Anti-Technology Themes in James Cameron's Avatar 870
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CmdrTaco
from the these-are-a-few-of-my-favorite-things dept.
from the these-are-a-few-of-my-favorite-things dept.
ThousandStars writes "'The anti-technological aspect [in James Cameron's Avatar] is strange because the movie is among most technically sophisticated ever: it uses a crazy 2D and 3D camera, harnesses the most advanced computer animation techniques imaginable, and has apparently improved the state-of-the-art when it comes to cinema. But Avatar’s story argues that technology is bad. Humans destroyed their home world through environmental disaster and use military might to annihilate the locals and steal their resources.' The question is two-fold: why have a technically sophisticated, anti-technical movie, and why are we drawn to it? Part of the answer lies in Neal Stephenson's Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out."
Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw it as showing bad uses of technology, and more about retelling the story of the native americans as well.
See, technology is like beer. (Score:5, Insightful)
Technology, like beer, is the solution to, and the cause of, all of mankind's problems.
White people suck in space (Score:5, Insightful)
I always read it as another "white people suck" movie, but this time, "white people suck in space", which is equally weird, because Cameron is about as white as they come.
Change vs Destruction (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because a story criticizes something doesn't mean the teller wants to destroy it. In order to change something for the better, we need to criticize it. And if we just attack the criticism, we'll never get change.
Cameron knows better than most what's wrong with our technology and the way we use it. His dependence on technology makes it quite clear that he doesn't want to eliminate it. He's not "anti-technology", he's anti the things he says are bad, which is not technology itself. Really what he's anti is the ways people use technology to treat each other badly. Which is not about technology, but about people.
Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
But Avatar’s story argues that technology is bad. Humans destroyed their home world through environmental disaster and use military might to annihilate the locals and steal their resources.
Humans can do bad things using technology. That doesn't mean technology is bad. Next on Slashdot: classic tale "Hansel and Gretel" has a secret message of "gingerbread is bad".
Typical Noble Savage Fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
It's an ideal -- peaceful people living in harmony with nature -- that doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. For instance, what do they do if one of their buddies is born with a genetic disease like Polycystic Kidney Disease or needs some other benefit of modern medicine. Also, in the real world packs of wolves and bears don't just leave you alone.
This stuff sounds great until you start to think about it really hard.
P.S. And at the end of the movie I was rooting for the "indians" just like everyone else.
White guilt (Score:4, Insightful)
Though not as prevalent as it was just a couple decades ago, "white guilt" is a feeling of responsibility particularly experienced by privileged white people for the suffering of blacks under the slave system. It is a modern phenomenon that such guilt is felt by people that are completely unconnected to slavery. The guilt manifests itself as an embrace of Black culture, a willingness to provide undeserved support to the African American underclass, and a tendency to promote multiculturalism and its anti-judgmental system of evaluating cultures.
So if the technology haves want to slum it with the have-nots, it shouldn't be any big surprise that they embrace an ideology that makes themselves the criminal and thus flagellating themselves thereby redeeming themselves. Of course, they do it in a way that doesn't actually put them in direct contact with the have-nots. This is typical behavior of those embracing cultural/technological guilt as a path to spiritual salvation.
I believe (Score:3, Insightful)
that Luke uses 'The Force' and turns off the computer.
Was Lucas trying to say something with that, I wonder...
Why assume the Na'vi are low-tech? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that they rely on bio-centric technology doesn't make them low-tech. Every major organism on that planet has a universal neural bus that can establish a physical and logical link in about .3 seconds. Does that sound even remotely accidental?
it's called "entertainment" (Score:5, Insightful)
p.s. and even if cameron truly believes in the "messages" of the movie, big freaking deal. he's a director. there are many people in the world whose opinion on such difficult philosophical topics has much higher value for me than that of someone in show business.
only one reference (Score:3, Insightful)
Apart from that, you can't really say it's anti-technology. Yes, it has a message about imperialism and how conolial powers - or companies despoil environments for their own gain. However that's been going on for venturies and doesn't have a tech. aspect to it. The tech just increases the speed of the destruction.
Is "anti-technology" really the message? (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't get "tech is bad" from the movie at all... (Score:5, Insightful)
I must have been answering the call of nature when the movie claimed that "technology is bad", because I didn't get that impression from it at all. At most, there was a "might makes right" is bad, and "allowing mankind to become subservient to quarterly shareholder reports" is bad, but that's about it.
The scientists in the movie did wondrous things with their avatar technology, and the Na'vi had their own, organic version of the same, but never did I see a message that any of this was bad. What was portrayed in a poor light was forcibly relocating a people so as to be able to mine out a large chunk of resource that they're sitting on top of, and that's just theft.
