[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')While I'm all for protection of the natural world and the natural habitats, I really dislike all this outright Gaia worship. If you ever find yourself in a survival situation in the wilderness, your survival depends on viewing nature not as benevolent goddess, but as a cruel and merciless adversary who will take advantages of your misfortune at every opportunity.

[SeaGypsy]

+1 Gampy.
This film is the closest I have come to an acid trip without any drugs.

[lexicon]

Peak Oil Deconstruction: Avatar

Warning to snobby intellectual purists: this is NOT some scrutinizing, academic, according-to-Jacques Derrida deconstruction. This is the ravings of a movie lover who for over five years views every experience through the prism of Peak Oil awareness. So every time that I review a movie on this blog, whether it be documentary or fiction, new release or classic, this is the filter that I am using to attain perspective; to explain its personal meaning. Trying to explain what the writer or director meant can only go so far before you start guessing what they meant. No such pretense exists in my reviews, I know exactly what it means to me!

Now, for my review of Avatar:

First of all, I get it. I get why this has become a cultural phenomenon to gross over $1 billion worldwide. I get why many compare their first viewing of Avatar to their first viewing of Star Wars when that movie (A New Hope, not the prequels) first came out in theaters. It is a singularly spectacular cinematic experience that comes along once in a generation. This is due not only to its groundbreaking special effects, but because the effects are in the service of a story that has a mythological quality to it; I regret Joseph Campbell is no longer around to point out the particulars with Avatar the way he did with Star Wars.

The conflict within Avatar is as timeless as a tribal war whoop and as timely as the blast of an IED. Our protagonist, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is a paralyzed Marine chosen to replace his dead brother on a scientific mission to the planet Pandora in the year 2154. Ostensibly, he is chosen to help Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) with her work "collecting samples" of plant and animal life on Pandora and maintaining diplomatic relations with the Na'Vi, the indigenous blue people who live there. But almost as soon as he arrives, Jake is pulled aside by Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who gives him the opportunity to act as a covert military operative and collect intelligence for the Colonel. Quaritch is the muscle behind a corporate-military entity called Resources Development Administration run by Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi). Their goal is to obtain a mineral called Unobtanium, which exists in large quantities right where the Na'Vi reside.

Aside from the interplanetary travel aspect, this is a very familiar story: an empire searching for natural resources without which they cannot grow their economy finds it in an area outside their political control. This is the story of Peak Oil, with a cornucopian twist: if you cannot have infinite growth within a finite sphere, find another sphere to plunder. Unobtanium is the symbolic equivalent of oil in the 22nd century. The etymology of the word unobtainium seems to foreshadow the futility of the quest for this empire. For within every region where valuable resources lie resides native people with their own prior claims and needs. Almost without exception this is a recipe for conflict. Nor is this the first time the invading forces in Avatar have faced this conflict. When Quaritch gives Jake his covert mission, he prefaces this by talking about his previous military tours of duty. I don't think it was an accident that writer/director James Cameron chose Venezuela as an example where Quaritch served.

While Jake begins his mission on Pandora linked with his Avatar, a genetically bred human/Na'Vi hybrid, he is separated from his team by a dinosaur-like creature that chases him off a waterfall. Jake survives, but because night ops are not allowed, his team returns to base without him. Alone to fend for himself that night, he is surrounded by a pack of wolf-like creatures ready to attack, but is saved by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), a young Na'Vi female. She chastises him for his ignorance, but brings him to her tribe, the Omaticaya, because he has a "strong heart" and attracts the seeds of Eywa, wispy floating seeds of a sacred tree, which Neytiri says are "very pure spirits". After meeting her parents, the King and Queen, it is decided that the will of Eywa, their Goddess, is that Jakesully, as they call him, should live with the Omaticayan and Neytiri will teach him their ways.

