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Avatar’s History Lesson
Like Barack Obama, Avatar has become a Rorschach test for the times in which we live. Everyone interprets it their own way. Nominated for nine Oscars, it's already the highest-grossing film of all time-having pulled in around $2.5 billion globally. More importantly, Avatar could become a game-changer in our evolving cultural consciousness about the impact of modernity on the world.
I recently saw the film in St. Louis with my teenage niece and nephew. To them, it was science fiction. I suggested it was more of a commentary about the Americas. Indeed, it mirrors the history of indigenous peoples in this hemisphere for the past 500 years. The struggle over resource extraction for profit versus the territorial rights of indigenous peoples continues to unfold on a daily basis across the globe.
Set in the year 2154, the conflict in Avatar involves corporate lust for a rare precious mineral called "unobtanium," which, we're told, is valued by humans at 20 million per kilo. What's it for? We're never told, but perhaps that's the point. Unobtanium serves as a generic placeholder for the commodities we extract from native lands: oil, gold, silver, lumber, pasture or any other thing of value according to market forces. How much unobtanium is enough? The film's characters never say. But, like a bonus-grubbing Wall Street executive, no amount can satiate modern society's never-ending desires.
I receive several urgent action alerts every month from indigenous communities throughout the hemisphere, asking for help as their lands are invaded by corporations, farmers, and ranchers. Centuries of racism have turned them into nuisances to be pushed aside by the colonizers. They don't vote in a significant bloc, so local politicians rarely pay attention to their pleas. If they happen to use force to resist the exploitation and illegal expropriation of their lands, they-like Avatar's Na'vi protagonists-are often labeled "terrorists" and violently suppressed. In reality, indigenous peoples across the Americas have been fighting against terrorism since 1492.
I asked my niece and nephew to think back a dozen generations. Who populated the lands upon which they live today? What happened to them? Under what circumstances were their lands colonized? Deep down, we know about terrible wrongs that were committed against the native peoples who used to inhabit this land, but we push these traumas out of our collective consciousness. Until we come to terms with our own history, it will continue to fester like a rotting pink elephant in our national living room.
The Na'vi in Avatar and indigenous humans here on Earth have accomplished something that we in the modern industrialized world have failed to do. They've figured out how to live in a sustainable way for countless generations. We, meanwhile, are quickly reaching the environmental limits of what's sustainable.
Our technologies have advanced far ahead of our collective wisdom to incorporate them in a thoughtful way. We've surrendered our future to the market forces that have run amok, and where the only relevant bottom line is short-term profit. The elders of the Iroquois nations used to ask how the decisions they made today would affect their descendants seven generations down the line. Today we don't turn to our elders for wisdom. After all, what do they know? They're old. Put them in a retirement home.
Instead, our future is determined by cowardly politicians who can only think as far as the next election. Our economy is guided by short-sighted corporations that only care about hitting their quarterly numbers, lest their stock nosedives and they get taken over by a rival corporation. Any leader who talks about planning for the future is branded a "socialist" by the teabaggers-as though we should let our planet's fate be determined by the tender mercies of the free market.
In the early 1980s, an indigenous leader from Guatemala came to the Inter-American Development Bank and spoke to its board of directors. He said: "Your bank, I don't like it so much. It scratches where it doesn't itch." Avatar makes us pause to think of all the manufactured "itches" that comprise modern life. The movie left me ready to paint myself Na'vi blue.
The author would like to thank Esther and Philip Tree for taking him to this awesome film.
44 Comments so far
Show AllNo comment from the "progressive" wind bags who pontificate on this site. Hmm...
Superficial dig from a shallow mind. Hmm...
What, no wordage? Certainly you can do better than that.
Why, when brevity is sufficient.
It was a good movie, that I think I may actually buy it when it comes out on DVD, especially if it is in 3D.
Is that all this regressive windbag can come up with...?!
A no-comment comment from regressive windbag.
I would argue that "Avatar" is more an allegory than a history lesson. The main points of the movie are still quite salient though.
How did her niece and nephew respond to her suggestions?
Avatar is a technical phenomenon. Its 3-D effect is mesmerizing, and just as crowd-thrilling as when the gunman fires his pistol directly at the audience during The Great Train Robbery (1903).
I take issue with several aspects of the film.
The female characterizations are horrible. Having daughters, I look for strong female roles in media.
