Culture Wars

Near the end of the hit film “Avatar,” the villain snarls at the hero, “How does it feel to betray your own race?” Both men are white — although the hero is inhabiting a blue-skinned, 9-foot-tall, long-tailed alien.

Strange as it may seem for a film that pits greedy, immoral humans against noble denizens of a faraway moon, “Avatar” is being criticized by a small but vocal group of people who allege it contains racist themes — the white hero once again saving the primitive natives.

Since the film opened to widespread critical acclaim three weeks ago, hundreds of blog posts, newspaper articles, tweets and YouTube videos have made claims such as that the film is “a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people” and reinforces “the white Messiah fable.”

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News

Interesting post on art to be found here, saying:

There’s no way around it: many 19th-century paintings reek of masturbation. They are not lacking in sensuality, but it is of a deferred, fantastical, almost proudly warped kind, typified by Waterhouse. It’s only among the avant garde that love becomes real – in Gauguin’s painting Nevermore, for instance.

After reading that piece (if you followed the link) I would like to direct your attention to the following:

Just as one of these Frankfurters, Theodor Adorno, set out to destroy Western music, assuring the world that atonal music was a good thing because it was discordant and ugly, others in the group set out to destroy art and push it to its reductio ad absurdum: lights going on and off in an empty room, unmade beds with condoms and bloodstained panties strewn around, and sealed cans containing the artist’s own excrement.

Source/Full Story: The Plot Against Art, Part 1

I guess I must not have such a finely cultured art palate as others may possess, but I know what I like.  Waterhouse has my vote.