Avatar Is Heaven for America Haters
Screen International noted in its December 18 issue the banal dialogue and storyline, reminding readers that the plot involves an effort in the year 2154 by humans to mine a rare mineral on far-off planet Pandora in order to save the world from death by global warming. (Natch.) I am grateful to Screen International for this explanation because, despite twice viewing the film in comfortable and well-projected circumstances, I had no idea what the story was about. That is the sign of a mediocre screenplay. I do know that I watched lots of brave Marines being slaughtered in the stereotypical, liberal cant that tells young audiences that America is the Great Satan.
Some will feel my interpretation of this film borders on the paranoid, but as I was committing these thoughts to paper I received a telephone call from a neighbor who related a significant anecdote. He told me that a couple of his acquaintance — educated young professionals — had just returned from a visit to the cinema to see Avatar and that the film had upset them so much that they had fallen to the floor to pray. I asked him why and he said they felt they had just seen the work of the Devil and that the message of hatred of America is so sinister that they felt they had to say a prayer for the health and long life of the United States. My neighbor also reported that he had been following the demographics of Avatar and that it is apparent that cinemagoers from emerging countries in the remotest corners of the earth are flocking to this motion picture.
Is it possible that the spike in terror attacks and attempted ones — the Danish cartoonist, the CIA assassinations in Afghanistan, the Detroit bomber — is at least partially a result of a passion inspired by the worldwide Avatar mania? I would venture to say that the message of the film is so overwhelming — that America can and should be quashed for good — that it cannot but powerfully influence impressionable minds, most particularly in the Muslim and third world. At the second screening I attended there was applause near the end of the film and, from snippets of conversation I clocked on the way out of the cinema, I heard comments about the way white Americans treated the Native Americans, slaves, Vietnamese, and Iraqis. It is rare to see observant followers of Islam at concerts, opera, musicals, theater, or movies (I do not mean this in a disparaging way — it is not de rigeur, as my veiled Pakistani neighbor tells me, to attend such events when I invited her to My Fair Lady), so I did register that there were groups of young Muslims (I know because the females wore head coverings) who seemed to be having an enormously joyous time at Avatar.
This motion picture is a disturbing epic that in my view instills in audiences a deep hatred of America. As I finish this piece the United Kingdom has raised its terror alert level. Is Jim Cameron the reason? How long is a piece of string? My view? His childish polemic against the U.S. is dangerous and I truly believe the rise in worldwide incidents may be in direct correlation with the wide proliferation of this film. It will be loved by many but I still think it is pure evil.
I haven’t bothered to see Avatar, because it looks like pure bunkum, great eye candy but that’s it, a film for kids. It does sound though that yes it does have an anti-American subtext, that isn’t even subtle. Of course I have to take the word of numerous critics here, whose opinion I generally trust.
However I do think Carol goes to extremes here, not quite paranoid but blaming increasing terror alert levels in the UK and new threats from jihadists to US interests as being contributed to by Avatar, even in a little way, is well over the top.
The BBC and the Guardian do more anti-American pro-jihad apologetics than Avatar ever could. So is Avatar to blame for increasing jihadist threats? Logically (if we take seriously Carol’s hypothesis) far less so than the BBC and the British media promote every week. Yet Carol doesn’t blame the BBC and the Guardian and the Independent for raising the jihadist threat against the US and the UK.
Avatar just follows the stereotyped plot long established among Leftist movie-makers – the evil Western colonialists oppressing the poor innocent natives out of greed, ruthless in their quest to exploit & plunder the indigenous population. This simplistic plot has been repeated a thousand times & is reinforced by the similar stereotyping of media reports to conform to this pattern. The ”White man” is 100% evil, the black, brown, yellow, red, or in this case, green man is 100% good.
I’m waiting for someone to break this pattern & make a movie showing the ”natives” to be nasty, backwards, dishonest, treacherous, savage monsters with abominable beliefs & customs, xenophobic & racist, with few, if any, redeeming qualities while the colonialists are shown as bringing enlightened rational civilized ideas to the brutish natives.
I remember the line in The Abyss. Cameron was taking a swipe at the Naval commander on the research vessel. “I guess you’ll be out of a job”. And the Naval commander had a scowl on his face. Cameron is a Canadian-America hater. I guess there was no Indians in Canada. After James Cameron made expeditions to the Bismark, I was hoping his movie making ability would have been used to make a movie about the Bismark and how the British ships surrounded the ship and sunk it. But he would probably put in subtle anti-American sentiments in a World War 2 movie as well. Hollywood never puts the Soviet Union on trial in movies. Always the USA. Now I read that Cameron is interviewing the last survivor of the Nagasaki or Hiroshima atomic bomb drop. Another anti-America movie in the works here? Ever since the Vietnam war, the US has had venom spewed at her with unstoppable relentlessness. If America is beaten down into non-relevancy or even into non-existence, that will leave the door open for some evil force to emerge in the world like it did in the past. Only this time the United States of America won’t be there to rescue the America haters.
