I do not exist

Jinx has decided there's a new bed in the house, just for him.( Read more... )

outsdr: Ooo We should go DANCING tomorrow night!

Andy:  :|

outsdr: Yeah, you're right.

outsdr: There's nowhere around here to go dancing.

Andy: lol besides that, I don't dance

outsdr: I do. I'll teach you.

Andy: pff

outsdr: Oh please. It's easy. You just let the music make you feel sexy, and then you let the sexy ... spread.

Andy: LOL

So, occasionally Andy will share with me some of the discussion posts he makes for his online college courses, and some of the responses he gets back. In his current class, Humanities: Science Fiction, the students were asked to write a one-paragraph review of a movie; Andy chose Avatar.

Andy: lol I just corrected someone in my discussions... they were making examples of what Fantasy and SciFi was by using movies. She brought up Avatar and said that it was pure fantasy because it was animated....

Outsdr: Nice. Tell her to go watch Akira. Or Iron giant. Or Star Wars: Clone Wars.



Andy also on occasion will use my responses to him as part of his discussion.



Andy: response to my discussion post: "I think you misread what I stated or maybe I was unclear. What makes Avatar fantasy is the animation portion of it. I do agree that the portion of the humans is plausible science. It is a movie where human life experience a made up world which is made up of animation concluding that it is fantasy. Hope I made sense."

Andy: still sounds like she's saying its fantasy because its animated

Outsdr: It almost sounds like she thinks the humans are interacting with animated characters IRL in the movie.  You should reply thusly:

Outsdr: "So are you saying that the humans in the movie are interacting with animated beings? Or are you saying that all movie that combine or use animation are therefore fantasy, no matter what the animation is portraying?"

Andy: posted

Andy will also let me write his posts for him when necessary. *evil grin*

The more I thought about it, the more fired up I got. How completely dismissive of an art form; to say that a movie is fantasy simply because of animation. To confuse a story telling method with the category of the story ... this could not be allowed to go unchallenged:

Outsdr: Oh, it's ON with this girl. Post this followup:

"If it is the former, then I think you've fundmentally misunderstood the movie. If it is the later, then it seems that you are confusing the medium with genre. To say that stories presented via animation are fantasy is to fundamentally dismiss the entire art form; it is akin to saying that all stories that are drawn by hand are also fantasy, whatever their story may be. Animated films such as Akira, Star Wars: Clone Wars, or even Futurama simply do not fit the fantasy genre, no matter how they are presented. These films are no less science fiction because they have been drawn than if they had been filmed with live actors. If I draw a series of pictures for a flipbook showing a rocket launching, then crashing into a firey explosion, by your definition, it would be classified as fantasy simply because of the medium used to present the story. To state that a film is of the fantasy genre just because it contains animated elements is simply wrong. I'm sure James Cameron (director of Terminator 2, which relied heavily on computer animation) would agree."

Outsdr: Post that.



Bring it.