An Uneasy feeling about James Cameron's Avatar

Over Christmas, I and the family visited LA and saw James Cameron's Avatar in 3-D at an Omnimax. We sat in full reclining seats with a perfect view from our knees to the ceiling of a huge screen in the clearest possible resolution. The 3-D worked really well, and sometimes I found myself holding out my hands to feel the foliage of the rainforest floor. I remember looking over at my family and seeing them in a long row of people, every one of whom was wearing those funny glasses.

Amidst the splendour of the audio/visual experience, I remember feeling at unease about where Cameron was taking the story. The plot featured a people of another planet perfectly in tune with their environment, threatened by an American corporation with American military support bent on extracting the precious 'Unobtainium' from beneath the rainforest floor. I became uneasy when the people began to fight back successfully, actually kill American soldiers, and succeed at the expense of American business and warcraft.

I am not sure that Cameron intended to draw a parallel between the American business interest and military on a strange planet and the American business interests and military war in Iraq. However, it seems to work well: with regard to business, 'Unobtanium' equates well with 'oil'; as for the military, one of Cameron's soldiers actually uses the term 'shock and awe', the code name for the invasion of Iraq.

I think I felt uneasy because America is still involved in a war in Iraq, has lost many men and treasure prosecuting this war, and we, a family of foreigners, were sitting in a closed in place surrounded by Americans who may not have liked what they were hearing.

I felt uneasy also because Cameron seemed to be re-writing American history. The main character meets the daughter of the chief of the native people, and it is through her intercession that the main character is not killed. This is eerily similar to John Smith and Pocahontas. The difference is that John Smith's descendants would eventually thrive, kill or capture the natives and put them on reservations, and create a nation state. In Avatar, we see the proxy Pocahontas and her people repel the invaders and require that they leave the planet. In a stroke, Cameron has allowed the Native Americans to keep their 'New World' for themselves.


In the end, we were not crushed by our fellow theatre goers as they stormed the stage with pitch-forks and torches. Rather, the audience seemed to really like the film. In fact, it is now the all-time biggest movie in terms of revenue. While not all of this revenue has been garnered in the US, I understand that most of it has.

This tells me one of at least three things.
1. People agreed with the equation of the planet/Iraq and native people/Pocahontas and liked it.
2. The above equation is wrong, Cameron meant something else, and people understood what he meant and liked it.
3. People did not see any symbolism at all, and liked it instead because there was a romance, lots of colour, destruction of public property, and some really interesting ways that people died.