Avatar is a great 70′s movie (w/70′s sensibilities like “Soldier Blue”, “Man called Horse”) realized on a bigger screen with blue meanies as the protagonists. It’s a fun journey (not a serious one) and I thoroughly enjoyed it but did not take the story (light) very seriously.
Cameron did a film/documentary “Ghosts of the abyss” about the TITANIC
When I first saw this woeful left wing PROPAGANDA movie I knew Hollywood was at it again CAPITALISM bashing. Not only is Hollywood anti Capitalist and anti American it is blatantly Anti White anti Christian Islamophile and RACIST.
For example throughout history elites have used narratives, usually based on actual events, to shape and control the picture of the world they impose on the societies they rule. Sometimes those narratives depict the heroism of ancestors in the hopes that a dramatic retelling of past exploits will motivate young listeners to emulate them in behalf of the elites. In societies ruled by more ideologically inclined elites, those tales often take the form of morality plays that shape and mold the outlook, values, and judgments of the ruled.
In the U.S., elites use the corporate entertainment industry and its vast television audiences to shape the outlook of their constituent populations. But instead of using truthful narratives, American elites resort to lies and distortions so that actual events can be twisted and bent to conform to the propaganda needs of their left-wing ideology.
Consider the case of NBC’s Law & Order, an extremely popular television show. L&O’s left-wing producer, Dick Wolf, controls a stable of five crime-oriented shows (also Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, L.A. Dragnet and Crime & Punishment), making him one of the most powerful men in television. For years, Law & Order, which is filmed in Manhattan, advertised its episodes as being “ripped from the headlines,” a claim Wolf and star Jerry Ohrbach still make in interviews. But instead of depicting reality, Wolf’s scriptwriters take high-profile crimes committed by blacks, and replace the bad guys with whites, even inventing white racist criminals that bear no relation to anything seen in New York during the past 100 years.
And so, even though more than 89 percent of suspects in violent crimes are black or Hispanic according to NYPD crime reports, L&O presents a looking-glass world in the grip of a white crime wave. In “Teenage Wasteland,” an episode that originally aired on February 7, 2001, the true case of a group of black teenagers who ordered Chinese food, and murdered the delivery man, is turned into a group of middle-class, white kids. “Myth of Fingerprints” (November 14, 2001) tells of a white, female forensics chief whose years of false testimony has sent many innocent men to jail.
One of those innocents was murdered in prison, resulting in the official’s conviction for manslaughter. “Fingerprints” was loosely based on the real case of former Oklahoma City supervising forensic chemist Joyce Gilchrist, nicknamed “black magic,” for her seeming forensic wizardry. Gilchrist’s lab techniques and court testimony had come under scrutiny by federal and state authorities. Critics charged she gave false testimony causing 23 men to be sentenced to death, eleven of whom were executed. Joyce Gilchrist is black, but unlike the fictional white official, was never prosecuted, though she was fired for alleged “flawed casework” and mismanagement.
Seven months after the October, 2002 Washington, D.C. sniper case was closed with the arrest of suspects John Muhammad and Lee Malvo, L&O dramatized the case, but with the shooter as a white man! (“Sheltered”; May 14, 2003.) “Smoke” (May 21, 2003) opens with the death of a child, whose adoptive father, a famous entertainer, had dropped him, while dangling him from a hotel room window. The detectives eventually discover that the entertainer would also arrange for underage boys to accompany him to his mansion, where he would sexually violate them. When I told a not particularly media-savvy neighbor who is the mother of four small children that story line, she immediately said, “Michael Jackson!” But on L&O, the character was depicted as a white comedian. Remember the Danny Almonte case? Almonte was the 14-year-old Dominican fraud who — through the connivance of his father, Felipe de Jesus Almonte, and Bronx-based, Dominican Little League coach Rolando Paulino — passed himself off as a 12-year-old, in order to play in the 2001 Little League championships. But in “Foul Play” (May 1, 2002), the coach magically becomes a blond-haired, white man, who is somehow convicted of a murder committed by the player’s father.
L&O’s creative team must read some interesting publications, since many of their “ripped from the headlines” stories never happened, but suit any left-winger’s paranoid fantasies quite well. Consider their obsession with non-existent, murderous white supremacists, whom they depict as besieging Manhattan. In “Open Season” (November 20, 2002), a William Kunstler-like defense attorney is murdered while celebrating the acquittal of a guilty-as-hell black defendant for shooting a white policeman. The killer, a member of a white supremacist group, then uses his defense attorney to unwittingly pass along information to his co-conspirators, who murder a prosecutor in another state. The defense attorney is charged with aiding and abetting the supremacists, before she is shot by a female supremacist. The real basis of the episode was the indictment of radical attorney, Lynne Stewart, of consciously aiding and abetting Moslem terrorist Sheik Abdul Rahman, the convicted ringleader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In “Prejudice” (December 12, 2001), a racist, white real estate agent progresses from writing a letter to his co-op board in an effort to keep an interracial couple out of his building, to flashing a gun at a black colleague, to murdering a black man who beat him to a taxi. Such a case would have been fantastic in 1951, let alone in 2001. In “Genius” (April 2, 2003), a white, violence-embracing ex-con-writer stabs a white cabby to death. Viewers are then given mixed messages, as the cab driver turns out to be a fugitive, white supremacist racial murderer.
