Avatar: A Bad Day for Conservatives? Think Again.

U.S. Marines blow up giant tree.  An ex-soldier discovers the wonders of mother-gaia and becomes defender of nature.

Sounds like “Fern Gulley 3” right?  No, it’s the most important film of the decade and it’s as liberal as hell.  The plot is about a group of corporate marines who attempt to infiltrate a village of 10-foot blue alien cat-people who worship a tree-goddess.

Jake Sully, a crippled soldier enlists in the ‘Avatar program’ which allows a human mind to control the body of a genetically grown alien.  But before your conservative blood starts boiling and refuse to take your kids to see a godless, new-age attack on America and all the traditional values you believe in, take a moment to consider what this film actually means for us.

Avatar is the most incredible movie I’ve ever seen.  It is, bottom line:  awesome.  The visual heft is more than enough to levitate a ‘been-there-done-that’ plot to wondrous heights.  That’s the main selling point.  It is an astoundingly beautiful and visceral film for being 95% artifice.  Each effects-laden sequence is filmed in eye-popping 3-D.

The main enhancement is the ability to channel facial emotion through motion capture.  It represents a new era in filmmaking, where even the most farfetched dreams can be made on-screen reality (provided you have half a billion dollars).  Choosing not to see this film would be an error akin to skipping out on the first Star Wars movie (and The Phantom Menace, this ain’t).  This not a movie that will be enhanced by repeated viewings, but you should at least see it once, if anything because it is a good diagnosis of the soul of the 21^st Century American.

Avatar has interesting parallels to “The Matrix”, a film that also came out on the eve of a new decade (and a new millennium for that matter) and effectively set the stylistic tone for the following ten years of film.

The aesthetic of the Matrix turned superheroes and robots into well-dressed, culturally savvy, nihilistic ass-kickers that turned the ordinary world into a supernatural playground.  It was a critique, a comment, like Fight Club gone Anime and just about every action film since then has been realized under a thick layer of its influence.

Avatar represents a new paradigm that will likely have a similar cultural effect.  In The Matrix, robots make people think they’re living normal life when in fact they are just hooked into a computer program, an excellent comment on the pointlessness of modern consumerism.  But the problem with the Matrix was that even though it was a mental prison, it was still cooler than dirty derelict reality and you couldn’t wait for Keanu to jack back in and do flips and stuff.

Jake Sully is the anti-Neo who actually finds his true soul through the computer program.  He lives in a circuited society and finds escape from it through another reality and then gets lost in that reality.  This is simply a more accurate characterization of what it feels like to be a 21^st Century American.

We lose ourselves in other realities all the time.  Sports, TV, golfing, World of Warcraft, alcohol, music, maybe even having an affair or changing one’s sexual identity.  However more or less socially acceptable your altered-reality of choice is, the reason remains constant:  we are tired of the reality we have built for ourselves and feel the need to ‘discover’ something else.

Wail on Obama haters but the truth is that, for good or ill, America is sick of anything status-quo no matter how solid the foundations may be.  There are no more illusions to be dispelled or barriers to be torn down, no square mile of land or sea left to discover.  Our great pioneer ancestors would be just as lost as we are today because they would have nothing to do.

There is simply nowhere else to go, no rock left unturned.  There’s just us earthlings bickering about whether to cap emissions or kill terrorists.  We are ready for another world.  Jake Sully is the new man of the age, one who is in touch with his own frailty and meaninglessness and hungers for something higher.  He will choose the ‘illusion’ that he is an alien over his human ‘reality’ because it is a better one.  Unlike Neo, he’s not coming ‘down to earth’ he’s rising up to heaven.  The story of Jake Sully is a religious one.  He wants to believe in something.  Avatar is the Matrix in reverse.

The truth is that Avatar is a historic movie no matter how you slice it.  Heavy-handed plot?  Sure.  Stereotypical characters?  Absolutely.  But those are minor details in the face of its visual grandeur, and rightfully so.  The film is a spectacular love letter to the supernatural wonders of the natural world and it would not have been possible but for highly advanced technology.

Hypocritical?  Maybe.  But we humans have always been a little backwards and Cameron knows it.  It’s built into the plot.  Jake uses hyper-technology to upload his mind into his alien body and only then dose he become one with nature and find purpose and meaning in life.  We use technology in order to escape it.

As for the bald-faced environmentalist message and the naïve ‘ham-handed’ anti-imperialist Dances With Wolves vibe:  maybe it is time to accept these themes as part of the national consciousness.  We are a part of a society that has done great good but also great evil.  We have stepped on and disrupted cultures.

Whatever you believe about climate change (and last I heard, the numbers were pretty clear), the truth is that we are a nation with a massive appetite for natural resources.  Are we to be a recalcitrant and gluttonous people?  A strong nation is one that knows how to atone for its sins.  How we respond to these issues is debatable but when you see Avatar, you’re going to find yourself wishing you were in Sully’s shoes.  My advice:  give in.  Set aside your political ho-humming and remember what it was like to be a kid again longing for adventure, romance and that ghostly feeling of purpose.

alexwilgus

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