Avatar Offers Us a Unique World Where We Can Reflect on the Inescapable Conflicts Man Always Has And Always Will Face
After seeing Avatar on an IMAX screen, I am prepared to join Matt Feeney in defending the film against its critics, even if they include Peter Suderman, James Poulos, and Reihan Salam, three people I seldom find unpersuasive.
With regard to this film, I think their varying takes share a mistaken premise: Avatar strikes them as a simplistic denunciation of capitalism and humankind generally, whereas I see it as a thought-provoking if imperfect exploration of an imagined world that is, more than anything else, different from our own. Critics secure in their worldviews, like Messieurs Suderman, Poulos and Salam, react by defending earthbound, capitalist humanity as better than what the film supposedly portrays. Less confident critics seem to protest against the film too much, and ultimately wind up claiming that the alien civilization is unrealistic, that being the easiest way out since they can neither bear to concede nor quite refute the possibility of a society better in some ways than ours.
Ultimately all these critics miss out on a rare chance to reflect on the tragic flaws of earth and humanity in a novel way. Think back to those basic kinds of narrative conflict we learn about in elementary school. Man versus nature stories show us how the hard realities of the human condition impact our lives. Man versus man stories render the fallen nature of our species: since at the Greeks we’ve understood that we’re condemned to be forever hubristic, greedy, violent, jealous, etc. In Avatar, we’re shown a foreign world where creatures and nature are similar enough to our world that we understand them, different enough that they can help us reflect on ourselves and our planet as never before, and rendered so spectacularly that as much as any movie I’ve ever seen, we’re able to conduct this mental exercise by really feeling that the creatures and habitat we’re viewing are authentically there and different. “The audacity of Cameron’s movie is to make believe that the artificial world of computer-generated graphics offers a truer realm of nature than our own.” (link)
Sure, I wish the villains would’ve been a bit less one dimensional — Avatar isn’t an inquiry into the characters of individual humans or the nature of evil doers, nor is it a masters class in intricate, delightful plotting — but the characters and the plot serviceably accomplish their main objective: putting us inside an alien society and landscape, awing us with its contours, and threatening its destruction so that we feel how thoroughly we’ve grown to like its best attributes.
Let’s summarize the plot for those who haven’t seen the film, and delve into the arguments of particular critics. Basically there is a faraway planet populated by intelligent natives. Their complex but unindustrialized society is characterized by tribal organization, deep respect for all living creatures, a symbiotic relationship with nature, and through it an ability to communicate — with all living things, their dead ancestors, and their deity.
Unfortunately for these folks, they live atop a mineral that is very valuable to humans. So valuable that a corporation establishes an outpost staffed by mercenaries on their planet, attempts to negotiate for the mineral, and when that doesn’t work decides to disperse the population by force.
Critics on the right object that the corporation is unrealistically evil, and that the aliens are cartoonishly noble.
Unlike Peter Suderman, I don’t think that the corporation in the film is meant to stand in for all corporations. It is one evil actor. And seen this way, it doesn’t strike me as a particularly unrealistic portrayal. Guess what happens when exceptionally valuable natural resources are discovered underneath a people with inferior weapons who can be easily characterized as others? You’d think that the history of gold, diamonds and oil would persuade everyone that humanity is prone to exploitative violence when those circumstances converge. What I took from the film wasn’t simplistic moralizing so much as an implicit assumption on the part of the filmmaker that everyone finds rapacious imperialism and genocide in pursuit of other people’s minerals to be bad things. Plot vehicle, check. There is a moral premise embedded there, to be sure, but don’t we all agree with it? Or is it now “left-liberal” to acknowledge that these kinds of things happen, and that it’s bad when they do?
On to the alien people. Critics on the right would have us believe that this is a classic case of Hollywood liberals simplistically giving us noble savages, despite the reality that tribal people are no less fallen than the rest of humanity. Historic Hollywood portrayals of Native Americans encompass caricatures of savagery and nobleness, to be sure. But these critics are too quick to assume that James Cameron is making the same mistake. The problem with the noble savage cliche is that it is demonstrably untrue. The people who inhabited North America before the arrival of Europeans warred, died for lack of medicine, sometimes killed animal herds so unsustainably that they faced starvation — so despite the manifold wrongs done by the Europeans to indigenous peoples, it is inaccurate and simplistic to screen stories where savage Europeans war with noble natives living in utter harmony with nature.
But James Cameron isn’t portraying native people of our world. His alien protagonists aren’t intended as stand-ins for the Navajos or the Aztecs or the Cherokee. In his different world, the native people really are in communion with nature. Were his purpose to comment on European history, this would be a terrible choice, but in fact Avatar is a film whose purpose is allowing humanity to reflect on its circumstances and fallen nature in a novel way. That is why I approve of the decision to portray the kinds of natives that were shown.
Alongside liberal fantasies about the noble savage, there are plenty of people who tell themselves that European genocide against Native Americans wasn’t really so bad. This tradition takes its cues from films like The Searchers, and it is alive and well. “I don’t understand the weird need of our artist class to figuratively beg forgiveness for the alleged sins of their ancestors,” Kurt Schlicter writes at Big Hollywood. “Cameron, give the damn aliens some casinos and call it a day.” The exaggerated savagery and backwardness of the natives is used in a way that is supposed to absolve the white man for all his trails of tears, as if to say, Yeah, maybe we wronged you in some ways, at least allegedly, but we’re more advanced and civilized, so ultimately it’s good that we won.
By giving us an alien species of natives who don’t fit into that conventional narrative, Mr. Cameron takes away that out, forcing us to grapple with how we’d react if our society found itself lusting after the land or resources of a people even we believe to be more advanced than us in some ways — people whose communion with nature does enable them to survive better than we can in their environment rather than the opposite. This is a feat that can only be accomplished in a story about aliens, insofar as it is human nature for the victors in our armed conflicts to presume that their very civilization is objectively superior. Apparently it makes a lot of people very uncomfortable.
In Reihan Salam’s review, which I very much enjoyed reading, there is a rather eloquent defense of capitalism that I subscribe to as it applies to our society, and perhaps even our earth, though I can certainly conceive of an alien people for whom that isn’t true. He goes on to write, “Throughout the film, the Na’vi are portrayed as superior to the humans. The irony of Avatar is that Cameron has made a dazzling, gorgeous indictment of the kind of society that produces James Camerons.”
Is that accurate? As I watched Avatar, I saw conflicts that have always haunted life on earth — scarcity of natural resources, environmental degradation, greed, unjustified recourse to physical violence. But is rendering age old, obvious, inescapable features of the human condition tantamount to indicting American society after the industrial revolution?
On watching Avatar one couldn’t help but be reminded of the advanced state of human weaponry, so perhaps we did see an indictment of militarization and its potentially ruinous impact on nature. Aptly enough, I might add. But Mr. Salam seems to think that Mr. Cameron was saying that an unindustrialized society in communion with nature is better for flourishing than a place where entrepreneurship is valued and helps lend meaning to life. I’d say Mr. Cameron is showing us a different version of flourishing, and forcing us to really ask ourselves if we’d prefer it. I suspect that some people — former marine adrenaline junkies, for example — would certainly choose an Avatar-like world if they could, whereas entrepreneurial Brooklyn born writers might prefer the differently imperfect version of flourishing we’ve got here on earth. I certainly would.
In the New Yorker, David Denby writes:
Science is good, but technology is bad. Community is great, but corporations are evil. “Avatar” gives off more than a whiff of nineteen-sixties counterculture, by way of environmentalism and current antiwar sentiment. “What have we got to offer them—lite beer and bluejeans?” Jake asks. Well, actually, life among the Na’vi, for all its physical glories, looks a little dull. True, there’s no reality TV or fast food, but there’s no tennis or Raymond Chandler or Ella Fitzgerald, either. But let’s not dwell on the sentimentality of Cameron’s notion of aboriginal life—the movie is striking enough to make it irrelevant.
Again, this misses the mark. Avatar is only anti-war in the sense that it condemns one of the most nakedly unjust military ventures ever portrayed on film. That the aliens are themselves part of a warrior culture, and that they fight back with machine guns when given the opportunity, strike me as significant. And the “boring factor” is actually an important choice, not something to be ignored. If the aliens were prancing about in the forest, communing with nature, and enjoying the fruits of their singular society, and they were able to crash on a leather sofa, turn Ella Fitzgerald on the stereo, and nibble on a three cheese pizza with prosciutto, the audience would hardly be forced to confront the trade-offs involved in our society versus theirs. To repeat myself, most crucial is that this alien world is different. James Cameron rendered this difference in ways that are sometimes undeveloped or cliched, but that pretty effectively illuminate certain contrasts, so that we can experience the differences as though we’re avatars, grappling with whether we prefer this virtual reality to our own.