In another surreal L&O touch, ordinary black New Yorkers are repeatedly shown to be victims powerful white overseers. In “Kid Pro Quo” (April 30, 2003), the dedicated director of admissions at a tony private school is murdered by her corrupt racist boss. The victim sought to get a deserving but poor black girl admitted, but was overridden by the boss, who’d taken a bribe to accept the inferior child of a Jewish pornographer. And then there’s the homophobia angle. In the real world, Manhattan is, like San Francisco, one of the most gay-friendly areas in America. But not in L&O’s alternate universe. In “Girl Most Likely” (March 27, 2002), a private school student murders her lesbian lover, in order to hide the fact that she is gay. Last, but not least, comes xenophobia. In “Patriot” (May 22, 2002), a pale, blonde-haired former special forces officer kills a Moslem immigrant he had surveilled, and whom he suspected of being a terrorist. The prosecutor presents the imaginary patriot as a fire-breathing, chest-thumping, jingoist monster, even as the story suggests that the dead man really was a terrorist.
Now beginning its fourteenth season, Law & Order, a top-rated show and perennial Emmy nominee for Outstanding Drama Series, serves as a willing tool for the elites’ culture war against Middle American whites. No wonder it receives awards and recognition from its corporate masters.
Funny, did you know that an Israeli-Jewish Arab called Juliano Mer, caused quite a commotion at a movie theater in Tel-Aviv, when at the end of the movie, he shouted to the astonished audience that this is how the “filistinees” should defeat Israel.
He seems to think that the filistinees” are peacefull blue creatures with tails and the American soldiers are the Israeli forces.
So there you go again USA (“big Satan”) and Israel (“little Satan”), are similarly bashed. Both countries have contributed more than anyone to this miserable world, and both are bashed for being successful. What would the world look like today without USA and Israel, I ask? …
The world without Israel would have been one less raping, pillaging army. That would have been a plus for the world. The point I wanted to make about the topic of the movie Avatar however is this. Why is it ok in Hollywood for movies to depict the US military and US corporate interest as the bad guys? Why not the IDF and the “Israeli” interest? Ok so you think both are good invaders, rapists and pillagers, that is not the point. As long as someone is filling kids heads with “lies”, why is it allowable in Hollywood to “lie” about the US and not Zionist Israel? Why not use them, why us? Have you ever seen a movie that puts your beloved little Israel or Zionist Jews in a bad light? But the U.S. plenty, right? Doesn’t that bother you gentiles just a little? This gentile takes notice of such things.
Vote with your wallet, folks! Avatar will not capture one cent of my money, as most of the s### that drips out of hollywood does not.
Meh. I saw “Avatar,” it’s greatest sin is being boring, boring, boring. A little fat kid ahead of me started texting during the second act. I was going to confront him, then I decided, ‘nah, the kid is just as bored as I am.’ Nobody was texting during “Sherlock Holmes.”
And to be fair, the “Marines” in the movie are all PMCs, “Private Military Contractors.” They’re using their training to serve a corporation. (And all corporations, especially 20th Century Fox, are Evil).
Cameron also gets some slack for his previous depiction of Space Marines in “Aliens.” His brother was/is allegedly a Marine. Marines themselves, the ones I know, don’t mind being depicted as ruthless killing machines. That’s part of the Corps’ appeal, son… Hoo-rah!
The same way most CIA employees kinda like how operatives are depicted in “Bourne Indentity” pictures. Most cops love “LA Confidential” or “Training Day.” In other words, everybody loves being seen as a badass.
Great visuals, terrible plot. I hope the terrorists see it and decide to attack with arrows.
The Colonel was the craziest stereotype I’ve ever seen. James Cameron has obviously never met a Marine officer in real life. The only good Marine – of course – a Latin woman!
The corporate types are laughable too – I’d comment more but I have a meeting on destroying the Earth and exploiting native peoples for profits.
There is no evidence that the characters are in fact Americans. They speak English, but in films made in the anglophone world this is generally the case. The “marines” as you call them are explicitly stated to be mercenaries, some of whom are former marines. Residing in “Londonistan”, you are no doubt aware that nations other than the US have forces they call marines.
