
Thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar and “Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out” - pchristensen
http://jseliger.com/2009/12/27/thoughts-on-james-camerons-avatar/
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ryanwaggoner
While there are some interesting points in this article, I didn't take this
movie as either anti-corporate or anti-technology.

It's more anti-military / anti-imperialism than anti-corporate. Yes, the bad
guys are a corporation, but I get the feeling that they did that to make the
film more marketable. Americans probably would have a much harder time
cheering for the aliens who are slaughtering US Marines. But very little about
plot would have changed had the bad guys been military instead of a private
corporation.

As for anti-technology, I think it's more about the dangers of abusing power
of any kind, including the power that technology lends us.

~~~
kingkongreveng_
I haven't seen it yet, but I assume it's just a regurgitation of a "noble
savage" story.

I want to make a movie about a technologically and culturally advanced people
who encounter a primitive race. The primitives have high murder & infanticide
rates, endless stupid tribal wars, etc. The technologically advanced people
force assimilate or drive off the primitives and live happily ever after. The
End.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Watch any old western :)

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amalcon
There are, fundamentally, two different ways to approach science fiction,
exemplified by Star Trek and Star Wars. The "Trek" style uses a "weird"
setting to enable social commentary that would otherwise be either unpalatable
or simply impossible. In the "Wars" style, the "weird" setting is the whole
point: the reader/viewer can witness world-building on a grander scale than
would otherwise be possible, and the plot can include elements that the
audience would never otherwise swallow.

There's almost always some crossover between the two, but it's important to
remember that each is very difficult to do well. Very few artists are skilled
at both. A work that tries to focus on both, as Avatar does, usually fails.

Avatar is an excellent example of world-building, on possibly a bit too grand
a scale for a movie: there are a handful of things that should have been
explained away or lampshaded, but the explanations just wouldn't fit into an
already-too-long movie. Where it falls flat is in its attempted social
commentary.

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kiba
I would imagine that the limited resource on earth would sell for an
incredibly high price before getting depleted. Thus Earth would become a
conservationist society, careful not to waste resources or produce too many
humans.

It is hard to imagine that the incentive for space travel to find new source
would be outraced by extremely fast usage of resources.

Plus there are asteroid belts to mine, and probably tons of them in the system
that that Avatar is occupied.

From my political perspective, this is mostly a libertarian film that pit a
peaceful tribe who rightfully homestead the island against a fascist
corporation that was granted evil government privilege.

Though I can't help but think that most people will think this is about
environmentalism and planting tree and that greedy evil free market
corporation ruins everything.

~~~
pchristensen
Now let's not let realism get in the way of a good movie! Every story gets a
few points where you suspend belief, then the rest has to make sense in that
context. For this one, let's say that it's an exotic material that has only
been found on Pandora. Unrealistic, but so is the fact that the aliens are
humanoid shaped.

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gort
"Capitalism won when it learnt how to sell anti-capitalism."

I think I read that somewhere...

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ojbyrne
I saw the movie yesterday, and I also watched "District 9" yesterday. I'm kind
of amazed at how the 2 movies approached the same basic idea - humans
oppressing aliens - and ended up entirely different. While I enjoyed all the
visual effects of Avatar, I think District 9 had a more interesting treatment
of the idea, mostly because it was less utopian.

~~~
kingkongreveng_
District 9 is a movie about refugees made by a refugee.

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guessy
(spoiler alert)

A lot of the themes and messages in Avatar are very common in science fiction,
in particular the parallels with the story of Dune are striking:

\- greedy corporation seeks to exploit a resource with little regard for the
native population (spice/unobtainium)

\- saviour from same race as greedy corporation is accepted into native
population and through a mythical prophecy, becomes leader and unites tribes
against greedy corporation

\- native population and their natural habitat are massively underestimated
and through help of saviour defeat greedy corporation

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cmars232
This is a bit off topic, but I related Avatar to Rudy Rucker's Postsingular.
Same theme of technology becoming irrelevant when faced with superior
natural/supernatural alternative, which I think reveals what we subconsciously
desire, try and fail to create with technology.

Just like Postsingular made me wish someone would figure out how to strum the
"lazy eight", Avatar left me wishing life on Earth came with an organic USB
cable.

Sorry if there's a spoiler in there...

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jcnnghm
Cameron's thinly veiled message clearly seemed to be that the corporations are
out to destroy the earth and everything green causing overpopulation. The
whole thing seemed kind of juvenile, especially when you consider the
abundance that has been caused by corporate competition, which has in turn
directly lead to decreasing birth rates in developed countries. The two
factors, overpopulation and corporations destroying the earth for resources,
are contradictory.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
I disagree. Corporations don't have to have any goal to "destroy the earth" or
"cause overpopulation". Pursuit of short-term profits while externalising the
risks and wastes is bad enough. If you consider the "the abundance that has
been caused" you should also consider the common tactic of trying to ignore
and hide the drawbacks (e.g. tobacco industry) and drag feet on any effective
action to change thigns (e.g. recent Copenhagen climate conference).

~~~
jcnnghm
The changes advocated at Copenhagen only make sense if your financial future
is tied to either green tech or carbon trading. If the stuff was economically
viable or offered an attractive alternative (e.g. Tankless water heaters never
run out of hot water. Plugging in a car should be much cheaper and easier than
visiting a gas station.) it wouldn't require legislation.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
_If the stuff was economically viable ... it wouldn't require legislation_

I think you're missing the point if what I said. Lots of things are
economically viable to a corporation if it can externalise the downsides
(either by dumping the wastes or getting a bailout when it make mistakes) or
simply get the legislation that favours it (google "oil industry tax breaks"
for an example).

You can't get away from legislation. Bailouts are legislation. But making
polluters pay requires legislation. There is no mythical free, unlegislated
market that will magically do the right thing. There's only good legislation
and bad legislation.

~~~
jcnnghm
Don't polluters already pay? The proposed measures are designed to curtail
carbon emissions, aren't there already supply side taxes on carbon generating
fuel sources like oil and natural gas. Has carbon actually been scientifically
proven to be the sole driver of global warming? By scientifically, I don't
mean using a computer model with fudged numbers generated by interested
parties with poor programming skills. If it isn't testable and repeatable it
also isn't science. The models have made predictions that haven't matched
reality thus far, why would we believe they are going to start matching
reality in the future?

Aren't there other more pressing forms of pollution than CO2 emmisions? What
about strip mining, particulate emissions, and methane? Is this really about
curtailing emissions, or creating a lucrative secondary trading market and
taxation system to benefit people like Al Gore who are both heavily invested
in carbon trading, and part of the legislature.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
Whoah, that's a whole lot of rant you've got pent-up in there.

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allenbrunson
this was submitted by the author himself only 19 hours ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1018100>