- * *
I’d like to conclude by addressing a few reviews that I really disliked. John Podhoretz wins the prize for worst of the worst. His intellectually lazy piece presumes that because some liberal Hollywood directors sometimes make anti-American military movies, every movie with military villains should be automatically presumed an anti-American screed.
I find that I’m also able to answer the questions that Kurt Schlicter posed to James Cameron:
Why is capitalism – you know, the economic system that allowed you to make Avatar – so bad?
The film isn’t an indictment of capitalism, a system based on mutually consensual trade, though it is implicitly against the imperialistic exploitation of faraway people who happen to live atop precious mineral resources. That you equate the two doesn’t say much for your opinion of capitalism!
Why are primitive societies – you know, the kind you manifestly do not live in – so morally righteous?
Primitive societies aren’t all alike. The particular primitive society painstakingly portrayed in the movie is on the whole moral and good because its people are healthy, they live at peace with their neighbors, they have an abiding respect for life, and they treat vanquished opponents mercifully. It does not follow that the film implies the primitive societies of earth are all morally righteous, let alone more morally righteous than we are. And is “primitive” even an accurate description of the society in Avatar? In many ways it is exceptionally advanced.
And why are the deaths of American fighting men – you know, the folks who are keeping at bay the bastards who would saw your open-minded, tolerant, liberal head off with a butter knife given half a chance — something you think ought to bring cheers from the audience?
It is misleading to say that the soldiers in the film are “American fighting men.” In fact, they are a mercenary army run by the head of security at an unnamed corporation. Unlike members of the United States Armed Forces, mercenary soldiers employed by mining corporations do not “keep the bastards at bay.” And the audience is meant to cheer against the mercenaries in the film because they’re engaged in a bloodthirsty genocide that means to destroy a beautiful society merely to enrich their corporate masters.
And now I finally want to see Avatar. Brilliant review Conor, thanks.
— Alex Knapp · Jan 6, 02:38 PM · #
Well said, Conor.
The more that people from a cross-ideological perspective all make the same political-critical observations about a book or movie, and the more they all do so in a self-congratulatory mode, the surer the sign of intellectual vulgarity.
— Freddie · Jan 6, 03:41 PM · #
<i>The more that people from a cross-ideological perspective all make the same political-critical observations about a book or movie</i>
…The more likely that observation is to be true? Hey, Rocky IV: crude jingoism. To observe this isn’t vulgarity, it’s just reporting the obvious. Much like reporting that Avatar is an almost hilarious in hitting every dances-with-wolves lefty trope. And I liked the movie!
— Ben A · Jan 6, 04:13 PM · #
Mmmmm, no. No, the kind of self-fellating that’s going on— the kind of “I’m so cutting and you are too,” the absolute staleness of all of these arguments, how utterly tired every one of name-checked Avatar reviews seems, and yet how fresh they all think they’re being— well, something’s off, there. It’s not the consensus opinion alone that makes me suspicious. It’s the smugness, the self-congratulation, the we’re-all-so-clever-here agreement to believe in one anothers cutting vision.
But then, this is all pretty idiosyncratic.
— Freddie · Jan 6, 04:35 PM · #
Avatar is a film whose purpose is allowing humanity to reflect on its circumstances and fallen nature in a novel way…
An impressive apology for the film and an able deconstruction of some of the less persuasive criticisms, but I think this is where things fall apart a bit: the purpose of Avatar, as near as I could tell, was to show off Cameron’s technological prowess (I think I’m fair in using the singular, as that’s what you’ve used). Which was quite impressive. Not so much to make the points that you’re able to use it to make, or he would have spent a bit more time on developing a film to match the technology.
I wish that Cameron had consulted with you or someone of a similar mind on the film, because I have no doubt that it would have been a better film if the subtleties that you draw out of it had been elaborated on and developed in more depth. As it stands, the various ideologically-driven criticisms of the film strike me as rather unnecessary, given that both its plot, dialogue, and characterizations are all so wooden that it’d be unwatchable if it weren’t for the marvelous visual wizardry and it’s nearly unwatchable even with them. But I suppose everyone knew that already, and I shouldn’t be surprised that political writers feel the need to deal with films ideologically.
— rob · Jan 6, 04:43 PM · #
I think you’re projecting way, way, WAAAAAAAY too much into the film, using AVATAR as nothing more than a springboard for your own writing. Which is perfectly fine for an essay, but sucks as criticism or analysis of the actual movie.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 6, 05:10 PM · #
I think most of the commentary for and against the film give the film too much credit. I saw it, and I enjoyed it insofar as it was a nice escape with eye candy for awhile. But the story wasn’t compelling at all, regardless of what political or moral message you try take away from it.
The movie was riddled with cliche after cliche and, since we’re talking about intellectual laziness, how on Cameron’s Blue Earth something so insultingly unsubtle as “unobtianium” made it through so many edits to the final product shows the vacuousness of the filmmakers and the process. I felt repeatedly insulted by the hit-you-over-the-head messaging, ranging from the aforementioned “unobtanium” to the saran wrap transparency of the pre-attack speech by the strike force leader. Add the predictable deaths and the god awful attempts at foreshadowing (e.g., the circles around the tree) and you have a pile of shit.
A visually stunning sparkly blue pile of shit in 3-D, but it is what it is. I don’t regret seeing it, but there is such a thing in reading too much into a Hollywood blockbuster.
— JPB · Jan 6, 05:11 PM · #
well….this is the best conservative review I have read, Conor.
But conservatives don’t relly “get” Avatar…..this part— PG-13
You have to be able to access your inner 13 year old to feel the magic.
Dire horses have six legs!
For technodroids like me Avatar represents the knee in the curve of full immersion film technology…the path leading to stimsuits and holodecks. Extreme tech costs extreme bucks, but Avatar is already the 4th highest grossing film of all time…. capitalisma si! If Avatar is cost-viable then Ringworld can be….Snowcrash….Diamond Age…The Mote in God’s Eye….Broken Angels…Altered Carbon…
But Conor…Pandora and the Na’vi are only alien to conservatives (eg, white, christian). The Na’vi are easily recognizable to muslims, buddhists, SBH afficionados, and Miyazaki fans. The balance of Life, Oneness of Being, wahdat al wujud it is the message of Miyazaki’s great work Mononoke Hime.
My favorite review from fellow muslim Arif—
“Many people will be watching this movie and they all will have different things to say. It is a success from the director’s point of view that people talk about the movies they make.
From my side, I like this dialog during the climax. The reference is to God who does not take anyone’s side but protects the balance of life. It is true in a sense that everyone wants or expect God to be on his/her side but God indeed is not on anyone’s side. However, life has a sustaining quality so it is worthwhile to suggest that “God” only protects the balance of it.”
Jake eventually prays to Eywa, telling her that the humans are about to destroy the Tree of Souls. Neytiri responds, “Our Great Mother does not take sides, Jake. She protects only the balance of life.”
— matoko_chan · Jan 6, 05:14 PM · #
Conor, this was a really good post. The only thing I’ll add is that Cameron himself seems to think the film is a powerful indictment of Western avarice, arrogance, adventurism and alliteration. Whether this should matter to us is a good question and an interesting topic, but it’s worth noting nonetheless. You may be giving Cameron too much credit, even while being fair to the movie.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 6, 05:15 PM · #
“the fallen nature of our species” ????
My species evolved, Mr.Friedersdorf.
We’re still evolving.
One of the big problems with Avatar for me, is the impossible nature of the Pandoran ecology from the evolutionary perspective.
All those species networking? Puhleez.
For me Avatar is a work of moral fantasy, like Pilgrims Progress or Divine Comedy. There’s practically no real science in it and certainly no real biology.
I’d have nuked them from orbit. At least the freakin’ tree.
Where’s the Roundup when you need it?
Homo Sapiens FTW!
— Keid A · Jan 6, 05:39 PM · #
Interesting review.
But I think one of the purposes of the movie was to have a political effect in the current world. And it couldn’t do that if we didn’t draw parallels between that world and this. And I think it intended more than to jsut ruffle conservative feathers, although I always enjoy hearing conservatives sputter angrily about how great capitalism is, it never gets old. But you don’t spend a quarter of a billion dollars jsut to annoy John Podhoretz. I think the movies political intent is to engender passionate progressive feelings in the young by alerting them to the ruination of our natural world and it’s cost to them. We have all seen Dances with Wolves and we all know about diamond mines in africa, but my ten year old daughter didn’t. This theme was new to her. All I had to do to her is point out that the movie paralled very well events that happened on this continent starting in 1492. This continent was as miraculous in it’s own way as Pandora. And the people that lived there lived in pretty similar ways. It makes plain some of the costs of industrialism/capitalism. ANd then you can easily connect that to global warming and see that Industrialism/capitalism still extracts costs. You wrap that insite up in amazing visuals and a simple compelling story (that is not old and hackneyed to young people) and I think it was pretty successful in it’s political aims. I think Cameron had other aims as well, but I think the political componant was pretty successful. I don’t think it will have a huge effect, but I think it planted seeds in young minds.
