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21 June 2006

♥ an inconvenient lack of new movies

Apparently there are not enough animators in the world to make enough movies to sustain Tor and me for a couple of months at a time, so last night we answered our collective social conscience and went to see An Inconvenient Truth. Unfortunately, Mr. Gore was preaching to the choir, as the only people who are probably going to see his movie are already a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals (such as yours truly, apparently) who already know that we need to curb global warming.

Actually, I'm such a treehugging hippie that I almost cried as Gore explained that global warming would eventually bring about the rapid extinction of many species, including the polar bear. As he outlined the reasons for the death of our furry white friends - a lack of ice is a major concern, as bears will have to swim 80 or more miles to actual land-based ice, which they often don't find in time to keep them from drowning, a cute animated polar bear appeared on the screen and swam to a little chunk of floating ice, which he pawed at rather adorably and then looked somewhat dismayed when it broke up and melted away. I seriously almost cried. Okay, fine. I cried.

Anyway, me being a bleeding-heart liberal is beside the point. I'm sure you're all sick of what-is-this-world-coming-to posts, but I just can't help myself on this particular issue.

So we're sitting in the theatre, waiting for our little socially conscious indie flick to begin, and the previews start. As usual, they were all for remakes of movies, sequels to movies, and / or books-into-movies. There were no movies that I have not already seen or read.

This observation prompted Tor and me to begin our ritualistic pre-movie conversation, which goes something like this:

Me: "Are they EVER going to just make a NEW movie?"
Tor: "No, honey. We go through this every time we see a movie."

Every time.

Anyway, there was an actual point to this post. The point was, I had something of an epiphany.

It was one of those moments where you realize that humanity is circling the drain. I saw a preview for World Trade Center, a new Nicholas Cage flick in which he plays a member of the NYPD. The movie takes place on September 11, 2001, and the plot involves shamelessly exploiting a horribly tragic event for the sake of raking in some big box-office profits.

I couldn't believe my eyes as I watched the preview. At first I thought maybe it would turn out to be some kind of ridiculous hoax, and at the end Michael Moore would march out and say to the audience (yeah, all 6 of us), "Wasn't that disgusting? Aren't you glad no one has the kind of gall to ACTUALLY make a movie like that?"

My answer, had he stepped out of the shadows, would have been yes to both.

But he didn't. It just kept going and going, until the tagline finally blinked its way onto the newly-soiled movie screen: "The world saw evil that day. Two men saw something else."

Seriously?

Pearl Harbor was based on the events of December 7, 1941, during which Japanese forces conducted an air raid on the U.S. Naval base from which the movie gets its title in Hawaii. The movie won 8 prestigious awards, including an Oscar for its special effects.

And even if it's not about terrorists, Titanic was based on a similarly catastophic event and won 87 awards, 11 of which were Oscars.

So I think it's safe to say that this exploitative piece of cinematic garbage will find itself swimming in piles of cash, and possibly even win awards for what will more than likely be something of a train wreck, the sort of scene which people can't keep themselves away from even when they are utterly horrified.

At least the makers of Titanic and Pearl Harbor were able to hold off for half a century or more. In the cases of Flight 93 and World Trade Center, however, the producers couldn't even keep their greedy paws off for five years.

The point I'm trying to make, I guess, is that the events of that day are not to be used as a cash cow. I hate saying "the terrorists," (I find invariably that I sound terrifyingly similar to our theif-in-chief) but I'm going to here anyway. I think that's what they're expecting. They - the terrorists - have this view of Westerners, Americans especially, that we do nothing but produce waste and wallow in our own laziness, selfishness, dishonesty, and greed.

Obviously, starting a war on false pretenses wasn't a great start to disproving these sentiments. The fact that we're still dawdling around in the Middle East with no apparent goal or exit strategy doesn't exactly speak to our vast intellect, either. We never have found Osama bin Laden; our answer to Saddam Hussein was to keep him around in his boxers eating Doritoes for six months. When "coalition" forces dropped two 500-pound bombs on al Qaeda's number one man, the media didn't treat it like a tragic necessity, but an exciting event worth celebrating and, in the epitome of revolting barbarianism, plastered photos of his corpse all over the news under the headline "We got him!"

We haven't exactly proved ourselves thus far. Of course killing people is wrong; what kind of hippie would I be to deny it? I believe, as much as any upstanding citizen, that anyone who uses the deaths of innocent civilians to make a point is seriously warped. But I think we can't just sit back anymore and act like it's someone else's fault that the rest of the world hates us.

Not profitting by the thousands of unnecessary deaths would be a good start. I don't think I'll ever get through Moonstruck again.

♥ the best is yet to be.
6/21/2006

♥ yours truly. ;

    "And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep." --Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

♥ Thank you

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