Why Avatar Box Office Record is Real and Inflation Doesn't Matter

There is a lot of speculation regarding James Cameron's Avatar film not really holding the highest grossing movie of all time. The reasons many site the record isn't real are: 1)the inflation rate; 2) the inflated ticket sales of 3D showings. I'm currently taking Statistics for Engineers, and often I get contextual questions wrong. If this were on a test, and inflation rates were given for Avatar and Gone with the Wind to determine which movie was better (despite evidence that Gone with the Wind technically sold more tickets) I'd still say Avatar was the better movie.

That's because back in the days of Titanic and even Gone with the Wind, the Internet was not around like it is today. Instead of traveling down to the nearest cinema for some visual entertainment, you now can watch everything, including Avatar on your home computer. If you're tech saavy you can have a whole box office streaming on your jumbo flat screen t.v.

In 1997 the year of Titanic, we had Windows '95 and America Online. Whoever you were, the internet was hooked up by telephone and boring websites took up to 30 minutes to load (my computer anyway). In 1939 the year of Gone with the Wind, there wasn't even color t.v. and sets that streamed antenna broadcasts were the of Lexus's with the screens the size of magazines.

Avatar, again, the greatest movie of our time, has to compete with the greatest technology man has ever made, the Internet. Avatar offers an experience that is unmatched, and even if you could watch 3D movies on your laptop well enough, or your big flat screen, they still cannot compete with Avatar IMAX, not even close. IMAX is a multi-million dollar setup, for $15 hell yeah I'll watch Avatar over and over.

This debate just goes to show you how useless money can be in measuring success. The brains at Forbes can crunch dollar bill signs all day, but they don't consider the context of their data. Basically, they suck at interpretation. Movie gross, just tells you how much a movie made. Comparing one movie's gross to another is indicative of which is a better movie in the eyes of the public. Comparing movie grosses across generations doesn't reveal which was the better movie because there are so many factors from each generation that affect whether or not people see a movie. The case I have made is that despite the internet providing most middle class citizens with ample entertainment, many choose to see Avatar...over...and...over...and over...

Avatar is not Racist

This article sheds light on people that believe that Avatar was a racist movie. The white Messiah comes and saves the indigenous colored people. Examples in film are Tom Cruise in "The Last Samurai" and Kevin Costner in "Dances with Wolves" and the real life example of John Smith and Pocahontas.

I'll get back to why people that call Avatar racist are idiots, but first my take on the Movie. It was Art in the most technologically advanced, compelling, emotional way ever created. I didn't cry when I saw a painting by Da Vinci and my heart didn't churn when I read John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Movie making is the medium by which every field of artistic endeavor (writing, drawing, photography, music) can come together and create an even more dynamic masterpiece; Avatar is the masterpiece of our time. 

As black film professor Donald Bogle has said:

"Maybe there is something he does want to say and put across" about race, Bogle said. "Maybe if he had a black hero in there, that point would have been even stronger."

That request and degradation of this film's theme to racism is uneducated and pathetic. The main complaint is: why can't colored people save themselves. Yes, the white Jakesully rallies the blue Na'vi, but he doesn't win the war for them, the moon's deity, Eywa saves the day. And if religion is not your flavor, then ham it up to dumb luck as rhino-type beasts decide take a jog and stamp out the villainous ground troops or to the thousands of flying creatures that suddenly arrive just to wonder what a flying piece of metal would taste like. -- Had the ikran (mountain banshees) not attacked the escorts, Jake would never had gotten close enough to blow up the bombers. It would have been a dues ex machina, had the whole film not centered around this Eywa spirituality the WHOLE TIME, where importance is placed on the spirit behind the physical embodiment being the true person (I See You). 

As an advocate for equality I continually am disappointed by the ways people find a problem in everything, then go write about it or bitch about it with other friends who go an write about it themselves. Do they create solutions? NO. They elaborate on some problem. Now with this poor accusation I mark the death of a College Ten all star; I bled that theme social justice and community, but it's time to ditch that type of whining to work with real people and real solutions. 

James Cameron has remarked on Avatar's real theme:

[Avatar] asks us to open our eyes and truly see others, respecting them even though they are different, in the hope that we may find a way to prevent conflict and live more harmoniously on this world. I hardly think that is a racist message."

Does the existence of an alien species expose the reality that all humans are actually one race 

My Favorite Health, Wealth, Love Books

There are three areas of your life that need to be handled: Health, Wealth, Love. If you follow evolutionary psychology, what we're programmed with is just a mechanism for survival and replication. My favorite books that have helped me in these three areas:

Health:

1. Abs Diet
2. Abs Diet: Eat Right Every Time Guide
3. Book of Muscle
4. Full Body Workout

Wealth:

1. The Neatest Little Guide to Stocks
2. Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover

Love:

1. The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love
2.   

Of course this isn't complete as I'm still doing some reading, but this is a great start. 

