Avatar's Missed Opportunity
but not as great as if you got new legs.
Okay, but since I'll never get new legs, and since nature will keep producing people like me, It's time to fight in this imperfect world, at this imperfect time for acceptance of imperfection.
What is wrong with MDB?Do you believe no euthanasia story should ever be written?
Hee. That's a bit of hyperbole, isn't it? I think I like Avatar better than MDB. I guess I just think that Clint has taken to writing morality plays since his masterpiece, Unforgiven. I thought it was sentimental and cliched, and turned an awful lot on believing that it was better to be dead than disabled. I didn't buy it. Your mileage may vary.
I'm sorry, Apples. I know you like the movie. I liked parts of it too--and said as much in earlier threads. You also seem to think I don't like sci-fi--nothing could be further from the truth. I even said I liked parts of Avatar, even enjoyed it. But its 'message' and the way it seemed to take itself so seriously, kind of irks me, and has clearly irked others. Let's just say it ain't no T2.
It was hyperbole, and I think that's ok because the following paragraph was written in a level-headed and explanatory manner.
I don't particularly like Avatar btw. I watched it once. I find discussions of avatar more interesting than the movie itself.
I don't think I said you don't like sci fi. Maybe I did. I did say that a lot of the artists in broader Hollywood don't "get" sci fi.
Okay, but since I'll never get new legs
Why not?
Because the research will take decades. By the year 2025 I will be to old to learn a new set of nuero motor skills. Experimental treatments are also risky, I don't want to end up with less function then I have now. My body is pretty cool, all things considered. I'm a pretty healthy guy.
There's also the question of who gets cured. social democracy or no social democracy we still live in a capitalist system. The sons of CEOs will get new legs long before I will. I need to live in my body, my man. Dreaming of cures is a sure fire way of becoming completely miserable
And, as I've said, medical science never be able to wipe out gimpdom completely. The people in white coats can reduce the number of gimps in society, but there will always be a population of people with physical and mental challenges. Which is why the struggle for gimp rights is important.
There's also the question of who gets cured. social democracy or no social democracy we still live in a capitalist system. The sons of CEOs will get new legs long before I will.
You could always volounteer for military service on Alpha Centauri.
Because the research will take decades. By the year 2025 I will be to old to learn a new set of nuero motor skills. Experimental treatments are also risky, I don't want to end up with less function then I have now. My body is pretty cool, all things considered. I'm a pretty healthy guy.
There's also the question of who gets cured. social democracy or no social democracy we still live in a capitalist system. The sons of CEOs will get new legs long before I will. I need to live in my body, my man. Dreaming of cures is a sure fire way of becoming completely miserable
And, as I've said, medical science never be able to wipe out gimpdom completely. The people in white coats can reduce the number of gimps in society, but there will always be a population of people with physical and mental challenges. Which is why the struggle for gimp rights is important.
More generally, I don't know that the timescale for technological change is longer than the timescale for social change. The prior would lead one to conclude the opposite, as technological change determines social change more than the reverse.
More generally, I don't know that the timescale for technological change is longer than the timescale for social change. The prior would lead one to conclude the opposite, as technological change determines social change more than the reverse.
So the invention of the pill has ended patriarchy? The invention of whitifying makeup and plastic surgery has ended racism? No matter how many gimps are cured there will always be a population that isn't and that population will still expeirence ableism unless there's an effort to combat the social attitudes that make us feel unwanted and inadequate.
More generally, I don't know that the timescale for technological change is longer than the timescale for social change. The prior would lead one to conclude the opposite, as technological change determines social change more than the reverse.
So the invention of the pill has ended patriarchy? The invention of whitifying makeup and plastic surgery has ended racism? No matter how many gimps are cured there will always be a population that isn't and that population will still expeirence ableism unless there's an effort to combat the social attitudes that make us feel unwanted and inadequate.
I've already explained that I don't see racism as a valid analogy, it's a social construct. Blacks don't need whitifying makeup because their skin isn't a problem, it's people attitude's to their skin. Additionally there's the legacy of sociological persecution and isolation, it's a matter of record that children of African immigrants and African American children don't live the same life experiences.
Blindness is an objective difficulty and a subjective difficulty, whereas absorbing more sunlight is only a subjective difficulty.
Reproductive technology didn't "end patriarchy", but in terms of the advances made in the past thirty years it is no doubt a linchpin.
Anyhow, I am not against social change. However we shouldn't pretend it's a be-all and end-all.