The submitter's 3D glasses must have been defective if he's getting an anti-tech message from this.
Who says "we" are drawn to it? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you remember "Dances with Wolves" at all, its about an American military officer just after the Civil War who goes out to a frontier post and then ends up making friends with the Indians, and then helping them against a later invasion to attempt to drive them out onto a reservation type situation. Here, the Indians have been replaced by those little blue smurf-y things.
As someone noted above, the military force in this particular situation was private and not governmental, however it was essentially the private armies of the British East and West India Companies that were responsible for most of the horrors of colonization by the British (I've never been too clear on the situation with the Spanish insofar as to whether or not they were regular military or not).
This seems to be more like some sort of post-colonial clap-trap than an "anti-technology" film, of course the two things usually go hand-in-hand when perpetrating the myth of the noble savage. In any case, I have no interest in actually watching it.
Re:White people suck in space (Score:5, Insightful)
I always read it as another "white people suck" movie, but this time, "white people suck in space", which is equally weird, because Cameron is about as white as they come.
It's a "people who try to take things from others by force suck" movie. As are the other movies in the same category you are referring to. The fact that the people who did this to Native Americans happened to be white is completely irrelevant, and your comment not only implies that all whites think they have the right to take from others by force, but it also implies that Cameron somehow should be bound to also think that, because he happens to be white.
Basically, don't make things about race when they're not. Besides, I personally saw it more as anti-corporate (in the same way as Alien) then anti-technology.
Re:Typical Noble Savage Fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I wonder what the Native Americans did back in the 1700's when that happened? Probably the same as any European or Asian: made their buddy's life comfortable as that person died. Harmony doesn't mean your life is easy or long... not sure what doesn't "hold up" there.
One doesn't have to be against x to moderate it (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pro-alcohol but also pro-moderation.
Avatar was a fairly amazing movie. I'm comparing and contrasting with the new Star Wars. There was probably even more bluescreen in Avatar than Star Wars but Pandora felt convincing and vibrant, completely alive. You never hear people criticizing the Death Star battle in A New Hope saying it looks like a video game, it was just awesome and exciting. I think part of the video game critique comes from movies that overuse bad CGI and make things look little better than the average page and part of it comes from the audience being unable to connect emotionally with those characters. Compare Pandora with any of the environments from the the new trilogy and it's just a lesson in CGI done wrong and CGI done right.
The false dichotomy most people fall into with environmentalism vs. tech is that it's an either/or proposition. "Look, we're either running around in the boonies with bones through our noses and die of preventable diseases before we're 30 or we have to clearcut the forests and live in sterile concrete and steel towers, there's no middle ground." And that's not really true. What's needed is the judicious application of technology, conforming with the needs of the environment rather than trying to thwart or control it.
I'm interested to see what the conservative backlash against this movie will be. Conservatives have been wanting to chew Al Gore's eyeballs out ever since an Inconvenient Truth. There's a strange kind of glee about destroying environmental sacred cows like the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. It's not like the truck barreling down the road indifferent to whether or not there's an animal in the road, it's the truck deliberately swerving to hit the animal, just for fun. This movie is big, awesome, has s'plosions, is from a director who has made some of the most awesome guy movies ever, and it has a message that could only be seen as environmentalist propaganda. This is a 20th century fox film so that explains why Faux News has been told to keep a lid on it. If this came out from any other studio that network would be frothing. Dunno if Limbaugh had anything to say about it yet. He's not affiliated with Faux and has no financial stake in the project. He'd have to go apeshit over it.
Silly, Infantile Discussion (Score:5, Insightful)
* Look, fire! Now I can keep my family warm and safe.
* Look, fire! Now I can go burn down the hut of my annoying neighbors.
* Look, trigonometry! Now I can build bridges.
* Look, trigonometry! Now I can launch projectiles at those bridges.
* Look, printing press! Now I can communicate broadly.
* Look, printing press! Now I can subjugate broadly.
* Look, nuclear technology! Now I can radiate cancer and use PET scans.
* Look, nuclear technology! Now I can blow cities up...
etc.
Iraq (Score:4, Insightful)
The villian used the phrases "fight terror with terror" and "preemptive attack". He was described as gearing up a "shock and awe" attack.
He was using the military to steal a valuable foreign resource, and funnel it into private/corporate hands, killing civilians along the way.
You're saying the message of the movie isn't supposed to be a parallel for Iraq?
For the record, I don't think it is a fair comparison because we're not stealing oil in Iraq. The Iraqi people own the oil and receive every penny for selling the oil. If anything, going into Iraq was a fiscal nightmare for the US. We're footing the bill for the war, and for reconstruction. We're funneling tons of money into Iraq, and liberated 30 million people from a cruel dictator. But given that Cameron is a vocal Democrat who drives a Prius and has suggested Bush lied about Iraq to steal oil, I'm sure he very much intended that to be the message of the movie.