Instead:
1. Sigourney Ripley dies meekly, the victim of a fly-by shooting. Her last words are a mere joke. Nobody listens to her, nobody cares about her.
2. Hot Chick Pilot can fly to the edge of night and beyond, but she deserts her unit in combat (which nobody cares about). In the big battle she dies after scratching the paint on her boss's ride and apologizing to the Hero for having failed him.
3. Princess Blue gets to kill and survive, but then she's got a little Hero inside her now, doesn't she? That makes her 'special'.
This movie is about exceptionalism, about being 'special'. Not qualified, honest or anything positive, just special.
The Hero is judged to be special by the goddess-tree-thingy. He violates this trust at every opportunity.
The closer the Hero gets to the Blue people, the stupider they behave. They fly but never look up or down, unless the human is there to teach them. They fight as if they're Injuns.
The war ends when the Hero is safe, not the planet.
Perhaps the biggest 'Avatar History Lesson' here is that there is nothing to stop the humans from coming back. Perhaps next time they'll just eradicate all life forms from space and then the mining will be easy.
I appreciate this review. One weakness of futuristic scifi is that it almost always uses current mores, and thereby too often makes itself less credible and sometimes a bit ridiculous. We know better than to expect Hollywood to accurately reflect real-world issues - societal, political, environmental - or for heroes to save us, but we keep doing it anyway.
from the article:
"I asked my niece and nephew to think back a dozen generations. Who populated the lands upon which they live today? What happened to them? Under what circumstances were their lands colonized? Deep down, we know about terrible wrongs that were committed against the native peoples who used to inhabit this land, but we push these traumas out of our collective consciousness. Until we come to terms with our own history, it will continue to fester like a rotting pink elephant in our national living room."
the land that is the Americas was stolen through murder and treachery...those that claim current title, those we pay for residency, have no such title...this historical wrong must be righted...
interesting that another lengthy article, this one dancing all around it, fails to confront the two critical words:
private property
it has to go...
incidentally, this is just a movie, and the successful violent response required to resolve the final conflict rather negates the wispy spiritual aspects, in my mind...
Thinking about the criminal colonization of the Americas isn't enough. Zillions of people have gone thought that process, in school assignments, debates among friends, while reading books and media. It doesn't sink it very far. So sooner or later, this question, why doesn't it sink in very far, has to be addressed.
Issues bounce off people because those issues are not tied into people's world model as crucial to the individual's long-term fulfillment. And to a great extent, long-term fulfillment isn't very crucial in this society either.
If you want the people to appreciate the plight of the Native Americans, and all the issues of social justice, you have to overcome the dominance of materialism and hedonism as values in the society.
So when you go to see Avateur, you have to talk out loud about how elements of that media extravaganza reinforce the status quo values of plunder/oppression. Any reinforcement of corrupt values has to be exposed and ridiculed. Compared to something better. The vision of the better way is crucial. Teaching the kids to develop a vision of their own, toward universal equity/justice, is probably key.
thank you...I don't know that my vision of a better way aligns with most, unfortunately...it would be pretty minimal, and much more local, even individual, in scope...
I advocate for a non-industrial world...
I would emphasize the immediate benefit of the restoration of natural sound...
the freedom from indebtedness to others for one's right to live...
the reestablishment of the individual's rights and responsibilities, and the living world's rights to unaltered resources...
the mutuality of shared effort and just reward...greater freedom of expression sexually and exploration psychologically...
it will probably take horrific chemical impacts on human reproductivity around the globe to finally open eyes, but I would prefer to try a unanimous Pause in our daily busyness and a Puff on a peace pipe or hookah...
a pause and a puff to get things started down a better road...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...let's get those gardens growing!
this vision is but a body wandering among towering dunes of drifting sand...a naked wrinkled shell for the social crows to descend upon, to contest and devour until nothing but bones remain, bleaching under the baking sun...
I understand that the movie made over $1 billion.
My questions are:
How much of that money went to protect indigenous peoples' way of life here on planet Earth?
How much of that money went to protect the environment here on planet Earth?
How much of that money went to the fatcats?
VERY good questions.
I agree -- very good questions.
I haven't seen the film -- the price tag here in NYC is $20 per ticket, which strikes me as a corporate price tag!
Remind me what the point of the film is!?!
Yes, the elderly. They should be at the center of all things in this world.
When we are in the presence of an elderly person, we are being taught.
The way we treat the elderly is the way we are going to be treated when we get old.
Of course!
