This Sunday, March 7, 2010, the 82nd Academy Awards will honor one movie with nine separate nominations. Said movie has in fact been the highest-grossing movie of all time, earning over $2 billion. The film is, of course, James Cameron’s Avatar.
When released in December of 2009, Avatar was met with high praise and wide acclaim. Movie critic Roger Ebert described the movie as “extraordinary,” saying “When I saw Avatar, I felt sort of the same as when I saw Star Wars in 1977.”
Time Magazine ran a review that told movie-goers to “Embrace the movie—surely the most vivid and convincing creation of a fantasy world ever seen in the history of moving pictures.” Ross Douthat of The New York Times even wrote that Avatar is “Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism … Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now.”
Well, Avatar may be “Hollywood’s religion of choice,” but there are three main reasons why free-thinkers and conservatives in general should be reluctant to waste about 2 ½ hours of their time.
For starters, Avatar, which some people characterize as a modern-day Pocahontas, has a strong anti-capitalist message. Comparable to any film out of say, Michael Moore’s private-enterprise-hating brain (yes, it’s that bad), Avatar is a story about evil Americans trying to take advantage of a distant ecosystem; and all for corporate greed.
Said ecosystem exists on the planet of Pandora, which is inhabited by natives called the Na’Vi. However, in the movie, Pandora becomes overrun with military mercenaries and greedy profiteers who will stop at nothing to gain a few trillion dollars. Now enter Jake Sully; an ex-Marine who takes over his dead brother’s Avatar.
An avatar is a genetically engineered replica of the Na’Vi that the humans can interface with by sleeping that will allow them to interact with the natives. And in a plot that is just about as predictable as Harry Reid’s loss in November, Sully falls in love with the Na’Vi princess, Neytiri, decides to permanently become part of the Pandora world, and fights against the evil humans.
Although in real life, no one would, or could defend the tactics that the military display in this movie, the very fact that entrepreneurship is shown as being evil, immoral, and synonymous with murder is very telling. Not to mention the fact that in the end, the collective, or socialistic society of the Na’Vi succeeds.
Then there’s the fact that the movie is basically a glorified, 162-minute, PSA for man-made global warming. It’s the perfect equation: untouched, green, ecosystem, plus humans who want to tear down the trees, equals the ultimate struggle of good versus evil. Or so Cameron would like people to think.
What’s most telling is a part of Sully’s narrative at the end in which he watches the “aliens” (i.e. humans) leave Pandora, saying they are going back to continue to destroy their dying world. But Avatar is more than just one big argument for taking care of the environment; it’s the vision of an impossibility that completely disregards the way the world works.
It’s this complete disregard for reality that is the worst feature of Avatar. For instance, the movie’s plot would not even be possible if Jake Sully wasn’t completely disconnecting his brain from his body. In other words, his adventures are entirely dependent upon his separation from reality. It would be the same as if another movie was made entirely about someone’s trip off LSD: completely unrealistic.
Moreover, Avatar has almost no metaphysical meaning; it does not represent any metaphysical concept. Or think about it this way: art (which most people would agree does include movies) is created as a projection that is reflective of the creator’s beliefs and values. This tells us a lot about those who create art.
With Avatar, there is no semblance of reality- no interaction between what is and what could be. It is simply what James Cameron wishes reality was. Thus, Avatar is a film that is a projection sans any values that can be found in the real world. Not only that, but the “happy ending” completely inverses the traditional sense of morality. In real life, permanently choosing to disconnect yourself from reality would be wrong. In Avatar however, it is Sully’s ending, and the audience is supposed to rejoice with him.
Many people argue that while watching Avatar, one must ignore the misguided messages and just appreciate the stunning visuals and effects, or the movie’s beauty. But to do that requires that one redefine the word “beauty” to include things that are anti-rational and value-less.
Just three things to think about as society prepares to give Avatar awards that were created through a capitalist system and built from our earth’s natural resources.
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Amanda Carey is the Editor of The Tiger Town Observer at Clemson University. She has previously worked for Robert Novak and has been published in Reason Magazine and The American Spectator.
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