I’d like to make a movie about evil aliens who are motivated by a noxious totalitarian ideology based on the career of an ancient barbarian war-lord who is also a psychopath murderer, a pedophile, & a bandit who preached that those who did not follow his insane ideology of hate & violence should be conquered & forced to convert or die. These evil aliens are so fanatic that they willingly go on suicide missions to murder & maim innocent civilians, decapitate captured victims, & riot for imagined slights against their foul prophet who they consider holy.
These aliens seek to migrate from their planet which they have turned into a living hell plagued by authoritarian dictatorships, lack of freedom, poverty, ignorance, & illiteracy to the far more advanced & prosperous societies of Planet Earth but instead of being thankful that they have escaped the sh*tholes they come from seek to undermine & destroy the lands they colonize.
The perfect hysterical denouncement. Stalin would be proud of Carol Gould.
No surprise after three generations of evil utopianism propagated in schools since the 60s. But thanks for reporting what few have noticed.
You must destroy the teachers’ unions, replace the teachers and wait several generations to see any change.
Ain’t gonna happen in my lifetime nor yours.
Get ready. Go Galt.
This movie is chock-full of cliche: the shoot-em-up-and-ask-questions-later army guys are stereotypes, as are the one-with-nature-paradise-on-earth alien “natives,” and the only-thing-important-to-me-is-collecting-the-next-sample scientists. To pick out only one layer of the foundation of cliche that this picture is built on is absurd. It would be like taking a Quentin Tarantino genre picture, such as “Inglourious Basterds” and saying that it is a vile, hateful, polemic against Jews because it paints fictional Jews as merciless aggressors against the not-quite-so-vile Nazis. Ridiculous! It is a genre picture that is playing with movie cliches that we’ve all seen a hundred times!
If “Avatar” is a vicious polemic against Americans, then are you saying that pretty much all of the Westerns made during the 1950s and 1960s were vicious polemics against the American Indians?!
CG: Avatar Is Heaven for America Haters
You saw, but you did not understand.
Cameron is selling a product on the world market.
He gave _all_ his customers what they wanted to see.
Avatar is layered like one of Shakespeare’s plays,
with something for everyone, from children to adults.
Unfortunately, that includes a lot of tall children who want
to be given an excuse to indulge their hatred of the US.
Fine: Let them hate, as long as they fear to attack the US.
While Cameron, and other anti–American propagandists, are responsible to some extent, I think the lion’s share of blame must go to Obama, and his mis-handling of the war on terror, starting with civilian trials for terrorists.
(Hollywood does have a lot to answer for, stirring up anti-American sentiment across the planet. Ironic, since it’s badmouthing the nation that’s allowed it to spew out its brainless movies, and protects its freedom of speech—not to mention allowing people like Cameron to make megabillions of evil capitalist dollars. But they’re on the side of the “little guy”, yah, right. They lurve the common folk!)
For Gods’ sake people, it was a Sci-Fi movie!
Michael Moore has done far more damage to America’s image than a bunch of stereotyped militarists and aliens could do.
To be honest I enjoyed the movie AS a movie. Yeah I did get the underlying message (about as subtle as a baseball bat to the head), but I was entertained.
That’s what movies should be about.
I think Carol Gould has jumped the proverbial shark on this one. For starters, Avatar is set a hundred-plus years in the future. What makes Carol Gould think that the “Marines” depicted in Avatar will actually have anything in common with the current US Marines? If she’d paid attention she would have seen that the “Marines” in Avatar were just well paid contractors, so they more resemble Blackwater mercenaries (contractors).
With the current strategy of using contractors for our wars, isn’t it possible, that the US Marines in Avatar evolved from today’s contractors. That is, there are no US Marines in that Avatar future? That the contractors just co-opted the name “Marines”?
Also, I strongly doubt that a Muslim at the theatre wils ee those 10-foot plus Na’vi and say “Hey, they look just like me!” And then go out and become a terrorist. Maybe Carol Gould needs to check her American history. The Na’vi reminded me more of the American Indians of old, than a Muslim.
The spectacular technical accomplishments of the movie are overshadowed by the unsubtle “America is evil” theme. Ms Gould’s analysis is spot on.
Yeah, forget Avatar. Stick with the America haters you love – Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh. Palin – those children of the porn network who would destroy this great nation rather than see it succeed under a Democratic president.
Now That is what you call a “formula.”
Many people that have seen the film have come to the same conclusion. As films go it is pretty much a brain dead piece of pulp that can hardly call itself science fiction. I have played more interesting video games. Of course, it will reinforce the belief in people who are already anti-American that this world would be a far better place if only the US disarmed. It might also serve to inflame the passions in those who are currently forced to kill people in the name of their peace-loving god–as if they needed more ammunition.
We really have to stop supporting these guys, even if we find their mind-numbing agitprop and bangs and flashes “entertaining.” If you want entertainment, try the circus. Or find some good, non-agitprop DVD’s. Or read a book. Don’t give your money to those who make big bucks off hating America.