"Today we don't turn to our elders for wisdom. After all, what do they know?"
They've all become avid FOX News fans who vote.
I've seen Avatar three times, once on IMAX 3D, and caught James Cameron's interview with Charlie Rose. He is a brilliant man who overcame studio objections to making a film with any kind of environmental message and still made lots of money.
Regressive message films proliferate, but when left for the movie-going public to evaluate, few if any make much money.
ezeflyer: [quotes from another's previous post] ="Today we don't turn to our elders for wisdom. After all, what do they know?"
ezeflyer response: "They've all become avid FOX News fans who vote."
I am 73, which I think is considered eldering. I am not an avid FOX News fan. I got rid of my television, and when I occasionally watch CNN, Fox and even PBS [exception Moyers and Now & Frontline], I am struck by how insipid, inaccurate, seemingly uninformed, and bought everyone is. I would describe myself as a very informed, passionate gadfly, absolutely enraged and appalled at what is passing for the U.S. Government. Murderers and thieves, that's my take, and that we have already lost our democratic process, and I don't see us getting it back anytime soon.
That leaves a vacuum which has got to be filled with a new creation of, for and by the People. And that is going to be messy.
Howard Zinn may have watched Fox News once in a while just "to see" the circus. He just died at 87 or thereabouts. And that's elderly. Howard wasn't exactly inactive and uninformed.
Do not generalize about "the elders." I would agree that most are uninformed like the general population -- from the boomers' children, the boomers themselves on up to and through eldering people. We've discussed many times why that is. We haven't figured out yet how that enormous group can be activated for a whole new way of doing things from a fresh perspective that is life-affirming for all rather than the life-destroying situations we have now.
okay?
... and if you want to arm wrestle ... ; - )))
peace, cm
Good post; thank you. That old people are necessarity reactionary or out of it, or whatever, is profoundly stupid and consists of good old-fashioned bigotry.... period. Howard Zinn, as you mention, was in his late 80s; Noam Chomski approaches 80; Ralph Nader is 74 or 75. To pretend that anything other than the most superficial 'trendoidism' is related to age is to completely miss the point.
Look at all those little tight-ass pieces of young, overeducated trash who totally trashed our economy with their fraudulent (and highly profitable... for them) subprime predatory loans. Trying to cut the lines across race, religion, creed, or age is bigotry... and deeply stupid.... PERIOD.
ezeflyer: GROW THE FUCK UP, OR SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Nice try Billo
Except for you of course
If we can't really be heros, if we are really just pawns in a vicious game, at least we can see a movie, which is itself another move in the vicious game, where our wishes to be heros can be assuaged -- and we can consent to being pawns in the vicious game another day longer.
If we can't really be heros, if we are really just pawns in a vicious game, at least we can see a movie, which is itself another move in the vicious game, where our wishes to be heros can be assuaged -- and we can consent to being pawns in the vicious game another day longer.
There may be plenty of details to correctly criticise in Avatar, but it says more to ordinary people than a thousand political and scientific articles. It puts scores of feelings and intuitions that most people have into a powerful concrete narrative. It connects the dots between all the different things that are going on in the world system but which the MSM carefully keep separate.
After seeing Avatar any youngster (and also older persons) will much more quickly understand the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, etc. as the grab for the oil-unobtainium. The increasing conflicts in the Amazon for oil, gas, gold, and other unobtainiums. They will also get a good feeling for the lies to cover up the bottom-line profit justification and ruthlessness.
JohnE,
Yes...I agree with your perspective. A seed was planted with the viewing of Avatar. All good seeds finding rich soil will grow and bloom. I want to be a "blue person!" After seeing this film (twice now), I have to say that the producers were courageous in the statements they made.....also however, they wanted to make a successful film! Therefore, they used a bit of "cheesecake" to do it! This film had it all.....technological skill, gorgeous color, it's own language even, great characterization, and most importantly....a message!
I disagree about the female characters being weak ones. Also, the role of the hero in the film was a very important characterization. The hero represented all of us collectively, who live in industrialized nations. We can all choose to go over to the other side so to speak and empathize and affiliate with the indigenous people's and their ways. The hero also represented the male aspect of humanity and the change necessary for the Patriarchy to "see" reality. The Feminine aspect was represented by the goddess, the wise woman, the ferocious warrior princess, and especially Sigourney Weaver's role as the finally wise "civilized female" who has been struggling to find truth in this culture; to promote balance between the male/female aspects of life, and knows it is just a heartbeat away....yet cannot grasp it in this lifetime! She "get's it" in the end and joins the goddess.....finally....having known she was there all along. The Feminine as Divine was all over this film! In the end, it was incorporated into the characters of Neytiri and the male hero.