Re:White people suck in space (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, don't make things about race when they're not.
It's America, everything is about race any more. It's identity politics.
Assuming Facts Not In Evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Nowhere in Avatar does it explicitly state that technology is the cause of an Earth where there's "no green left" (that's as close as I can recall to a quote from the lead character). It could just as easily been our tendency to breed like flies on a dung heap that led to the paving of the planet. It's also pretty clear that the main driving force behind the attempted rape of Pandora isn't Earth's government, but a greedy, conscienceless corporation.
It's typical of apologists for the on-going, real-life ecological devastation we're inflicting on our little blue planet to try to misrepresent Cameron's message as anti-technology. In fact it's clearly a cautionary tale against our current trend toward a global corporate oligarchy. The tech in the film is a tool, neither good nor evil. It's used by the heroes for positive purposes and the villains in the service of corporate greed.
Re:it's called "entertainment" (Score:3, Insightful)
Because discussions are interesting in themselves. What other justification do you need?
Re:White people suck in space (Score:4, Insightful)
Even smart people are stupid (Score:1, Insightful)
I think it was outright obvious that Avatar was criticizing bad uses of technology, as well as over exploitation of resources. The movie was not full of vagueness, or the kind of intellectual subtlety that gives people lots of room to dream up rival interpretations. The movie was simple, and it was not anti-technology.
I can also see how people who just aren't very good at critical thinking might come away from this movie with an anti-technology story in their heads. They saw guys in airplanes = bad, guys in trees = good, and didn't pay any closer attention than that.
I guess the world is full of such shallow-thinkers. I have accepted this. But it still annoys me when they post stupid articles like this one.
Re:Silly, Infantile Discussion (Score:3, Insightful)
* Look, Interstellar Travel! Now I can colonize in other star systems.
* Look, Interstellar Travel! Now I can plunder Unobtainium, but were going to mine it from a gravity well instead of mining from the Alpha Centrai asteroid belt...
* Look, Advanced Medical tech! Now I can fix broken spinal cords.
* Look, Advanced Medical tech! Now I can clone Aliens and play Dances with Wolves with them instead of just creating a Bio Agent to wipe them out from orbit....
etc.
Re:Dances With Smurfs. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:White people suck in space (Score:3, Insightful)
Sadly, I can't mod you insightful, as I've already posted in this thread.
Re:Typical Noble Savage Fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of this is standard noble savage stuff.
Ah, that old false dichotomy. There are vicious technocrats, noble technocrats, vicious savages, and noble savages. In evolutionary terms, there is very little difference between man in a cave and man in space: don't expect a few thousand years of civilisation to change our nature.
what do they do if one of their buddies is born with a genetic disease like Polycystic Kidney Disease
The same thing that happened 50 years ago, or that happens now to the majority of people who cannot afford treatment for the complex disease you mention. Now, are you arguing that society is necessarily more peaceful when there is the medical knowledge for everyone to lead a long, healthy life? Can I offer you Earth as a counterexample?
Also, in the real world packs of wolves and bears don't just leave you alone.
That pretty much depends on what part of the world you come from, and where you draw the line between savage and technocrat. Fairly hospitable weather, flora and fauna in southern England where I am now.
Tell me, friend, would you rather enjoy 30 free years or 70 in a cage? Of course we would both rather enjoy 70 free years, but where can one find that option today?
Re:Crap (Score:1, Insightful)
Parent was modded as insightful, but replace "technology" with "firearm" and I bet it wouldn't be modded as insightful. When, for a long time, many of the advances of the day in the technology arena were in firearms development (1800s). Remember, anything not occurring naturally is technology, whether it is high or low tech is up to the observer, but it is still technology. Even a sharpened stick is technology. Interesting how humans assign right/wrong based on perceived value and personal prejudice.
So, the point is, does technology kill people or do people kill people?
See wikipedia:
"Technology deals with human as well as other animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its natural environment."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology [wikipedia.org]
Well, it has to be... (Score:2, Insightful)
Technology is viewed as the downfall of man...it's the basis of the ManMadeGlobalWarming(TM) religion. However, technology has been nothing but a friend, as mankind finds his way into the future.
Remember "London Fog"? Not just a line of outerwear in the 60's, it pointed to clueless Americans that time in history where 20,000 coal fires kept Britain warm back in the days of Sherlock Holmes. This 'fog' was actually smog, so thick that people with gardens (most of them, actually) had to sweep off the soot if they planned to get anything out of them. It collected that badly.
But here comes technology; no one loves pollution, so not only can we use one large coal plant and run wires everywhere, we also have piped natural gas and the skys are clear. Coal isn't without it's faults, but as recently as the 70's, things were pretty good.