The only way a focus on Ableism could harm the anti racist and feminist movements is if gimp activists say that it's more important to fight ableism then it is to combat racism or sexism, which is rediculous, since many gimps do face racism and sexism on top of ableism. No anti oppresion struggle should be downplayed in favor of another anti opression struggle. They are all equally important.
I wish I could make you understand.
It's the same with Ableism. I will expierence less ableism then someone with a much more severe disability. In a way you are right, technology is important. Lifts, wheelchairs and ramps are vital for my quality of life, but the social challenges faced by gimps are in some ways more of an impediment to happiness then missing limbs or learning difficulties. Who cares if you can drive out into the playground if no one will play with you? Does a handicapped accessable shower and ramps galore matter in a group home where the tenants are abused on a daily basis? Ableism is a product social and political forces. The attitudes that society has about my body, rather then my body itself.
If it's any consolation, CMOT, I've found your contributions in all of the Avatar threads to be extremely enlightening, eye-opening and informative. If you haven't seen my thanks before now, here they are again: thanks!
Thank you. I just find it frustrating that a medical cure is being suggested as a panaciea to a problem which is 99% social. As if medical reasearch is more important then getting appropriate support services for gimp rape victims or tackling ableism in the media or any of the other problems gimps face on a daily basis.
It's also absolutely horrible to hear that a focus on ableism will damage other anti opression movements. This is a very meta way of silencing us. Of saying that our struggle is less important then other struggles.
I really hate Babble.
Well, I'm sorry to hear that CMOT, but perhaps it would be good to keep in mind that there are many voices out there--including many who agree with you and, at least in my case, have come to agree with you because of what you've written and shared here on babble.
Timebandit,
I'm sure you know, but I want to point out for general purpose that using physical imbalances/imperfections as a metaphor for balances/imperfections of the soul is a literary device used much more broadly than in science fiction alone.
I recalled the example of Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda's Ritual of my Legs last night. A beautiful poem, the first work I ever read which made me think literature was a beautiful field of human endeavor. Here's a translation I found online:
For a long time I have stayed looking at my long legs,
with infinite and curious tenderness, with my accustomed passion,
as if they had been the legs of a divine woman,
deeply sunk in the abyss of my thorax:
and, to tell the truth, when time, when time passes
over the earth, over the roof, over my impure head,
and it passes, time passes, and in my bed I do not feel at night that a woman is breathing sleeping naked and at my side,
then strange, dark things take the place of the absent one,
vicious, melancholy thoughts
sow heavy possibilities in my bedroom,
and so, then, I look at my legs as if they belonged to another body
and were stuck strongly and gently to my insides.Like stems or feminine adorable things,
from the knees they rise, cylindrical and thick,
with a disturbed and compact material of existence:
like brutal, thick goddess arms,
like trees monstrously dressed as human beings,
like fatal, immense lips thirsty and tranquil,
they are, there, the best part of my body:
the entirely substantial part, without complicated content
of senses or tracheas or intestines or ganglia:
nothing but the pure, the sweet, and the thick part of my own life,
nothing but form and volume existing,
guarding life, nevertheless, in a complete way.People cross through the world nowadays
scarcely remembering that they possess a body and life within it,
and there is fear, in the world there is fear of the words that designate the body,
and one talks favourably of clothes,
it is possible to speak of trousers, of suits,
and of women's underwear (of "ladies'" stockings and garters)
as if the articles and the suits went completely empty through the streets
and a dark and obscene clothes closet occupied the world.Suits have existence, color, form, design,
and a profound place in our myths, to much of a place,
there is too much furniture and there are too many rooms in the world
and my body lives downcast among and beneath so many things,
with an obsession of slavery and chains.Well, my knees, like knots,
private, functional, evident,
separate neatly the halves of my legs:
and really two different worlds, two different sexes
are not so different as the two halves of my legs.Fromt the knee to the foot a hard form,
mineral, coldly useful, appears,
a creature of bone and persistance,
and the ankles are now nothing bu the naked purpose,
exactitude and necessity definitively exposed.Without sensuality, short and hard, and masculine,
my legsl exist, there, and endowed
wit muscular groups like complementary animals,
and there too a life, a solid, subtle, sharp life
endures without trembling, waiting and performing.At my feet ticklish
and hard like the sun, and open like flowers,
and perpetual, magnificent soldiers
in the grey war of space
everything ends, life definitively ends at my feet,
what is foreign and hostile begins there:
the names of the world, the frontier and the remote,
the substantive and the adjectival too great for my heart
originate there with dense and cold constancy.Always,
manufactured products, socks, shoes,
or simply infinite air,
there will be between my feet and the earth
stressing the isolated and solitary part of my being,
something tenaciously involved between my life and the earth,
something openly unconquerable and unfriendly.