Avatar, by the way, sounds like Cameron borrowed heavily from the Ursula K. LeGuin novel, “The Word for World is Forest”, and the James Tiptree, Jr., story, “The Girl Who Was Plugged in.”
And let us not forget the oft-mentioned comparisons with “Dances with Wolves” and “Ferngully.”
Skeeziks, join your other compatriots and quit pulling your punches. You really hate the US Constitution and the checks and balances that the founding fathers put into it to prevent tyrants from dictating.
Avatar was bedazzling visually and just a poorly done rehash of Dances with Wolves.
Hollywood, I paraphrase, taught us (the cognitively pseudo hip) #1 how to be cool. You know, proper windsor knot, proper martini (shaken not stirred). Properly seduce a woman, and more importantly, how not to fail in that pursuit; Diamonds (Are Forever) vs A Box of Chocolates. Forrest Gumpier vs James Bond. Come on it’s easy too see the influence film media has over our lives. The 60;s led to the seventies. Cheech and Chong did not open the floodgates towards Charles Krauthammer types. Though back in the day he was probably in his local cineplex imbibing. Thank God, God gave some of us common sense. Yet despite this, it takes a little leaven, too leaven the whole loaf. Avatar, is a dangerous leaven. This ain’t Cheech and Chong making a generation or three of stoners. This is just plain old nasty weird creepy self hatred. Hollywood style.
This film takes place about 150 years in the future. A contingent from earth is attempting to colonize a fictional planet. This group of invading earthlings appear to be motivated entirely by greed and a tacit faith in their superior technology. Also, they seem to have no respect at all for the environment they are encroaching upon, nor any regard for any of its inhabitants. No mention is made as to what nation from earth the colonizers are coming from, or, in fact, whether earth in the year 2145 even has any present-day nations at all. I consider your assumption that these venal, amoral, shallow, and exploitive earthlings must obviously have come from “America” to be a terrible stereotype of American behavior and an insult to all Americans.
23. Michael:
No, Michael, it’s YOU who really hates the US Constitution and the checks and balances that the founding fathers put into it to prevent tyrants from dictating.
I have 8 years of proof. How many do you have?
Poor American wingnut fascists, overrun by overgrown smurfs. Their empire facade being carved up by some communist rice eaters and forest people!
Skeeziks, you have squat. I have 1 year of brazen attempts to hope and change this country into a sham of itself. I support the constitution and what it is doing to Obamamania.
Cameron played on stereotypes of Native Americans and American Marines and Corporations. There is no nuance. It is aimed at a sixth grade level.
The Marines are portrayed at Marines even if they are called something else. The natives are just a rehash of the “Noble red man” fiction of the past.
If Cameron must deal in broad stereotypes this movie would have been much more accurate in having “Islamist type” invasion demanding convert or die. Meanwhile natives fight amongst themselves as to whether the invaders were just misunderstood demanding that no one should be allowed to talk about them disparagingly. Meanwhile a wise minority sees the danger and fights back.
How’s that for stereotyping? At least that would be much less ludicrous.
Um, no. I don’t think Avatar wins the cake for why people hate Americans. I’m sure there are a few thousand other reasons that top another long James Cameron film.
Um, no. I think the Danish cartoonist’s attack was self-explanatory, as are attacks on US-affiliated agencies in Afghanistan and I’m pretty sure that the Detroit bomber was not shouting as a Na’vi or was painted blue. OMG. Wait! Maybe Cameron made them BLUE to identify with the Leftists. OMG, so obvious!
Seems like Ms. Gould is projecting her own America-hate in this article about (yawn) a James Cameron movie.
I loved the movie for the visuals. The 3D Imax experience was really thrilling. The story was Western vs. Indian IMHO.
It would have been a really interesting movie if the aliens looked very, very different from humans and there was some physical revulsion or fear, as would no doubt be the case in reality. It was not plausible that the mercenaries would hate such attractive, simple beings. It would also be more plausible if the aliens had the slightest curiosity about their obviously far-advanced invaders, but not a single one of them did.
So go to the movie and enjoy the visuals, the beautiful flora and fauna, the technical brilliance, but don’t expect any intellect in the hackneyed plot.
For decades the Canadian Liberal government ba$turd$ have bombarded Canadians with anti-American propagnda – through the media, the courts, the legislature and especially the schools. Everything good and right that they depict as wrong or evil is “American-style”.
When I saw that Avatar was written by a Canadian and saw the trailers, I knew what to expect and decided in advance that I wouldn’t spend one red cent to support it. Thanks to Carol Gould for confirming my first impressions.
Our lefty taxpayer supported extorted dollars go to such Liberal approved Canadian Content TV shows as “Little MOSQUE On The Prairie”. I have been watching reruns of “Little House on the Prairie” and “Road to Avonlee” and can’t stomach the other rot.
We have finally removed those Liberal, lying, theiving, criminal bas7a9d$ from the seat of government and elected a Conservative.