Now, if we can ever get the liberals to permit us to create nuclear power plants, it could be better! Not because of the CO2, but because they're cleaner in general.
But that's not all:
- The story was set in a way to make us guilty of the removal of the indians. Not just in the story line, but they go to the trouble of using a native American 'war woop'. But I didn't DO that. Same for slavery: not gonna feel guilty.
- And lets not forget how America goes to foreign shores and loots them until they're poor!
Bullshit. You people have jobs. Where do you think that money comes from? Where'd it come from before we had a thriving overseas economy?
For example, in India a lot of people got jobs, thanks to the unions pushing up the cost of American production. Thanks, Nick-da-fish and the boys! Ever see India in Google? Wow...desolation. They REALLY NEED our technology.
We brought air-cleaners, clean rooms, caused them to create infrastructure, and now people who might be begging are aswering phones. That's not evil. I wish we had someone who could do that, here!
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:3, Insightful)
The film was multi-layered and nuanced. The main message was to wake up, respect, and deal with the consequences of ecosystems, local cultures, and other ways of seeing. I loved it.
Re:White guilt (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's not forget that there are other reasons than 'white guilt' that people might feel this way, though. I certainly don't feel bad about what other peoples' ancestors did (my family hasn't been here that long) but I still do feel bad about anyone else's ancestors getting a bad shake. Heck, that applies to people who get a back shake today, too.
As for promoting 'multiculturalism and its anti-judgmental system of evaluating cultures', that just seems to be common sense to me. Why limit yourself to 1 culture's offerings when you can enjoy many?
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:3, Insightful)
The native american analogy is fitting, but the message is not so much as anti-technology (after all, the natives have their own technology) but rather an anti-imperialist, anti-douchebagness, anti-might-is-right message.
Re:Dances With Smurfs. (Score:2, Insightful)
When I go see a movie that is billed as 'entertainment', I am not there to be preached to about particular message.
When I square off against someone on a forum about, I know it will get nasty, but I'm there for that reason: to test my skills, my power of argument, and possibly to persuade some and be persuaded myself, if the case arises.
I don't want to live my whole life as if I was in a combative forum. And, once "entertainment" crosses over the line, I don't enjoy it. It's not entertainment anymore. It's not the purpose of seeing the movie.
Re:I was rooting for... (Score:3, Insightful)
...the blue people ever since they revealed what they were doing with the natives.
The takeover of the Native Americans, and the slavery of Africans, were the two most savage acts the United States every did. There was no way even a futuristic United States would allow such actions to proceed. I wouldn't be surprised after they went home there was some type of investigation and charges filed against the CEO and other people within the company for genocide. This is why we need to remember out past, or we will be doomed to repeat it.
A long time ago when we justified the hostile takeover of Native Americans, we considered them as "savages." Guess who the real savages were?
Like the posters before me have said, this isn't a statement on anti-technology, but how technology needs to be responsibly used.
Don't limit yourself to the history of the United States please. There is plenty of shame to go around the World for every empire or power that ever existed. Then you will realize that it wasn't necessarily "The United States did this or did that bad thing" but it is "Humans quest for power has no limits on one another."
More interesting opinion (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, the obvious : Nice graphics, of course, though still not quite out of the "uncanny valley" [wikipedia.org], where I'd want them to be. A nice evolutionary step, but certainly not something that won't be surpassed next month (year). It's a bit like those old Disney movies like fantasia "pushing the boundaries of animation". Great looking, but easily surpassed.
Imho the movie is massively anti-technology and pro-"magic". Magic in a sort of a mythological "natural religion" kind of way, and of course conveniently leaving out anything even remotely resembling an actual natural religion (just one example : all natural religions mandate (yes mandate) intra-religious wars between families, individuals and villages, or various combinations of that. Of course, deadly competition between inhabitants of the same place is a physical necessity in any non-agricultural religion, due to the massive inflexibility, unpredictability and unreliability of food sources, and the (natural) inability of a species to do birth control, resulting in exponentially increasing populations that regularly get "adjusted" by a famine or some such, a subject conveniently skipped over in the movie).
Before you ask, flying dragons, and other magical servile creatures seemlingly bread to replace everything from a helicopter to a toast maker do not count as "technology" in my mind. I do not find this strange at all. Nature has provided us with far less than it has provided these aliens. It seems gaia didn't love us from the start ... my ancestors never rode on flying dragons.