So I can see why conservatives are ruffled. It’s another in a long line of defeates at the hands of the liberal hollywood establishment. But then again, they do have tea parties. I’m sure those are really effective at swaying the youth over to the conservaitve side. On the other hand, my 10 year old daughter doesn’t vote. Not for 8 years yet.
— cw · Jan 6, 05:40 PM · #
Cameron himself seems to think the film is a powerful indictment of Western avarice, arrogance, adventurism and alliteration.
Truedat, KVS….but should it matter to conservatives?
Sneering at Avatar has become a whole new conservative blogging genre. Cameron said this film has become his indictment of the Iraq war.
but…shouldn’t we all indict the Iraq war at this point?
The invisible hand of the market has already voted….the fourth highest grossing film of all time ALREADY.
Quit yer whining and make your own blockbuster defending conservative values….like avarice, arrogance, foreign adventurism and missionariism ……and laissez faire capitalism and racism and anti-intellectualism….lol…..shall I go on?
— matoko_chan · Jan 6, 05:44 PM · #
<<there are plenty of people who tell themselves that European genocide against Native Americans wasn’t really so bad. This tradition takes its cues from films like The Searchers>>
Wait, what? Are you sure you meant to cite The Searchers and not some other movie? The John Wayne character’s bloodthirsty racism is supposed to be a character flaw, not a virtue.
As for the rest: Movies like Avatar are usually more interesting for the political views that slip in unintentionally rather than the stuff that the filmmakers attempted to say. So I prefer critiques like this one:
http://io9.com/5422666/when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar
— Jesse Walker · Jan 6, 05:48 PM · #
cw, awesome points.
Lets see…..i project the Avatar trilogy will shape the new voters in the 2016 presidential election.
The 13 year olds watching Avatar today will play the console game, buy the dvd and the action figures, pant over Avatar II in 2012 and Avatar III in 2014, and be 19 year old first time voters in 2016.
Sweet!
All your base are belong to us.
— matoko_chan · Jan 6, 05:53 PM · #
Matoko,
Excellent comments. My daughter’s favorite movie is Nausica which as you know has similar themes. And what’s funny is Princess Mononke has the same theme but deals with them in a much more sophisticate way. It’s actually a much better movie. But it didn’t have to earn back $250 million. Movies that cost that much have to speak to the groundlings.
Anyway, Matoko, I think you are right to focus on the the young. New mediums like the internet and games create new art works which create new cultures. And this medium is the most powerful since the printed page. And it’s the young who are really getting the full brunt of it. They will be a new world-wide culture. Who knows what will result.
And I agree that conservatives are uniquely ill-positioned to appeal to the coming genreations.
— cw · Jan 6, 05:53 PM · #
Jesse, annalee has one of the worst reviews out there….she was dreadful on District 9 too, but not quite as awful as Suderman and Sailor.
lol, talk about blinkered ethno-centrism….its all about the white man?
wat a maroon.
— matoko_chan · Jan 6, 05:55 PM · #
Jesse walker
Those are good points in the review you suggested, but the fact is, white people make movies for white people. Jake is an “avatar.” Get it? He is our avatar. We can relate to him. We go on his journey. We white people inhabit him and see the the Other through his experience. It a method of interpretation. Again, it is speaking to the groundlings. A movie from the experience of the Na’vi if it was authentic would confuse the shit out of most viewers. My wife can’t even watch a french movie without getting pissed off.
— cw · Jan 6, 06:00 PM · #
Spock, you just lost all your transhumanist chops….any germline engineer worth their salt would die to integrate the best of human and alien DNA.
Its huge that aliens HAVE DNA, lol.
— matoko_chan · Jan 6, 06:06 PM · #
Oh, and to add to what cw said….the word avatar comes from hindu mythos.
An avatar is the manifestation of a deity, notably Vishnu, in human, superhuman, or animal form.
There is a lot of subliminal mythos in Avatar…just different mythos than Star Wars.
I think the main thing that conservatives can’t accept about Avatar is the core message…. the other is you.
That is a profoundly anti-conservative message.
The other simply has to be inferior in conservatism…..so that they can be saved for jesus and “civilized”.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jan 6, 06:14 PM · #
It’s still impossible matoko_chan.
There’s a lot more to life than DNA. And besides, there’s lots of interspecies communication on Earth too. But so much of it is deception, camouflage, threats, etc. You’ve said it yourself in your more rational moments, there is no genuine altruism in Nature.
No I don’t believe in Pandora. It is a fantasy world.
It could only exist if it was set up by the real Pandorans, who were living underground in a gigantic laboratory or something. And they had set up the Eden on the surface, as a gigantic escapist fantasy for blue-catwomen-with-tails fettishists.
— Keid A · Jan 6, 06:23 PM · #
Jesse, that’s exactly the worst kind. People like her don’t seem to believe that people like this exist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSc4Hdqq1tw
This attitude is far, far, far more prevalent than the self-hating liberals who insist on attacking Avatar would care to admit.
— Freddie · Jan 6, 06:28 PM · #
cw:
<<Jake is an “avatar.” Get it? He is our avatar. We can relate to him. We go on his journey. We white people inhabit him and see the the Other through his experience.>>
…and we then become their leaders and saviors, apparently.
Anyway, my point isn’t to criticize Avatar, which I haven’t seen yet. It’s to contrast one style of political analysis of a movie (aimed at discerning the message the filmmakers intended to convey) from another (aimed at discerning the ideas the filmmakers took for granted, and probably weren’t even aware that they were expressing). I usually find the second more interesting, at least when you’re dealing with a film of this sort. (Of course, the two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive.)
— Jesse Walker · Jan 6, 06:35 PM · #
It’s an old engineer’s joke, a nod to the nerdishness of the audience. It’s no less a storied SF cliche-term than “hyperspace”. Anyway, what would you assume that a future Earth society would name a naturally occurring mineral capable of acting as a room-temperature superconductor?
— Chet · Jan 6, 07:14 PM · #
You’re giving Cameron way, way too much credit.
— paul h. · Jan 6, 07:18 PM · #
Chet: I dunno. Something with a Latin root perhaps? Hell, “Pandorium” would have been fine, given it’s location (cf., Californium) and that the name of the planet itself is a not-at-all-subtle reference. Make up a discoverer or scientist that discovered it (cf., Einsteinium). I don’t care.
But “unobtainium” is something so simple it belongs in children’s stories beside Spare Oom, etc., not in a feature geared for adults with IQ’s above 60.
— JPB · Jan 6, 08:33 PM · #
Again – unobtanium is an old engineering term. Cameron didn’t make it up, it’s no more hackneyed than calling your FTL drive a “hyperdrive”. Any adult with an IQ above 100 should recognize the origin of the term. The only people I can imagine being actually angered by the term, as you seem to be, are the ones who fall in that 60-100 range.
It’s a nod, like if you had a movie that was about the quest for a powerful artifact called the “MacGuffin.” It’s a wink to the audience. Engineers of the future would call the material “unobtanium” simply because it would be one in a series of materials they’ve already called “unobtanium.”
— Chet · Jan 6, 08:49 PM · #
Ok, I stand corrected on the “unobtainium.” Though I still don’t quite understand the use of a “joke” in a decidedly non-humorous setting—because it’s not as if making a movie similar to the Rwandan butchery would be enhanced by calling the machetes “Schwartzes”—but I’ll concede point because it was I who missed the reference.
That said, my critique on the rest of the movie holds. I think you can understand the mistake made by sci-fi novices like me, given the dearth of subtlety and overabundance of predictability throughout the rest of the film. I’d go into further examples but a) we’re already arguing minutia that detracts from my overall point b)I don’t like to be the spoiler*, so a lot of the other examples I’d give would unveil plot lines.
And again, I didn’t hate the film. I just resented parts of it and thought a film that took so much talent and effort on the part of the technicians and artists could have delivered something more compelling instead of something so patronizing on several levels. I feel that way with the purported politics of the film fully set aside.
*I’d just as soon anyone who sees the film be as unsurprised as those of us who watched it cold.
— JPB · Jan 6, 09:34 PM · #
JPB…the movie can be experienced at many levels.
But why do conservatives near-universally dislike it?
Cameron said Avatar, which he started as a project 15 years ago, has morphed into a condemnation of the Iraq war…..but like I said to KVS….shouldn’t we all condemn the Iraq War now, in hindsight?
