‘Avatar’ and Shuster’s Shame Culture
by Adam BaldwinModern Liberal pundit David Shuster yesterday denounced critics of the movie Avatar as “shameless and crazy.”
The invocation of such hateful, pop-psychoanalyzing epithets is common practice in Shame Cultures (totalitarian ones), as a means of character assassination and destruction, rather than honest democratic engagement with ideological adversaries towards greater understanding.
Since, in this case, Mr. Shuster seems disinterested in objectively considering the valid cultural and political points made by the film’s critics, he resorts to the shameful rhetorical tactic described above in order to secure his own personal cultural worldview as being truer, or even saner than his fellow disagreeable Americans.
No surprise there.
However, this does give us an opportunity to briefly reexamine the phenomenon of the “shame” culture in which Mr. Shuster cares to reside.
What is a “shame” culture, and how does it differ from its parallel “guilt” culture?
Dr. Pat Santy provides an expert analysis:
In a typical shame culture, “The desire to preserve honor and avoid shame to the exclusion of all else is one of the primary foundations of the culture. This desire has the side-effect of giving the individual carte blanche to engage in wrong-doing as long as no-one knows about it, or knows he is involved.”
Mr. Shuster avoids internalized shame – the shame of being closed-minded to intellectual diversity – by transferring a wrong-doing of “shameless and crazy” accusations against his cultural/ideological nemeses. To maintain face, he disallows or ridicules any/all voices that might reasonably disagree, and blocks his conscience from both self-doubt and/or self-reflection.
The exercise then becomes no longer the virtuous seeking of truth (his job?), but rather the deceitful “winning” of an argument, if you can call it that – a selfish pyrrhic victory, at best.
What he should instead be doing is acting within the logical parameters of the American “guilt” culture, which “is typically and primarily concerned with truth, justice, and the preservation of individual rights.”
But, individual rights can, in the shame-ridden, be cavalierly discarded when dealing ‘Two Minutes Hate’ against predetermined “shameless and crazy” people (a.k.a., ‘Emmanuel Goldstein’).
Dr. Santy sums it up:
“As long as an individual is capable of self-doubt and self-reflection about his behavior; he is able to remain open-minded and willing to search for a better understanding of himself and others.
Excessive or inappropriate shame is another thing altogether, communicating forcibly to the individual that he or she is worthless. Shame can be an exceedingly devastating and painful experience.
Guilt is an emotion that rises after a transgression of one’s own or cultural values. Guilt is about actions or behavior; while shame is about the self. There is an important psychological difference in saying to someone that their behavior is bad; as contrasted with saying that they are bad. The former leads to guilt; the latter to shame.
Eventually for the shame-avoidant person, reality itself must be distorted in order to further protect the self from poor self-esteem. Blaming other individuals or groups for one’s own behavior becomes second nature, and this transfer of blame to someone else is an indicator of internal shame.”
Mr. Shuster simply fails to address his critics’ valid points directly. He fails to tell us what his own definition of anti-Americanism is, if not American military men at the behest of an American company committing a 9-11 act of atrocity on innocents.
Shame on you, Mr. Shuster?
I hope he can do better.
(Full disclosure: I saw Avatar yesterday and call me “crazy” but I enjoyed most of it very much. Yet I must also honestly agree with the brevity of Dennis Miller’s artful description of it today as an “insipid, visionary film”).
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Got a Tip?
77 Comments
The "shame" culture has pervaded the left. Do what you can get away with. Traditional religions, particularly Christian and Jewish, emphasize your actions (or lack of them), not whether anyone knows what you did. The old-time religious preacher says: "Morals (the right thing) is what you do when you think nobody is looking." Christians and Jews know that the One who matters is always watching.
I suspect I'll have the same reaction to Avatar as you had. I'll enjoy it for its special effects and surround sound (but I'll wait for the DVD), and ignore the lame political message. I didn't much care for Rousseau's "noble savage" foolishness, and I doubt that Cameron has improved on it.
Great piece, Mr. Baldwin! I think I will wait until one of those spoof programs takes on Avatar; any script they could concoct would be better than the drivel Cameron pens.
