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Curse the people who think too much! Really? FFS.
Again, not at all. You're most welcome to rail against Avatar until the day you die, dissecting it at thesis length if that seems like a worthwhile thing to do. I hope that I'm welcome to disagree? For the record, about the last time that you did this, with respect to the Matrix, I also disagreed. I thought it was a good film, watched it again immediately. I also eat parmesan cheese that tastes of old socks, and I don't like romantic musical comedies. Pizza, to me, always has pineapples.
I fear that the powerful cultural cringe might interfere with the aircraft navigation systems.
You underrate the NZ immunity to cultural cringe. We've been vaccinated from birth, mostly.
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Again, not at all. You're most welcome to rail against Avatar until the day you die, dissecting it at thesis length if that seems like a worthwhile thing to do
See? You're doing it again! You're saying that I was wrong in not liking Avatar, because my not liking it involved using critical skills that are either misplaced or not worthwhile to employ. Whereas from where I'm sitting it's simply a matter of having found Avatar awful and being willing to back it up with argument - an argument which is in turn open to being accepted or rejected on its merits.
But somehow these days - and I mean quite recently, since around the time when The Matrix came out - this right to exercise basic criticism has become offensive to a dispiriting number of people. It didn't use to be like that.
I am quite convinced that if we could harness Neil Postman's current rpm's we'd be able to power a medium sized city.
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BenWilson: any other candidates for finest century? I'm tempted to balance the odd bout of industrialised mass homicide with antibiotics, civil rights, reproductive freedom and plummetting infant mortality.
Yes, the ends did justify the means. Horrible means. Good ends.
Re: Uruk Hai, IIRC Tolkien is quite unspecific about exactly how Saruman makes them. I think someone (Aragorn maybe?) speculates that they are part man, part orc. So Jackson's guess is as good as anyone's. Reproduction is generally not discussed frankly in LOTR anywhere.
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Reproduction is generally not discussed frankly in LOTR anywhere.
No, that's what slash is for.
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See? You're doing it again! You're saying that I was wrong in not liking Avatar, because my not liking it involved using critical skills that are either misplaced or not worthwhile to employ.
No, you're projecting that onto me.
Whereas from where I'm sitting it's simply a matter of having found Avatar awful and being willing to back it up with argument - an argument which is in turn open to being accepted or rejected on its merits.
There's been "arguments" both ways, and of course everything in them boils down to subjective opinion of artistic worth. After a while it moves from anything resembling argument, to cheerleading. I think this happened months ago, wrt Avatar.
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Horrible means. Good ends.
What was so horrible about the means? I can't think of any atrocities committed in the development of antibiotics (unless you're a bacterium) or contraceptives. The horrible was just horrible on its own, without any end to justify it, unless you want to get into a Hiroshima argument.
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No, you're projecting that onto me.
Yeah, right. "If that seems like a worthwhile thing to do", "when he writes his masterpiece", "the desperate bitching [of the critics]". And that's just on this thread.
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No, that's what slash is for.
Legolas and Aragorn never had babies with each other. FACT.
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Yes, and in none of those cases did I say it was "Wrong to hate Avatar". I don't think there is a right or wrong to the matter. Hence I say, you are projecting.
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You're not saying it's okay to hate Avatar. You're saying it's okay to hate Avatar only if it's for the same reasons why you loved Avatar.
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Legolas and Gimli wanted to have babies, but disagreed about whether it should be raised in a forest or a cave.
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There's been "arguments" both ways, and of course everything in them boils down to subjective opinion of artistic worth.
But at some point, you have to accept that some things actually *are* artistically 'better' than other things. Otherwise I could say 'hey, Rock of Love Bus is as good as The Wire', which is clearly utter pants as a statement. No one, even the most determinedly obtuse pineapple-on-their-pizza-eating populist, could *possibly* believe that. And one of the reasons that it isn't true is because you can analyse the work and construct an argument, using the dreaded criticism, in order to prove that point.
(Disclaimer: I watched every episode of all three Rock of Love series. With joy.)
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No, Gio, I'm not saying that.
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But at some point, you have to accept that some things actually *are* artistically 'better' than other things.
No, I don't.