It's also absolutely horrible to hear that a focus on ableism will damage other anti opression movements.
Try and only hear and read what people actually say and write.
You said: Anyone who pretends they're analogous is either misguided in my opinion or at worst, working alongside oppression.
What the heck did you mean by that?
Look mate, there are times when I don't like being a gimp. There are times when I wish I could be John Wayne, rugged, bullet proof and unstoppable. But the fact remains I am not a mid western uber menchen, and there is not now and never will be a cure for disability in general, and even if there was, the social has always been more important then the technological. How did the pill help the feminist struggle, really? We still live in an ass backwards, deeply mysoginist society. Women can exercise there sexual rights but are denigrated for doing so. Tech does not make us more moral. It does not really change the social systems we inhabit.
Anyone who pretends they're analogous is either misguided in my opinion or at worst, working alongside oppression.
I don't believe in equating things that are different.
It does not really change the social systems we inhabit.
I kind of agree with Karl Marx that man's nature is determined by his material conditions. Not totally of course, but more so than you seem to.
I don't believe in equating things that are different.
Alright, so they may not be completely analagous, but they do share certain similarities. Both prejudices are systimatic and both are based on characteristics that a person has no control over. The greater society also presents both able bodied POCs and gimps (regardless of skin color) with a stock collection of sanitized, sactified heroes that are impossible for most of us to emulate. Gimpy POCs have an even difficult time when it comes to our cultural attitudes towards gimps, because, at least in North America, all of our official gimpy heroes are white.
I kind of agree with Karl Marx that man's nature is determined by his material conditions. Not totally of course, but more so than you seem to.
Tech is important, but I think that we need to diferentiate between what helps gimps( wheelchairs, electronic voice boxes, ramps physio balls etc.) and what actually changes the system of oppresion we live under.
I suppose my attitudes towards tech are very much shaped by my privilage, I've been born into a white middle class family and have never really wanted for anything when it comes to technological assistance. This has given me time to think about the more abstact aspects of gimp rights(sexuality, education, art) and how they affect people with disabilities.
There's also the issue of what technology is being focused on. Ramps aren't sexy, crutches aren't sexy, but The Cure is. Rick Hanson focused on The Cure and was made into a gimpy saint. Micheal J. Fox Focuses on The Cure and is rewarded by having all his sins forgiven. Christipher Reeve did exactly the same thing and was saluted as a hero. Terry Fox was also canonized for chasing The Cure.
All four of these privileged people were praised for trying to find a way to make disability disappear. It would be better if they and society in general focused less on the cure and more on general accessibility issues, anti-bullying campaigns, employment, education etc.
No offense CMOT but to live life is a struggle for everyone - despite our efforts to empathize we only ever see the world through our own eyes - I'm not saying you don't face struggles that able bodied never even think about but the reason people like Terry Fox inspire people isn't just about chasing a cure for cancer. It about doing something extraordinary(like running across Canada) that most people would never even try, let alone if they had only one leg and cancer.
The courage and inspiration to try to do the incredible despite the fact we're all in this awful situation called the human condition is what Terry Fox is about, the cancer and raising money for a cure is a distant second for a explanation to his popularity
excuse my poor grammar
I kind of agree with Karl Marx that man's nature is determined by his material conditions. Not totally of course, but more so than you seem to.
Tech is important, but I think that we need to diferentiate between what helps gimps( wheelchairs, electronic voice boxes, ramps physio balls etc.) and what actually changes the system of oppresion we live under.
I suppose my attitudes towards tech are very much shaped by my privilage, I've been born into a white middle class family and have never really wanted for anything when it comes to technological assistance. This has given me time to think about the more abstact aspects of gimp rights(sexuality, education, art) and how they affect people with disabilities.
Maybe if you were poor, you'd wish that wheelchairs were affordable more than you wish for better attitudes.
I agree with you about hero worship.
worship?
The reverent love and devotion accorded a deity, an idol, or a sacred object. b. The ceremonies, prayers, or other religious forms by which this love is expressed. 2. Ardent devotion; adoration. 3. often Worship Chiefly British Used as a form of address for magistrates, mayors, and certain other dignitaries: Your Worship.
Maybe if you were poor, you'd wish that wheelchairs were affordable more than you wish for better attitudes.
They wouldn't be if I didn't live here.
If we were yanks my parents would be a lot poorer.
