The political import of Avatar -- and, there's no waving this aspect away because it's right in your face start to finish, and especially in the third act -- is ardently left. It is pro-indigenous native, anti-corporate, anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. Iraq War effort, anti-U.S.-in-Afghanistan (and anti-troop-surge-in-that-country, or strongly against the thinking of President Barack Obama and Gen. Stanley McChrystal), anti-rightie, anti-Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, etc.Which, of course, means it's a shoe-in for the Oscar.
Yes, it's very teenaged adolescent in its super-imaginative wacko visions and exuberant energy levels, but politically it's pure Che Guevara (more the Motorcycle Diaries or Che-in-Cuba version than Che in Bolivia), Naom Chomsky, Hugo Chavez, Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Oliver Stone, etc. Cameron is an earth-hugging lefty from way back (the flagrant despise-the-arrogant-rich current in Titanic being but one example) so this should come as no surprise to anyone. I for one am cheered and heartened.
If Sarah Palin sees Avatar and then sits down and actually thinks about what it's saying (which is always a dicey proposition, I admit), she'll hate this movie. Because Avatar hates her and her kind. Some righties will pretend to like it ("great popcorn flick! took my kids!"), but they'd have to be in major denial mode not to recognize that Avatar is much more MSNBC than Fox News. It really spits on the Fox News philosophy/worldview. If Cameron had for some inane reason put a Fox News-type character in the film, he/she would end up with a Na'vi arrow through his/her chest, trust me.
Call it the most flamboyant, costliest, grandest left-liberal super-movie anyone's ever seen -- a political tract that cost Rupert Murdoch God knows how many hundreds of millions to make and yet is totally pro-loincloth, pro-native, despise-the-greedy, hug-the-earth, worship-the-earth, down with the soulless short-end, down with the us-first, masters-of-the-universe thinking behind the Goldman Sachs/Timothy Geithner culture and up with the eternal/spiritual in all cultures and all corners of the globe. The tragedy of the Vietnam War echoes all through this film. Somewhere Ho Chi Minh is smiling.
It'll make a zillion dollars because of the fantasy nature of the thing, but they'll lose a lot of money that might have made once the political angle of the movie gets out.
UPDATE: John Nolte also has a review:
REVIEW: Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ Is a Big, Dull, America-Hating, PC Revenge Fantasy
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3 comments:
I knew there was something I didn't like about the movie Avatar, when I saw it recently getting shamelessly promoted by a TV show (Bones).
I had the same reaction when in-your-face politics ruined a perfectly good movie like "Julie and Julia." I wouldn't recommend that film either.
I watched the movie with my mom and the first thing I said afterwards was "that was the most unbelievably liberal movie I have ever seen." Evil US military plundering helpless natives for their most valuable underground resource... I mean, c'mon... Not to mention the lines about how the "skypeople" had killed their mother and how they were returning to their dead planet. The special effects were awesome, but the plot itself was sub-par and I just could not get over the in-your-face liberalism.
Why in the world do you need to inject politics into what is the most sensous movie every made. A feast for the eyes and most every other sensing organ. Enjoy the movie for all its beautiful, inspiring and sensous complexity.
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