Structurally, Avatar works because Jake is ignorant and curious. His journey becomes our journey. As he learns about the Omaticayan, how they survive on Pandora and their rites of passage, so do we. Learning about the people of Pandora also means learning about the environment of Pandora. There is a connection between the Na'Vi and the forests of Pandora that Jake learns from Neytiri: all energy is borrowed and one day we have to give it back. It is almost as if the Na'Vi have taken the law of entropy and given it a spiritual component. Understanding these connections, I fell in love with this beautiful world, just as Jake does. Every time Jake leaves his Avatar, there is a hunger to return that he feels and so do we.

As Jake falls in love, with Pandora and the Na'Vi in general and with Neytiri specifically, he comes to regret his covert role and the intelligence he has fed Colonel Quaritch. The intelligence that is most damaging is that the greatest concentration of Unobtanium rests where the Hometree stands, which is where the Omaticaya live. And as the impatient RDA starts bulldozing into the Na'Vi land, Jake is forced to make a choice between what he considers to be "the real world", where the Na'Vi live in communion with their planet, and "the dream", where human beings deplete the natural resources of the planet in the name of infinite economic growth. Quaritch tries to appeal to Jake's baser nature, asking how he could "betray your own race". But Jake is operating on a deeper consciousness of race. To quote blogger Ran Prieur, "Every one of us has ancestors who lived more or less like the Na'vi, and who were violently conquered by disconnected, resource-extracting cultures. If we all stop identifying with those cultures, the whole game is over. We did not conquer the Indians. The Babylonians, the Romans, the English, the Spaniards, the Americans conquered us... but not completely. The reason Avatar is so popular, and so important, is that it is helping us to remember who we are." Jake's real betrayal is of his resource-extracting culture which operates under a paradigm of infinite economic growth.

This choice is the same that we face on this planet in the year 2010. Peak Oil and Global Climate Change are flip sides of the same coin: overconsumption of fossil fuels are destroying the way we live and in a worst case scenario may destroy human life itself. It was a chilling moment for me when Jake pleaded for Eywa's help in leading the Na'Vi to victory by telling her, "See the world we come from: there's no green there. They've killed their mother, and they're going to do the same thing here." This is the voice of the Ghost of Christmas Future. This is what will happen if continuing the paradigm of infinite economic growth by any means necessary (i.e. war for oil) remains the policy of the industrial society. All the good will and best intentions won't save civilization until we wake up and understand as Michael Ruppert does, "Money represents the ability to do work and energy is the ability to do work. One is a symbol. The other is reality." We must change the way money works or we will perish. How will we achieve that? Ran Prieur has another good insight, "The important thing is that we make the shift from an extractive economy to a sustaining economy, and from the made world to the found world. And we might not be able to make that shift once and for all -- we might have to keep making it again and again."

Then again, we could just find a way to transport humans faster than the speed of light...

[evgeny]

The end of the working week, and want to talk about something quiet, not economic. For example, about the film "Avatar."

We will not talk about special effects, although, of course, they are impressive. Let's talk about the senses. What plot? Formally: people want to offend the "green men" because they have something that people need. The question that the little people would be good to ask, is not even - and send people to man the agent, who is tormented, tormented, but ultimately decides that people are not quite right ... The question is, how well does that mean?

Very simple. Let us, instead of "green men" put the Iraqis, but instead of the mysterious "something" that they have, put regular oil. Accordingly, instead of abstract "people" in the film - specific Americans, more precisely, of U.S. citizens. For the greater analogy, we note that the operation itself forced "green men" refers to the original, British version of the film as well as called the U.S. operation against Iraq. "Shock and Awe", it seems. And what happens? What if the Americans need oil, then those who possess it should quietly go away because of "who did not hide, I (American) not guilty.

This is - old and old American position. It is thanks to her were destroyed by the Indians, who had land that needed to Americans, more precisely, the citizens of the United States, and before that - the British settlers. Note that the same Spaniards conducted themselves in America much more humane and do not engage in mass genocide. Q: And why, actually.

