Monday, March 1, 2010

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.

3 comments:

Michael Homan said...

Jim, I think plenty of people have seen the symbolism. Also I've read quite a bit about not only Native Americans, but African Americans and Hispanics getting tired of the whole white messiah message.

Unknown said...

4. Most people are sheep and they had been told by endless media that Avatar was a "great" film, and were unable to articulate an intelligent thought to the contrary.

Unknown said...

Nephew Dear

I think Cameron knew exactly what he was doing and I for one am very happy to see the anti corporate anti-miltarist anti colonial point of view put forward in the mainstream media and in the ultimate blockbuster to boot. Western civilization has a lot of bad karma to redeem for from the so called Age of Exploration which should really be called the Age of Genocide. Having reached the point where the Military Industrial Complex has achieved the means to destroy life on this planet in any number of ways, the only real hope for our children's generations is a radical rethink about the way we value and do things - to think of the entire human race as one tribe is a very reasonable way to start. We have to rethink the whole concept of "growth" which powers our economies and also confront the kind of unchallenged military power that allows continued imperialism...
I'm sure we are going to get the "Empire Strikes Back" Avatar sequel - part 2 of the trilogy, no doubt - in which the corporation takes revenge on the Nav'i - my attitude is bring it on and let's hope that maybe a few Americanos will adjust their thinking from the patent red white and blue that is drilled into them from birth...

Love your blog tho O U Allan