Anti-Technology Themes in James Cameron's Avatar 870
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.
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. I don't think it was anti-technology, but rather all about using your resources wisely. The scene where they asked for forgiveness when they had to kill a predator basically laid it all out. They understood that there were necessities, but they would do them as needed to survive. They also didn't mock the offworlders for what they knew. They complained that their 'cup was already full', meaning they were inflexible about learning a new way.
Given their native capabilities to network with other animals and plants, store memories, travel quickly via land and air, and easy accessibility to huge stores of food due to native flora and fauna, it's not surprising that they weren't technologically advanced. They simply didn't need it.
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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:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes. Now, do you think that these capabilities evolved naturally? Or that the entire planet was something designed? I mean, what evolutionary pressure could possibly drive an animal to having a built-in "make me your mind-slave" link?
That's easy. The sex drive. It's already pretty close. Some people will already do anything their partner asks, and that's just for the promise of future sex.
Couple that with a neural interface, and every guy I know is a goner.
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:5, Informative)
Another hint: floating mountains, people. Come on.
I'm going to really show my geekiness here, but the floating mountains were explained in the original screenplay, though granted only hinted at in the movie. The "Unobtainium" is a room-temperature superconductor. It is well known that a superconductor in presence of a magnetic field will float, and if you look around the entire area it shows curved constructs of rock that look suspiciously like lines of magnetic force... like melted iron twisted by the magnet. This was hinted at because the guy running the base (whose name I forget) had a piece of Unobtainium that floated in a magnetic field on his desk. Although this raises questions like why they didn't just mine the floating mountains, it's still a cool and at least reasonably plausible explanation... at least if you try not to think about it too hard :)
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:4, Interesting)
you must be referring to Bt corn. i can believe that pollen could do what you describe, but at the same time I know that it could have been prevented with the proper promoter on the Bt gene. there's no need for pollen to express the peptide pesticide. fortunately, corn pollen is absurdly massive compared to most other pollen, and doesn't fly far.
what I was really asking about was the irresponsible use of transgenics. you say you work for a company involved with them. have you seen the amount of paperwork needed to even get transgenic seed? the amount of regulation surrounding transgenics is enormous, and I have never really heard of a biologically-irresponsible use in the field (not that it's impossible).
transgenics will save this planet, mark my words.
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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.
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Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:5, Informative)
I thought it was a rather clever nod [wikipedia.org] to exactly what it was.
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
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.
Re:More interesting opinion (Score:4, Informative)
You can't produce technology with metal for a large population without having things like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingham_Canyon_Mine [wikipedia.org].
You can't produce food for a large population without things like this: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B0CE0D81438E433A25757C1A9679D94699ED7CF [nytimes.com]
WHEAT FIELD OF 25,000 ACRES.; It Would Take One Man Thirty Years to Plow and Plant Such a Field as One Californian Owns.
http://www.truthabouttrade.org/news/editorials/trade-policy-analysis/15288-china-moves-forward-on-biotech-crops [truthabouttrade.org]
China is the world's largest producer and consumer of rice with 72 million acres devoted to rice annually
technology always involves raping (to a larger or smaller degree) the biosphere. with less people the biosphere heals faster than it is destroyed.
Without things like Bingham Canyon Mine, you don't have affordable computers.
It's at a point that I do not think is sustainable. I expect some kind of huge blowout in 30-50 years. Maybe we will invent our way out of it, but I think it's reached a point where new inventions are now just making the eventual blowout worse.
---
The movie implicitly supports a small (I'd say minuscule) population where few individuals know how to do anything except hunt, gather, and sing.
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Well it's a massive economic bust because our economy is structured entirely about selling things constantly, rather than wealth production and retention. And the most effective proven way of reducing birth rates is increased educational opportunities, particularly for women. But agreed, as things are currently set up, it's a big problem.
Nice sig., btw.
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:5, Funny)
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What's that wooshing sound I hear?
About as anti-technology as... (Score:3, Interesting)
Star Wars.
From "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed", through Luke "finding his way" in a swamp on Degobha, to the final battle of stick wielding Ewoks versus the evil technological Empire.
Utterly anti-technological.
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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.
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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.
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That struck me right away, but more like the "myth of the noble savage" which originated in the 17th centure as a rise of primitivism, but got held up during the romance period in literature, and now again as a counter-reaction to the silly or hateful portrayal of American Indians of 1930s-1960s in Westerns and what not.
But it is just as one-sided, often the noble savage is too saintified, the American Indians were singing kum-bay-ah holding
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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: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).
