Guest Writer: Why I Like Avatar So Much

EDIT: I just want to write a brief welcome note to Suzanne. I asked her to be a guest writer on this blog when I saw the following post that she wrote about Avatar, and I realized that she pretty much said everything I wanted to say... except she said it better.

Also, like she said in her self-introduction, she's a real film major at Vassar (unlike me, who's an engineer but pretending to be a film major by taking a film class), so everything that I pretend to know, she actually knows. I won't say more -- it'll distract you from the main attraction. I just hope that Suzanne can find some time to add more enriching thoughts to our blog.
--X

I'm Suzanne, a friend of X and Jay and a senior film major at Vassar College. The following is a defense of Avatar I wrote because frankly I became tired of having to explain myself every time someone criticized me for loving Avatar. They asked me to post it here as a guest article, so enjoy!

Lately, (and somehow ironically) it seems like the popular thing to do is hate on what is currently popular. I honestly think that's a big reason as to why Avatar is getting a lot of backlash, especially from so-called intellectuals who think that because they're going against the masses, they're somehow superior to people who choose to enjoy popular entertainment. This post is my official defense of Avatar, and I want to get a few things straight.

What became of the good old western movies?

In my film class (Introduction to Genre and Auteur Study), we discussed western movies during our discussion section today, and one of questions that the TA brought up was, “What happened to the western movies these days?” That’s a legitimate question. After all, western movies used to be so popular in the golden age of film making -- I’m talking like back in the black-and-white movies days, when sound was first introduced to motion picture, but today, we only see maybe one western a year.

My film class

Attended my first film class lecture last night. I have to say it was pretty awesome. Watching movies sure beats listening to a boring professor drone, I mean lecture, for hours on end. Anyway, I bring this up not because I like to blabber on about my life, but because X and I will be using our film classes as source material for the blog throughout the semester. We are taking different classes, which will be interesting in that we will be able to talk about different films and from points of view, but hopefully not so vastly different that we won't be able to preserve some dialogue and discussion between us (and the readers). I'll let X write about his course himself. Here is some info about my class and the list of films I'll be watching:

Language of Film (aka intro to cinema studies)
In order of my viewing them... I included the year of release to illustrate the span of works we'll be covering

The Hurt Locker (2008)
Rear Window (1954)
Four Little Girls (1997)
Sunrise (1927)
Barry Lyndon (1975)
A Man Escaped (1956)
The Godfather (1972)
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Princess Mononoke (1997)
Bicycle Thieves (1949)
400 Blows (1959)
Chungking Express (1996)
The Gleaners and I (2002)

I'm really excited about the itinerary, since I haven't seen most of these films. In fact I haven't heard of more than half of them, so it'll definitely be interesting, though perhaps not necessarily pleasant (I hate black and white movies, not rationally). I probably won't write reviews for most of them. I will however, plagiarize myself. The professor makes us think about the films by asking us to write (brief) responses to prompts at the end of class. I'll reiterate those responses, and try to expound on them in order to come up with something interesting to say here. You guys will let me know what you think...

Here's a quote the professor included in the syllabus, which always makes me smile while reading:

The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good. --- Stanley Kubrick

I find this to be of great relief because I'll be able to use it whenever I can't articulate why I like a movie... it's just because. Hopefully I won't use it to cop out too many times this term.