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That's quite a radical position, Ben. Not surprising, given your similar take (it boils down to 'taste') on morality/ethics.
But you'd save yourself some aggro if you stated it clearly up-front :) -
Oh goodness, I now know for a fact that Google is not my friend.
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No, I don't.
OK, so Tiffany is as good as The Beatles. 2 Fast 2 Furious is as good as Raging Bull. 1980s Archie comics are as good as Maus. Everything boils down to 'I like it!' vs 'I don't like it!'
You realise that my whole online life is ruined now, right? :)
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You could make an argument that The Rock of Love Bus is better than The Wire, I suppose. I mean, it depends fiirst of all on better how, in what specific respects. Qlipoth might well argue that TROLB is better because it's less evil. But nothing is better than anything else a priori and in all circumstances. It's just that as in all things extraordinary claims will require extraordinary arguments.
But then of course if you're not even allowed to think and argue, but just to feel (enjoy/not enjoy), the whole thing becomes a pointless consumerist exercise. And who's got time for that?
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Regarding the LOTR racial politics hoopla, the Warcraft universe does a decent job of muddying the waters of traditional Tolkiendom.
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You could make an argument that The Rock of Love Bus is better than The Wire, I suppose. I mean, it depends fiirst of all on better how, in what specific respects.
Well, OK, I suppose you *could*. Let's say: as a commentary on bandana use in washed-up balding rock stars, Rock of Love Bus is practically peerless.
(It's totally WAY more evil than The Wire, though, so that argument isn't going to fly.)
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Legolas was shooting blanks.
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Orcs, in the mythology of the book, are clearly not indigenous - they were created in mockery of or from humans by an envious demigod. It's hard to integrate that with European racist mythology.
Elves actually. Not even humans. Orcs are a mockery of Fairy people. They are meant to be earthly demons of some kind.
Ooh, can I contribute some Tolkien-geekery?
Tolkien actually struggled quite a lot with the problem of what orcs really are. JRRT drew a distinction between "thinking peoples" and "beasts". The former had feär (roughly, souls; also implying free will), which only Eru (God) could create. Originally, there were two species with feär: elves and men. Aulë created the dwarves, and Eru took pity on him and gave the dwarves feär too.
So what about the orcs? Melkor, who made them, was effectively a fallen angel. He couldn't give them feär, and it's unlikely that Eru would look kindly on him. Tolkien pondered three possibilities:
1. Melkor "twisted" captured elves, perhaps later "blending" them with captured men. This is the theory presented in _The Silmarilion_. But if orcs are debased elves, then does that mean they go into the west when they die? Are the Halls of Mandos filling up with dead orcs? That would be an unusual twist. Furthermore, while Melkor can corrupt individuals, can he make that total corruption inheritable? If orcs are really corrupted elves, we should see good orcs now and again.
2. Orcs are intelligent beasts, highly trained and capable of talking in the fashion of parrots. Unfortunately from scenes in LotR, they seem a little too intelligent to make this fly, although there could be some maia (lesser angles) in orc form to keep them in line.
3. Orcs are animated by the spirit of Melkor. That is, Melkor distributed part of his "essence" amongst the orcs (and trolls, and dragons). This is why Melkor had to fight with armies and servents, rather than by just dropping mountains on the elves' heads and suchlike. Orcs still bicker and fight amongst each other because evil contains the seeds of its own destruction.
http://www.thetolkienwiki.org/wiki.cgi?The__Origin__of__Orcs
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Regarding the LOTR racial politics hoopla, the Warcraft universe does a decent job of muddying the waters of traditional Tolkiendom.
Indeed. It's actually quite fascinating how they managed to engender racial hatred into the game. The Alliance and the Horde can't directly communicate, they can only emote.
Legolas was shooting blanks.
True, true, I forgot that. They could adopt, though. Maybe a little orc baby stolen from one of their victims?
Ooh, can I contribute some Tolkien-geekery?
Even Iluvatar himself could not stop you. In fact, as per Melkor, he'd just claim that it was what he was trying to say all along.
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That's quite a radical position, Ben.
I don't reckon. I think it might even be the norm.
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See, we can't directly communicate. Only emote. Ah, the delicious irony!
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