Another thing I find quite funny is the location of that village and that tree. What energy source would they have ? Given the extreme "coincidental" location they have, one would think it ... just might be those very same minerals. This would mean, of course, that all that "native" stuff is just "plundering" exactly the mineral source as the humans want. If that wasn't the case, imagine just how "unlucky" those natives must have been to build exactly there. But, of course, keeping mountains floating in the air is just so much more important than keeping humans alive (after all, the movie dialog makes clear that following any course of action other than acquiring those "unobtanium" minerals would result in massive casualties on earth. Of course you'd think that sort of urgency would make people appoint a military commander who is actually capable of dispatching multiple ships, or realize that a space-faring human race probably has options of using orbital bombardment, or even just sending one of those probes to make a *tiny* course correction on a meteor. Problem solved. The aliens obviously have no hope at all of repulsing any form of long-distance attack, whether that's missiles, ray weapons or even meteors).
Avatar as a suicide fantasy [doczero.org]
Given the reaction on other blogs this review will loosen quite a few feelings. Apparently it hits close to home for quite a few people. Great stuff for discussions.
Re:Curious. (Score:3, Insightful)
Similarly, I about damned near went berserk during the version of Beowulf which had Angelina Jolie in it. I've read that poem over 300 times. I've translated it from the original myself. That movie was straight up bullshit.
This movie seems to be of a new trend where poor story telling is "made up for" by fancy graphics to bring people into the theatre. The entirety of the new Star Wars trilogy was the same. 300 also made use of fancy graphics to make up for poor historical accuracy.
If they wanted to make a film about the American Indians, that's cool. I'd go see it if were weren't dressed up in computer-generated smurfs, poorly masked allegorical names, and a bunch of other bullshit.
I also tend not to really dig on science fiction films that much. I did enjoy Firefly/Serenity, and some older movies are pretty cool. I was a major fan of Jurassic Park, which of course uses Malcolm's rants to inject the commentary and opinion on man manipulating nature that was clearly the point of the whole exercise.
So, I think that this mostly has to do with my dislike of "blockbuster" type films than it does with the story per-se. Maybe I'm a pretentious private-school polo-shirt wearer who just happens to make his living off of a high school hobby that was spawned from my un-willingness to do math by hand rather than a "true geek" who eeks out over flashy graphics. Chances are I'm a total jerk like that.
But its not because I think that Indians got a raw deal and I don't want to be reminded that my great grandfather graduated West Point in 1883, was commissioned in the cavalry and actually did fight indians (incidentally, he was born on a plantation in 1853 and my family did own slaves, so I'm pretty much directly in line for blame of all the bad things to happen in this country). I just don't want to watch a bunch of computer-generated blue people fight against future East India Company because they couldn't find actors like Jimmy Stewart, Steve McQueen or Paul Newman 'cause the "movie stars" and the animators drove all the story telling and art out of mass-market film, causing me to have to suffer through the weird-ass shit on IFC if I want to see something where they're at least trying.
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is, that in the real world, might is right.
There isn't a single good thing in this world that lasts that isn't backed up by someone willing to kill or die for it.
It's a nice fantasy that it isn't true. You can even artificially create an environment where it seems true for a couple generations. But force wins out - always.
Re:Fascination With End of Times (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it has more to do with the fascination about the End of Times.
My grandmother believed all of my (at least) life that we lived in the end times, and that the apocalypse was near. It was -- for her. She died in 2003 at age 99 a few months before her 100th birthday. The apocalypse comes for us all, sooner or later.
In reality, I think this is where technology went wrong: instead of making our lives simpler and easier, it has ended up making them more complex and more stressful for us all!
That hasn't been my experience. If my car broke down when I was young, I'd have to walk to find a pay phone to call a tow truck. Now I keep a phone in my pocket. The cars themselves were more deadly -- no air bags, abs, the dash wasn't even padded. If I wanted popcorn I had to put oil in a pan, put the popcorn in, and watch it until it was done. Now I just throw a bag in the microwave and hit the "popcorn" button. My dad was an electrical lineman, and had to climb poles. By the time he retired they had bucket trucks; no more climbing.
I can't think of a single piece of tech that has made my life more stressful of complex; technology has only removed stress, gruntwork, and complexity. What tech has made you life more stressful and complex?
there's a point where you just have to think, "Yes, we may have gone too far..."
Aside from nuclear weaponry, how has it gone too far?
I think that point comes when you look at the world you live in and see that we are obsessed with death and mayhem on the news
That hasn't changed in my lifetime, and I'm not young.
many people suffer and we (as a collective) do nothing to aid their lives.
You have never seen a food pantry or homeless shelter? Two hundred years ago they had debtors' prisons.
If it's not in our interest to discover better ways to use technology to clear sand dunes and create better irrigation systems in the desert, it just won't happen.
I'm not sure I follow you there, but at any rate irrigating the desert doesn't sound like a good idea to me. The desert has its own ecosystems, irrigate it and they die.
