.

According to the report, because Cameron's world was so realistically rendered and so beautiful in its relationship with its inhabitants, many movie-goers left feeling depressed about having to "go back to Earth", where mother nature is not nearly as valued and people seem to work against the basics of nature itself. When forced with the mess we humans have made on Earth, people mesmerized by Cameron's portrayal of a futuristic world cannot take it and want out.

Here's where my panties get into a bunch. These people are getting depressed about something that came from a man's imagination and inner cavities of the mind and don't see instead the ways we can change life here on Earth now. What about volunteering to build a house or serve at a soup kitchen or take a special interest in a student graduating? No, instead, let's go see a movie, get mad about what we can choose to change, and decide to kill ourselves. I guess in a way this is Darwinism at its finest; though it isn't too far off from the "suicide phone booths" described by Aldous Huxley in his futuristic novel, Brave New World, and that world was even more messed up than ours is currently.

What also gets my girdle in a grind is the fact that if we are so truly upset with where our choices have led us to this current state in relation to ourselves and our planet, why don't we use the *cough*-billions of dollars they gave Cameron to make this movie on improving our society? This way, at least people wouldn't have to feel the need to kill themselves after watching a movie. Maybe we could even get some decent housing built for our large and ever-growing homeless population and grow the number of people employed, taking care of our own for once, rather than just producing "entertainment" to numb the reality of our current state.

Not that I don't enjoy the mindless drivel of movies and TV and I will even admit that not all of these are surface entertainment, but some have intrinsic value as well for the populace. However, if movies are going to make us want to kill ourselves, then it is time to re-evaluate reality, especially our part in the current state AND the choices we still have to make in order to even get close to matching the future Cameron paints.