I am not being critical of you, John, but have you spoken to 'young people' who have seen this film.
I often work with them, teens, in my work as a psychologist. The ones i have spoken with do not connect the dots to current u.s. occupations. Not one bit.
At most they look back to the Native American experience with the white men.
This statement was actually true. Since I work with young teenagers inthe inner city of Chicago, I always ask them what they think about the movie. Most of them are not able to give me a more intellectual answer, but if you were to ask them concerning what this movie 'Avatar' reminds them of in our history, most of them would say Native Americans and their experience with white men.
list building
I thought "Avatar" was the plot line of "Dances With Wolves", remade with absolutely spectacular sci-fi special effects.
At Avatar's end, we see the white militarist corporate pigs routed in combat by the aroused indigenous peoples spontaneously joined by all the animals in the jungle. The bad guys in the black hats get defeated at their own death and destruction game, and the infidel sky people are unceremoniously marched off into the sunset, to go back where they came from so the natural order of things can be restored. Once again, the bottom line message is that the righteous use of military might shall prevail once again.
To put it mildly, this ending is not historically parallel to the genocide of native Americans nor the experience of most other indigenous peoples confronted by post-1492 colonialism. Maybe that's why Avatar is quite properly labeled science fiction. It's a great cinematic experience, but I found the message muddled and mixed.
Bill from Saginaw
I'm not sure if it's what Cameron intended, but I think its interesting to consider the parallels between Avatar and the original classic alien invasion tale, H. G. Well's War of the Worlds. Like Cameron, Wells had a political message to his fiction. He was an opponent of British imperialism, and wanted to make his countrymen imagine what it would be like to be on the receiving end of (Martian) imperialism. Avatar turns Wells vision on its head, by portraying (American, Corporate, white) humans as the evil invaders of an alien planet. In Wells story, the Martian invaders have technology and military force vastly superior to the victimized humans, but are defeated by another component of Earth's ecosystem- bacteria, which cause them to sicken and die. In Avatar, the Navi are likewise militarily outclassed by the vastly superior technology of the invaders from space. The human invaders on Pandora were likewise defeated by a component of the Pandoran ecosystem other than the Navi. The planet's life forms are under the control of Ehwa, a planetwide botanical neural network mind. It is Ehwa who ultimately defeats the human invaders, by sending hordes of ferocious Pandoran animals to join the fight. So I don't think Avatar is intended to parallel the real history of indigenous people post-1942, but rather earlier science fiction. However, in my opinion, Avatar did a wonderful job of updating Well's anti-imperialist message for our own times.
Its been said before, but I'll say it again: Avatar, in its story, is not SciFi (as the previous poster said: its 'Dances with Wolves' redux). SciFi is about what hasn't happened yet, because it couldn't (here, now, on earth). Real SciFi has not only been done better by various authors in the last century, its actually been done better by James Cameron himself (Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss). The problem with real Scifi is its not very popular (check with Steven Spielberg on 'AI'). Most people don't see the relevance to themselves in their workaday lives. Hence, Cameron's choice is brilliant given these times. We are definitely at 1849 again, poised to push a whole lot of 'other people' off a cliff (only, now they are us). 'Those' people are deeply superstitious, wedded to tradition, beset by cruel forces they only weakly understand [as an aside, let me explain: the best analogy to the American Indians of the 19th Century is the Europeans of the 8th century: cruelly reduced by 300 years of diseases they could not have understood, given to invasions by foreigners clued to their weaknesses, deeply superstitious in abbeyance to whatever internal forces might give them strength to survive their turmoil. Ergo, these are not people in their 'right minds'. They are weakened, at risk, and poised for extinction. And so are we.]
We are the Na'vi. Earth is our Pandora. And 'Avatar' is our Avatar.
we all like to project our hopes and dreams of a better world onto primitive peoples (or cultures we percieve as primitive).
It's exacly the same thing as projecting our fears and frustrations onto primitive peoples but the reverse. Thus in all racism there a duality to the projection. the "other" is both evil violent ignorant savage and noble wise and all seeing. both viewpoints are equally false and disgusting.
