Avatar, Enough Said

Lots of conservatives hate Avatar. It only reflects poorly on them.

My thoughts (taken from a written conversation):

I have seen it and it was an awesome time. The movie really is a spectacle for the eye. The 3d adds so much depth to just about any scene and made the actions scenes exhilarating. When I left I was so bummed out to walk into drab dreary grey slush. You really need to go see it 3d in theatres. Prob the 2nd best action film only to Dark Knight.

It does have a lot of environmentalism, feminism, etc and it's along those lines that people will be divided. The movie brings in a lot of issues and people should wonder why they are so offended by them. If they are then they should just sit through the bucolic crap of any Marvel blockbuster or R rated shootem up. Issues though are what make great cinema. It's true conflict. Even Dark Knight was a commentary on terrorism. See the Slate review. Tthe Dark Knight's critique was based in this world with a lunatic villain who we were never supposed to side with. In Avatar, the villain is us.

Avatar's issues are all issues we haven't dealt with. It focuses on natural resource and native cultural abuses that have been part of civilization for forever. If Americans think fair play and giving a hand are part of what it means to be an American than there is a conflict of interest in how we, today, and how the human characters in the movie conduct themselves. We go into countries, mostly with a smile and a knife behind our back, or if they doesn't work, with tanks and cruise missiles, and setup agreements or just plain take what we want. Avatar parallels what happened to the Sioux in the Black Hills, the Incas in the Andes, and is happening now to the Iraqis. These are big time open sores that make for great cinema and hurt as well.

I would question why they hate it. Cinema wise it's not the most unique script. There are plenty of movies that say the same thing but that's the same in any genre. Do you not like the downer human message? Then you prob don't like Schindler's list or any movie that showcases negative human behavior. Do you not like feminism or anti-Americanism? Then you're not comfortable with the reality of what America does in the real world and not a student of history. Only until civilization was created did women become unequal and cultures wipe out other cultures for resources. You end up looking like a fool or a bigot or a philistine. Your pick.

On a cinematic note, the Navi are the underdog which has a big place in American culture. We were UD's against the Brits but now that we are in charge do we not like that side of the bed. The humans in the film and in reality have the technology to basically kill or conquer anything they want which basically puts anything non-human as an underdog. Star Wars is an underdog story? The Empire could blow up planets in one shot so why is no one complaining about rebel humans blowing up the big bad Death Star?

I get worked up about this stuff.

More Conservative dislike on pantheism.

His piece is fatalist and skews the message of Avatar, Dances with Wolves, etc. His basic problem seems to be that humans love pantheism because they feel guilty about there relationship to nature and are jealous of the freedom that pantheism offers. He finally questions Nature as religion in purely human terms: can nature classify right and wrong. He complains that in nature there is death and ruthlessness and for this reason nature can never be a religion.

There is a saying that there is no right or wrong but thinking makes it so and this is the first step down the wrong path Douthat travels. He declares we "live in two worlds" and so therefore the religion nature could provide is not enough for us. We need to go beyond natural laws to create laws only applicable to human behavior. The problem is we already had laws to govern human behavior. Native Americans watched how animals and nature behaved are coordinated their lives by the same rules. Religion condones the human right to dominate the world by putting man at the center of the equation. If we followed a religion that focused more on nature we'd have think twice about mowing down forests, poisoning and choking off rivers, etc. The fact is we do live in both worlds and we have to respect both worlds because if we don't, Douthat will be right, there will go back to ashes along with everything else.

On a side note, the fact that pantheism is packaged to America in giant, expensive, blockbuster movies and is commercialised in the book racks is something that is not lost on me. I figured that if he mounted a legal campaign against a major polluter or bought up land for a reserve with that 500 million that it'd be a better example of pantheism than blue giant aliens fighting humans. But that's his talent and if it can help change some people maybe they will do the real work.