After arousing my brain cells in front of the big screen with Avatar, I exposed my head to the freezing cold by walking onto the front entrance of the Coliseum theatre in Ottawa at minus whatever. That’s my disclaimer for “swallowing” the word “thousand” for Jules Verne’s 20,000 leagues under the sea. Instead I said 20!
I loved Jules Verne as a kid. He was a synonym of fun science and fiction. As soon as I could read I was given this beautiful collection of illustrated books and 20,000 leagues was one of them. A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) and one of my favourites, the Courier of the Czar, Michel Strogoff (1876), which I will talk about once I get to Russia!
A great number of us have heard of Nemo… but not only referring to the lost clownfish in Andrew Stanton’s film but also for Verne’s Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus. If you haven’t read the book … there is a “ride” in Florida’s Disney World with this theme…. And there’s also a movie from 1954... with Kirk Douglas playing Canadian master harpoonist Ned Land(a classic in technicolour)
And I am going to sound old, but I used to accompany my reading with what is now considered a toy: my red viewmaster (created in 1939).
Remember the seven 3D stereo images rotating on that paper disk? I had one of the Nautilus being attacked by the gigantic squid (or octopus, according to the French version). ‘Twenty thousand leagues’ refers to the distance traveled by Captain Nemo, and his experience with New York professor Aronnax. They travel from the Arctic to the Antarctic through the seven seas. A ‘modern’ resemblance of Homer’s Odyssey and the ‘revolutionary’ vision of a free anarchic submarine detached from any land-based government (in times were devices of this kind were unthinkable). Verne has been a best seller in most languages for years (after Agatha Christie); and so is James Cameron, Mr. box office success. I thought I would compare the Avatar of the 21st century to the creative and constructive science fiction mind of the 19th century. Verne’s submarines, balloons, rockets, trips to the centre of the earth and all other journeys… were beyond people’s imagination in his days. Cameron has managed to bring us to a different era as well, connecting the thematic reality of today (military powers, unfriendly-profit-oriented enterprises, endangered indigenous communities) to a modern computer-designed mythology. I liked Avatar… although I found some stereotypes that could’ve been avoided (like the ‘nature-oriented, spiritually inclined, animal-friendly’ portrayal of the Na'vi people). The script serves the standards of a good movie, and today’s technology facilitates the transition between the fragile human bone and the resilient blue flesh. Avatar has magic moments and its use of light and colour is literally ‘fantastic’.
Suggestion of the day: let’s dust our view-masters and have a theme party… stereograms predate digital photos and were a great way to see tourist attractions especially from those places far from our reach. Share
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