Scott Ellington's Blog

On Feb 20, 2011, at 10:27 AM, Scott Ellington  wrote:

Siobhan,

From: Siobhan O’Flynn
To: Scott Ellington
Sent: Sun, February 20, 2011 6:13:57 AM
Subject: Re: Avatar

He called them “The Bastard Muses“:

Propaganda, which pleads sometimes unscrupulously, for a special cause at the expense of the total truth;

Sentimentality, which works up emotional responses unwarranted by, and in excess of, the occasion; and

Pornography, which focuses upon one powerful human drive at the expense of the total human personality.

The poet Czeslaw Milosz identified another enemy of democracy when, upon accepting the Noble Prize for Literature, he said

“Our planet that gets smaller every year, with its fantastic pr

oliferation of mass media,

is witnessing a process that escapes definition, characterized by a refusal to remember.”

Memory is crucial to democracy; historical amnesia, its nemesis.

http://www.alternet.org/world/149925/bill_moyers%3A_america_can%27t_deal_with_reality_–_we_must_be_exposed_to_the_truth%2C_even_if_it_hurts/?page=entire

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Avatar, schmavatar, really.  It’s a photograph of half of my eye — very simply, but suggestively mirrored symmetrically — and in-and-of-itself, absolutely no big deal, from my pov.

It’s importance to you is, on the other hand, absolutely fascinating.

Before the writers’ strike ended, I was honored to receive an email from Jeffrey Berman, one of the founders of United Hollywood asking in behalf of an even more heroic bigshot

(quite possibly Laeta Kalogridis) that I pick another avatar, because the same one that bothers you also disturbed her, ostensibly for the same reasons which were not itemized then either.

I complied.  The strike ended, and the sentiment proclaimed on November 6, 2007:

“They get paid, we get paid” and “We’re all in this together.”

fell by the wayside in the stampede to get back to business as usual

and beneath the weight of a 150 page Minimum Basic Agreement formulated by the army of lawyers called the AMPTP.

So I’m anything but anxious to exercise unquestioning compliance with the semi-rational, inexplicit qualms of people I respect

who have a problem with my means of expressing myself.

It should be noted here that most of the things I said at United Hollywood involved the inflamaory suggestion that the WGA should initate

a 3-year education program to educate global audiences to the realities of rank&file screenwriters’ situation…preparatory to calling for

a global boycott of studio product.

Throughout the duration of the strike, I stopped buying DVDs, suspended my iTunes and Netflix accounts, and wrote directly to Patric Verone

asking how a private citizen might support the strike (given that [my] presidential campaign donations would be funneled directly into the very deep pockets of

integrated transnational minstream media conglomerates for incredibly wasteful and counterproductive adbuys) anyway.

He actually wrote back! telling me to send money in support of the striking writers to the Motion Picture and Television Fund, which I did, supporting an organization

that has fallen deeply into disrepute since then.

So much for blind obedience.

When I invent or discover a “better” avatar, I’ll probably start using it ubiquitously, religiously, and far more diplomatically,

but not meaninglessly, nor blindly-obediently.

My avatar, in my opinion, propaganda, sentimental nor pornographic.  It’s fairly angry, skeptical and vigilant.

Sidebar.  The same guy who turned me on to his copy of the Serenity DVD four years ago, that put me on the path to Joss Whedon, Ken Burns, David Milch, David Thorburn, Henry Jenkins and to you

suggested yesterday that Kyle XY was really cool.  So I’ve been streaming it for the past 10 hours, and Kyle XY absolutely sucks.  Bob’s taste is clearly deplorable and his tip to SereniFly was a total fluke.

I guess I don’t understand, with civil wars erupting, foreign and domestic, why anybody’s talking about anything else.

Scott