{"id":9390,"date":"2009-12-27T01:06:21","date_gmt":"2009-12-27T08:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9390"},"modified":"2009-12-27T01:06:21","modified_gmt":"2009-12-27T08:06:21","slug":"moffs-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9390","title":{"rendered":"Moff's Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Racialicious<\/a>, I was directed to this jeremiad, which wins the internet:<\/a><\/p>\n

Of all the varieties of irritating comment out there, the absolute most annoying has to be \u201cWhy can\u2019t you just watch the movie for what it is??? Why can\u2019t you just enjoy it? Why do you have to analyze it???\u201d<\/p>\n

If you have posted such a comment, or if you are about to post such a comment, here or anywhere else, let me just advise you: Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Shut your goddamn fucking mouth. SHUT. UP.<\/p>\n

First of all, when we analyze art, when we look for deeper meaning in it, we are enjoying it for what it is. Because that is one of the things about art, be it highbrow, lowbrow, mainstream, or avant-garde: Some sort of thought went into its making \u2014 even if the thought was, \u201cI\u2019m going to do this as thoughtlessly as possible\u201d! \u2014 and as a result, some sort of thought can be gotten from its reception. That is why, among other things, artists (including, for instance, James Cameron) really like to talk about their work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The entire post — which began as a comment on Annalee Newitz’s brilliant Avatar<\/i> commentary<\/a> — is worth reading in full, and I will be invoking Moff’s Law going forward any time someone argues that I should stop analyzing a movie because “it’s just a movie.”<\/p>\n

I haven’t seen Avatar<\/i> yet, in no small part because I don’t really know if I have the patience to put up with three hours of white-guy-saves-too-perfect-to-live-indigenous-people-from-other-white-guys. I may eventually go, because I’ve heard universal praise for the visual and technical effects in the film, but I’m not sure that wizardry is being used in service of good.<\/p>\n

More to the point, though, is that James Cameron quite obviously wanted<\/i> this to be a talked about movie. He could have pretty easily created a dumb-but-visually-stunning movie about plucky soldiers fighting mean aliens. (Heck, he already has<\/a>.) Instead, he made a movie that by all indications is Trying To Say Something Important about nature and indigenous people. So it’s not exactly a stretch for people to want to question what the movie is saying, and to argue that Cameron’s characterization of the native peoples in Avatar<\/i> literally dehumanizes them, and ends up reinforcing racism rather than working to destroy it.<\/p>\n

Art is supposed to say something to us, even the art that wants us to shut our brains off to enjoy it, like, say, the Transformers<\/i> franchise. Sometimes what it says is subtle, sometimes it’s subtle as a freight train. But it’s meant to affect, even if just to divert people from their humdrum lives. Because of this, it’s only natural for people to react to how they were affected by art by telling people how they were affected by art. If they’re artists themselves, they may even go further, and create art that is a response to previous works, as Avatar<\/i> can be seen as a rejoinder, not just to the old, overtly racist treatment of aboriginal peoples as savages, but to Cameron’s own treatment of non-humans in Aliens<\/i>.<\/p>\n

That’s what art is supposed to do — spur discussion, spark creation, and yes, engender criticism. Of course, all too often — and especially when that criticism strays into questions of gender or race — people don’t want to hear that there are problems with films they liked. They want<\/i> to ignore the flaws in a work of art. That’s their privilege. But it doesn’t mean the rest of us should follow their lead. Art is about communication. And that communication should not be one-way only.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Racialicious, I was directed to this jeremiad, which wins the internet: Of all the varieties of irritating comment out there, the absolute most annoying has to be \u201cWhy can\u2019t you just watch the movie for what it is??? Why … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}