Foetunately all the ignorant useful idiots don’t vote and we in western Canada don’t vote Liberal.
First, I agree that as just a critique of the Iraq War, “Avatar” is shallow and superficial. But the movie is a lot more than that.
It’s a pretty accurate description of what has happened historically when industrialized societies have encountered hunter-gatherer societies. Maybe not so much today (although the Ecuadorian Amazon does come to mind), but certainly within living memory. The story of the American Indians is a case in point, and Cameron underlines it (I think) by using the fine actor Wes Studi to portray the Na’vi chief. (Studi has played the hard-case tribesman in just about every modern Indian film made.)
Also, not all the Earthlings are evil (notice I don’t say ‘Americans’). Consider who puts their lives on the line to help the Na’vi: women, handicapped people, people of color, and people of nerdliness :>)
It’s a brilliant movie, as if the old Frank Frazetta sci-fi illustrations had come to life. Gould should relax.
I did also see the movie twice and loved it twice, despite Cameron’s blatant leftist propaganda.
It is a pretty darn good sci-fi movie, good versus evil, and everyone can decide who the bad guys are, within their own political frame.
By the way, I did see a lot of non-white Marines, fighting against the Nav’i, thus depicting a pretty good image of Earth’s multiculturalism.
Why should they necessarily be Americans? Does it always have to be about Americans? It is a really biased way of thinking that 150 years from now, only Americans would have the power and technology of traveling in the far galaxies. It used to be the Europeans, hispanics and non-hispanic that would roam and discover the world…
As a European recently naturalized American I don’t like these stereotypes. This is about Humanity.
Also, why would it be about white-man’s guilt? it couldn’t be only about white man’s guilt, since there where marines of all (humanly possible) color fighting the good (blue) guys.
What do the other-than-white communities think of that? Well, when you see the success of the movie world wide you know:
this movie just is a movie of Good versus Evil, and that is why it has resonated so well all around the world, with people of all color and creed.
These are universal values, and we all recognize ourselves in the bad guys wanting to make a buck, and the good guys, working for our redemption, and saving the day.
Relax and enjoy a good movie when there is one!
This is like a Michael Savage rant, the terrorists now hate and attack us because of some sci fil movie they saw!
I saw the movie. It is to bad the left could not leave out the New Age agenda.
Notice the half human half Nav’i came to the rescue on a large red dragon leading the good guys (Nav’i), and the goddess of the planet to defend themselves from the bad aliens,(mostly white males).
In the New Age religion of earth worship, and you too can be as god, the Avatar will reappear to lead humans to a global Marxism, and Lucifer worship.
Check out Lucis Trust inside the UN building. They have a website that welcomes all religions except those nasty Jews, and Christians. Misleading millions of people, just like the movie.
So Hollywood makes movies that show they hate America.
In other news, water is wet and dog bites man.
28. Micahel:
First, learn how to spell your name. Second, you clearly have unresolved issues with Native Americans. That’s’ OK, they have unresolved issues, too. Then again, given the 30 million of them we slaughtered on our march to the West, maybe they have a genuine reason to be pissed off, something, you know, a little more substantive than a movie. Don’t worry about the Marines, they’ll survive Avatar just fine. (There’s a reason they call them the world’s greatest fighting force.) And corporations? Well, Im sure they’re glad to know that they have another blind supplicant in their corner. The ghost of Ken Lay will bless in the night.
Perspective . . . Mic. (and spelling)
Although I’m a big sci-fi fan and I thought the FX looked great, the trailer made it obvious that Avatar was just a very thinnly veiled allegory for conflict between US soldiers & American Indians, with the Americans once again being portrayed as the evil technologically advanced civilization heartlessly mowing down the peaceful innocents who were nobly living in harmony with nature. I’ve seen Hollywood churn out these one-dimensional stereotypes of both sides too many times to count, & I frankly have no interest in seeing it again, no matter how pretty the cgi window-dressing is. I also have no interest in supporting anyone who engages in this type of America-bashing, & so I choose to spend my money elsewhere.
The savior arrives riding a RED DRAGON! How could I have missed it till now?? It’s clearly a hidden message advocating Welsh supremacy.
Y draig koch – Cymru am byth!
Pragmatist.
Good write-up on the craziness of the Law and Order series. However, regarding your statement “a claim Wolf and star Jerry Ohrbach still make in interviews” I would point out that Jerry Orbach has been dead from a couple of years.
Folks, it’s a movie and like most there is a good and bad. At first I too was disconcerted that it looked like this was yet another Hollywood jab at our great military and country but in actuality there was a good AND a bad marine. There are less than stellar people in all walks of life. In the end the “bad” marine was annialated and the “good” marine won. So what is wrong with this picture? We learn the hard facts that there are bad people out there no matter what job they are in but as in most instances, the good win. I liked Sam. He didn’t desert his country. He was trying to take down a really over the top bad guy. That guy would have been unacceptable even if he wasn’t in uniform. So take a breath everyone. The movie is a high tech phenomena and the screening was breath taking.
