vruz:
—by langer:
Avatar is a bad film.
Not because it lacks any meaningful character development (which it does), not because its plot is laughably flimsy (which it is), and not because it is little more than a big-budget remake of FernGully, but because it is yet another example of b-grade Hollywood moralizing, of not very smart people with typically superficial good intentions offering Americans an insidiously shallow civics lesson along with their 64-oz Cokes and shrink-wrapped boxes of Butterfinger Minis.
American audiences have long preferred to buy their cultural sensitivity on the cheap, and Avatar is no exception here. Cinema regularly lures its viewers into an empty sense of mea culpa by safely buffering any requisite admission of guilt with the distantiation of history, of fairy tales, or of good old fashioned exaggeration. Our collective sins are pointed out for us in a way that doesn’t demand we see those same sins in ourselves. In any theatrical contest between Good and Evil, ticket sales will only ever cover production costs if while being asked to root against our own image we’re allowed to remain reasonably convinced of the implausibility that we ourselves could ever individually be as evil as these representations suggest.
It’s the uncanny valley of morality.
This is why we were all supposed to feel a little bit better about ourselves after watching Crash, because even though the film’s white antagonists didn’t drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag bumper stickers but lived in McMansions and kept hired maids and drank Starbucks and drove BMWs and looked generally indistinguishable from well-to-do liberal types just like us, their racism was so exaggerated and unsympathetic that we could condemn ourselves without any of the uncomfortable consequences of actually condemning ourselves. Then we all patted ourselves on the back and congratulated each other on how far we’ve come by handing this lousy film the Best Picture award. In an age when a political activist is someone who tints his Twitter avatar green, this Oscar was our Emancipation Proclamation.
This is why when watching The Last of the Mohicans we rooted for an indigenous culture that we ourselves had once oppressed as we watched them be subjugated by white colonizers we call our forefathers, since despite our shared lineage with the bad guys we can comfortably cast judgment because theirs were historical sins for which we’ve long since apologized with national monuments and Congressional resolutions, and because the indigenous culture in question has already been so decimated and so quarantined by poverty and desert reservations as to no longer pose any ongoing challenges to our national interest.
And this is why we cheered on a bunch of dwarves and elves and talking trees, because the two white guys oppressing them commanded an army of orcs instead of Blackwater personnel.
In the case of Avatar the bad guys again look just like we do, they wield the mighty hammer of the military-industrial complex just like we do, and they speak the language of colonialism just like we do. Yet in a country where anything short of full-throated support of the military is verboten we’re exonerated for rooting against these former Marines because they’re conquering a make-believe planet populated with make-believe aliens in a make-believe time. We’re allowed to cheer for this oppressed people because the missile strikes come from futuristic gunships and not from Predator drones. And we can safely criticize this fictional military because it takes its cues directly from its heartless capitalist overlords, while ours only takes its heartlessly capitalistic cues through the more familiar proxy of a popularly elected commander in chief.
As with any other case study in the ever-cheapening cinematic pedagogy of morality, it speaks volumes about the contemporary American audience that James Cameron had to spend fifteen years and $300 million inventing a race of people and the necessary technology to tell a story that could have just as easily been told with a handheld camera and a flight to the Ecuadorian rainforest—albeit one that wouldn’t have sold any tickets if it had.
And now millions of Americans get to go home and take comfort in the fact that while our empire may have its flaws and our military may be regularly dispatched to conquer “savages” who made the tragic mistake of establishing their homeland on top of massive deposits of natural resource, well, hey, at least we’ve never blown up a bunch of adorable purple aliens.
Yes, that is absolutely correct. I see films instead of going to confession; it’s so much less painless than self-flagellation. But thanks for breaking this down for myself and the millions of other addled Americans who left the theater completely overcome by a glucose head rush and a curious sense of unattributable exoneration. Before this post, it was completely lost on me and my fellow hordes of grunting, barely upright knuckle draggers that we were perhaps brainwashed into living another day relieved of guilt… all for the price of a theater ticket.
Pardon the sarcasm.
My question for you is, since we both agree that the weak character development isn’t the main issue here, should we also damn Plato’s Republic and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings too? Or are we only jumping on allegory-as-film? Is it possible that maybe the theater-going experience isn’t about mea-culpa after all? Just possible? I hope so, otherwise I’m afraid I’m going to have to await your next film before I can feel less guilty about enjoying everyone else’s.
Pardon my french, but remember when you went to the movie because it was fucking fun and didn’t feel the need to check beforehand whether or not you would already pre-agree with someone else’s interpretation of the “message?” This is a watershed film and will be remembered as such. Who cares if you don’t “agree” with the film, there have been hundreds of films I didn’t “agree” with that A) I still enjoyed, B) I still appreciated, and C) I’m glad I watched.
When exactly did your inner child and sense of wonder die? Maybe you can still enjoy a film without dissecting the historic or science-fiction interpretations through the lens of modern politics. Maybe you don’t have to get permission from your overlords to accept the messaging before seeing an entertainment property. Maybe, sometimes, you can just drop into a film and enjoy the ride.
Fuck, modern political discussion is retarded. If The Godfather were released now people would be up in arms over their interpreted “message” of the film. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail - if you’re looking for a reason to get up in arms about “Hollywood liberals” or “liberal messaging” or “forced brainwashing and liberal guilt” you’ll fucking find it everywhere you look - because you’re an idiot and have only one tool at your disposal. You’re a one-trick pony. Actually, you’re also the tool.
We used to play that game in film school - reinterpreting historic films’ messages from a modern context - Star Wars was the communist manifesto, Indiana Jones was just Ayn Rand with treasure hunting, Die Hard was Vietnam, etc. But it was fucking ridiculous, that’s what made it a such a joke!
“Dad, do you remember seeing Star Wars in theaters?”
“No, Tim, I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t agree with the Hollywood Liberal Anti-America brainwashing - of course the “empire” had to be evil. George Lucas just hated America and was sowing seeds of liberal guilt. Darth Vader could have easily been written as a unifier, but they made him the bad guy. And in the end their pagan mumbo-jumbo overthrew what’s obviously meant to be the pope - who of course was also evil. Brainwashing, that’s all it was.”
“Dad?”
“Yes, Tim.”
“You missed out.”