It turned out to be A Very Bad Thing.
I loved the film…I loved the technology, I loved the visuals, I loved the clever insider tags like unobtainium and avatar, I loved the themes, I loved the mytho-poeisis and the fusion of science and philosophy.
And mostly it gives me hope for Ringworld.
<3 Cameron
— matoko_chan · Jan 6, 09:52 PM · #
In your view, would a movie with a more sophisticated plot but a far inferior technical sophistication – unconvincing Na’vi, boring or confusing visuals, the same old Northern California state park standing in for literally every alien planet – have been a better achievement?
The plot holds together, more or less, and is at least somewhat interesting. It’s the weakest portion of the film, to be sure, but it strikes me that it’s not that weak, and it’s certainly no weaker than the weak visual effects in any number of movies that were hailed as great achievements in filmmaking.
Frankly I think the critical focus on the movie as a parable about capitalism vs. whatever is misguided. Avatar is a movie about race, not about economics. Which is why conservatives hate it so much.
— Chet · Jan 6, 09:56 PM · #
bingo!
Chet answers my question.
It is about race, just like District 9 is about race.
the other is you
Two things conservatives cannot discuss…..race and sex.
lol
— matoko_chan · Jan 6, 10:17 PM · #
Race is at most an ancillary issue in Avatar. Mostly it is a movie about a good, sustainable, harmonious worldview being attacked by a crude, greedy and violent worldview, and winning because the former is more in line with what nature herself wants. If anything, it was a movie about how race doesn’t matter; the only thing that matters is worldview and how it affects behavior. Thus the Avatar device (walk a mile in their shoes, etc.) and the cadre of enlightened humans.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 6, 10:22 PM · #
And no, I don’t buy ‘race’ as a stand-in for worldview and behavior. Anybody can adopt a worldview. Nobody can change their race.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 6, 10:24 PM · #
“Mostly it is a movie about a good, sustainable, harmonious worldview being attacked by a crude, greedy and violent worldview, and winning because the former is more in line with what nature herself wants.”
Perhaps the sequel will deal with a giant asteroid speeding toward Pandorum and how the “good, sustainable, harmonious” Na’vi have to send Jake to beg the “crude, greedy and violent” sky people for their help.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 6, 10:28 PM · #
To answer both of you: please note that my closing line in my first comment was, indeed, that people—whom I know personally and respect—are over-thinking this movie. It’s a big Hollywood film (not to be confused with Breitbart’s BigHollywood by any stretch) and thus probably going to be lacking in depth, either thru oversimplification or just bad writing. What politics people read into it I left fully alone because, well, I think it’s a waste of thought and energy, given the product I saw.
Most people who watch this movie are going to say “ooh! Look at that!” and that’s what it will be remembered for. A groundbreaking work of social commentary it isn’t, and consequently (and THANKFULLY) it won’t be remembered that way. My point was that it could have been better and not worth the expansive attention the media (and my friends therein) have given it.
matako_chan: I don’t know what I would have preferred. Avatar’s greatest strength is indisputably its visuals and the groundbreaking work will pave the way for better films to use the techniques more to my liking.
Chet: I think you’re falling into the same trap as some of the people you accuse of racial discomfort by projecting your biases upon them. I would argue that a more apt reason for the conservatives’ and libertarian reactions comes from an oversensitivity to any perceived anti-capitalism sentiment that often comes from Hollywood and other places. Indeed, I tend to agree with them that the Big Bad Businessman is a very tired villain and that it perpetuates a myth that the people who sit in boardrooms are evil and just coming up with new and ingenious ways to screw poor/indigenous/everyday people.
It’s the same oversimplification that afflicts people on the receiving end of one of Sarah Palin’s incomprehensible comments: latte sipping, ivy league educated, ivory tower-sitting, atheistic baby killers out to take all of Joe Mainstreet’s money to turn his kids gay.
The evil, powerful “other” is out to get the little guy, be they the impoverished downtrodden or the god fearing hard working middle class family. bah.
It’s just a movie, and it could have been better.
— JPB · Jan 6, 10:39 PM · #
Racial conflict is the central issue in Avatar. That’s why the mineral has the name it has – it’s meant to indicate that it’s a MacGuffin, it doesn’t really matter what “unobtanium” is or what it does. It doesn’t matter why the humans are there or what they want; they want it, and their concerns as a race are more important than the concerns of the Na’vi, but for no good reason other than we’re us and they’re them.
If you needed it spelled out, they do spell it out in the climax of the movie, as Jake fights Quaritch, who accuses him of being a race traitor. My recollection is that he uses those exact words, in fact – “traitor to your race.” How did you miss that?
Being able to change your race, to truly become the Other (the Other, perhaps, you already were inside) is the central conceit of the movie. It is, after all, a fantasy; impossible things are meant to be able to happen. That’s why the end of the movie, Jake’s apotheosis is when he really and truly changes race, leaves behind his human body, and awakens as a real Na’vi.
— Chet · Jan 6, 10:45 PM · #
But nobody in the movie is even engaged in capitalism. We’re told that the mineral sells for an exorbitant sum, but we never see anyone sell any of it; Quaritch offers Jake the medical reconstruction to restore his mobility as a reward for military service, not because he’s in the business of selling medical treatments. Jake is hired to drive the avatar not because he’s trained to do it, or even good at it – he simply inherited the job from his dead twin brother.
The soldiers are nominally mercenaries for the company, but by the first half of the movie Quaritch is in control of everything. They don’t trade or buy the mineral; they simply kill the natives and steal it.
Saying that this is a movie about capitalism is stupid when capitalism isn’t even in the movie. It’s like saying the invading aliens in Independence Day are capitalists. In fact, this movie is almost exactly Independence Day in reverse – complete with the St. Crispin moment at the end of the 4th act.
— Chet · Jan 6, 10:53 PM · #
Nah….Avatar is District 9 rendered in PG-13….both movies are about becoming the Other. Wickus becomes a prawn, Jake becomes a Na’vi.
Chet is right.
It IS about race…..about becoming the Other and seeing that they were you all along.
the capitalism dealio is just like Obama’s birth cert…a way of not having to admit that you are a racist while being a racist.
the capitalist thing is just subliminating race.
admit it KVS.
Chet nailed you all.
— matoko_chan · Jan 6, 11:05 PM · #
Chet, you use ‘race’ as a stand-in for worldview. It is not.
Jake doesn’t want to join the Navi because of their morphology. He wants to join them because he comes to believe that they are the good guys; not because they are blue and ten feet tall with big yellow eyes — i.e., because of their race-determined phenotype — but because they are decent beings with an enlightened culture.
Conflating race with culture, or race with behavior, or race with aptitude, or race with worldview — this is sloppy sloppy thinking. It’s also something I would expect in a conservative, not a progressive.
You don’t really think that race determines how violent you are, or how greedy you are, or how peaceful and sustainable your culture is. And neither does Cameron. Therefore, the movie is not about race relations. QED.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 6, 11:07 PM · #
How many times do I have to say it? I’m <b>not addressing</b> the message(s)of the film. I said that the conservatives and libertarians may be “<i>oversensitiv[e]</i> to any <i>perceived</i> anti-capitalism sentiment”. That’s it.
My issue is (and consistently has been since I first commented)that people (read: the critics and you) are talking past one another about these issues that may or may not be in a film that, while mildly entertaining and with impressive special effects, isn’t worth all this debate.
Settle down, man.
— JPB · Jan 6, 11:14 PM · #
Much like how it was only conservatives who saw Dick Cheney reflected in Star Wars III’s Emperor Palpatine, it strikes me that if you see depictions of wholesale murder, destruction, theft, and oppression and the first thing you think of is “capitalism”, then your problems with capitalism are surely more significant than Cameron’s.
— Chet · Jan 6, 11:15 PM · #
KVS, i think race is why conservatives hate Avatar.
“Therefore, the movie is not about race relations.”Your argument is as unconvincing as Manzi’s social cohesion arguments which ignore the elephant in the room of race relations.
Conservatives can’t even admit to themselves that they are racists.
LOL!
now that is a lie.
— matoko_chan · Jan 6, 11:21 PM · #
I don’t know what “worldview” is supposed to mean, but one can hardly divorce the Na’vi’s cultural attitudes to their environment with the basic fact that, as a direct result of their morphology, then can talk to it.
I mean, sure, the Na’vi could just have been a stand-in for shamanistic human tribes, but they’re not – the Earth-mother goddess they worship is actually a real thing, a real entity with which they communicate, and whose consciousness affects and infuses them and everything around them. And the reason that’s so is a direct consequence of their morphology.
