Subject:
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Re: Something not right about Captain Ahnee and the Dipwads?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 7 Nov 2000 16:29:44 GMT
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Viewed:
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724 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
> > One certainly might assume this, if one had difficulty differentiating
> > between fiction and reality.
>
> How so? There are some strong negative feelings toward JarJar either because
> he's goofy or because he's a marketing tool. The fact that he's ficticious is
> lucky.
Lucky, perhaps, but it is the essence of the argument. People's animosity
toward Jar Jar (my own included) stems not from the fact that he's stupid or
clumsy, but because George Lucas made a conscious and concerted effort to
generate the character in this way. Admittedly, we have Ahmed Best to blame
for a considerable part of Jar Jar's annoying character, as well. Jar Jar
isn't simply an unfortunate person who is stupid and clumsy--he's the result
of a multimillion dollar CGI process, during any part of which George could
have said "you know, this is terrible. Let's start Jar Jar over and do him
right."
> What if he was not [fictitious]? Why would those negative feelings not still hold?
You're making an falacious and unsupportable leap of logic here, along the
same lines as saying children who listen to violent music or play violent
video games are automatically going to commit violence. For that matter,
the "negative feelings" very well might hold if Jar Jar were real, but so
what? As long as one can resist the urge to inflict violence upon him, how
can anyone presume to dictate which feelings, negative or otherwise, should
exist?
> > The clear point is that Jar-Jar creates animousity in many because of his
> > high-pitched voice, witless jabbering, and omnipresent clumsiness, without
> > noteworthy redeeming qualities.
>
> I'm pretty sure that you will reference my psychological instability again for
> this, but from your statement here, I think it reasonable to assume that you
> would feel such animosity toward a clumsy person engaged in high-pitch
> jabbering, but only so long as you didn't happen to know about their redeeming
> qualities. Right? If not, then why not?
I for one am not qualified to judge your stability, nor do I believe you
have any wholesale difficulty in distinguishing reality from fiction.
However, you're failing in this case to distinguish between an attitude
toward a real person versus the attitude toward the end result of a
years-long CGI process.
> I never suggested that their ficticious nature is the cause of the animosity.
> I was presenting alternate characters who fit the criteria which were
> presented as explaining Mark's animosity.
But the key factor you're missing in presenting those alternate characters
*is* their ficticiousness. If a real individual acts like Jar Jar, a
person's reaction to that individual is wholly separate and distinct from
that same person's reaction to the character onscreen. Even if there were a
"real" Jar Jar who acted, looked, and talked exactly like the onscreen
version, there is no way to predict that people's reaction to the real
person would equal their reactions to the onscreen version.
Do you believe, for instance, that the portrayal of Mel Gibson on The
Simpsons, played by Mel, is the same as Mel himself? Or how about Rudy
Guiliani on Seinfeld? I don't expect that you do, and rightly so! At any
rate, to suggest that a person would react the same to a real-world
incarnation as to the onscreen version of that character implies outright
that the person is unable to distinguish between person and caricature. In
that case, the problem lies in the person's mental faculties and not in the
onscreen portrayal. There is a necessary and undeniable difference between
a screen presence and a real-world individual.
> Jeez. After the first three SW movies, you didn't feel betrayed by TPM? Most
> of the people I know actually _did_ feel betrayed by the brayingly simple
> (almost lack of a) story, and the appeal to cinematic gimicks instead of meaty
> concepts. (Not that SW has ever been complex fiction, but there are limits to
> how low it should sink.)
Hmm.. Now all of a sudden we're agreeing! The difference between TESB,
for instance, and TPM is palpable. My hope is that George has had the sense
to get an actual writer and an actual director to work on EP2. We'll see...
> > > > I don't discriminate against anyone, for any reason.
> > >
> > > Unless they're only a CGI construct.
> >
> > Well, that's hardly discriminating against someone, then, is it?
>
> In this case? What about in the future? I suppose if something is merely a
> graphic representation, that's true, but what about in the next 20-40 years
> when the CG characters are AIs?
Here you're forcing us to equate a lifeless onscreen image with a
hypothetical intelligence from the future, and again we cannot reliably
extrapolate one from the other. When an AI is created, it will be as
fundamentally different from Jar Jar onscreen as Jar Jar is different from
cave drawings. To draw parallels between them is tenative and speculative
at best.
> > Again: Digital representation of toy image of CGI construct of fictional
> > lifeform from fictional planet =/= (does not equal) real person.
>
> How old must you be to _really_ understand this? How old are the kids who
> might be exposed to the comic?
Kids who are so young, or individuals who are so naive, that they can't
make that distinction should be in the care of someone able to act on their
behalf and to instruct them. Parents ideally fill this role for children,
of course, and if the child enacts the violence he has witnessed in a scifi
movie, then the parents should be held responsible for failing to educate
the child properly, or perhaps even for exposing the child to such a
representation in the first place.
Dave!
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