Why I Like Disaster Movies, by Extemporanea, aged nearly 5

[freckles_and_doubt]

A random thought has occurred to me. I have burbled before, in this forum, about my complete love for disaster movies, and for watching large tracts of human civilisation explode, erupt, disintegrate, drown, get swallowed by earthquakes, get blown up by aliens or otherwise interestingly fall apart. However, watching the Na'vi Hometree char and collapse, despite its lavish provision of explosions and giant things going crunch, gave me no enjoyment at all, engendering instead a sort of sickened disgust.

This has been somewhat revelatory. I think I enjoy disaster movies, in the average expression of the genre, because they offer an apocalyptic response to something I feel very strongly about, which is that human civilisation simply doesn't work. On average it's an unreflecting, unintegrated, fundamentally self-destructive society we belong to, one that is probably stuck in a downward spiral to some kind of collapse. Being gleefully destroyed by some imponderably and irresistably enormous external force, whether alien or environmental, operates on some level of my subconscious not just as a lovely externalisation of inherent qualities, but as something we probably deserve. The Na'vi, on the other hand, are a functional society in perfect and harmonious balance with their habitat. They didn't deserve to be destroyed. Hence, no enjoyment.

This basically suggests that somewhere in my subconsious is a sort of stern Victorian governess with a very large ruler, saying over her pince-nez, with steely determination, "If you break one more thing there will be trouble." I'm OK with that. I'm also going to stop talking about Avatar now, I seem to have mostly expelled the fury by blogging.

Comments

[mwotn.livejournal.com]

Interesting philosophical idea. The concept of humanity "deserving" annihilation is an interesting one too (it irks me that you live on a continent. This would be a good debate to while away a few evenings). I've not seen Avatar so can't comment on it, tho, sadly.

On other business, Happy New Year! Apologies for my very erratic nature, revision is destroying my life.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Revision of what, pray tell? I mean, you're perfectly entitled to pop up here erratically as your life permits and hang out for a bit, it's a free blog and no-one's keeping a register, but enquiring minds want to know.

And, yes, vague philosophical meanderings ftw, preferably debated while tipsy.

Don't see Avatar unless you are very forgiving about crappy scripts and really like the colour blue. I used to.

[mwotn.livejournal.com]

Engineering. Which, for some reason that now completely eludes me, I chose for my degree. I have exams later on this morning (breakfast is for surfing the internet!)

I might give Avatar a go then. I tend to turn my brain off for cinema so am normally quite forgiving and I daresay I can stump up enough appreciation of the colour blue to sit through how ever many hours of giant blue aliens...