Cameron didn’t have to do it that way; the fact that he did would seem to immunize the movie against your interpretation. The reason that the Na’vi have an organ that allows them to talk to nature – and not just a cultural belief, or a “worldview”, that they can do so – is because race matters to the story.
Your conclusion doesn’t even begin to follow from your premises. Are you really saying that the only way a story can be about race is if that story is about how your race determines how violent you are?
— Chet · Jan 6, 11:21 PM · #
Matoko, you of all people should know the difference between race and worldview. Race determines the minor morphological variations between reproductively isolated groups of the same species. It only looks like it determines behavior because within those isolated groups culture evolution takes place against a background of random stimuli, and because each isolated group must deal with non-universal constraints like geography and climate.
Chet, but you see depictions of wholesale murder, destruction, theft, and oppression and the first thing you think of is “race”. Are you saying that white people are by nature murderous, destructive, thieving, and oppressive?
Of course not. So, again, the movie is not about race. Or rather, Cameron uses race is an easy shorthand for ‘cultural other’.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 6, 11:22 PM · #
racism IS fear of the Other, KVS.
That the movie has racism, fear of the Other coupled with oppression of the Other for their own good coupled with race loyalty, and also pegging the inferiority of the Other is totally obvious.
The Other is not human, and so the life of the Other is not worth the same as a human life.
3/5 of a human.
lol.
That is why conservatives hate Avatar…it is going to teach generations that the Other is you.
How can you fight and kill beings that are just like yourself?
— matoko_chan · Jan 6, 11:30 PM · #
Chet, you’re saying that the movie is about how the Navi are good because they’re genetically superior?
That is exactly the opposite of what Cameron is trying to say. You can’t possibly think that the take-away is “phenotype determines worthiness.”
To me it’s pretty clear. The Navi represent a mindset that is better than the one that drives the corporation and its minions.
Peace and meaning aren’t kept from us because we lack hair tendrils that connect with the Mother. Rather, we are kept out of Eden (by Eden herself) because our bankrupt worldview doesn’t belong there. Not our height, not our melatonin count, but our non-covalent worldview.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 6, 11:32 PM · #
Matoko, no, fear of the other is xenophobia. Racism is the belief that certain physical characteristics determine mental superiority, coupled with the belief that one’s own physical characteristics just so happen to be the superior ones.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 6, 11:35 PM · #
I meant ‘genotype determines worthiness.’
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 6, 11:36 PM · #
No, I don’t. Please don’t be stupid. I see two humanoid species in conflict and I think of race, because of the long SF tradition of exploring racial conflict by analogy to adversarial contact between humans and alien intelligences. I see a human being made to inhabit the body of an alien in order to apprehend their culture, and I think of race, because of the long SF tradition of exploring racial alienation and “passing” by that analogy. I see a human being whose apotheosis is complete conversion to alien, and I think of race, because of the long SF tradition of exploring reconciliation of the races by that analogy.
I see race because it’s a movie about race. Cameron clearly meant it that way. Why do you think that the Na’vi were voiced by black actors? Just an accident?
No, I’m not. Have you always been this stupid?
— Chet · Jan 6, 11:36 PM · #
LOL xenophobia is fear of aliens.
Give up KVS….we nailed it.
Conservatives hate Avatar because it teaches the Other is you.
And complaining about anti-capitalist messaging is just a sublimination for complaining about messaging racial equality.
— matoko_chan · Jan 6, 11:44 PM · #
Yes, as I said, race is a shorthand for cultural other. But it is itself nothing more than morphological difference.
By elevating it into a central position, by making it The Thing, you end up missing the point. Race does not determine behavior. Genetics and culture do.
But aha! — you say. The Navi are genetically distinct, and therefore that can be said to account for their behavior. Well, yeah, but then you lose the whole message behind the movie: the implication would be that human covalence is a chimera because we are genetically predisposed to greed and violence; that our way can never be the Navi way, and vice versa.
Cameron’s message is the obverse. In the words of Rocky, “If I can change, and if you can change, then everyone can change!” In the words of Poulos, the movie is about human redemption and what we need to change within to get there. So sorry, assbag, you just got pwned.
And Matoko, are you being purposefully obtuse?
I thought you were supposed to be a cognitve elite.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 6, 11:55 PM · #
If that message is present, then “what we need to change” is that we have to stop being Homo sapiens, as Jake does, with the help of the Na’vi. Remember when that happened? No?
KVS, you’re not only ignoring almost everything that happens in the movie, you’re ignoring what Cameron himself has said about the movie. You’re ignoring who is in the movie.
You’re ignoring every single choice Cameron and the studio made that resulted in the movie. You’ve ignored the entire context of racial exploration in science fiction literature and cinema. The thin reed you’ve rested your entire argument on is Poulos’s interpretation, not any part of the film. And you think you’ve “pwnd” me?
You’re a complete moron. Give up while you’re behind.
The most amazing thing about your argument is that its wrongness is complete. Race in humans is not morphological difference – there are no morphological characters unique to any race! Race is culture; it’s not a stand-in for it. Who is black and who is white is a matter of cultural opinion. As an Italian-American, I know that only too well.
— Chet · Jan 7, 12:07 AM · #
Or maybe the point was that Jake was initially an uncle tom, but finally saw the light after tasting the sweet nector of the hometeam. Maybe the moral is, only through racial solidarity can great deeds be accomplished.
Cameron is the Navi’s Leni Riefenstahl!
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 7, 12:09 AM · #
Ah yes, because the moral is that humans suck and Navis rule. To ventriloquize the Navi with the words of Jack White:
I love it!
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 7, 12:14 AM · #
KVS, in my grad school the first person to resort to insults loses the argument.
You understand perfectly what chet and I are saying….discussion of race makes conservatives uncomfortable.
It is also perfectly obvious that one message of Avatar is the Other is you.
So conservative attacks on Avatar are subliminated into anti-american, anti-capitalism, anti-military….they can’t say the unsayable….they hate Avatar because it is about race.
I am a cognitive elite.
I see full well your predicament.
You need to demogogue the low information base with racebaiting to farm their votes, yet somehow begin to attract non-whites because of the demographic timer.
So difficult.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jan 7, 12:14 AM · #
Jack White is so ovah.
Try MGMT
The water is warm,
but its sending me shivers.
A baby is born,
crying out for attention.
Memories fade,
like looking through a fogged mirror
Decisions to decisions are made and not fought
But I thought,
this wouldn’t hurt a lot.
I guess not.
Control yourself.
Take only what you need from it.
A family of trees wantin’,
To be haunted.
— matoko_chan · Jan 7, 12:25 AM · #
Jack White is just beginning to get interesting. It’s the White Stripes who are over.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 7, 12:51 AM · #
I haven’t seen the movie, but I can’t pass up a movie that reveals the truth about corporate masters. I’m sure they made the government/corporate welfare connection.
— mike farmer · Jan 7, 02:33 AM · #
race and racialism in Avatar
— matoko_chan · Jan 7, 03:13 PM · #
Oh, for crying out loud. Do you actually read the things you link to? Scott Eric Kaufman disliked the film. He calls the film itself racist. His interpretation of the “racialism” of the film appears to be the exact opposite of yours:
For example:
This is not a vision of a racially harmonious social politic: it is an inversion of the logic of passing that seems acceptable only because it imagines the experience of becoming a person of color as necessarily ennobling. The film argues that once a white person truly and deeply understands the non-white experience, he becomes an unstoppable combination of non-white primitivism and white rationalism which is exactly what happens. In order for the audience to support the transformation of Jake Sully into Braveheart Smurf, it must accept the essentialist assumptions that make such a combination possible … and those assumptions are racist. In football terms, this is a variation of the black quarterback “problem.”
— Kate Marie · Jan 7, 06:36 PM · #
lol, that invalidates not a whit of my argument.
conservatives hate Avatar because part of it is about race. liberals hate Avatar because part of it is about god.
conservatives cant talk about race: liberals can’t talk about god.
those are their big taboos.
i loved Avatar unconditionally …..because I am still 13 inside.
i loved Avatar because i loved Nausicca and Mononoke.
i loved Avatar because i loved Ringworld and Broken Angels.
i loved Avatar because i loved District 9.
Avatar was made for me and people like me….and 13 year olds.
I guess you can see a lot of things in Avatar….clever scifi insider details like unobtainium and gamer culture visual tags like the Nagrandian floating islands.
I guess you can see indictments of the Iraq War and the British Raj and mercenaries and native american genocide and capitalism and racism and white guilt and mytho-poeisis and romanticized pantheism and …wallah! all the way to E.D. Kain’s sophisto ennui..…….
But I’m still 13 inside.
And I just got blasted with wonder and magic and discovery.
And maybe that is all Cameron’s purpose was….to entertain 13 year olds….to make magic.
