Stumbling out of the Imax theatre, $35 poorer and eyes feeling like candy had been poured into them for two-and-a-half hours, we spotted a colleague who had also been seeing large blue people. Whadya think we asked? Ahh they replied, liberal Hollywood stuff – you know, Dances with Wolves and all that. Ya, I said, but what a visual ride.
What a visual ride indeed. Not many have dared decry Avatar for its effects extravaganza, and I certainly immersed myself in James Cameron’s CGI world for the entire experience. But corny and tragically simplistic dialogue aside, there is something else about Avatar that was nagging at me, and the Dances with Wolves comment nailed it: it’s the white American hetero-male saves the helpless indigenous people all over again.
The fact that the alien peoples (Na’vi) can’t get their shit together until a white American military man in a blue person avatar rides in to save the day is the principle thing wrong with this uber-spectacle. One can walk away from the film conflicted: it’s a critique of military culture and a valorization of the environment and human connection to ecology, but wait, while their forests burn and missiles fly, the Na’vi gather round a tree to sing? No damnit! That’s not how AMERICANS do it! And then the speeches about “our land” and our struggle and all that, led by of course the white American guy whose macho might and military mind save the day for these tree-loving aboriginals.
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