It's surprising how much I owe to unions and to socialism.
It's actually important to ask for cheap tech and progessive attitudes.
I just think that sometimes gimps get overmedicalized. Our bodies are seen as problems to be solved, rather then vessels in which we live. We are hurt by doctors who want to help us. Many times our feelings are not taken into account. Which is what makes this discussion around The Cure so agrivating. There are gimps who simply woudn't consider being cured, but the dominant attitude has always been that if you are part of gimpdom, you must hate your body, hate yourself and have an intense desire to be healed completely by a Christ like figure in a white coat.
[heavenly choir font]Aaaaaamennnnn![/heavenly choir font]
Again, cures are sexy(particularly when the people advocating for them are as good looking as Micheal J. Fox) but they distract from the basic issues(technological and social) that dominate the lives of gimps. Who cares if the welfare state has made it impossible to earn a decent wage? The Cure is just around the corner. Who cares if class sizes are so massive that gimpy students can't get adqeuete assistance? The Cure is just around the Corner. Who cares if Toronto won't be completely accesable until I'm 45? The cure is just around the corner. Who cares if special needs teachers have no training and no listening skills? The Cure is just around the corner.
As I've stated before, I think The Cure is bullshit. We've spent twenty plus years raising money for cancer research in the name of Terry Fox and yet we still have cancer. Rick Hanson's foundation has been raising money for over two decades, and yet people with SCIs are still ending up in chairs. And of course, gimps of all kinds are born every year to all kinds of parents all over the world.
The search for The Cure is nothing more than an exercise in self promotion for the people heading it.
No offense CMOT but to live life is a struggle for everyone - despite our efforts to empathize we only ever see the world through our own eyes - I'm not saying you don't face struggles that able bodied never even think about but the reason people like Terry Fox inspire people isn't just about chasing a cure for cancer. It about doing something extraordinary(like running across Canada) that most people would never even try, let alone if they had only one leg and cancer.
The courage and inspiration to try to do the incredible despite the fact we're all in this awful situation called the human condition is what Terry Fox is about, the cancer and raising money for a cure is a distant second for a explanation to his popularity
excuse my poor grammar
You're right, he wasn't just diefied for trying to cure cancer. He was also diefied because he was white, male, middle class, an athelete and, lets not forget, handsome. If Terry Fox had been black or Latino or First Nations, if he had been scarred or had dwarfism, if he had been a young fisherman from Newfoundland or a car worker from Windsor, the media wouldn't have looked sideways at him, or if they had covered him they would've covered his condition rather then the run.
People like Terry Fox and Rick Hanson are useless as role models simply because they've been white washed by the mainstream media. They are super heroes and are no longer human, but are still used as role models for tonnes of young people with disabilitys. The situation so stupid. People like Fox are used to distract the general population from the needs of real gimps.
I think someone like Catherine Frazee deserves the lime light, but she won't get it, because as a middle aged lesbian, intellectual and rebel. She dosen't fit the mainstream media's idea of what a gimp should be.
Alright, so he wasn't turned into a saint because he was running for the cure, but it was a small part of the media's fascination with him.
Fuck, But I'm confused. Could someone sort out my thoughts? 
CMOT, the cure isn't BS, you keep dealing in absolute terms.
Yes, there's still cancer, but survival rates are much higher much higher now.
Source: Hermann Brenner, "Long-term survival rates of cancer patients achieved by the end of the 20th century:
a period analysis," The Lancet, 360 (October 12, 2002), 1131-1135.
As you can see the survival rates are quite high, when they used to be quite low. Your comment that the cure is bullshit because we still have cancer is similar to your comment that the pill didn't help women because we still have misogyny.
I didn't bother to go through and read any graphs or analysis but I watched this movie for the third time and it is still being sold out - and I can truly say that humanity has achieved a new level of awareness due to it. Let the blind debate the light...
Sorry. I'm repeating myself.
Okay have read though most of the preceeding threads before this, and was reading this one, until I thought "fuck it", so am just going to say I just finished watching it for the very first time.
Not in 3d.
Not having read any of the critiques, too much, when they were going on, as I wanted to keep my perspective fresh, I must say now that I believe it was a great movie.
Did it have corny predictable parts most certainly, but that freed your mind up for other perceptions.
It was a movie meant to reach people who are NOT actvists by job description, inclination or nature.
And that my friends, is why it is great.
We need no movies to tackle the big issues facing us, we already know what they are, however not so for millions of others. Cameron did not write this movie for the viewing audience here, and that really is okay, ya know?!