— matoko_chan · Jan 7, 08:23 PM · #
Awww, that’s sweet. Clap your hands if you believe in fairies, everyone!
— Kate Marie · Jan 7, 08:54 PM · #
But i do believe in the Fae, khatemarie.
And as song as we breathe their breath and dream their dreams they yet live.
— matoko_chan · Jan 7, 09:16 PM · #
Don’t hate me, Matoko. Remember, the other is you.
— Kate Marie · Jan 7, 09:23 PM · #
lol, i don’t hate you….i pity you.
you will never ….. see the beauty.
— matoko_chan · Jan 8, 12:25 AM · #
Ah, but I do see the beauty, because the other is me, er . . . you.
Or something like that.
— Kate Marie · Jan 8, 12:46 AM · #
Spanner in the works here.
Liberals hate Avatar, because Avatar is about treason.
It’s about betraying your own kind.
Loyalty to the tribe is deeply wired.
Loyalty to the species, maybe even more so.
There is no life for the DNA without the species.
Hi tech genetic avatars notwithstanding.
— Keid A · Jan 8, 02:01 AM · #
Oh, disappointing, KM. Matoko shared a moment of childlike wonder, which is instilled by only the best and most enduring visions of science fiction, and this is what you come back with? Sarcasm? I’m not even angry, just sad for you.
— Chet · Jan 8, 05:36 AM · #
best. review. ever.
<3 strangehorizons
— matoko_chan · Jan 8, 05:43 PM · #
funny, why did these intellectually dishonest critics (read “cynics”) not buzz about in similar proportions when in nearly every hollywoood movie (like “independence day” ad nauseam) the aliens would almost always land in america (read “new york” or “california”), and negotiate primarily with the most-powerful-man-in-the-world myth (read “american president”), peppered with the terribly cliched great-wall-of-china and eiffel-tower and taj-mahal footage during the climax?
so conservatives of all countries and religions, please repeat after me: * my country is not the best in the world * my country’s army can sometimes do some wrong * my religion is not the greatest in the world, and is not the only way out * my fucking way of life is mine and mine alone, and should not be imposed on others
btw james cameron just called me and told me to tell you guys about his twist: * in avatar 2, it would come to light that the mercenaries were actually atheist drug traffickers and us army deserters (so conservatives can cheer their deaths without any guilt) * jack used to be black married to a latino whose skin and features got altered in a lab mishap – the future would allow humans to change on whims (so liberals can forget their white-guilt crap) * the navis having carnivorous teeth-structure started eating human babies – just for added effect (so nutjobs, like most on here, on both sides can get their freak on)
btw whoever thinks citizen kane is a stupendous movie, please meet me in a dark alley (because you are a freaking tight-ass, like most on here).
— t2 · Jan 9, 01:01 AM · #
btw jack was actually an avatar of a black man who needed to infiltrate white drug traffickers (why wouldn’t you smart asses on here think that human avatars would have been much easier than alien avatars given the dna similarities, and therefore tried first???)
— t2 · Jan 9, 01:07 AM · #
matoko_chan
Reading that review was interesting and brought a couple of interesting thoughts to mind for me. I don’t want to decry for a moment what a wonderful achievment the movie is, as a work of creative fantasy art, and at least philosophical speculation.
I can’t take it seriously at the hard-science fiction level for a number of reasons. Some of which I’ve already mentioned. But let’s say we overlook the plot holes, some of them may be filled in later movies, and ask ourselves what the consequences of Jake’s action are.
He has shown the alien collective mind how to kill humans, despite (some of) our advanced technology. He has explained the nature of our threat to the Pandorans.
Note: I’m really quite unconcerned about the cute Navi themselves, it’s the plant-mind-thing that is the real alien here.
The alien collective mind has downloaded the contents of two entire human minds into its own matrix. Jake and Trudy Machon. So it now has access to all their knowledge of 22nd century human science and technology.
OK. My question – And I have no clue what the next episode of the saga will be, there are so many incongruities in the movie that it’s hard to say how coherent the next film will be:
Now that the alien collective mind has been warned of our threat, and it knows quite a bit about our science and technology – as much as a couple of technically skilled but not exceptional humans know. What is to stop it from reverse engineering that knowledge out of curiosity, or self-preservation for the future?
It could start its own scientific research program, searching the contents of the two humans minds for clues how to do it, and start building up its own body of scientific and engineering knowledge. The Navi could be used as lab assistants. Bear in mind that the alien mind is a vast collective mind of great power.
By the time we meet the Pandorans again, they might have an industrial civilization. They might be able to fight back with nuclear weapons.
Jake’s treason could have endangered the survival of mankind.
— Keid A · Jan 9, 01:26 AM · #
Fight who? Remember “Contact”? The same response noted in that movie to the idea of alien invaders applies here – Eywa starting a war of retribution against the human race would make as much sense as President Obama launching nuclear strikes against anthills in Africa simply because he found one on his sandwich. Certainly we should expect a Jupiter Brain to have strange and inscrutable motives (ala Solaris) but from the perspective of Eywa the entire action of the movie was basically an immune response to a splinter. If you got a splinter, would you then embark on a jihad against all wood?
I get the sense you’re not familiar with a lot of SF, Keid. First was your astounding misread of the Na’vi’s relationship with the planet (they’re not a “hive mind”, any more than you or I are simply because we’re talking on the internet and using Wikipedia.) Now this?
— Chet · Jan 9, 02:53 AM · #
First, I haven’t seen the movie so my reactions are to reviews and specific issues that get raised.
But Eywa seems to have a will of its own and everyone and everything needs to plug into it and each other, so I’m not sure hive mind is the description I would have used. It’s the collective mind of the plants, no? A vast intelligence? It must have taken over the planet at some time in the past? All the living things have interfaces?
I could imagine reasons why it may want to acquire defenses against any further human action and offense is the best defense. If you got stung by a wasp in your garden, you might want to hunt down the nest and get rid of it.
I agree its motive might be inscrutable and up to Cameron, but you have to consider it’s going to have all our science and technology next time, from reverse engineering what is in the minds of the two humans it incorporated, including spaceships and nukes. Am I wrong there?
— Keid A · Jan 9, 03:47 AM · #
well…in the review i linked Roy speculates about the second Avatar which is already in the works…..I agree with his take…the Na’vi are a warrior culture…who did they fight before the bush-iraq-war proxies came on the scene?
Unusually for this sort of planetary romance, especially in the movies, the Pandorans are not a monoculture, but a group of societies closely linked by the planet-wide network of plant intelligence. We don’t see much of any of the other groups because Jake spends his time with the Na’vi, but at least they exist—and are there to be shown in the sequels. Similarly, although what we see even of Na’avi society is limited, if Cameron has his way we can expect a far fuller picture. Avatar is a long film but there are limits to the number of narrative points it can address, particularly when its main purpose is to show us an unfallen world, not without its dangers and conflicts—if the Na’vi have warriors, presumably there are Pandoran wars—but preferable to the bleak future which faces us, and which is Jake’s present.
Nuke from space is not a believable storyline …..its kinda like the idea that ‘merica could have turned the arabian peninsula into a plain of black glass and slant drilled under it post 911. PR fail and destroys the resource, but im sure the plan had its advocates in the bush cabinet.
The 3D CG models and tech are reuseable, Spock, so the sequels will cost less.
Culture doesn’t shape people as much as people shape culture according their needs…the themes of Avatar…acculturation, balance of life, unity of existance, oneness of being, are emergent themes in modern science and politics both. SBR and climatology, for example.
There is quite a bit of xian mythos in Avatar…but the “avatars” of true xianity (like Grace Augustine and Trudy Machon)) all side with the Pandorans. And the non-xian mythos triumphs.
If Jake is a messiah figure like Roy postulates, he is also an avatar in the hindu sense….an incarnation of a deity in the form of a human, animal, or mythic figure.
And Quaritch, the avatar of contemporary white evangelical (neocon) xianity….becomes a wholly demonic figure.
So I was wrong…for conservatives, it isnt just race…..it is a rejection of the idea that any culture has the right, biblically authorized duty, or might-privilege to impose its values and needs on another…a pure rejection of white evangelical xianity as exemplified by “democracy promotion” and the Iraq War.
still…the main message is the balance of life.
To respect life, and honor it, without taking sides.
Moro: ‘The Forest Spirit gives life and takes life away. Life and death are his alone to give.’
Neytiri: “Our Great Mother does not take sides, Jake. She protects only the balance of life.”
— matoko_chan · Jan 9, 03:18 PM · #
Yeah Spock, you are wrong.
Don’t you get it?
Cameron’s goal was to make us fall in love with Pandora.
Our love becomes a vector for all the other things he wants to tell us.
