avatars of history

So I went to see Avatar today, despite the copious number of reports indicating that the sermonizing and proselytizing contained therein would far outweigh the potential benefit/entertainment of the copious quantity of high-powered graphics, and rather than my standard one-line throw-away comment, I am going to go a little deeper this time.
So should you go see it? If you can appreciate absolutely amazing special effects (to the point where you literally cannot tell what is rendered and what is real) without getting too wrapped around the axle over the storyline and the “moral” contained therein, yes. If that sounds like too much trouble for you, avoid it (and pretty much any movie produced these days). If you do go, though, I strongly recommend the 3D version – it takes a bit of getting used to, and possibly some deprogramming, but it definitely adds a dimension to the film (harhar).
(If anyone is concerned about spoilers, you should go ahead and stop reading now, by the by.)
So what about that story? I honestly did not find the thin thread of a narrative to be all that troublesome, compelling, or even riveting, and I am not exactly a tree-hugging enviroweenie (my car may be green, but it is surely powered by a Gaia-humping V8). In fact, I found it to be more a parallel of what early American settlers and expansionists did to the Native Americans they found here, rather than anything remarkably environmental in nature. Oh, sure, about 2/3s of the way through, we get treated to the protagonist decrying the “Sky People” (humans) for leaving no green on their planet, and destroying their “mother”, and potentially threatening to do the same on Pandora, but apart from that, it was much more a statement about invasive societies rather than environmental stewardship.
So I guess I should start from the beginning. The story is formulaic – ’savages’ have something ‘civlized folk’ want, the savages are not showing any indications of giving that something up, the civilized folk send infiltrators, the infiltrator falls in love, the civilized folk get tired of negotations and torch the place, infiltrator changes loyalty, civlized folks driven off, everyone lives happily ever after. We have seen this kind of plot time and time again… there are probably a season’s worth of Star Trek episodes from all of its various incarnations documenting all the different ways that idea can go. Unfortunately, James Cameron forges nothing new in this regard.
Sure, that “something” happens to be buried underneath a tree, a tree that is one of the natives’ largest settlements. Sure, that “something” involves stripmining a planet. But, in the end, it is nothing more than settlers moving west, and displacing the locals to take the land they wanted.
So what do we humans do? Well, we level a sacred grove of trees that allow the natives to tap directly into the racial memories of the planet (Oh, did I forget to mention that the ecosystem of this planet is all tied together, in what could be considered one gigantic organism, networked and interconnected? Did I mention how much this movie reminded me of the Native Americans? ‘Cause, you know, the mad skillz with the bows, the giving thanks to the animal-you-just-killed’s spirit, the living in harmony with the land, the shaman, the tracking ability, the familial rank structure, the not-caring for the white-man’s ways, the insistance on remaining “rustic”, the hunting styles, the attire, the mother-world-spirit-thingie… yeah, that was just coincidence, right?). We blow up the tree in question (using napalm, no less, launched from hovering gunships… yeah, that sounds a bit familiar). And we try to MOAB some more trees.
Let me make this bit clear: what most of the humans did in the movie was wrong, but not because of the supposed environmental reasons. We invaded a planet populated with sentient species (including, possibly, the planet), we displaced and murdered them, we stole their land, we torched their villages, we destroyed their sacred sanctuaries, and we tried to exterminate them. Yeah, there are obvious environmental overtones (the planet being “alive” in its totality, the planet being interconnected, humans torching trees in the name of progress, etc. etc.), but focusing on those overtones completely misses what I see to be the real historical analogues.
So, basically, the “green agenda” was present, but was something of a backseat Jewish grandmother (if you will excuse the momentary racial stereotyping) to the raping and pillaging of native societies by invading hordes of “civilization”. The real question, for those of you who cannot watch movies and ignore whatever hidden agendas they may or may not be pushing, is not whether you can stand the occasional tree-hugging moment, but whether or not you can stand the “manifest destiny is EBIL!” motif.
Me, I tend to think that pillaging another world, against that world’s inhabitant’s wishes, is pretty much the wrong tack to take, regardless of whether or not the pillaging in question harms the ecosystem or not. And, personally, the abruptly blatant sanctimoniousness of the movie was far outweighed by the positively amazing graphics, attention to detail, realism, and overall universe construction (though, I do have to admit – those gunships looked borderline comical with their loadouts)… But that is just me.