Why is it that he substitutes technology for story-telling? Titanic was formulaic, and Avatar sounds the same. I can't believe this is the guy responsible for the classic True Lies (sigh).
Glad to see you, LawHawk….seems I have missed your posts of late, and I miss them as well.
Unlike LawHawkSF and some of my friends, I was unable to ignore the political message. The attack on America and the military begins before the stunning visual effects. It's like someone offering you a piece of the best dessert in the world but hitting you in the stomach before each bite. Too hard to swallow.
Shuster an idiot with no brains. Why waste any time on this pathetic human.
Thanks, Kit. Andrew Price and I have been so busy over at Commentarama that we haven't been able to spend the time here that we really would like to spend. John Nolte has generously added our site to his links, and we are extremely honored by that. Still, I want to spend more time here. The "Bigs" are still the best blogs on the net.
Fun fact you may not know: Cameron "borrowed" a lot of Titanic from a Nazi propaganda film. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_%281943_film...
Well said, Adam! Flinging blame or shame around onto others is a way of 'protecting' the ego of the blame-ee or shame-ee. It can stop you and I taking the beam out of your/my own eyes. We all have blind spots and triggers; things that will send us straight to that unthinking knee-jerk response which is less than gracious. Our task; if we can summon the courage and appropriate spiritual assistance is to 'work' on ourselves! Then tenderly offer healing and assistance to others.
I love AVATAR. So much fun. Sure, it is not a complex plot, but there can be genius in simplicity. Anyway, that is not why I am commenting. I think that some have taken on the attack on AVATAR more for its seemingly anti-American bias. Or, to be more accurate, its depiction of American fighting men as savages hellbent on murdering tree huggers (what isn't entertaining about that?).
I know it can be easy to miss in the movie, especially since the main character was/is a marine, but the military force on the planet is NOT the US Marines. They are a private military force owned by the corporation mining the planet. So, if anything, it is more an attack on Blackwater/Xe and the like than US troops. Not that I am defending the movie's hyperbolic depiction, but facts are important to these discussions and I want people to attack the movie with the correct ammunition loaded.
To summarize, the human warrior force in AVATAR is made up of mercenaries. The only marine is the one who fights with the natives to destroy the merc attack.
Kaaapow! If Shuster was a Rock 'em Sock 'em robot he'd be the one with the telescoped neck. Great takedown, AB!
Shuster (or is it Scheister?) only confirms the shallow nature of his intellect by dismissing criticism of Avatar in such a callous and insulting manner. I seriously doubt he has the capacity to deal with the honest concerns brought up by a lot of Americans, so he chooses to revert back to grade school tactics.
How he and Bill Maher and Joy Behar continue to collect a paycheck on TV is simply baffling…..
Shuster has a paying gig and is damn glad to have one…
Ever and always the lightweight, he stumbled into a career of 'Olbermann light' and enjoys not only his paychecks but the requisite good tables he can now get in mid-town Manhattan eateries. Feckless worms\\such as he are hard to get all worked up over.
He should enjoy his little min-run of fame. He will soon find how fleeting- and how fickle- his audience really is…
Shuster has a paying gig and is damn glad to have one…
Ever and always the lightweight, he stumbled into a career of 'Olbermann light' and enjoys not only his paychecks but the requisite good tables he can now get in mid-town Manhattan eateries. Feckless worms\\such as he are hard to get all worked up over.
He should enjoy his little min-run of fame. He will soon find how fleeting- and how fickle- his audience really is…
Wow! What an interesting, penetrating analysis!
Are you sure you're an actor?
(Just kidding – you're a good actor AND a good pundit!)
Shame is something David "Pimpmaster" Shuster knows all too well.
Great column Adam. Also, thanks for appearing on Dennis' show twice in the last week. I enjoyed your segments and know the folks at the DMZ did as well. You have an interesting and enlightening take on things. It almost makes me hold out hope for Hollywood.