The next two movies will be deeper explorations of the Pandora world he built.
More alien culture, alien ideals, more VR, more tech.
We will all be avatars.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jan 9, 03:59 PM · #
@matocko_chan
“Quit yer whining and make your own blockbuster defending conservative values…”
Um, wasn’t that 2008’s blockbuster, The Dark Knight?
And honestly, Avatar is good, but I was let down by it’s lazy storytelling. I also find Jake a dull and unrelatable character. I mean, despite his statements about his “People”, we never see where that stems from. It’s established in the canon that the humans have FTL comms, yet Jake never bothers to call his mother or even posts pictures of his friends. So where are Jake’s family and friends in all this?
— JackUphill · Jan 9, 05:55 PM · #
Pfft…conservatives cant see the dual tree symbology and grace augustines name?
The Messiah/Avatar theme? The triumph of eastern mysiticism over white christian conservatism?
The triumph of the web of life over the military-industrial-mecho complex?
Cameron is smacking you over the head with it.
There is no lazy storytelling….if you don’t like Cameron’s message, fine…..but don’t pretend it isn’t there.
It is a carefully crafted tale interwoven with world mythology…the mytho-poeisis of a different world.
sapentia poetica…..the wisdom of poetry….the use of beauty to convey truth.
:)
— matoko_chan · Jan 9, 06:20 PM · #
I thought it was the term you did use, but I think I’ve attributed someone else’s words to you in the course of discussing this movie in four different threads. I apologize for the confusion.
— Chet · Jan 9, 06:21 PM · #
It is a carefully crafted tale interwoven with earth mythology…the mytho-poeisis of a new world, the world of Pandora.
sapentia poetica …..the wisdom of poetry….the use of beauty to convey truth.
It is Cameron’s truth, sure, but its Cameron’s movie.
— matoko_chan · Jan 9, 06:32 PM · #
@matoko_chan
Well, I don’t ascribe to a particular political leaning. And it is lazy storytelling. Characters shouldn’t only be hammers to swing big ideas, they should be relatable. Since I couldn’t relate to either Jake/Humans or the Na’vi, I was just kind of apathetic to both sides. In fact, I just wanted to get to the asplosions (and this view is probably the same view of most people who saw the movie). I guess that may be Cameron’s genius: we the viewer become Eywa, in the sense that we don’t care who wins or loses!
— JackUphill · Jan 9, 06:34 PM · #
So?
because it didn’t work for you doesn’t mean its lazy storytelling.
you are a blind man feeling the elephant….you lack the neccessary organs of perception.
it is not “lazy storytelling”…it is mytho-poeisis….carefully crafted cultural and mythic subliminals.
I bet you don’t get Miyazki either.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jan 9, 06:56 PM · #
You can say…“the characters didn’t engage ME”…..but lazy storytelling is just isnt.
I loved Neytiri….Roy says it well…
Though the main character arc is Jake’s, it should be mentioned that his Na’vi lover Neytiri is a lot more than just a love interest; she trains him in the way of a Na’vi warrior, she is disillusioned when she discovers that he has betrayed them, she kills the blood-thirsty racist human commander Quaritch, and she saves the life of Jake’s human body in a moment that shows her both reaching past surfaces to essence, and accepting emotionally as well as intellectually that this is the person she has come to love…..she is one of the film’s several moral centres in the way that she teaches Jake to look into the soul of things. “I see you” is one of the key statements of the Na’vi way of life: the words that are said to an animal killed for safety or food, and to a lover at the moment of commitment.
The treatment of strong women in the film was very engaging for me, Neytiri’s mother, Grace Augustine, and Trudy Machon.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jan 9, 07:12 PM · #
“You can say…“the characters didn’t engage ME”…..but lazy storytelling is just isnt.”
Sorry, lazy storytelling is exactly what it is. I have never seen a movie lauded despite its incredibly weak, ham-handed plotting and structure. The moment where Neytiri told Jake, “You have a strong heart,” I knew exactly what kind of movie this was going to be.
The Na’vi are embodiments of the noble savage cliche. They’re noble. They’re savages. Noble savages. Friedersdorf excuses it because he thinks they’re not supposed to be reflections of actual native tribes on Earth. I call BS, sorry. They walk like native tribes, talk like native tribes, look like native tribes in every important way, and just because they’ve made their communion with nature more literal than the average cliche does not excuse this. If the corporation had captured and enslaved them, it would be commentary about America’s slave-trading past, and the fact that they’re aliens and not Africans wouldn’t change that either. In every real respect, the Navi are not really aliens and they’re not really humans either: They’re big blue walking stereotypes.
This movie is condescending to the Na’vi. The Na’vi supposedly live in perfect harmony in exactly the way that real people don’t but like to imagine native tribes do — yes, they’re not supposed to be humans, blah blah blah. So what? Removing the human element only makes the movie into an antiquated fairy tale. There wasn’t a single thing the Na’vi wanted. They didn’t want medicine, they didn’t want schools, they didn’t want guns, because they lived so perfectly. Reality is people wanting things. I find it hard to grapple with the idea of a native tribe that doesn’t have at least one person who wouldn’t trade his spear for a gun, or couldn’t use a little medicine to heal up some of those hunting injuries. The fantasy alien setting doesn’t excuse this, it’s a way of hiding from reality, the same way that the godawful deus ex machina ending is a way of hiding from it.
— MBI · Jan 9, 09:28 PM · #
Another blind man gropes the elephant.
I guess you missed the part where Trudy refuses to commit what she views as a warcrime and goes suicide bomber with her chopper.
“Jake, and the other humans like Trudy Machon (Michelle Rodriguez), who abandon their own people to fight for the Na’vi, bring something actual to the mix. Trudy, of course, brings the helicopter that she pilots and uses suicidally to ram other aircraft; they bring some guns and grenades. Most importantly, they bring Jake’s knowledge—some tactical skills, and some pieces of practical knowledge such as the need to go in fast and close head-on to the human aircraft and shoot arrows directly into the cockpit’s front window, so as to achieve maximum momentum and kill pilots, rather than letting them glance off the sides. The Na’vi’s close spiritual relationship to the land, plants, and animals of their world does not necessarily mean that they intuit the Laws of Motion.”
Dude, of course Cameron has something to say about race. The Na’vi are voiced by black actors. Scifi has a strong tradition of limning racial confrontration by contact with aliens. I’m curious about why some conservatives like Suderman and Sully “like” District 9 but disdain Avatar….isnt District 9 about race?
Prap’s its because the gleeful race stereotyping of the nigerians and the prawns totally aligns with conservative values.
“In a post-colonial world, in which we are all dealing with our unconscious assumptions about racism, sexism, imperialism, and capitalism as normative, it is imperative that stories about contacts between cultures be told and inevitable and correct that they will be subject to criticism. These are conversations that need to be had, rather than a set of demands and rules to which creators should sign up. The demand that creators not screw up needs to be the demand that creators try to minimize their screw-ups—and this, I would argue, Cameron has at least endeavoured to do. (District 9 by comparison not only included a lot of “everyone needs a honky” tropes, but was actively, cheerfully, and perniciously racist in its portrayal of Nigerians.) It is not to ignore the problems of any portrayal of these issues to say that sometimes we should avoid making the best be the enemy of the good.”
— matoko_chan · Jan 9, 09:46 PM · #
relly.
I am going to smack down every single one of you poseurs that sticks their head up here.
You can say you don’t like the message, or that you are not equipped to process the message, but you don’t get to say there is no message.
Because I got it.
And Avatar is already the 4th highest grossing film of all time that means a hella lot of other humans are getting it too.
— matoko_chan · Jan 9, 10:05 PM · #
matoko_chan
We will all be avatars
Oh sure, that occurred to me too, that one of the possible, responses of Eywa would be to try to incorporate mankind into it’s overall “balance of nature” system.
So mankind might end up with plugs in our heads too – like the Navi.
It is the obvious way for it to deal with our implicit and ongoing threat to Pandora.
Now Eywa has access to all our knowledge, through the two humans it already incorporated, it will know how to use its “warrior culture” to try to impose that on us. It can balance things up by equipping the Navi with our technology.
I mean if you really hate conservatives, then put plugs in their heads and force them to become part of your politically correct system.
— Keid A · Jan 9, 10:21 PM · #
Here’s a thought:
Now that Eywa has its Adam and Eve (Jake and Trudy), to fit into its Eden, it can mass produce humans with plugs in their heads, and send them back to Earth.
— Keid A · Jan 9, 11:30 PM · #
“District 9” is a superior movie because both the whiteys and the aliens come across as real people, with real needs, real desires, a real culture, instead of being a mishmash of condescending stereotypes of magical little earth children who paint with all the colors of the wind. Also, it’s told in a novel way, and it has better dialogue, directing and certainly better acting. I am not even a die-hard defender of District 9, I think there’s a lot it does wrong, but Avatar wraps things up in big easy bows, while District 9 has complicated problems and doesn’t give them easy solutions.