Re:White people suck in space (Score:4, Insightful)
It's human nature, everything is about race any more. It's identity politics.
Fixed that for you
Re:Typical Noble Savage Fallacy (Score:4, Insightful)
Living in harmony with "nature" is like living in harmony with fire. They both have the same movtives, none. They both care about you in the same way, not at all. They both have the same feelings and desires about eating you.
As for what the Europeans did differently than the Native Americans with regard to their loved ones when they lacked the benefits of modern medicine. The Europeans invented scientific method and modern medicine. I've no doubt that the Native American's would have done so as well, eventually, but it would have come at some point after they figured out bronze.
Re:Taken out of context, clearly. (Score:5, Insightful)
We, as humans, abuse things by nature
We're not the only species that does that, and possibly all do. Elephants will make a green area into a desert. Before there was multicellular life, the anarobic bacteria changed the earth's entire atmosphere, filling it with the deadly oxygen. Those life forms that couldn't adapt to the poisonous atmosphere went extinct.
It's not human nature to abuse nature, nature abuses itself.
Re:Dances With Smurfs. (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find interesting, though, is how much the reviewer's hatred of that colored the rest of his review. For instance: "During the big battle scene, as dinosaurs were chowing down on soldiers, the middle-aged couple seated next to me were grinning happily delighted by the defeat and destruction of their own miserable species." So, it's "my species, right or wrong"? Party A unilaterally invades Part B's property, making war against them without provocation in order to take their stuff. Obviously only commie peacenik self-loathing liberals could possibly approve of Party A losing. Could anyone, ethically, fail to approve of Party A losing?
Imagine, for sake of argument, that(instead of a bunch of noble savages living in harmony with nature) the story had involved a rugged, self-sufficient band of human colonists, instead. These brave, decent, souls renounce the venality and softness, and collectivism of a dying earth and strike out to build their own future, by their own honest labor, on a different planet. A couple of generations later, the sinister corpronational minions of earth show up, looking to take what they have built. Had this been the story, the writer of that review would have loved it(and he wouldn't have been the only one, how many westerns involve the struggle by plain honest folks to hold on to their land in the face of corruption and oppression?). For extra credit, the story could even have been a thinly veiled allegory about abuse of Eminent Domain, that would really have gotten them going.
That is what irks me about this review. The reviewer hates the presence of the liberal environmentalist noble savages so much that his judgment is blinded to anything else. Their presence is so unacceptable that only a self-loathing hippie could possibly cheer their successful defense of themselves and their property(C'mon, does the goodness of the castle doctrine not carry over to blue people?). And the ridiculousness continues:
"For one thing, if the fate of humanity rests on the Pandora mission, you’d think the governments of Earth could find someone other than a backstabbing middle-management weasel and a blatantly psychotic colonel to run the show."
Actually, that is pretty much exactly what you'd expect. This is a mining mission not an epic heroic quest. Yeah, it is an important one; but it isn't as though the President Of Mankind is going to strap on his power armor and oversee things personally. They'll send a mid-level manager(presumably competent enough to achieve and/or backstab his way to a good rank in whatever metric they use) and a standard military detachment, it's just a few primitive aliens, after all, routine job. The goods are important; but they would have no reason to expect unusual difficulty in obtaining them.
"They laugh down the report of a scientist who obviously knows what she’s talking about, and has hard evidence to back up her position."
Yup, I totally can't think of any instances where politically, militarily, and/or culturally inconvenient science(or intelligence data, for that matter) has been belittled or ignored. None at all. Only those Hollywood liberals would dream up such a thing.
"All those military toys beloved by the right-wing warmongers of the military-industrial complex prove to be useless against the righteous fury of an aroused Gaia and her chosen champion, a redeemed soldier who has seen the error of his ways. Take that, Marine killbot slaves of Big Business."
Because it is, after all, only in the pernicious propaganda of limp-wristed liberals that asymmetric warfare can be harder than it looks, and high-tech hardware can meet low-tech countermeasures(any bets on whether the military killbots of the future are finally using encrypted video links?). Technological supremacy especially never fails in hostile terrain that your forces are unused to operating in.
Re:Dances With Smurfs. (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a hard time thinking of a movie that isn't preaching a message of sorts.
The Dark Knight? Certainly has a message - heroes aren't always applauded.
The Shawshank Redemption? Several, one of which is that sometimes we have to suffer and crawl through a mile of shit to come out squeeky clean on the other side.
Toy Story? Friends are important
Just because you happen to like the message being preached to you, doesn't mean it isn't being preached.
Re:Dances With Smurfs. (Score:5, Insightful)
When I go see a movie that is billed as 'entertainment', I am not there to be preached to about particular message.