35. Leatherneck:
What color car do you drive?
worth a look: http://failblog.org/2010/01/10/avatar-plot-fail/
I for one was rooting for the humans in the movie. And I take solace in the fact that the Blue People have just signed their own death warrants, since in Real Life, the next ship to enter orbit won’t be a mining shuttle carrying mercenaries, it’d be a bomber carrying nukes.
Carol,
the name Londonistan was not invented by Melanie Phillips. It was being used in the mid-1990s by French investigators who found that commanders of jihadi terrorists who bombed the Paris subway and other public facilities in France were in fact based in London. And the UK govt was protecting them.
This was pretty reprehensible on the part of the UK govt which today is only worse in catering to Islamist jihadist terrorists. Even after the 7-7-2005 bombings in London, Britain still coddles the jihadis.
Cameron is not only prejudiced against Americans but is deeply and thoroughly ignorant. After all, if we are concerned about slavery, then the Arab-Muslims were great slave raiders, and maintain slavery today. Even in the year of our Progress of 2010, millions of workers live in slavery-like conditions in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf oil-rich states. Arabs were raiding Africa and other places for slaves long before there were English-speaking [or Spanish or French or Dutch or Danish] colonies in the Americas. And they continued after the Emancipation in the USA. Think of Zanzibar where British [yes, the British back then dared to raise their hands against their Arab-Muslim betters] forces stopped the African slave trade about 1880. The Mahdi revolt in Sudan was fought because the Muslims there resented the British for preventing them from raiding southern Sudan for slaves. It was a revolt in favor of enslaving. Even now there are Black slaves or semi-slaves in Saudi Arabia, where slavery was only outlawed in 1962 but continued de facto.
The best thing to be said about Arab and Muslim slave-raiders is that they were equal opportunity enslavers. They took Blacks from Africa, Slavs from Ukraine and southern Belarus, Western Europeans captured in raids on the coasts of Italy, France, Britain, Ireland and even Iceland.
Cameron is wrong to overlook the slave-raiding of the Arabs and other Muslims, which is religiously approved just as long as the enslaved are not Muslims.
Good comeback Skeez. I knew that was coming after I say the post.
No, I have to issues with Native Americans. My sister is married to one and I attended school and played sports with others of 4 different tribes. Native Americans were and are no better than any other humans. Some tribes had customs that were very good by today’s lights. Most had customs we would find anywhere from offensive to horrible. Some tribes were just horrors.
Unfortunately they all suffered what happens to any stone age society that comes in contact with one much more advanced.
Oh and sure, power to the people, pull down the owners, kumbiya. Guess what, there are good corporations and bad.
That should read “NO, I have no issues”.
Yeah, Avatar is hopelessly cliched.
Yeah, Avatar takes plot devices from revisionist westerns where the indians are good and white guys are evil.
Yeah, the characters are cardboard stereotypes.
But go see it anyway. And pay the extra two bucks to see it in 3D.
If you want to see a film that resolutely refuses to romanticize the Native Americans, go rent the Canadian masterpiece “Black Robe”
In most cases its considered “ad hominem” to say “Carol Gould is just plain stupid. No one should take her seriously.” But it is so self-evident it would be the equivalent of stating skunks should be ignored because they make a bad smell. Skunk=Carol [because the readership is that stupid too].
Are we really complaining about this movie again. Give me a break. If you don’t want to see it, don’t. Some how I don’t think this movie will make our enemies hate us more. Some how I don’t think our enemies would bother going to see the movie as it would just bolster the “Great Satan” economically. (I’m not referring to the US as such, I’m quoting the radicals who hate us)If you feel attacked by every fact of the liberal media. However, at some point you have to let it go. If you all want more conservative movies with more conservative themes, start writing some scripts, get a camera, and head to Sun Dance.
Recent christer celluloid creations as LEGION and “Book of Eli” made me LMAOROTL. They’re actually stealth comedies. “Great Satan” would be a massive upgrade for these willfully ignorant morons.
I’m waiting for someone to break this pattern & make a movie showing the ”natives” to be nasty, backwards, dishonest, treacherous, savage monsters with abominable beliefs & customs, xenophobic & racist, with few, if any, redeeming qualities while the colonialists are shown as bringing enlightened rational civilized ideas to the brutish natives.
Apocalypto. (Not so sure about the colonialists since they’re only in the final frame, but we can only assume that they can’t be worse than the natives.)
50. miguelj:
If you want to see a film that resolutely refuses to romanticize the Native Americans, go rent the Canadian masterpiece “Black Robe”
Good advice, but I’m not sure I could stand a movie that dark — no pun intended.
I am surprised you failed to understand the story despite watching the film twice. I too found the plot to be the weakest element of an otherwise breathtaking movie; but mostly because it was too predictable.
