Introduction
Although I came awfully close to walking out of Avatar about a third of the way through, I managed to endure the spectacle in its entirety. For all the hoopla lauding the film’s visual splendors, the gawky computer-generated movements of Avatar’s aliens smack of video-game animation. I suspect that Late Empire movies that rely on state-of-the-art special effects will suffer an increasingly short shelf life as advances in technology quickly render their wonders obsolescent. No doubt fedora-sporting gents in the 30’s marveled at Faye Wray a-wiggle in the palm of the Mighty Kong.
My creepily inauthentic Avatar experience, however, reminded me of the soullessness of Disney World, that high capital of the inorganic.
As the finite number of sunsets left to enjoy dwindles, sitting in a theater at 5:30 PM on a pretty day watching Tarzan battle Sgt. Rock/Doc Savage in sort-of 3-D could be seen as a waste of precious time. Nevertheless, I’m glad I stuck it out. Experiencing the most profitable popular entertainment in Late Empire history in light of its most prevalent philosophical and artistic movement, postmodernism, provides food potato chips and onion dip for thought. In short, Avatar is a wonderful movie for children but can cause a near-lethal dose of cognitive dissonance for adults. Its so cynical that it makes run-of-the-mill postmodernism seem wholesome in comparison.
Postmodernism Writ Small
[Despite the truism, try to explain postmodernism and lose a reader, I’m going to attempt an oh-so-short approximation. (You can find an excellent, more comprehensive philosophical overview of postmodernism here.)
Like its not-too-distant cousin autism, postmodernism exists as an amorphous cloud of tendencies. Essentially, this philosophy posits that because of computers, knowledge has devolved into information. Information can be interpreted in various ways according to the modes of its presentation; thus, subjectivity trumps objectivity in the interpretation of a world each of us interprets uniquely. Therefore, modes of communication become as - if not more - important than what they convey.
In other words, everything is relative.
No wonder then that irony is the postmodern artist’s dearest trope. In addition, as Mary Klages points out, postmodernists “reject boundaries from high and low forms of art rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness” [emphasis mine]
Now, if you’ve seen Avatar, you might be thinking that except for the swooping roller-coaster-like cavorting of barebacked bird/pterodactyl riders, Avatar is about as playful as driver’s ed. video. Also, at least on the surface, the film is essentially as devoid of irony and humor as, well, a driver’s ed. video. The film presents its themes – the interconnectedness of vegetable and animal life, the evils of imperialism/corporations, and the spiritual superiority of pre-agrarian/industrial people – more or less straightforwardly.
However, if you look at Avatar in the context of its production/mode of presentation vis-à-vis its themes, the ironies come swooping down like the flying reptilian raptors of the film. Few would deny that the movie is a pastiche of comic book/ movie staples. Essentially Avatar is a somewhat subversive stew of clichés whose ingredients include the WW2 genre movie, Tarzan, Pochihanis, Alice in Wonderland, etc. Although the characters are one-dimensional, suspension of disbelief impossible, and the dialogue insufferable, the imagined world of the Avatar’s setting is impressive and the movie’s subversive themes palatable. A good question is whether Cameron is aware of the profound disconnection between Avatar’s themes and its modes-of-production. After all, this celebration of the natural world and denunciation of corporate greed comes to us via artificial computer generated images underwritten and marketed by 20th Century Fox, whose ultimate head Rupert Murdoch is certainly much more evil than the corporate villain depicted in the film.
Ratwatercat's Review
The movie begins in the WW2 genre mode. A group of disparate types have banded together on a mission underwritten by the RDA Corporation to mine a moon, Pandora, that orbits the planet Polyphemus. The mission is the WW2 equivalent of escaping from a stalag or blowing up a bridge. The ridiculously valuable mineral RDA seeks is, get this, called unobtanium.
First, we meet a cadre of scientists led by an aggressively blunt red-headed Sigourney Weaver who beneath her foul-mouthed arrogant exterior possesses [cliché alert] a heart of gold. Sidekicks include a friendly anthropologist named Norm and a pudgy Chief System Analyst named Dr. Max Patel. The gritty security detail includes a lovable (and, yes, foul-mouthed) Latina pilot named Trudy; a super-soldier Marine warrior, Colonel Miles Standish Quaritch (who makes Col. Kilgore of Apocalypse Now seem like Thich Naht Hahn in comparison); and finally, the protagonist, Jake Sully, a paraplegic Marine corporal whose IQ somehow rises during the course of the film from ~90 to ~160. Like in the WW2 movies of my youth – The Battle of the Bulge/The Dirty Dozen – I sized up this gang of misfits placing inward bets on who would survive or not. The good news for the tenderhearted is that these characters are so flat and clichéd that you really don’t care one way or another. Pinocchio is a more real-life than anyone in Avatar.
Although RDA’s helicopters sound as if they run on internal combustion engines and their cockpits look crudely retro, this corporation possesses the technology to transfer human consciousnesses into inert alien life-form clones, animating them so they can go undercover to do re-con on the blue-skinned, yak-eared Tibetans (called Na’vi) who inhabit Pandora. Our hero, the paraplegic, is subbing his DNA for his combat-killed identical twin brother’s. Perhaps one futuristic prophecy that this movie has nailed is that even in the year 2554 universal healthcare still hasn’t passed. Col. Miles Standish/Sgt. Rock/Doc Savage makes a deal with Jake the paraplegic that if he gets him good intelligence, he’ll see that the corporation will restore Jake’s legs, a perfected procedure that it seems only the rich can afford.
Col. Miles
Doc Savage
Once Jake is transformed into a blue-skinned yak-eared Na’vi, he successfully infiltrates one of the tribes, thanks to a golden inner being that his soon-to-be love interest can detect via insect/dandelions’ attraction to him. (I know, TMI). Now, we have entered the Tarzan section of the movie, only with Jake taking on the role of Jane and whatever-his-love-interest’s name taking on the role of Tarzan. Like Jane, Jake flips, goes native, and turns against the post-industrial brutes who are all about ecological rapine.
The final act pits American technology against primitive soulfulness and Pandora’s ecosystem’s Tarzan-like ability to enlist Triceratops-like/ tank-like quadrupeds into the battle.
I’ll let you figure out how it ends for yourself.
Conclusion: Drop off the Kids; Go to a Bar
Avatar is a wonderful movie for children ages 8 - 17. It’s message is wholesome and subtly delivered, i.e., love and be kind to your planet, don’t commit genocide, corporations are evil.
But wait, Avatar is a dangerously subversive movie for children ages 8-17. Its plot can be read as a treasonous retelling of American history, the Vietnam war, the war in Iraq. American audiences are applauding Latina copter pilot Trudy’s acts of treason! My country/corporation right or wrong!
No no, no, Avatar is purely escapist, a beautiful faux LSD trip that doesn’t cause chromosomal damage.
Whatever.
Basically, Avatar’s a movie for children, a narrative collage of comic book tropes. The sex is implied, the violence pyrotechnic. If you’re an adult like me whose suspension of disbelief has seen better days, check out Tarantino’s Dirty Filthy Bastards instead. Avatar commits the literary sin of peddling serious themes in what should be pure escapism. It takes postmodernism to a new low in decadence because by providing us with 3-D glasses through which to view its paper doll characters, it masks its shallowness as it bites the corporate hand that makes the movie possible. It’s pastiche that takes itself way too seriously. Jason and the Argonauts with a message.
With Bastards, on the other hand, you get a healthier dose of silliness, postmodernism the way it’s meant to be: self-conscious, occasionally funny, empty.