There are at this point is an interesting hypothesis. The Spanish were Catholic. That is, confessed Christian precepts, including "Thou shalt not kill", "Thou shalt not steal" and so on. And not that they are right now because all of them complied, but a common understanding of what is good and what is bad, they have been sufficiently clear, that is the basis of their behavior lay MORALS.

But the British and later U.S. citizens, all different. The British have been Protestants, and representatives of the "West" global project for which the fundamental role played by the term "freedom". We understand, of course, in the framework of this project. That is, as the right of any person to choose for themselves one set of commandments, which he likes. But not entirely without restrictions, there will be chaos. And so the "West" project in place MORALITY comes - LAW.

In the Christian, Islamic, "Red" (communist) projects can not kill because it is - bad wrong. And in the "West" - just because it is prohibited by law. If the law says nothing about "green men" - you can kill them. Of course, just doing stupid - what's the point. But if they have something that we need - why do not you kill them? Not punishable ...

The private security company Blackwater in Iraq have killed dozens of people. Just like that, opened fire and killed him. They came under the U.S. Supreme Court - just because the story was leaked to the press (and how not leaked?), For political reasons it had to respond. Court "heroes" liberated. Technically - because of irregularities in the collection of evidence, actually - because American law does not say anything about it being impossible to kill Iraqis. That is, no, of course, something was written in the abstract, but it is furnished so many restrictions (suddenly unarmed Arab for his aggressive scared armed to the teeth with an American citizen?) That the meaning is lost.

There are, however, the law, unlike morality, is one more subtlety. Morality is always a man, but the law requires more than the Code and the police, court, prison ... And if it all disappears, like in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, the horror begins ... Well, actually, if there is no law, and "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal" - is an abstraction, you need to enjoy the moment, that is, to rob and kill ... What happened in those days in the city ...

Of course, far from being all U.S. citizens are imbued with the values of "the West" project, although they are intensively introduced in the territory of this country. But that does not help: the right of that country's elite is this global project, for which the humane treatment of people, especially those whom it considers the losers, not peculiar. Actually, while they will be lost almost all, except, perhaps, the Chinese, and, accordingly, are working to destroy this country. Of course, the reader of this page understand that they are seriously mistaken, but he must also understand that when the sense of this error comes up to them, no one will not find it. However, it is not quite on the topic of this article.

A paper is actually about the film. In which the protagonist discovers that his morality is more important than any particular purpose. That is, the film - is deeply humanistic and extremely anti-Western. Surprisingly enough for Hollywood, which usually acts as a propaganda tool "of the West" global project.

[Jotapay]

Hollywood is still the propaganda machine. You haven't seen all the green commercials by oil and tech corporations lately? My intranet at work is plastered with green messages from corporate PR.

This is about the 15th different interpretation of this movie that I've seen.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evgeny', ' ')Note that the same Spaniards conducted themselves in America much more humane and do not engage in mass genocide. Q: And why, actually.

There are at this point is an interesting hypothesis. The Spanish were Catholic. That is, confessed Christian precepts, including "Thou shalt not kill", "Thou shalt not steal" and so on. And not that they are right now because all of them complied, but a common understanding of what is good and what is bad, they have been sufficiently clear, that is the basis of their behavior lay MORALS.

[pablonite]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evgeny', 'S')urprisingly enough for Hollywood, which usually acts as a propaganda tool "of the West" global project.

[SeaGypsy]

I think you draw an exceedingly long bow here Evgeny. In several ways.

The assertion of the morality of pre protestants, as pointed to by Ludi, is absurd.
Protestantism is the assertion that the people have the right to read and understand with their own hearts and minds, the bible, the truth and the law. The illiterate have the right to enquire without end as to the wisdom and nature of all manner of endeavour.