James Cameron making anti-technology movie? (Score:4, Funny)
You mean the same guy who bought us such pro-technology, pro-big government, pro-big business block-busters as Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Aliens, The Abyss, Titanic, and The Dark Angel Series has now gone over to the dark side?
Say it isn't so!
Re:Who said it was anti-technology? (Score:5, Informative)
Except of course that the Native Americans were nomadic, had no notion of property rights (unlike the Na'vi and their Hometree), and rejected the idea of owning land.
Ah yes, I remember hearing about how the Cherokee uprooted their longhouses to follow the great fields of corn as they traveled around the prairie.
But the ones I really feel sorry for are the Pueblo tribes. Carrying those cliff dwellings around must have been rough! No wonder they could not resist the mighty white man's manifest destiny, they were all tired out.
There is no problem with that, just don't expect not to be forced off someone else's property that they've rightly claimed.
There is so much wrong with that sentence it's hard to know where to start. "Rightly claimed" here means "someone on another continent decided that they owned this land, and had the right to give it away".
I see your webpage links to "Objectivist Roundup". Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about the concept of eminent domain?
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So, Native Americans certainly weren't in universal agreement about land ownership, but was that more out of convenience more than any notion of fundamental property rights? Those that subsisted off grazing animals followed the animals around. Those that lived off corn stayed in place for much longer periods, but even then had to move around to maintain land quality. Those that found a nice tall mountain liked the defensi
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I didn't realize that all Native Americans fit this stereotype.
If you study Native American religions, you'll see there are a variety of believes that span the variety of tribes across the country. Some tribes were nomadic out of necessity. Many plains Indians travelled to follow a herd, hence the mobility of the teepee.
However, not all Native homes were so mobile. And many natives did have strong ties to specific locations. Devil's Tower comes to mind.
http://www.aaanativearts.com/article471.html [aaanativearts.com]
And so will the Na'Vi. (Score:3, Interesting)
>but Native Americans essentially lost...
And that was my final take of the move, as the colonists left Pandora - the Na'Vi are fucked. Just like the brief glory for the Indians at Little Big Horn, in the end it provoked a tidal wave of retribution against which there was no hope of resistance.
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
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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.
Fern Gully in Space (Score:2, Interesting)
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See, technology is like beer. (Score:5, Insightful)
Technology, like beer, is the solution to, and the cause of, all of mankind's problems.
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Re:See, technology is like beer. (Score:5, Funny)
So you're saying Skynet will run on Rickards Red?
Rickard was a deplicant.
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.
Dances With Smurfs. (Score:5, Funny)
Dances With Smurfs. That's what it was.
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I personally prefer the Avatar review by the inimitable Dr. Zero: The Suicide Fantasy [hotair.com]
I would summarize his article, but frankly I could never do it justice. Click through and read. It's fantastic.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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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:Dances With Smurfs. (Score:5, Insightful)
That line only exists in your head. Get over it.
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:5, Funny)
No, it was Dances with Thundercats.
Thundercats are badass; Smurfs are decidedly not.
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: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.
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Sadly, I can't mod you insightful, as I've already posted in this thread.
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
That's what he said (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a "people who try to take things from others by force suck" movie.
Exactly, a "white people suck" movie because the implication is that all white people ever do it take by force, except for one lone hero who "breaks the mold".
You are just echoing the reason why the movie thinks white people suck.
Re:White people suck in space (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:White people suck in space (Score:4, Informative)
I'd say the only flaw in Cameron's vision for this movie was casting too many white people. I don't think it was done on purpose, but it gives some people the fodder to say it's a "white people suck" movie. Had they cast a black guy in the main role (or as the evil CEO, or the Marine Colonel), it would have been really hard to say "white people suck".
I think casting calls, contracts, agents, schedules, budgets etc. had more to do with who got cast than any perceived message the movie is supposedly trying to preach.
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How many blacks had speaking parts in the movie?
What percentage of the words by humans were said by blacks (much less asians).
On the "bad guy" side, I am fairly certain 100% of the words were by whites, and 95% were by white males.
It should be noted (Score:5, Informative)
That it was a private military force that did the attacking, not a governmental one. Presumably, the government on Earth was not willing to allow any military attack on the Natives, hence their attempts for 5+ years for a diplomatic solution.
Also it should be noted that a statement such as "no greenery left on Earth" is an exaggeration at best, considering life would die on the planet without the Oxygen Cycle. Unless the Humans attempted to develop machines to replace the functions of the plants.
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This [wikipedia.org] is a plant?
Re:It should be noted (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, isn't it obvious? Colorful tank? Check. Black tube thingy? Check. Odd wires? Yep. Carrying belts? Yes! Clearly a plant.
