All in all, Avatar works. The two hours and forty minutes are justified. The payoffs are set up, and the loose ends are tied neatly. For a popcorn movie, Avatar is top notch entertainment. For a cultural experience (and despite shrieks from the fascist right) we do not often see the natives win over a technologically superior force. Not on earth, not in real life, it's indeed a rarity.
I have met several people who have gone back for repeat viewings, some in both 2D and 3D to experience the difference. The naysayers can say what they will, but the numbers don't lie. Audiences like Avatar, overwhelmingly, and they are voting with their wallets in the "free market" of our culture.
One laughable film review in The Weekly Standard, back on December 28th, attempted to squash the film amongst the paper's target demographic.
Ooops. Avatar avoided the iceberg on its way to the box office. I hear that foot in mouth disease is rampant on the right these days, and Podhoretz should go get himself checked out. He called the film both "anti-American" and "anti-human," in his rant.
As for "American," there is no America in the film, and the earth force is purely a mercenary/corporate entity. Is Podhoretz admitting that the U.S. acts in a mercenary fashion on the world stage? Is he copping to the central point Cameron has made? Rather than blaming the film for making an uncomfortable connection, perhaps some better analysis of America's actions and motivations, its "foreign policy" is called for.
Podhoretz also seems to have missed that the main character is himself one of the earthlings, an "American" whom the film is allegedly against. It is this soldier "from the jarhead clan" who has the moral and spiritual awakening and who undergoes the central transformation of becoming an Avatar.
The film makes a moral argument that might does not make right, and the ability to go somewhere doesn't give one the right to be there (sort of like International Law). These are simple and straightforward ideas which stand without unnecessary complexities.
In fact, these basic issues of right and wrong are constantly obfuscated in the corporate media. All we get there are the minutia, the official pronouncements, and never the moral clarity.
It is only when an official enemy power commits a transgression that a moral argument gets trotted out. Never are moral standards applied to one's own nation's actions and policies.
The beauty of the Avatar plot is that Jake Sully exists in both worlds, as both species, and he bridges the gap between the two sides. This is handled perfectly, much to the chagrin of propagandists like Podhoretz who wish for the message to fall flat and to fail. Avatar has not failed but has succeeded despite the system the film was produced in, despite the sniping of "critics" opposed to such content, and despite serial hot wars currently raging which are fueled by imperialistic aggression for the purpose of controlling valuable resources.
The overwhelming success of Avatar with audiences has actually given me some hope (not the plastic Obama brand of "hope" as substitute for moral policies). It is impossible to not get it. It is impossible to not accept that moral questions remain when people decide to take from others and to demonize them in order to achieve their desired "facts on the ground."
Avatar is a timeless story, mythic, allegorical, and yet grounded to our actual history and to our current events. Perhaps art can go beyond imitating life and progress up to nudging it just a little in a better direction.
Joe Giambrone is the editor of The Political Film Blog on Wordpress. He hopes to hit an iceberg and sink just a fraction of the depth James Cameron has plummeted. Send political/film articles to: polfilmblog at gmail.com.
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