If you didn’t understand the simplistic and contrived plot, I’m not surpised that you didn’t realise that the marines were paid mercenaries, not USMC.
Your assumption that these marines are Americans says a lot more about you than it says about the film.
I knew that when I started reading the comments about this article, someone would write something like this: “Avatar is only a movie.” You did not disappoint me. And so, my friends, I fear for us all. We have forgotten the power of ideas.
Many years ago, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. The novel changed the way a large portion of the United States viewed slavery. So much so that when Abraham Lincoln met the author, he observed, “So you’re the little lady who started this great war!” Does anyone out there want to tell me that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was only a book?
Left wing Hollywood has always made anti-American movies. And when another one comes along that has the potential to persuade the world even that much more against America, the disappointment sets in for all the patriots. The Soviet Union got away with mass murder because the left somewhat agrees with the concept of equalization of the population. The left can control the people to stamp out the unwanted thoughts and behaviors of a society. So the Soviets get a pass. Some of us will go see the movie, some won’t. And some will wait for dvd. The massive amount of money has been made. But if there was a pro-America movie from James Cameron, I doubt the rest of the world would line up to see it in mass numbers. Because George W Bush went into Iraq and removed a brutal dictator, the judgement and condemnation of America is that much more pronounced. It was always there.
57@RobertB5
Then why not use free enterprise and make better movies yourself, RobertB5? Are you so dull you have no story to tell that draws a paying audience? And why is that?
funny, a leftist talking free enterprise.
59, still a good question. If the right is so worried about the movie selction, why not get into the movie making business. Everytime I mention a need to develop alternate energy sources, that very suggestion is what I get to hear. What’s good for the goose…
Carol Gould asks:
“Am I overreacting?”
Oh no Carol, not at all, overreacting would be so out of character for you.
Hi,
I change my screen name around a lot, not to be a dreaded TROLL, I just like teasing Children Of The Damned.
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh205/dishmael_bucket/children_of_damned_poster_04.jpg
Far Left, AlterNet had a blog entry 2 months ago, about…why did people wish to have sex with the 9′ tall cartoon character in Avatar.
Please remember, that Joe Camel had to die, and, that absolutely detestable piece of schlock cartoon Sam E, gets 4 stars on Dish Network. Leftists defend it as if it were something by Stanley Kubrick…Yecch!
Dude, I think you’re reading too far into it. It’s just a Fern Gully ripoff. It’s nice to watch sure, but let’s check off the Fern Gully/Avatar list:
Main character sent on invasive mission to native territory……Check!
Said character meets female counterpart before any other native…Check!
Man gets to know indiginous people by living with them….Check!
Man befriends winged companion (no Robin Williams for Avatar)….1/2 Check
Love scene in glowey setting……..Check!
Giant bulldozer trucky thing w/ giant chainsaw attatched to front..Check!
Man witnesses heart changing catastrophe….Check!
Smog monster voiced by Tim Curry……1/2 check
Man rises against former allies to aid indiginous people….check………
…and saves the day!…Check!
So there you have it. It’s not anti American, it’s friggin Fern Gully all over again!
Avatar is Ferngully on steroids!!!!
Col.Quaritch a combination of X’MEN’s Cable (without the robotic arm attached in place of his human arm, or mutant powers of time travel)and Duke Nukem !!
That man had to have had some of the best badass lines ever uttered or quoted in cinematic history!!!
I did not see him as the villian but a man of Honor(an anti hero or antivillian at best) who through stress of his job and effects of war on his psyche just seem to crack under the pressure of it all! Where was his support or superiors to remove him from his post and get him the help and understanding an care he so desprately needed and deserved?!
I’d cry if Col. Quaritch started to cry because someone reached out to what was left of that man’s humanity, and making him look like a babykiller!(Even Badass John Rambo cried and and discussed his disgust of how he and others were treated and “called babykiller and all kinds of vile crap such as that” after they returned home after the Vietnam War in “FirstBlood”).
Our Marines deserve more respect than what Col. Quaritch got in Avatar, that’s what bothered me most about the characterization.I somewhat think it kind of bothered actor Stephen Lang to a point,who did the best he could with what Cameron gave him, it was said that Quaritch was even more vilianous, and It was Lang that gave him what little honor and respect we see of him in Avatar(a lot of Quaritch cold heartedness was purposely cut out of the film-you can see the deleteded scenes in the new version rerelease of Avatar on DVD,some deleteded scenes can be accessed on youtube!
Let’s move on from the Veitnam War and how we so dishonored those who deserve our honor most!”FREEDOM ISN”T FREE”IT”S BOUGHT WITH BLOOD!
But then again according to Cameron, he wrote Avatar pre 911 yet tried to sell it to a post 911 world! I thought we had moved on from such negative sterotypes of our men and women in the Military service! Maybe Cameron after all the bad press that followed the film(most complaints being racism and White guilt)will be more sensitive in the future concerning this issue as well!