Is there ever a time when Hollywood is not FAILing? First up, What these people need is a honky syndrome goes off planet in:

James Cameron’s Avatar

Lawd ha’ mercy internets. Lord ha mercy. Because Hollywood sure as hell won’t. You know, a lot of those bullshit tropes that show up in movies like this are based on some real inaccurate history. If you haven’t read it yet, may I rec 1491? You’ll find that it goes a good way in clearing some of the…um…cobwebs.

EDIT: Just in case you were a bit iffy on whether Mr. Cameron was an asshole, he opened his mouth and removed all doubt.

PLAYBOY: Sigourney Weaver’s character Ellen Ripley in your film Alien is a powerful sex icon, and you may have created another in Avatar with a barely dressed, blue-skinned, 10-foot-tall warrior who fiercely defends herself and the creatures of her planet. Even without state-of-the-art special effects, Zoe Saldana—who voices and models the character for CG morphing—is hot.
CAMERON: Let’s be clear. There is a classification above hot, which is “smoking hot.” She is smoking hot.

PLAYBOY: So Saldana’s character was specifically designed to appeal to guys’ ids?
CAMERON: And they won’t be able to control themselves. They will have actual lust for a character that consists of pixels of ones and zeros. You’re never going to meet her, and if you did, she’s 10 feet tall and would snap your spine. The point is, 99.9 percent of people aren’t going to meet any of the movie actresses they fall in love with, so it doesn’t matter if it’s Neytiri or Michelle Pfeiffer.

PLAYBOY: We seem to need fantasy icons like Lara Croft and Wonder Woman, despite knowing they mess with our heads.
CAMERON: Most of men’s problems with women probably have to do with realizing women are real and most of them don’t look or act like Vampirella. A big recalibration happens when we’re forced to deal with real women, and there’s a certain geek population that would much rather deal with fantasy women than real women. Let’s face it: Real women are complicated. You can try your whole life and not understand them.

PLAYBOY: How much did you get into calibrating your movie heroine’s hotness?
CAMERON: Right from the beginning I said, “She’s got to have tits,” even though that makes no sense because her race, the Na’vi, aren’t placental mammals. I designed her costumes based on a taparrabo, a loincloth thing worn by Mayan Indians. We go to another planet in this movie, so it would be stupid if she ran around in a Brazilian thong or a fur bikini like Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. [Don’t ya just LURVE this part? I mean, the Mayans aren’t part of earth now? Or does he think they have all died off so its cool rip them off for his rather Native Americanesque aliens?]

PLAYBOY: Are her breasts on view?
CAMERON: I came up with this free—floating, lion’s-mane—like array of feathers, and we strategically lit and angled shots to not draw attention to her breasts, but they’re right there. The animation uses a physics-based sim that takes into consideration gravity, air movement and the momentum of her hair, her top. We had a shot in which Neytiri falls into a specific position, and because she is lit by orange firelight, it lights up the nipples. That was good, except we’re going for a PG-13 rating, so we wound up having to fix it. We’ll have to put it on the special edition DVD; it will be a collector’s item. A Neytiri Playboy Centerfold would have been a good idea.MORE

Women are not supposed to watch this thing, apparently?How fucking skeevy it is in the face of the history and ever present use of rape as a tool of war, how fucking assholish is his attitude of “oooooooooooooooohhhhhhhh gotta have breasts! Must have fuck objects!!! Cant have a movie with fuck objects!!!! Can’t women NOT BE FUCK OBJECTS WHEN THEY ARE DEFENDING THEIR HOMES AND LIVES AT THE VERY LEAST!!!!

Shadesong also points put something I inexcusably forgot to mention:

For bonus oh please stop, the lead character is a wheelchair user whose only motive is To Walk Again, to have his legs restored. Because OMG being disabled is The Worst Thing Ever. Guys? Can we please have some stories where the disabled character has a plot arc other than being magically healed?

Meantime: Universal’s UK ‘Couples Retreat’ Poster Brings Cries of Racism by Removing Black Actors

The excuse was rather amusing, I must say.

While all this is going on, however, Heroes writers decided to show their asses in a very public manner.

White men, you see, are totes oppressed in Hollywood. Oh yeah!

It all started when Jim Martin (assistant to show creator Tim Kring and himself a writer on the show) engaged in conversation with (former, now disgruntled) fans about the show, and in the process uttered such gems as “Anyone who thinks they can do better… I dare you. Go ahead. :) I’d love to see it.” and “If you think that Racism and Sexism are thematically integrated in HEROES then you may want to check your intelligence before worrying about it being insulted.” That post has since been deleted, but a kind mouse saved it and shared it with us in wank_report. In his follow-up post about the whole mess, he whined about how he liked the internet better when it wasn’t so self-righteous, and left us with even more gems as “Look up the diversity programs for writers in tv. Ask anyone in the tv world. There is a distinct disadvantage to be a white male when trying to be a staff writer.” and “I’m fully aware of what you are referencing, but I don’t think its a problem on Heroes and I don’t think white privilege is an issue in Hollywood at this point.”

Sounds bad enough, right?

But no! Turns out that was just the start of a downwards spiral of fail, and it turns out that the fail reached new startling depths when Foz McDermott, a coordinating producer and writer of the show and perpetual bringer of anti-PC and misogyny fail, decided to use his own blog to reply to a particular comment that was left on Jim Martin’s blog. He starts charmingly:

“The idea that white privilege isn’t a problem in Hollywood at this point is an idea coming from a privileged standpoint.”

Holy crap lady… if you are indeed a lady… that is hilarious. In a business that is scared of and run by pussy organizations that are so scared of being sued about everything, being OVERLY PC is the actual problem. Being a white male in the business of Hollywood is NOT easy. There are programs and incentives to help everyone except white males.MORE

Well. If you were wondering why Heroes sucks… There’s your answer.

And then there’s the prospect of 2013, a television show spin off from the headache inducing 2012.

Let me get this straight. Africa and other points of interest were colonized and exploited. This thieving allowed the exploiting countries to get rich. These riches allowed them to save a portion of their own population, mostly middle class to upper class and (white). Poor people, especially POC, were left to drown. Now, they have come to recolonize Africa. Which didn’t drown after all but simply went up in the air 1000 feet? Does this strike anyone else as chock full to bursting with the potential for FAIL to the nth degree?

Finally Britain’s film industry does its share of FAILing too.

*sigh* Maybe if I go to bed I’ll wake up and find that this was all a bad dream?