Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Evolutionary Psychology and Oscar Picks

I posted the other day that I was torn up about choosing Avatar over The Hurt Locker as a better movie. Because I love Kathryn Bigelow... I wanted her to win. Purely as a fan and as an accomplishment for genre movies.

But...and I still feel this Avatar is better movie.

Seems like Evolutionary Psychologists agree with me!

It's obvious to anyone who knows me why I loved Avatar so much: The conflict and resolution with hunter-gatherers is the main reason I love Avatar. Totalitarian agriculturalists suck. Yep, it's real simple why I love Avatar....plus, and great adventure and setting.

Here is why Evolutionary Psychologists choose Avatar as Best Picture...

Two things we believe contribute to a great movie are:

1. Characters actively pursuing one or more fundamental evolutionary goals (Getting The Girl or Guy, Getting Along, Getting Ahead, and Getting the Bad Guy).

2. Characters having to choose between two or more of those fundamental goals.

Avatar is the only movie that simultaneously focuses on all four themes. It deals with those fundamental themes in classical mythological form - using all the tricks of cinema to engage the viewer's interest, and it's own new technological tricks to perceptually transport us to an imaginary place that triggers all the human mechanisms for appreciating the beauty of nature (a sub-theme is how we're destroying our own planet). Its big flaw is the sudden descent into unnecessary levels of violence toward the end of the movie, but by that point, we were hooked enough to go along like eight-year-olds.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I guess cognitive psychologists dislike films where boy gets boy... ?

-andy

Candy Minx said...

No they carefully worded the main evolutionary goal..."getting the girl or guy"

:)

DILLIGAF said...

Whilst I followed everything I need to know.

What precisely did Oscar pick and why did he pick it?

...am I missing some'at here..;-)

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