Even the idea that something as ham-handed and in-your-face as Avatar can be compared to the subtlety of Miyazaki offends me. Avatar is paternalistic crap. Avatar paints in ridiculous broad strokes, with neither its cardboard villains (Yuppie McScumbag and Captain Killsforfun) nor its Disney Native Americans having any real motivations.
Just about the one thing I like about it is that it’s a bajillion-dollar-budget film about loving nature that isn’t hypocritically against science and technology. Science and nature are perfectly compatible in the Avatarverse — Jake Sully wouldn’t have been able to commune with nature if not for the billion-dollar Avatar program. This strikes me as a surprisingly evolved position to take.
“you are a blind man feeling the elephant….you lack the neccessary organs of perception.”
Seriously? You could not have said that unironically, right?
— MBI · Jan 10, 12:00 AM · #
matoko_chan,
The Na’vi’s close spiritual relationship to the land, plants, and animals of their world does not necessarily mean that they intuit the Laws of Motion.
I’m guessing, that maybe the reason Eywa doesn’t intuit the Laws of Motion – and so the Navi don’t know it either – is because Eywa is mainly based on the plants. Motion not being a big thing with plants.
Eywa is strong on biology, information, etc. – But it’s learning physics from us.
— Keid A · Jan 10, 01:19 AM · #
I agree completely with this review. I think that, although it may not be the main point (which bugs people for some stupid reason), we really need to consider what the hell we are doing to our planet? Earth is always described in Avatar as a place of desolation, which in not that many years could become a reality. It was actually very saddening to think that our people can’t be like the Na’vi. We destroy the earth and we don’t care, which is even more frustrating. I personally think that our system of life, our carelessness for nature, is the primary reason for our discontent with ourselves. This “primitive” way of living in Avatar is far superior for the sole reason that they are happy for what is the point in life if one is not happy? This movie . . . made me think about what I want to do with my life. Do I destroy? or do I create?
— JR Lee · Jan 10, 03:35 AM · #
MBI…… well you obviously don’t get the mytho-poeisis of Pandora…the christian myth patterns like the two trees and the Fall and grace AUGUSTINE and the messiah meme and quaritch as satan the tempter. You obviously don’t get the buddhist/islamic/miyazaki/ balance of life/ unity of existance/ oneness of being/ wahdat al wujud.
So yeah, lacking organs of perception.
And yeah….the message of Avatar is the SAME as Mononoke and Nausicca.
Cameron paints his Pandoran mytho-poeisis with the subtle brush of sublimal world mythology.
Blomkamp is “cheerfully and perniciciously” racist in his portrayal of the nigerians….you don’t object to that, but you whine about “crude” stereotyping of noble savages?
wallah.
Moro: ‘The Forest Spirit gives life and takes life away. Life and death are his alone to give.’
Neytiri: “Our Great Mother does not take sides, Jake. She protects only the balance of life.”
— matoko_chan · Jan 10, 03:54 AM · #
I’m curious matoko_chan, how much do we know about the lifecycle of the Navi? Is the plant their real mother? Or are do they only mean it “spiritually”.
Are they born as pods on the plants? Or do they have babies and reproduce independently? I’m speculating, maybe that plug thing might start out as their connection to Veggie-Mommy as they grow.
— Keid A · Jan 10, 04:11 AM · #
Because, if they are pod-people, then I’ve got a theory about how life on Pandora evolved.
Figuring out Pandora’s evolutionary backstory has been bugging me from the start.
— Keid A · Jan 10, 04:46 AM · #
Quote – Earth is always described in Avatar as a place of desolation, which in not that many years could become a reality.
In the eyes of the Navi the current Earth would be a place of desolation. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, since I appreciate the relative safety and convenience a modern city offers over Pandora. However, if you’re going from a planet covered in massive rain forests to Earth it’d look desolate.
— Byrk · Jan 10, 07:36 AM · #
Some speculation for Spock—
“I would not be entirely surprised were it to turn out in a later film that Pandora is a post-technological world and that the Pandorans’ ancestors bio-engineered this garden. Some carpers have decried the world-building as simplistic—the fact that we probably have two more movies in which to look at Pandora answers that point.”
— matoko_chan · Jan 10, 06:00 PM · #
I posted the same speculaton as that in an earlier thread, but if the Navi are pod-people then I have figured out an interesting theoretical model that would allow the setup on Pandora to be the result of natural Darwinian evolution.
It explains a lot of things about Pandora and I think Cameron could have based his vision of Pandora on an evolutionary model. I understand he consulted a lot of experts.
Repeat: Do you know the life cycle of the Navi?
— Keid A · Jan 10, 06:49 PM · #
Maybe you could go see the fuckin’ movie?
— Chet · Jan 10, 07:11 PM · #
Not fuckin’ possible. It is a very long movie and by the time I add travel time, it would take a large part of a day out of my shedule, that I cannot afford.
These days I mostly watch movies when they come out in BluRay, and mostly in half-hour segments whenever I can find a spare half hour.
— Keid A · Jan 10, 07:21 PM · #
I’m sorry to hear that. Seriously, though, it’s worth the time and expense, especially if you can catch it in IMAX 3d. We had to go to a theater over an hour’s drive away, but it was well worth it. You’re interested in the concept. I know you’d find the visual experience incredible. If you can muster the 15 bucks for a ticket, it’s well worth your time, even if it’s a matter of an hour’s drive or two. Really, seriously, it is. Especially since you’re clearly the kind of person who loves to explore someone else’s imaginary world.
— Chet · Jan 11, 05:59 AM · #
I wouldn’t say it’s all imaginary worlds, but this one intrigued me since I saw the 2 trailers in 1080p HD. I can clearly see the stunning beauty of it.
Like I say it’s a question of time. Even time out over Xmas/New Year has taken me time to catch up with backlog.
I am planning to upgrade my work-critical computer system from Vista/64 to Win 7, this week. Nightmares after last time. I will do a new install, not an upgrade. But then all the applications have to be reloaded.
If it works you’ll maybe hear from me again, LOL. I will try to make it to the movie if I get a chance.
— Keid A · Jan 11, 08:26 AM · #
Cameron clearly intended this to be – at least in part – an Iraq parable: why else would he have had the bad guys talk about “shock and awe” and “winning hearts and minds”? It’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Had he left this language out the movie would have been stronger (though still weak and cliched). Leaving it in made it simplistic and lame, no matter what your view of Iraq was.
— Mark · Jan 11, 10:20 AM · #
Like I said Mark, weak and cliched for YOU.
Can you say….3 billion in reventue so far?
I saw it a second IMAX time yesterday with my young cousins…they gasped at the dire horses and reached out with wonder and delight to touch luminous spores (apparently) floating in front of their faces.
Cameron’s goal was to make us fall in love with Pandora.
I think he succeeded.
heh, think of sequels, dude.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jan 11, 02:24 PM · #
I saw the film as like War of the Worlds or better still “V” told from the invader viewpoint. Like in WotW, the natives are utterly defeated by the invaders superior technology, and are only saved by a biological phenomenon attributed by the natives to their god.
Like WotW, Avatar can be interpreted as an indictment of imperialism. I thought the underlying message was actually about global warming though. The corporate guy was informed that the planet was a superorganism. The religion of the Na’vi is a thing of the natural world (the domain of science) and descibed as biological—not a supernatural thing (the domain of metaphysics), as on Earth. By ignoring what his scientists tell him, he sentences his men to death and the mission to failure.
— Mike Alexander · Jan 11, 03:26 PM · #
Here’s a defense of Avatar from the libertarian antiwar side.
Now, matoko_chan, if you were a libertarian pacifist, you and I would have a lot more to agree about ;)
— Keid A · Jan 11, 03:44 PM · #
Ah, good luck. I found it quite painless. You’re quite right, fresh install is definately the way to go.
— Chet · Jan 11, 06:22 PM · #
An alien society? What the . . . They were damn Plains Indians in blue face!
— Philip · Jan 12, 02:49 AM · #
“An alien society? What the . . . They were damn Plains Indians in blue face!”
no they weren’t.
Na’vi females could be hunters and warriors, and the rites of passage were the same for males and females.
Very little sexual dimorphism or role differentiation among the Na’vi.
“ I thought the underlying message was actually about global warming though.”
Closer. In Avatar II we will possibly find out that Pandora was bio-engineered by a post -technological civilization very like the desolated and ravaged earth of Sully’s timeslice.
— matoko_chan · Jan 13, 12:55 PM · #
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