Blue Movies

OK, so I don’t go to the movies.

I haven’t been to a movie theater in years.

For a while there, every time I went to the movies I would regret it. I’ve had the cell phone talker, the narrator, the chatter all sitting near me. Hell, I’ve even had the snorer and the soundtrack singer. So eventually I gave up and just wait for the movies to come out on DVD.

This weekend a friend got “Avatar” in Blue Ray and invited me over. He takes pity on me because I still watch a 27 inch analog tube TV.

Oh boy. Great effects. After a while you swear those cartoons are real.

However…what about the plot?…unreal.

After the movie was over, I proceeded to explain to everyone why they had just sat through communist propaganda. Laughter ensued.

People just can’t believe that I just can’t sit there and enjoy a movie without looking for the subliminal red flags of communist propaganda. I don’t know, maybe I’m just gifted or cursed.

Avatar, of course, pins the noble savages against the capitalist profit seeking military-industrial complex.

The blue “aboriginals”, (really, red would have been more original), of course, live as one with Mother Nature in a communal egalitarian Utopia. They are so communal that they even connect to the planet, Pandora, and every living thing on it through some tentacle-like appendages. They are like “the Borg” only nicer.

These folks don’t have material possessions, or clothes and they don’t need them because since they understand that they are part of the collective whole. All they need to do to be happy is to be one with each other. Awe.

Their memories are collective. They are ruled by a wise old leader who has inherited his position. No need for elections or debate here. He makes all the decisions.

In the Pandoran jungle Utopia, they are all equal and call each other brother or sister, depending on their genitals. And they refer to themselves as “The People.” (The People’s Republic of the Na’vi, anyone?)

Now, of course, this sounds a lot like John Lennon’s candy coated communist manifesto, “Imagine,” except for the “no religion” part because Na’vi worship a tree or something. (not too sure on that). Maybe they should have been green instead of blue, but green or red people are not as stylish as blue people and the left is all about style.

But it also sounds a lot like Castro’s idea of a perfect society. Or a leftist Hollywood wet drem. Oh wait, Castro is leftists Hollywood’s wet dream.

And the answer to the question of whether I can enjoy a movie for “just” entertainment is yes.

But, Avatar, is a movie with a message. It is a morality tale and as such you are supposed to “get something out of it.” And I did. A bunch of collective, communist propaganda.

Really, I don’t know see how you can get anything else out of it. You have the individualists who are out for themselves on one side and the collectivists who sacrifice their individuality on the other and the whole point is to show the viewer how suppressing their individuality for the good of the whole is the way to roll.

Unfortunately, us humans are not built to roll that way and the only way to make humans roll that way is for heads to roll because we have to be forced, or coerced …or brainwashed…err…educated by cool, friendly cartoon characters.

God, isn’t that just what the evil capitalists do when they advertise?

And A Little Birdie Told Me...

I was a mischievous child. Always up to some secretive mischief.

I thought I could get away with anything.

A psychologists would probably say I was “Acting out,” but it was rebellion. Totalitarian society encourages small individual acts of rebellion, I think.

And I was thinking about my “acting out” and I though of my grandmother, Ramona.

That old woman loved me more than anything. And I knew it. And I would take advantage of it.

I remember playing with the veins in her wrinkly hands. I don’t know why I remember that, but I do. And I remember her telling me about all the bad things that I thought I had done secretly and I would ask her how she knew and I remember her telling me a little birdie told her and I would be furious at the little, big mouthed bird.

And I think back in amazement of how such a young child would know about the evils and dangers of communism and know enough to keep his mouth shut yet he believed that some little bird was ratting him out. I guess it kind of made sense that in a place where everybody was ratting everybody else out, even their own family, and all the walls had ears that birdies would tell all. But, still, the cynicism mixed with innocence is mind-blowing in retrospect.

And so I think of Ramona, and the little birdies that talk to her. They told her Fidel was a devil when they perched on his shoulder in that now infamous “sign”

And I remember watching the tattle taling, gusano eating, chivato birds flying freely around while we were trapped in the world/s biggest bird cage. The birds, they were free. Free to fly to Florida and eat Ham and chew chiclets and play with Rosie.

And I also remember the time I freed the “azulejos” by opening their cage door, but I don’t remember if I did it because I hated them because they told on me or because I wanted them to fly North. I just remember getting in trouble for it.

And I was reading Yoani’s blog the other day and she had a post about a “Wild Beast” and it was about “Twitter”. Twitter’s logo is a blue bird and the whole purpose of “tweeting” is to tell everybody what you’re doing,(sometimes to annoying detail).

And Yoani was talking about how equipped with a cell phone, dissidents can tell a little blue birdie called “Twitter” what’s going on in the Cuban cage in “ 140 character fragments” so the little birdie can tell all

He didn’t know that our tweets travel to cyberspace through the rough sending of
text-only messages by way of cellphones. Nor could he imagine that instead of
ending up in the hands of a member of the British intelligence services, our
brief texts go to this blue bird that makes them fly through cyberspace.

And I though of how the birdies are signing and a different tune and how its being heard all over the world…

…a little birdie told me.