Might as well go and see Mall Cop or some other "mind-numbing" entertainment.
A movie is just another medium for storytelling. People typically like stories that have value. Some teach lessons, some show insight into the human condition, others are commentary on the human condition. Even "summer blockbusters" recognize that a movie can't subsist on fancy computer graphics and big explosions alone, and at least pay lip service to this idea.
You're welcome to stick to your slapstick comedies. But don't go watch a movie that tells a story, and then complain that there's actually a real storyline.
Re:Iraq (Score:1, Insightful)
For the record, I don't think it is a fair comparison because we're not stealing oil in Iraq. The Iraqi people own the oil...
Maybe in theory, in practice the oil is controlled by a government that came to power in a process heavily controlled by the USA and that government remains heavily dependent on the USA. Saying that the Iraqis own the oil is like saying that a small child, rather than his parents, owns his toys.
...and receive every penny for selling the oil.
Not directly. First, the supposedly substantial cost of "extracting" the oil is skimmed off the top (mostly by foreign corporations) and even then the remaining money is only spent on projects that are supposedly for the benefit of the Iraqi people (the money is not given to them directly).
If anything, going into Iraq was a fiscal nightmare for the US. We're footing the bill for the war, and for reconstruction. We're funneling tons of money into Iraq,...
But the Iraq war has been a very very good dream for the high level executives at companies like Haliburton (lots of profits to justify fabulous incentive bonuses) - executives who happened to be close friends with the Bush administration.
It would have been much cheaper just to give the Bush/Cheney cronies the money directly - rather than funneling it through a ridiculously inefficient war. But, ironically it's the efficient method that's illegal.
...and liberated 30 million people from a cruel dictator.
There's a school of thought that war is bad, really bad, so bad that there are only two circumstances where a country is allowed to go to war: either the other country attacks first or the other country is in the process of doing something so bad (e.g. all out genocide) that there is broad consensus in the international community that war is absolutely necessary. In particular, one leader disliking another leader and wanting "regime change" is not, even slightly, an acceptable justification for war.
Now I know the Bush administration tries to get off on all kinds of technicalities: the current Iraq war is merely a resumption of the first Iraq war because Iraq supposedly violated the cease fire (e.g. with it's supposed WMD). Thing is, if you step away from all the bizarre technicalities and look at the big picture - the current war on Iraq is an unjustified war of aggression. Incidentally, other leaders, besides Bush, that have pursued wars of aggression include Hitler and Saddam Hussein.
I suppose, ultimately, we have to admit that we don't know whether wars of aggression are always bad. Maybe sometimes they're good. Maybe we need to move toward a world where countries are much more eager and willing to go to war - where war is a routine tool to be used to advance a country's global standing.
But there are two concerns. First, at a practical level, a case could be made that WWI was result of countries being too eager to use war as to advance their global standing (and, incidentally, that WWII was basically a resumption of WWI). Second, and more fundamentally, war results in large numbers of innocent people being killed and injured. War may also prevent certain other people from being killed and injured. But we are left with a moral dilemma: is it OK to kill certain innocent people in order to save the lives of certain other innocent people. For example, is it OK to perform fatal medical experiments on certain innocent people (without their consent), if we expect the research to save the lives of certain other innocent people.
Whenever I hear the claim that the Iraqi people are better off, I think to myself: "Even the ones who are dead?"
But given that Cameron is a vocal Democrat who drives a Prius...
Oh, the horror! Driving a Prius is far worse than being a child molesting, mass murdering, drug dealing, terrorist.
...and has suggested Bush lied about Iraq t
Re:More interesting opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
There's nothing in the movie that makes it "anti-technology" save that the bad guys have it and the good guys don't. Thus you could project onto the movie that it is therefore anti-technology if you expect it to be. But the Pandorans do have a very sophisticated technology it seems. The moon may well be an engineered biosphere. You can't even say that they've since lost the knowledge they once had as it is presumably still contained within the trees as their ancestors memories. But even if the Pandorans are not the result of technology, there's nothing in the movie that actually says "technology is bad". It says thoughtless plundering of resources is bad. It says displacing people so you can take their land is bad. If it's the belief of some that development of technology is inseparable from destruction of the biosphere, then I call those people pessimists. For them, maybe they see it as anti-technology, but I challenge people to actually find something that supports that rather than merely their being inclined to see it that way.
An alternate explanation (Score:1, Insightful)
Who is it that really suffers from this white guilt? I would argue that Cameron is telling one of the most simplistic stories that we have. It's a simple tale of good guys vs bad guys with the lesson that greed is bad. Not a whole lot of depth there, and hardly controversial.
When Jesus railed against money changers and warned of the difficulties of the rich getting into Heaven, was he suffering from hebrew guilt? Or was he simply stating a simple truth?