Actually, you aren't correct. Jake is an ex-Marine as well. There isn't a single active military person in the movie, but it doesn't take away from the unbelievably ignorant depiction of our service men and women. When ordered to attack the home of men, women and children (killing many of them in the process), only 1 merc refuses, while the others enthusiastically participate. Anyone who believes you could find 500 – 1000 marines who as a group would happily slaughter innocents is mentally impaired.
"Mr. Shuster seems disinterested in objectively considering the valid cultural and political points made by the film’s critics, he resorts to the shameful rhetorical tactic described above in order to secure his own personal cultural worldview as being truer, or even saner …"
In other words, he sounds like a particularly unpleasant 13-year-old.
Right on Mr Baldwin. Avatar had cool special effects but the story was maudlin, hackneyed and formulaic. I also reject the -" Tepee good, MRI bad" narrative…
My own opinion, I think you read way too much into Mr. Schuster's opinion, and give him way too much credit.
Having been immersed in the culture of the left for decades (the formative ones at that) I've got a pretty good bead on them.
Quite simply, they are superior, and if you can't see that, then you are not worth their time. Be gone. Make room for enlightened other who can see how obviously superior they are.
Really not much more to it than that. Pure ego.
Also am I the only one who noticed that pretty much every "bad guy" in that movie was a white male. The one person who refuses to go along with the massacre is a Latina. Also the hero, Jake, is a poor excuse for a Marine. He was so undisciplined it was painful to watch. The movie to me was a bad, propagandized, blue version of "The Last of the Mohicans"
If you're going to see Avatar at all, see it in 3-D, preferably IMAX. The sensory experience made it possible for me to glide over (most of) the politically correct bull**t and the utterly asinine premise. I suspect a DVD viewing would be far less rewarding.
Then again…if you watch it at home, you can hit "mute" whenever Sigourney Weaver opens her mouth. So maybe it's a wash.
I tend to think of it as compensation for the social guilt modern liberals feel over the old 'white man's burden.'
It goes something like 'If only there had been someone as smart as me around during the colonial period, then we could have avoided all that terrible, terrible, slavery and exploitation.'
How ever I think if a realist approach to historical analysis were applied, despite the ravages of colonialism, many third world countries would be far worse off than they are now, had they not had interaction with Europeans.
India is an excellent example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee
Why is it that he substitutes technology for story-telling?
I think you answer your own question. Because there really isn't much story-telling involved, so something has to fill the void.
Be thankful it wasn't a series of Brittany Spears videos.
Avatar: The Most Neo Con Movie EVER!
So says this writer at Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/23/avatar-neo-con-m...
"You should see it especially if you are "right of center" or conservative. Forget the sneering reviews–this is the most neo-con movie of 2009, or perhaps ever, because it illustrates, rather than argues, the point we neo-cons made in Iraq: that American blood is not worth more than the blood of others, and that others' freedom is not worth less than American freedom."
Oh come on, some times its fun to pick on hobos.
Sorry, Mr. Baldwin. Mr. Shuster is uninterested not disinterested. The latter means impartial which he, clearly, is not
People who have no shame are incapable of recognizing it and are downright hypocritical when accusing others of it. This is also why Liberals have such a blind spot identifying or even acknowledging the dauntless courage and selflless acts of heroism performed daily by our men and women in the US Armed Forces. You'll never see that side of our military portrayed in liberal movies because Liberals can't even begin to understand its nature.
I haven't seen the movie, and it may turn out I do like it, if I ever watch it (though I'm not planning to, those 3D effects generally just make me nauseous), but I would think before a corporation would be able to pull off an operation of that scope, they would have to have at least the tacit approval of some form of governing body.
Which would imply (I carefully chose that word) basically the same thing as using a standing military unit.
Cameron may be many things, but you don't get that rich by being stupid enough to use (actors portraying) actual US Marines.
GoesTo11: Thanks for the tips. Now the only question is, is there a mute button at the IMAX locations?
Adam Baldwin and Gary Graham (and Michael Moriarty too) – some of my new favorite actors. Actually I was always was a big fan of both Jayne Cobb and Matt Sikes, way before I knew how much they were great Americans.
This certainly casts revealing light on the Left's alliance with that completely honor/shame culture, Islam.
