The Avatar Syndrome

The minute it hit the big screen, James Cameron's Avatar hit something else – people's minds. The blue creatures, and not the Smurfs, seem to have a special effect on human's psyche. The movie indeed is similar to the Smurfs, with Colonel Miles Quaritch being Gargamel the sorcerer, the sworn enemy of the Smurfs aka. The Na'vi.

The color and the mad men keen on destroying someone's home are the only similarities between the movie and the cartoon, though. Grown up don't take cartoons seriously but that's not the case with Avatar. People have difficulties separating fact from fiction.

The movie caused depression among people; young or old, nonetheless. Minute by minute, internet forums record floods of depressed and even suicidal users. Why? Because they can't visit the fictional planet of Pandora.

According to CNN, one American website dedicated to Avatar, gets enormous amount of posts each minute; especially in a thread named “Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible”.

The site’s administrator denies depression. On the contrary, the movie made him happy.

“But I can understand why it made people depressed. The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don't have here on Earth. I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed”, he added.

The 3D epic grossed 191,5 million dollars just over the weekend, becoming the second highest earning motion picture of all time. By now, the numbers have risen to a total of 1,34 billion dollars. The highest earning movie is titanic, also directed by James Cameron, which grossed 460 million dollars more.

"I believe anything is possible with this picture. Nothing would surprise me", said Bert Livingston, a 20th Century Fox distribution executive.

Special effects, the beauty of the planet and a special bond with nature make people downcast. Blue. How far people can go is obvious from a user’s post:

“When I woke up this morning after watching 'Avatar' for the first time yesterday, the world seemed grey. It just seems so meaningless. I still don't really see any reason to keep doing things at all. I live in a dying world.”

Another one wasn’t as poetic but still gave a troublesome post.

“After I watched Avatar at the first time, I truly felt depressed as I "wake" up in this world again. So after a few days, I went to cinema and watched it again for the second time to relieve the depression and hopeless feeling.”

Dr. Stephan Quentzel, a psychiatrist spoke to CNN saying:

“Virtual life is not real life and it never will be, but this is the pinnacle of what we can build in a virtual presentation so far. It has taken the best of our technology to create this virtual world and real life will never be as utopian as it seems onscreen. It makes real life seem more imperfect.”.

Is it so bad in reality that we seek comfort on the big screen? Movies are made by men; you, me, them. If they can make a perfect movie, you can make exactly that of your life. You just have to try a little bit harder.