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.
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Same argument isn't it.
I think mankind in general is a teen currently, sometimes self destructive, sometimes moody, sometimes passed out cold on someones couch or throwing up in wake of a hangover. Like teens, future is an unknown. Sometimes teens fail to live long enough to grow up, but mostly they do and then look back to their wild years in wonder.
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Wow. +100 insightful.
Someone tell the entire US population (including government) this! Just because someone points out flaws with this country, and there are many, does not mean they wish to destroy it.
Someone who wants to destroy you will keep the flaws to themselves and exploit them at every opportunity. Someone who points your flaws out to you is giving you the opportunity to improve. If you don't even make the effort to improve at that point, you're inviting the attack and you deserve it when it happen
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".
Re:Crap (Score:5, Funny)
Subject (Score:3, Funny)
"harnesses the most advanced computer animation techniques imaginable"
Really? Because all I get from the trailers is that it's an updated version of The Smurfs.
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.
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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
Re:Typical Noble Savage Fallacy (Score:5, Informative)
A friend who actually lived for two years with a south american tribe claimed that crippled babies were drowned as quickly as possible.
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.
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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
Re:Typical Noble Savage Fallacy (Score:5, Interesting)
Packs of wolves and bears don't leave you alone there, either, as Jake found out. They leave you alone if they don't know you're there, you're smart enough to stay out of their areas, not piss them off, etc.
The Na'vi aren't peaceful people. They're warriors. Living in harmony with nature, in the real world, means that sometimes you eat a bit of nature, and sometimes it eats you. The movie did not portray a Disney-esqe vision. We know things in their own environment think they're tasty, and we know this is not the first "time of great sorrow", and the last wasn't that long ago. IMO, it's an amazingly beautiful vision of a world, but hardly an Eden.
I don't know anything about PKD, but from the movie it's fair to assume people who aren't healthy don't become full members of the tribe. I found it an interesting concept. Which is better, a society that requires everyone to be productive, or a society (like ours) that encourages people to be unproductive (living on welfare, begging on the streets, living in their parents' basements until they're 35...). Neither is perfect. Our society has a tremendous surplus, so we can accommodate a lot of unproductive people. Societies that can't, don't. I didn't get the impression the Na'vi don't have enough to go around, and they simply didn't address your point at all. I suppose when they need "modern" medicine, they do the same thing we do when we need 22nd century medicine.
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It doesn't matter if that culture is the Wild West, Roman Legions, or Prehistory, how often do you see someone going to the bathroom in a movie if it's not for comedic effect?
To dismiss the idea of living sustainably as "White Guilt", or "Noble Savage", or general "Crazy Leftist" propaganda is missing the point of the movie. You don't have to go back to the woods and hunt in a loincloth, you just have to recognize that the our current system of living is n
glass half empty or half full? (Score:2)
you've chosen to cast this in a negative light as against something. the alternative view is that is is promoting a more rational approach to resource utilization. the easiest way to demonstrate this is using something you can relate to: our own behavior.
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.
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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 cult
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:White guilt (Score:4, Interesting)
It's sometimes shocking to me how much of life is lost via the conveniences of modern technology, not to mention the loss of character that results from lack of experience.
-Oz
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...
Re: (Score:2)
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?
Re:Why assume the Na'vi are low-tech? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because discussions are interesting in themselves. What other justification do you need?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This movie actually is deep, and merits a deep discussion.
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:Who says "we" are drawn to it? (Score:4, Interesting)
This weekend, when my wife and I needed to get out for a little bit, we gambled and saw it. To my surprise, I didn't hate it. In fact I enjoyed it. I wouldn't say it's the best movie of the year or going to sweep the Academy Awards like I've heard from some, but it was very well done.
Don't get me wrong, I still criticize the movie. Specifically the design of some of the wildlife (some of the designs just seemed to vary from impractical to unnecessary). There were some things that just seemed "alien for the sake of alien".
Yes, it's a "going native" film like Dances with Wolves (even Cameron said that was part of his inspiration) but it really does stand on it's own.
Re: (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. Tha
I got something different from that movie. (Score:4, Informative)
I was astounded by the organic synaptic link technology the Navi had. The Navi were possibly more advanced than we were. Their organic synaptic link tech was more advanced than anything we have. The thing is, they didn't develop weapons. Their entire planet was a linked up hive mind.
What new possibilities could this technology have had? could they start growing Organic ships like the Vorlons from Babylon 5? I'd imagine the Navi probably had better math and science than us.
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.
Re: (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.
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.
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: (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."
Re: (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 bee
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.