The politics of Avatar
By Paul Moomjean 01/21/2010
Four hundred million dollars and growing. No, I’m not talking about how much health-care costs are going to be, but instead the box office gross of the 21st century’s first real cultural phenomenon, James Cameron’s politically driven Avatar. On the surface, the second-highest-grossing worldwide film (more than a billion dollars in less than four weeks) looks like it is about a crippled Marine who befriends an alien race of 10-foot Smurfs on the planet Pandora, falls in love with their princess, and ends up becoming accepted by these paradise dwelling people. Yet Cameron’s film with its political agenda has more up its sleeve then simply entertaining action fans and film geeks. Instead, it appears Cameron wants to create a sway in public opinion concerning American imperialism, the evils of the military mindset, and to bash the United States’ role in bringing peace to the world.
Let me state here that no other country in the history of the world has done more good for humanity than America. Whether it’s ending slavery within its own borders, fighting the Third Reich, saving South Korea from communist rule, or maintaining a justice system that goes out of its way to maintain a defendant’s right to a fair trial so that even O.J. Simpson was able to get off from murder charges in 1995. Of course, if you watched Avatar, you would think that America is nothing more than a greedy, bloodthirsty, racist, inhumane place bent on destroying everything in its way to maintain its own sense of what is really a false shadow of security. And before you argue that the characters were representing “Earth” and not simply the United States, I didn’t hear one German or French accent in the whole picture. They all sounded like larger-than-life Texans with grit on their teeth.
Cameron’s film goes out of its way to show how evil America is through the characteristics of the Na’vi people, the U.S. military’s fictional enemy. They appear to be a cross between Native Americans, with their bows and arrows, and our Middle Eastern enemies who share a non-Christian religion and hold, underneath their land, a precious resource, thr ironically named unobtainium (think oil). This set up leads to an eventual battle between the military and the Na’vi with America leading a “shock and awe” campaign (actual quote from a character) to destroy the 10-foot Smurfs.
Along the way, other jabs at America’s role in the world are made as characters mention how the building of schools and teaching the Na’vi English were failures from the start. Cameron made it his goal to have people cheer against the United States, and it has led Chicago Alderman James Balcer to declare his own war against the film. According to CBS news, Balcer says the film makes Marines “look like lunatics,” going on to add that “we are a good, generous country that helps people.” Tom Roeser, a political activist, was shocked by the film’s message and visual imagery of Americans being villains, stating, “This is the only time I ever sat in a theater where people were cheering the forest and the blue people attacking ex-Marines.” Obviously, Cameron is having a blast deconstructing the role of America in foreign policy, laughing all the way to the bank.
Unfortunately, many people were duped into paying and cheering for a film celebrating an American military defeat, not realizing at first what was being presented to them. I know that after I started discussing the film with a few friends, they had a different view of Cameron’s blockbuster. We can all admit America has made mistakes, but this Howard Zinn-like point of view of America as eco-rapist is just simply untrue. But I guess when you are the King of the World, as Cameron called himself at the 1998 Academy Awards, you can simply stuff your propaganda down the throats of us serfs, if only because you have the camera and we don’t. But just as in any kingdom, Mr. Cameron, beware of the people you try to bring down, because once the peasants realize that they are the ones under attack in your film … well, just ask King George III how it went in 1776.
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