It's much simpler than this article implies. People like Shuster were educated in government schools that indoctrinated him with the notion that the world revolves around his own opinion (moral relativism) and his own self-esteem (unearned personal "worth", magically given without merit or responsibility). He's a child who's never grown up. We have two generations of American children in their 30's and 40's who have no conception whatsoever of responsibility, accountability, or reality. Too much unearned praise, and the absence of any adult expectations have created psuedo-adults whose world is shaped by leisure-time, mindless diversion. A head that's characterized by all mouth, no brain. The faulty notion that opinion, perceived motivations, and "noble intentions" sufficiently replace facts, reality, problem solving, and a functioning brain. What would happen if the 8 year olds ran the world? You're beginning to find out.
Shuster…as bright as a bag of hammers.
Mr' Shuster et al are devoid of any objectivity as they simply refuse to believe that the ideology that drives them places them anywhere other than squarely in the center of their own universe, oblivious to and immune from external stimuli. They are at the same time ignorant and delusional and dutifully engage in any and all characterazions of others to deflect and distance themselves from reality, cherry-picking only that which they to believe and nothing else.
Adam: Speak of the devil! There's a "Chuck" marathon on the SyFy channel tonight (at least here in San Francisco). I'll get to look at your pretty face for the next however many hours. OK, so it ain't so pretty. But it's very friendly (when you're not being menacing). LOL
Geez, it's only a movie made by a narcissist of Obamic proportions and Shuster is a no-talent, self-important hack. End of story.
I dunno if i agree with the entire "shame' chart… I mean Adam, you wrote it yourself,
Mr. Shuster avoids internalized shame – the shame of being closed-minded to intellectual diversity – by transferring a wrong-doing of “shameless and crazy” accusations against his cultural/ideological nemeses.
Just because he avoids it, doesn't mean he doesn't have it… more often than not, most of the "flamethrowers" IMO, already know they're guilty of whatever they're projecting on to others, but the chart only includes it in the "i don't believe I am guilty" section.
(or maybe I"m off in my opinion on this one compared to the general public)
Thank you for this intelligent response to Shuster. The preeminent weapon of choice in a Western Shame Culture seems to be you're a racist.
I heard you on Miller's show today. Though I rarely watch much TV outside of TCM and political shows, I'm going to tune in Sunday to watch Chuck.
.
Shuster reminds me of the kid who always gets beat up in junior high school, and . . . actually deserves it!
I had a "friend" (if you can call a guy who doesn't say anything to me for twenty-something years, until he wants to "shame me into submission" a friend) on Facebook, respond to a comment I made about global warming hysteria by telling me: " You should be embarrassed because a consensus of scientists says…"
I lit in to him: "I'll never be "embarrassed into submission for using my own brain." That's how the left works – they're adults who haven't grown beyond adolescent peer-pressure. Name calling works only on those who depend on the opinions of others. Not many are capable, in my opinion, of thinking independently or rationally. That's why they all parrot each other, without much – if any – individual thought. It's groupthink.
Sortof like the east india tea company….
We may be mixing mixing terms here, but I always considered "shame" to be used as a tool – call it social punishment – to make it painful to do something that may not be LEGALLY wrong, but is considered "bad" because it tends to screw up your life… note the "shame" applied to unwed and teen mothers in the past.
Yeah, it sucks, but it provided a tangible feedback that this was disapproved without throwing people in jail for it.
I guess I always looked at 'shame' as the cultural equivalent of physics – actions having consequences, but in this case social ones.
That said, I think – like learning by putting your hand on a stove that stoves are HOT and being careless with fire is STUPID (and painful) – that said shame should be about developing self-discipline and learning what is right and wrong so that you yourself shift into a guilt mode – and avoid behavior that is risky or detrimental.
That said – it can be overdone. There are deadbeat dads deserving of all the shame heaped on the stereotype, but it's gone overboard, and a lot of those dads do everything possible to come through.
As you said, the left resorts to shame when it has nothing else. Worse, they're often hypocrites.