Barbie and The Savanna Principle Explains Men's Psychology Pertaining to Mate Choice

The Savanna Principle is a term from evolutionary psychologist that says: the human brain cannot cope well with things and situations that did not exist in our "ancestral environment." The exact quote:

"The human brain has difficulty comprehending and dealing with entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment" (p. 21). -Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by Miller & Kanazawa

This article by Kanazawa suggests that men cannot comprehend technology that a woman uses to enhance her physical appearance and make her appear more young and thus more fertile to seed mate with. Large, ample breasts on a 45-year old should indicate plastic surgery (which it does), but with the Savanna Principle since such technology didn't exist back then, we as men find it difficult to allow that fact to deter us from finding such breasts attractive. If we believe what is young is fertile and worth mating we'll overlook the real facts (that the women is 45, and past fertility age).

My next and last thought was when the author used Barbie as the ultimate perfect woman, a figure that should induce primal sexual desire in any man. I have a particular issue with his use of blond hair being most attractive. I personally love brunettes which may pertain to my ancestry. If in the ancestral world, my ancestors never saw blond hair on any woman so they wouldn't have found it attractive (after all, how can you find something attractive, if you never saw it...*) My simple point is that culture developed in specific geographic area developed differently, a point too often overlooked by Modern Psychologist.

Final Line: The ugly truth is that men find youthful looking women more attractive, because we always have.


* Interesting conclusion from a man who I'll assume is Asian (based off his picture and his last name) and in particularly from a region furthest from any ancestral land that could have blond haired women.

Psych: Why Are there Bad Looking Couples?

Why are there so many bad looking couples? In high school there were enough examples of bad couples to make me bang my head on the walls. A good looking guy with an unnattractively mean girl. A really popular girl with the weirdest dude. It boggled my mind. I still wonder about it.

A recent conversation with a friend revealed to me that girls can change their minds and do change what they want in a guy, often she suggests. One year she was with a model looking guy a few years later she's with the biggest dude I've ever seen. B-I-G, BIG, =).

Physically attractive, intellectually stimulating, being charming all describe ideal traits a great guy should have. However,trying to be  an ideal mate looks to me to be a goal unworthy of your time.
I had a Sim on the game: The Sims that was everything I wanted to be, maxed out intelligence, athletics, cooking ability. . . And the guy could never get a date. It frustrated me, but the lesson was that there's more to human interaction than maxing out your stats, pages read, hours studied, number of bench presses.

In a past relationship, I really tried to be the highest quality of man. I was everything I ever learned to be in regards to being a gentleman, athletic, intelligent, kind, generous, I maxed out my stats so to speak. For whatever reason, the relationship didn't work out. In fact she sought out comfort from lesser males, and I mean, really, really gnarly looking, deadbeats. I couldn't let go of the fact that we looked like a great couple, similar interests, similar values and goals. It just didn't work out, because I wasn't what she wanted.

The final line: don't be drawn in by the seductive practice of finding ideal couples in your life or that of others.

Psych: People Own their Names

I've studied it in psychology, read it in pop culture, and see it everyday. One of my most favorite ideas in understanding people is that the most important word to anyone is their own name. I learned that neat line from "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. He'll go on to suggest that it is the number one thing you must not do is to forget people's names.

I recently forfeited the point that words have power and I doubt there is a more powerful and influential word than a person's name, to them anyway. It grabs someones attention when they are called by their name, it's special, and too often do people just brush by eachother unnoticed. Some of us go through hundreds of such interactions a day, but we really notice when someone uses our name.  

It's no wonder people care so much about their reputation. Their name is intimately tied with their reputation, and a good reputation will provide you with friends, status, and options in life. It's particularly more important for men to build a good name because men are most judged on their status in career and in relationship to other men. That damning line: "It's not what you know, it's who you know" rings loud and clear here. You may be a genius, but if you can't connect with people or if you have a poor reputation, you can't get as far as someone with a good name.

I'll Be Trying Blogging For a Bit

I just started to read Problogger by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett and decided blogging is something I want to do on the side. No! I'm not selling out! I promise! I just figured that on my facebook page I have about 100 posts over the last couple of years, more since I began a private blog, and I have some things to say I believe can benefit more than the few friends I write for. Why not share my ideas with the world? The good ones.

So I'll commit to writing everyday, well, I already do that. I will allow myself one ad per blog, and my model will be multiple blogs. I already write a lot anyway. My format is digestible, entertaining, and very functional, but be patient as I evolve and my blogs evolve with me. Here we go!

Links:
Problogger.net