Tim Cassedy is selling his card game on Etsy for $19.75.
Photo courtesy of Tim Cassedy
Even if you've never read the book, you probably still know the opening line of Herman Melville's literary classic Moby-Dick: “Call me Ishmael.” But how familiar are you with the rest of Melville's writing? Would you recognize passages or lines from the 200,000-word novel out of context?
SMU assistant English professor Tim Cassedy is hoping that you won't, because that's the crux of what makes his new card game so funny. Called — appropriately, yet hilariously — Dick, it's a Cards Against Humanity-style party amusement that uses actual phrases from the 164-year-old novel paired with semi-innocent questions.
Available on Etsy, the game includes 400 white cards and 100 green cards. Each player starts with 12 white cards (the answers), and the judge of each round chooses a green card (the question) for the players to pair with their funniest white card. The judge determines a winner, the white cards are replenished, and the player with the most green cards at the end wins.
The answers by themselves are not meant to be naughty. However, when singled out and paired with questions such as “Dearly beloved friends, we are gathered here to join together these two persons in ...” or “A therapist asks you why you're there ...” answers such as “a low sucking sound” and “the midnight spout” suddenly seem uproariously filthy.
Cassedy told the Washington Posthe was first struck with the idea for the game while teaching at SMU. “Moby-Dick,” he says, “questions everything and holds nothing sacred. It’s weirder, funnier, much more irreverent than you think. It would be an exaggeration to say that the book is nonstop sex jokes, but it is nonstop playfulness and irreverence.”
His hope is that people playing his game might discover “that Moby-Dick isn’t the sober tome they had been led to expect and feel empowered to read it.”
For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.
The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).
Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.
Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.
The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.
Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.
A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.
There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.
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Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.