Mr. Shuster should know all about being shamless and crazy. He is apart of the liberal mainstream media and they are all shamless and crazy. Even though I have enjoyed some of James Cameron's other films, I have no desire to see a movie about American hating smurfs or whatever it's suppose to be about.
Adam, I'm super excited about the return of "Chuck" this Sun/Mon nights!!!!
Dr. Santy's comment struck me: "Guilt is about actions or behavior; while shame is about the self." I would define this further as guilt is how we feel about treating other people like crap. Guilt shows a concern for the feelings, space & welfare of others, whereas shame is fo sho definitely about yourownself. Difference: "It would kill my dad if I got pregnant" vs. "I hope my dad doesn't find out I'm pregnant before I 'take care of it'." Only a self important prat could refer to people who don't like something they like as shameless and crazy. Er…I just kind of pulled a Shuster. Oh well.
My exbf loves 'Avatar', I've yet to see it. The fact that he loves it makes me wary of it, as he also loved all three Spiderman movies (pronounced 'Schpeidermann'). I heard about 'unobtanium' & wondered what clever 9 year old wrote the script, but no matter. I'm not going to refer to him as shameful, crazy or even easily amused as I've yet to see the film & we have mutually enjoyed things like 'Star Trek'. Plus, it hurts his feelings if I don't like what he likes. I will find out for myself soonish because Sam Worthington is freakin' hot.*
Did I read right in that Shuster himself has not yet seen the film?! What if he sees it &, like many of his conservative adversaries, also thinks it is a very pretty festival of stupid? Will his opinion be more valid because he is a learned liberal type who will obviously dislike it on valid intellectual grounds? You betcha!
*Yes, I happily sat through T4 & now have it on Blu Ray, so I will sit through it again & again, even shouty Christian Bale. There are EXPLOSIONS. Also, blue eyed freckled hot boy…[drifts off into incomprehensible muttering punctuated with giggling]
As a veteran and the son of a veteran, I couldn't be more insulted or offended by the Avatar movie. It was made by someone who hates the American Military. I'm a little stunned that point wasn't what you took away from it.
Ear plugs.
Well, I did say he was/is a Marine (they did not entirely state that he was not currently a Marine receiving treatment, it is never fully explained). I don't disagree that the depiction is heavy handed but I did not feel I was watching American soldiers, marines, and airmen fighting in the name of the red, while, and blue. I looked at them as a mercenary force who were being used to wage an unjust action by an evil corporation.
Sure, it is a slight on right wing ideology but I doubt James Cameron's intention was to say our armed forces are inhuman baby killers.
Very good analysis, Mr. Baldwin. The flip side, of course, is that under the "guilt" system, to be good you have done good things. Whereas in the "shame" system, you are either inherently good or bad, which allows for the elitist snobbery we see so rampant among the left.
And I'm glad to read someone here enjoyed Avatar, even though I was bored out of my mind once the "wow" of the visuals wore off 30 minutes in.
BTW, currently enjoying the Chuck marathon on SyFy.
Wow, someone got crazy with the Photoshop blur tool over at MSNBC. You can overdue it, fellas. You can try to airbrush out all those wrinkles and blemishes, but Shuster is still a moron. But at least he hasn't done the tan-in-a-can Olbermann thing.
Excellent analogy.
Down to the "effectively made a de facto branch of the government, BY the government.
Amazing how so many of the worst abuses of big business (Mining towns and "company store" policies complete with management hired thugs, the East India company, etc…) were often a direct result of government collusion, empowerment, or simply abrogating its responsibility to enforce the law for all people.
Oh yes, with out a doubt. In a free market a business can not force you to buy their product. The only way they can is to either pay off government to ignore their illegal practices, or buy a few politicians who will pass laws accomplishing the same.And it's much cheaper to do the latter.
Or, gasp, shudder, compete.
Animal Mother, I wouldn't spend too much time over-intellectualizing David Shuster. If you watch him much, you realize he's just another hapless, liberal, useful idiot in the Chris Matthews mold, without the spittle, a kind of Olberman wannabe without the juice.
$1,137,846,909 and going strong. The whole world loves Avatar!