Catholic Spaniards commonly sailed into remote communities around the world, set up a makeshift cathedral (a cross and icons on a beach) then lined up the people, screamed at them in Latin for a few hours then demanded pennance. The leaders either bended their knees before the 'cross of Jesus' or were garrotted in front of the rest of the village. Soon enough, they had a new bunch of Catholics.

How this is relevant to Avatar is beyond me. It seems you have a preoccupation?

As to the propoganda element, my view is that the west is gearing up the citizenry for green revolution (read BAU but greenish) under the mantle of global warming mitigation.
Because most people only want a shallow version of reality, Avatar is a nice prelude to the 'greening' of the citizenry of the west. Peak oil is not mentioned in either Avatar or in the AGW campaign; even though it is obvious to the free minded and well reseached that peak oil is the most serious problem imminently facing BAU.

Jesus was not a Catholic. He was a rebellious Jew who to this day is hated by the Jewish authorities who he despised.The life of Jesus may be more relevant than long winded political spins to Avatar.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', '
')How this is relevant to Avatar is beyond me. It seems you have a preoccupation?

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pablonite', '
')I think trying to apply some sort of philosophical categorization on a piece of shiat like that is a waste of time. Ah, that's about it!

[SeaGypsy]

I agree Mos. Except I would replace peak oil with peak everything.
Where I work, aboriginal people are being paid off their traditional lands to allow mining of all kinds of things: oil & gas, uranium and gold are the biggies.
If Avatar followed reality at all it would have had opiate or alcohol like substances used as softening agents well before the tree of life was blown to bits.

[Keith_McClary]

The Popethinks it's neopagan animism.

Will Heaven thinks it is nauseatingly patronisingly racist.

The Chinese pulled the 2D version from the theatres to make room for a film about Confucius, they said.

I'm surprised there wasn't a fuss about the interspecies sex scene ( wasn't his avatar made with his human DNA?)

[ian807]

Guys, you're over thinking this.

Avatar's plot is straight out of Disney. Specifically, "Fern Gully" and "Pocahontas." They were both successful and had great appeal to children just as Avatar appeals to an increasingly infantilized electorate.

It was just a no-brainer kid's movie with great special effects.

[SeaGypsy]

Great kids movies are usually much deeper in subtext than what usually passes for adult entertainment, which I agree is particularly infantile.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '
')And maybe the popularity of Avatar points to a latent readiness in the public for that green revolution. I'm very interested to know how this is going to ripple through pop culture. Maybe it's just people getting high on 3D CGI. Time will tell.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ian807', '
')Avatar's plot is straight out of Disney.

[Plantagenet]

Avatar was about 9-foot-tall blue-skinned tight-assed babes wearing little feather bikini tops.



I liked it quite a bit!

[Plantagenet]

AVATAR
--by james cameron

--look at the big blue-skinned tight ass babes in feather bikinis!
--Destroy the giant tree!
--aghg! no! Boom! KAH-BOOM!
--the tree will have its revenge!
--aghghgh! Boom! Scritch! boom boom Eyah! Bleh! Hoo-RAY!
--look at the blue-skinned tight ass babes in feather bikinis!

THE END

[gampy]

Everyone, and their mother seems to have an opinion on Avatar. Some opinions are interesting, most are not.

I won't say what category the OP's falls under.

Lol. It's a movie guys...a very good movie in my opinion, and well worth multiple viewings (which is the reason it's doing such great business) but it's just a movie.

Although George W. Bush said the US constitution was "just" a piece of paper...so take that into account as well.

Sometimes, great ideas, movements, or political thought can gel around the most inauspicious things. The director has a keen, and proven talent for taking the pulse of the zeitgeist.

Look at the grief Ayn Rand has caused us. I imagine some of these critics are thinking James Cameron has stirred the great unwashed into some kind of activity.

[Lighthouse]

Interesting what people see in that movie.

I found it an eye-candy without any deep meaning at all.

The plot was rather boring and left to many things unexplained.

How was the Avatar controlled by the humans? By radio control? How were the control inputs received, etc.