"Avatar" is an entertaining film that failed to take risks in a way that would have allowed it to explore the implications of the human culture it hints has been created by the year 2150.
Briefly, it is about a human mining project on the moon Pandora, a moon of a Jupiter-like planet in 2150 AD. Humans are mining a certain mineral that can be used on earth. In the process of mining, the indigenous beings on Pandora are threatened in their traditions and way of life. These are big, blue, feline-like humanoids who can communicate on a cellular level with all the plants and animals on Pandora. They are called the Nav'i. Eventually a war breaks out between the Nav'i and humans and the humans are expelled from Pandora.
Two major themes of Avatar are Enviromentalism and anti-interventionism. In exploring these themes James Cameron, the writer/director uses strong and pervasive allusions to current events in enviromental affairs and American foreign policy. However, in the use of these allusions, Cameron sacrifices any subtle examination of how these themes might have evolved in 140 years. Cameron's characters, the majority of which he barely develops past right-wing paleo-jingoists, are straight out of 2010 USA. They frame issues and use the same catch-phrases current in 2010. They are divided, as is 2010 America in the view of Cameron, between the virtuous, enviromentalists, non-interventionists and the intervetionists greedy for a commodity.
Cameron misses an incredible opportunity to examine the evolution of how these ideas would develop over 150 years. First, in terms of Enviromentalism,no sublety of thought is shown in those who want to mine the mineral. Presumably, humanity needs this mineral on earth. An interesting conflict could have been developed between "earth centered" enviromentalists and "universalists." A conflict between enviromentalists who want to "save the earth" using the resources of the Universe and those who want to preserve a pristine Universe, earth be damned. This would be a conflict more relevant to a 2150 society than the 2010 conflicts Cameron imagines surviving for 150 years.
Second, when examining the conflict between earth-centered enviromentalists and Universalists, Cameron again views the issue from a 2010 perspective. In 2150, the world Cameron presumably wanted to create, "save the earth" would be a jingoistic battle-cry in the war against the Nav'i. The film intimates that humanity is united in some kind of confederation(although strangely virtually all the humans are white Americans, looking acting and talking like its 2010). Under these political conditions it would almost certainly be enviromentalists advocating intervention on other planets to "save the earth", a phrase that would become comparable to "God bless America" perhaps.
Avatar takes no risks in its politics, its cultural ideas, and even its technological view of the future. It is basic boiler-plate "Gaia Theory" enviromentalism and a mishmash of critical assumptions regarding American foreign policy. It transports the minds and attitudes of 2010 Americans into the year 2150 and presumes no changes in the political and cultural conflicts that exist today. It is as if 150 years of culture, politics, and human life would leave today's political theories and conflicts untouched and unexamined. In that sense, there is not much science here and a whole lot of fiction. Even its vision of the technology of 2150 is the most unambitious in the history of science fiction, with gadgets that look almost contemporary.
In conclusion, Avatar is entertaining. However, it is a shallow examination of the future and in that sense it could have been so much more. It tries so hard to prove current Leftist enviromental and cultural ideas that it fails to do the job of great science fiction and transport the viewer into a world of the future. In that sense it was a disappointment and a lost opportunity.
2 comments:
Wow, very interesting analysis and a great point -- few filmmakers are able to get beyond contemporary arguments, especially in a mass market blockbuster like this one. Well done, and anyone who works "Gaia theory" into a post gets my vote!
The originator of Gaia theory spoke at Cal-State Monterey Bay, the biggest University near here, not long ago.
He is a brilliant old English gentleman and very reasonable. Can't remember his name off the top of my head.
My point is that mixing science and politics is risky. Very few scientific theories are WHOLLY correct or WHOLLY incorrect and the truth or falsehood of them takes 40 or 50(on average) years to prove or disprove based on additional data and the like.
Earth science is an especially tricky scientific endeavor because the inputs involved in order to come to a hypothesis are almost endless and many of them are still unknown. For instance, all of the inputs that go into earth's climate and affect it are innumerable and many scientists believe that there are things that affect the climate that as of yet are unknown.
The newest data suggest that earth's climate is greatly affected by solar activity as this would explain corresponding climate changes occuring on all the other planets of the solar system at the same time that earth's is changing.
Conservatives have obviously gravitated toward this theory because it tends to disprove or at least downplay Human caused global warming. However, this too is only a theory that will take decades of scientific labor to flesh out just as the theory of man caused warming is a theory that is being debated.
Science is AND MUST be a constant debate in order to ensure progress. This is why mixing science and politics is so fraught with peril for science. It risks stifling scientific progress so as to advance or not jeopardize various political viewpoints which rest upon a particular scientific theory.
"Gaia theory" I don't profess to completely understand, but its basics are that the earth is a "living system" that adjusts to various imbalances within the system using climate and the like. It is interesting but is not even close to being fully proven and to make policy based upon something like it risks implementing policies that actually harm the environment over time. This is the same thing with my "pet theory" of solar driven climate change.
For me, in my view, one of the basic lessons I remeber from the late-1980s is that economic efficiency is good for the environment. To the extent that I believe free markets drive up economic efficiency(which I largely do) I believe free markets generally mean a cleaner environment. This was clearly demonstrated by a comparison of eastern Europe, which was an environmental cesspool, to Western Europe which was relatively healthy environmentally. Generally, what we call environmental pollutants are simply byproducts of production that an efficient industry could capture and put to use in other ways and areas. Inefficient industries that have no market incentive to be thrifty and productive have no incentive to use the byproducts of their production for more efficient production.
In this sense, when I hear some on the radical Left say that the key to a clean environment is to abolish the free-market or "end Capitalism" or something I find it nonsensical until I realize that it is not economics they are using to promote the environment but a particular environmental theory they are using to promote an economic/political agenda that they would be advocating nonetheless.
Again, the perils of using scientific theories to promote political agendas is demonstrated. I just think I saw a little too much of that in Avatar for my taste and that is the only point I wanted to make in my post.
Thanks for commenting Joy. :)
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