David Shuster is David Gregory without the gravitas… oh, wait.
Great article here about conservative whining over Avatar
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2010/...
I agree. I'm not sure the whole "shame/guilt" thing covers it. Or maybe I'm looking at the same thing from a different perspective. To me, the dichotomy seems to be "perfect vs. flawed" or "ideal vs. real" or "unlimited vs. limited." They desire, or wish to be seen as, or wish to be associated with, the perfect, the ideal, the unlimited. They wish to disassociate themselves with anything that carries even the remotest hint of moral or intellectual imperfection, bad behavior, bad decisions, bad results. Their never-ending criticism of America's past and current behavior is an attempt to demonstrate, to themselves and the world, that they are not now and never have been "those" Americans – the ones responsible for all the "bad" stuff.
Another way of looking at it: They feel that human beings are in control and are responsible for everything – up to and including the weather. There is no human nature, no "c'est la vie," no "shit happens," no "let go and let God." If people fuck up, it's never because human intellect, morality and potency are limited – it's always because someone chose to do the wrong thing, to be "bad." In effect, they're almost like Puritans.
LawhawkSF
Trust me if you see this movie you want to hear the dialogue. This movie is bar none the funniest film you are ever going to see. The liberal cliches are not just placed in like a turd, no they are delivered in an arrogant I am better than you exhasperated style that ends up coming off as one of the best jokes you will ever see. Especially the scene where the lead mindlinks wth the tree. If only Cameron had meant it as satire we could consider him the comic genius of our time.
This movie is hilarious.
Ed Ski: As to the 3D effects I think you will find that they may not make you nautious. The new process employs two cameras offset to record the image as your eyes do. Thus the effect is not just the main thing coming at you in 3D but the entire forest is 3D as well so it is more real in that sense. The new process is amazing.
The movie (I could not stop laughing) yes the politics thrown on you with a shovel an they are as offesnseive as everyone says however the acting and dialogue is so pretentious and the plot so ridiculous that it comes off as a farce and you end up laughing all thru the movie. One of my favorite parts is the office clerk expalining the need for unobtanium because it costs 20 billion an oz and has a three oz rock sitting on his desk for a conversational paperweight. Most of the movie has that little thought in it.
Who's whining
I for one one have been ardently campaigning that this is one of the funniest comdies in the last 50 years.
I laughed more than I did when I saw Airplane.
I like your analysis Mr Baldwin. Its amazing the things we learn in life and I wish more people would learn things like this or.. take note of what you say.
If people were more philosophical about things maybe there would be less arguing in the world. Maybe.
Thanks for this.
Indi: I'll take your advice. It sounds like Cameron is the unintentional version of Woody Allen's "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" At least Allen intended the re-working of that chop-sockey movie to be funny.
Pretty much yep.
"The world" is a very fucked-up, dysfunctional place. The fact that it loves something is a bad sign.
I'm not looking to see this movie at the theater, more like I hope to get a bastardized copy from someone for free, hoping to cheat Mr. Cameron out of the capitalistic money he's getting from this venture, see as what a hypocrite he's being with regard to the lame story plot.
Mr. Baldwin, I might have gone to see it and paid full price if you'd been in it. Just saying…
oh, and btw, run for president….
damn, late for the party. I liked Avatar – liked the characters, liked the spectacle, very nice fight scenes. I can feel the other 'it's racist' angle that we aren't talking about here – that it's a story of a white hero saving the natives but then again if you're going to make that criticism without also at least noting that the supposed 'white' heroes are then exceptions to the typical 'white' villains haven't you just blatantly exposed yourself as a racist who accepts the very negative portrayal of the characters you interpret as white while attacking the only 'white' characters that are on the good side of the story?
