{"id":7809,"date":"2010-01-13T14:49:50","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T19:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=7809"},"modified":"2010-01-13T14:49:50","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T19:49:50","slug":"avatarted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=7809","title":{"rendered":"Avatarted"},"content":{"rendered":"

If seeing James Cameron’s boffo blockbuster special effects extravaganza Avatar<\/em> doesn’t give you a 3-D induced headache, apparently it will give you thoughts of suicide instead<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The beautiful alien planet Pandora depicted in James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ is so captivating that some audience members are becoming depressed and even suicidal when they fail to find meaning in real life after the film is over…<\/p>\n

“I just watched avatar a few weeks ago and I’m feeling depressed and sad. It’s like I want to reach out and be in Pandora. I’d do anything to be in Pandora. I’ve tried so hard to dream about me being on Pandora but it hasn’t worked.”<\/p>\n

“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it. I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ll admit I felt the urge to grab a gun after seeing “Cool as Ice”<\/em><\/a>, but I don’t think it involved the same motivations.<\/p>\n

While there’s nothing amusing about the serious depression and social alienation that allows individuals to be driven to thoughts of suicide from a 3-D film with 2-D characters, Cameron’s opus isn’t the first nor the last work of science fiction to do so.\u00a0 There’s Star Wars depression<\/a>.\u00a0 There’s Twilight depression<\/a>.\u00a0 Who knows, maybe even Mitch’s light posting this morning caused a few cases of SITD withdrawal.<\/p>\n

But regardless of the source,\u00a0the causes for such depression from a work of fiction seem as\u00a0much culturally based\u00a0as personality-driven<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Tamara Nichols, who practiced psychotherapy for 11 years, says, “[The genre] can provide a sort of a symbolic model for people who don’t fit into the more mainstream ideas of what a man should be, what a woman should be.”<\/p>\n

…it seems that many people who read science fiction as children had similar experiences: raised outside their mother countries, moved frequently, had health problems, troubled childhoods, and\/or were academically gifted. These circumstances led these people to delve more deeply into books than to reach out to other people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A multitude of critics as varied as the floral and fawna on Cameron’s fictional Pandora have expounded on the political and social messages <\/a>that Avatar<\/em> and its appeal suggest.\u00a0 But regardless of the film’s real or accidental messages (and Cameron leaves little doubt about environmental intentions <\/a>of the movie), the concept that Avatar’s<\/em> appeal is largely what filmmakers 50 years used to call a “sword and sandal spectacle” is seemingly too timid a conclusion\u00a0for some to be willing to reach.\u00a0 What would columnists and bloggers have to write about without broad, overreaching conclusions on social phenomena?\u00a0 Especially when your protagonists are giant blue cat people.<\/p>\n

Maybe that’s<\/em> the real underlying message of Avatar<\/em> – millions of people are secretly suicidal furries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If seeing James Cameron’s boffo blockbuster special effects extravaganza Avatar doesn’t give you a 3-D induced headache, apparently it will give you thoughts of suicide instead: The beautiful alien planet Pandora depicted in James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ is so captivating that some audience members are becoming depressed and even suicidal when they fail to find meaning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,26,105,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e","category-faiths-and-their-followers","category-first-ringer","category-geekery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7810,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7809\/revisions\/7810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}