"about the impact of modernity on the world.
no amount can satiate modern society's never-ending desires."
modernity is not the problem but a scapegoat.
"They've figured out how to live in a sustainable way for countless generations."
sustainability is a myth. change is the way the world has always worked.
"our future is determined by cowardly politicians who can only think as far as the next election."
our present is always determined by us.
a present full of scapegoating politicians, modernity, and dreaming about being cute little innocent primatives.
white people are so sad.
oh yea, also, and this has to be for a true racist primative story which is in fact something
with deep roots in american entertainment dating back to old daniel boone novels.
A good White guy save the natives from the bad white guys by giving them guns.
sort of like training the hatian army during occupation so many years ago.
that sort of "white guy" saving never turns out so good in the long run however.
One indigenous group's response to Avatar
http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/avatar-in-the-amazon?utm_source=wkly20100226&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=descr_tnVideo
Where is the the dialogue between peoples - violence is always the method...
I agree. The bottom line premise in Avatar, which i thoroughly enjoyed BTW, is that violence is the answer to violence. Nothing new at all here beyond it's technical triumphs.
As i've said before, District Nine is far more intelligent.
Quite frankly, as i've also said before, Dances With Wolves had a parallel story.
And, in case anyone is interested, David Price has written on how this is happening as we speak, in Afghanistan - social scientists and engagements with populations for the purpose of war and occupation.
Too bad it was another planet and the kids i've spoken to do not see it as relevent for our world today. At best, they see it as what was done to Native Americans.
Wittgenstein once said that the most miraculous thing about the world is that it exists. The politics of Avatar are a given to any thinking person. What we came home with was a new regard for the earth itself as miraculous. What film director could ever conceive a beast as strange as a porcupine?
Good comment.
With all the miracles of modern moviemaking and more, we the people can't even match the miracle of making a single leaf - although Earth's full of them.
"Avatar" is a great subversive movie - in that it takes all the tricks of modern technologies, including the art of narration and the hooks of action-movies, and twists that into a tale criticizing and negating it's own material premises - in a perfect paradox: the audience turned back on the reasons for it's own escapism into the movie-theater. Neat.
"Avatar" is like an updated, upgraded version of "Soldier blue", 1970, made under similar social circumstances.
Two weeks ago some people did paint themselves blue like the Na'vi. Peaceful protesters against the Apartheid wall in the West Bank village of Bil'in dressed as Na'vi demonstrated against their disposession and the military occupation that takes away their basic human rights!
Avatar and Deepening Perspectives on Sustainable Land Development
http://www.sldi.org/newService/SLDIJan2010.html
"The Na'vi resist the colonists' expansion, which threatens the continued existence of the Na'vi and their ecosystem - sort of like Dances with Wolves meets Star Wars..."
The SLDI Code™
http://www.sldi.org/images/Research/sldi%20in%20focus%20-%20world%5C%27s%20first%20sldbp%20system%20introduced.pdf
In a ground-breaking effort to overcome the problem, Sustainable Land Development International (SLDI) has released the world’s first comprehensive sustainable land development best practices system. Unlike other standards and certification programs, the SLDI Best Practices System helps to structure a triple-bottom-line (people, planet and profit) decision model that helps development projects achieve greater success in each area. We are interested in engaging all stakeholders in the review of this system.
Your participation and comments are welcome.
Sustainable Land Development International
www.SLDI.org
Page not found.
Gary
"I long to accomplish a great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker."
-- Helen Keller
Avatar offers a cowardly white audience the opportunity to imagine themselves the hero of some weak and helpless group of ethnics.
I'm sure the Nazis used to watch German hero films as well. It just feels good to see this kind of feel-good representation during times of neo-colonial repression by YOUR OWN government.
Thank you, Hollwyood, for letting us all feel better during these times of silent submission to the tyranny of the elites we empower.
This is off the subject, but if any movie would offer a better history lesson, it would be the movie/musical, "West Side Story". This musical, which is about love and romance that develops amid conflict between two warring street gangs (i. e. the White ethnic American Jets and the newly-arrived Puerto Rican Sharks) on the West Side of 1950s-1960's Manhattan, points out the senseless of gang violence, and the destructive consequences of bigotry and hatred. Why haven't more people haven't learned from that?
While Avatar certainly lays out the imperialist/Indigenous contradiction beautifully, it sends a mixed message. See
http://brokenturtleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/avatar-and-destruction-of-haiti_16.html