Don't hurt others.
Don't take their stuff.
Don't let things replace your essential humanity.
I find that the people who see 'White Guilt' in all of these archetypal stories are merely projecting their own emotions. Perhaps they are the ones who feel guilty. They are the ones who cast 'America' as the bad guy.
It seems that if any story today has a big corporate or military bad guy in it, conservatives will get their panties in a bunch because the bad guys are 'obviously' a stand-in for America. Yet, they are the ones making that conclusion. I wonder why that is? It says more about the critic than the artist.
Re:White guilt (Score:1, Insightful)
You mention "privileged white people" and an "African American underclass". Can you explain explain why white people are privileged and African Americans are an underclass?
LESS interesting opinion (Score:1, Insightful)
You clearly "missed it." The movie never portrayed the technology as bad, but rather, the inclination to over-exploit natural resources (and to push around people who aren't as technologically advanced) was bad. Watch it (and PAY ATTENTION this time) and you will see.
Just because this opinion is yours does not make it more interesting to anyone else.
In fact, I merely found it more verbose.
I am not at all impressed.
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:White guilt (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a modern phenomenon that such guilt is felt by people that are completely unconnected to slavery.
So if the technology haves want to slum it with the have-nots, it shouldn't be any big surprise that they embrace an ideology that makes themselves the criminal and thus flagellating themselves thereby redeeming themselves.
But for it to be SELF-flagellation, they must therefore associate themselves with the ones being flagellated, the ones portrayed as criminals. That's funny because I sure don't see myself in the antagonists in the movie. Why should I? Because they're mostly white? The ones who are redeemed are not the criminals in the first place. I associate with them, not the ones ho put greed above human life.
That you associate the portrayal of, say, the genocide of an indigenous people for the sake of greed as a bad thing with "white guilt" is quite telling, I think. I suppose you don't think the humans remaining on Pandora should do anything to help the Navi recover from the damage wrought by other humans, because doing so would just be more examples of self-flagellation over something they didn't do.
You must really hate Dances With Wolves. After all, the atrocity portrayed there really happened, and there's no way anyone could point that out without trying to make you, personally, feel responsible. So therefore we must not pass any value judgment at all, while also avoiding the evil of non-judgmental multiculturalism. Cus that's not dissonant.
Re:Fern Gully in Space (Score:1, Insightful)
And Star Wars (1977) was a generic damsel in distress story in space. It still rocked.
More arrogant opinion (Score:1, Insightful)
I have no respect for someone who titles thier post "my opinions are more interesting."
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:3, Insightful)
Selective breeding really is a very different type of modification than creating trans-genic product. It's the difference between setting up a date between friends and an arranged , forced marriage, if you will. I think the current pace of genetic modification is irresponsible, because it is driven by short-term expediencies.
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dances With Smurfs. (Score:5, Insightful)
That line only exists in your head. Get over it.
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually.. it may have.
If for some reason we couldn't get to the US (say the indians ruthlessly killed anyone one that landed and had a small navy which could destroy the few colony ships)... and then a large genocidal nation arose in europe who chose to kill anyone that wasn't of their race and there was no u.s. economic powerhouse to fight them but just that weak "red skin nation" across the ocean, it's quite possible that wiping out the indians saved a hundred million lives a couple centuries later.
Re:And so will the Na'Vi. (Score:3, Insightful)
As I watched the human colonists column off to leave Pandora, I was thinking, "In a few years an automated drone will arrive in orbit to bathe the Na'Vi villages in a neutron death-ray and solve the problem forever."
You have an orbital position, right? So you drop inert objects on the heads of the Na'Vi at orbital velocities. The Na'Vi die without any possibility of the weapon malfunctioning, and without the Na'Vi having any ability to defend or counterattack.
Re:See, technology is like beer. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:3, Insightful)
So you're saying that there is no difference between these low-tech methods used for centuries and the new, direct gene manipulation we have today?
And given our incomplete understanding of nutrition and our increasing bad dietary habits, why do you think changing our food so quickly is necessarily a good thing?
I'm all for GMO research, but it needs to be done properly, for many reasons.
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about the rise of what is essentially this age's Rome? The nation that had a major contribution in stopping the largest mass-killings of recent history.
People conquer, it is what we do, usually it speeds up human technological evolution by giving resources and space to the most advanced civilisation. Rome conquered large chunks of Europe and Europe thrived, The English conquered huge chunks of the world and their impact lingers today.
Harsh as the loss of life seems, without the suppression and, yes, murder of extremely under developed (technology wise) peoples, humanity would be nowhere near as developed as we are today. Now whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is entirely a matter of opinion, but I personally like having the possibility of being able to go into space before I die (as an example).