Whether or not you call any of it racism the problem with the movie is the liberal tropes it follows like an anonymous sheep in the unconscious flow. "Our" side are the bad guys, the heroes are the ones among us who escape their born nature to a better understanding. As far as that goes it is some candy packaging on the essential liberal understanding of themselves, that they are the heirs of a tainted, colonial, racist, industrialized, dominant and greedy heritage and they are the heroes who saw this and overcame their heritage and who must now save the poor, the ethnics, the exploited… the natives. If the movie is racist it's because liberalism is racist. And fine, I think it is. The Navi in Avatar are rainbow-painted putty, all essentially good and all but helpless before the oncoming "us" without the help of the heroes from "our" side. You'd have to make a careful case that this isn't the epitome of paternalizing racism on the one hand and of that rich liberal complex of stereotypes towards the "us" in which we are both supermen and morally corrupted at the core. It's not big news to me, and as much as I hate that, as far as this one movie goes the real shame is not the stereotypes themselves but what they did to the story. One of the most visually fantastic movies I will ever see with some really good performances and characters I really liked is also a movie I will never choose to see again. There is absolutely no tension beyond immediate physical danger or romantic interest. It is completely uninteresting as a story. 100% you know, the bad guys will be bad, the good guys will be good, the good guys will win out. Cameron says it's a story about getting along in harmony and it could have been if he had been capable of grappling with a world more complex than the liberal id. It could have been a story about the passions, mistakes and fears, closed perspectives, ambitions, and the accidents that can build into wars and conflicts. Seeing them happen from both sides would have made them clearer. Not knowing exactly who the 'good' guys are would have transformed it into a real and captivating saga that carried the characters along with it's flow rather than a totally bland series of events that flowed necessarily from their own natures. Avatar was instead the totally unreal and therefore worthless Garden of Eden tale passed down from white liberal to white liberal in which White Man is Adam who ruined paradise, White Liberals are the Christs redeeming it, and the Natives are the nicest part of the scenery.
Mr. Baldwin,
Respectfully, I think you read way too much into David Shuster's stance. I mean, WAKE UP people. Avatar is just a movie. STOP making all this silliness more than what is is. Jesus, everyone is so quick to pass judgement over this movie. What do we tell our kids? "It's just a move".
Everyone has a right to their own opinion, but this is just absurd. Lighten up folks. Life is too short to be working up the heart valve over something as petty as this.
I've been saying that about liberals for years. Your analysis is "right on"
Is it just me, or is it more bothersome to hear NON-Americans (cameron=canadian) overtly and repeatedly bad-mouth America and our culture? Why don't cameron and the fat guy make movies critical of canadian culture?No country is perfect, including ours, but we help more people than the next ten countries combined.
Do you think cameron will make a movie about the lives saved by all of our military personel in Haiti? I doubt it.
Semper Fi
Shuster and the rest of his MSNBC crew CAN'T admit failure OR shame. That would make them human. At least, I know Olbermann isn't human.
These MSNBC clowns have to fill an hour each and it's hard to do unless you have no intellect to back your knee jerk opinions.
Shuster just needs an off switch for his smarm.
Interesting contrast between shame and guilt cultures. It strikes me that there is a similar contrast between the culture of narcissism and celebrity vs. the culture of morality….of being celebrated for who you are as opposed to what you have done.
How else would Barak Obama have received the Nobel Peace Prize….without havign actually DONE anything. I found it startling that such a magnificent idea and institution could be so easily cheapened.
I saw Avatar this weekend and truly enjoyed it–though the rather blatant anti-military and anti-capitalistic themes made it a movie I probably won't see again. Nevertheless, I was awed by the brilliant conceptualization of the world of Pandora; and the only comparable experience I have had like this at the movies was when I first went to see Star Wars when it came out in theaters. I don't feel guilty about liking the movie at all.
This is quite (unintentional) hilarity. You try to take on Shuster's remarks by generalizing about supposed liberals (shaming them?). Talk about useless pop-psychology. There is a place in society for shame and adhering to certain levels of decency. You can call that a "shame culture" if it makes you feel all tingly, but you really aren't making any sense.
[...] mind guilt vs. shame; if you watch Avatar, you will die. Comments [...]
Mr. Baldwin – I love you on Chuck, liking this season so far. I always though you were a liberal-pinky-commie, glad to find you are not
[...] ‘Avatar’ and Shuster’s Shame Culture (tags: article editorial adambaldwin) [...]
You must be logged in to post a comment.