In Avatar, ‘Nature Gets to Fight Back’ Says Cameron
Can brilliant filmmakers be lousy thinkers? This question is being raised because of an interesting interview with James Cameron in the Los Angeles Times. In this interview, Mr. Cameron proudly describes his film Avatar as follows: “Nature gets to fight back. It’s Death Wish for environmentalists. When did nature ever get to fight back in a movie?”
Well, the answer is, as James Cameron should know, every time we see a person in a film who dies of a disease like cancer or tuberculosis, or as a result of floods, earthquakes, or hurricanes, we see how nature fights back. In reality, as in Haiti, we see what happens when nature takes control and destroys houses and roads and bridges — does it make him happy to see how nature destroyed a whole country?
James Cameron is 55 now, and if he takes care of himself and listens to his doctors and personal trainers he can easily last another twenty or thirty years on this planet. In the Middle Ages, Mr. Cameron’s Scottish forbears had an average life expectancy of about thirty years because they couldn’t fight the forces of nature. When they were born, they could expect the same lifespan in years as Mr. Cameron still has in his middle age.
Until human beings started to understand the complex universe of micro-life, discovering bacteria and viruses, beginning a scientific journey to understand nature at its most basic level, we were at nature’s mercy.
Ancient human existence was marked by a search for food and a fear of disease, which the humans at that time considered to have been brought upon them by supernatural forces. Even in the Roman and Greek periods, and also in pre-Columbian North America, human beings on average didn’t have a median life expectancy at birth of more than twenty-five years. It was the industrial revolution that gave us longer life spans — especially the construction of modern sewer systems in the nineteenth century which created a revolution in sanitation, leading to less disease.
In nature, organisms are engaged in an eternal battle to pass on their genes. Both huge and tiny organisms attack each other for nutrition and living space, and human progress was only made possible when we started to investigate natural processes and break up the natural chain of cause (diseases) and effect (death).
As organisms, we human beings seem to have a physical system fit for thirty to forty years of existence. According to nature, that’s enough. Nowadays, scientists use their ingenuity for finding even more techniques to limit the consequences of growing old, which itself has been made possible by successfully limiting natural forces. We spend most of our health care resources on people older than sixty — many of their illnesses occur because we live longer than our natural lifespan.
Mr. Cameron imagines that _his_ life would, and will, be much the same as it is in relative terms.
Easy there big fella,
He is referring to the part of movie where the animals in the movie mass and fight back against invaders.
There there were several movies where nature fights back; Willard, Hitchcock’s the Birds, a whole slew of movies about snakes, frogs, bee’s, etc. So the statement he made is not accurate, but not for the reasons in this article.
The closest analogy to nature fighting back with disease would be ebola, dengue fever, things like this. These are diseases that tend to remain within the environment until disturbed by humanity, and then released into the population. They are made to kill the invaders.
Cancer, and related diseases are terrible, no doubt. But they are mutations of cells, and result of particulants, carcinogens, Etc. they are cells running wildly out of control and have unplugged themselves from Natures blueprint.
Nature is Chaos. It isn’t pretty. Its violent and destructive and is the way its intended to be. We are only passing through.
Cameron’s biggest fault is that like so many in Hollywood, he measures the universe through the prism of James Cameron, as if somehow his ability to create an enjoyable flick makes him sovereign in passing judgment. A creative talent for sure and a tip of the cap in Cameron obtaining the accompanying riches, but if I want to hear real wisdom, I’d be better to visit any nursing home.
Nothing did more to extend life by learning how to purify our drinking water. And Sir John Harington did as much as anybody to help ensure good health when he invented the toilet. I discovered this immutable fact after finishing the hard sciences on the trip to medical school. Someone tell James Cameron there are people far more talented than he will ever be.
In regards to nature “fighting back”, even in the sense that Cameron meant it, it’s been done before, and done better. “Princess Mononoke” is a prime example. It involves a bloody conflict between humans and nature spirits, so it even has the deliberate will aspect on the side of nature that’s missing from real conflicts with nature. But it’s also fare more nuanced than Cameron’s vision. Conflicts between people (ie, war) enter into the picture, the forces of nature are not simply pure but can turn demonic (literally), and the needs that drive people into conflict with nature are portrayed sympathetically as well. The satisfaction of the movie’s resolution stems not from nature winning over man, but from nature and man reaching a new coexistence. Cameron is not only arrogant in his presumption to elevate nature over man, but also in his dismissal of other directors who have portrayed such conflicts, and portrayed them far better than he ever could.
Hollywood: Military and corporate villains kill and pillage a peaceful indigenous population that is in tune with Mother Nature for their own gain.
Reality: In Haiti, Mother Nature kicks the hell out of a backward indigenous population and American military and corporations immediately come to their comfort and aid.
If he really believes that nature isn’t capable of fighting back, I think he should go visit Alaska and punch a grizzly bear.
Better yet, a polar bear if he can find one. I hear they are cute and cuddly and defenseless.
Wait a sec… For example, Cameron said, that “noble savage” is just a fantasy:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10866#
I think somebody should take it easy, like it was said in first comment.
Nature fights back… death by Gaiatine.
Wasn’t even his own preceding movie about nature fighting back? As I recall, the iceberg won…
Talking about nature fighting back is absurd. Nature’s always been the aggressor.
Look around. Most of the universe is lifeless rocks, thermonuclear fireballs, balls of toxic gas, and the voids between them. Nature is an implacable enemy.
Actually man’s greatest enemy is himself. He naturally brings himself to the brink of extinction. Instead of creating lush environments, man makes competitive urban centers with scarce resources. From a market analysis, it is unprofitable to keep man alive. The food/labor pyramid has flipped upside-down after 100,000 years. In an economic crisis, corporate farms will shut down leaving 80% of the worlds urbanized population in famine. Natural hunters, urban man will cannibalize his neighbors and young leaving nothing but bones and cockroaches. As well, the age/birth pyramid has inverted with the majority of the population past reproductive age.
Mankind has no future, and will vanish as did the Neanderthal.
The 30-40 year life span is wrong. The natural human lifespan is seventy years; it’s infant mortality that devastates life expectancy.
I haven’t seen Avatar, but am speaking in general.
There’s nothing wrong with romantic imaginary fantasy fairytales about an ideal world that doesn’t exist and has nothing to do with reality.
In a normal world, the difference between imagination and reality is accepted — as normal. But something’s gone really flippy when we accept as normal NOT knowing the difference.
This was an excellent article “fighting back” against the ideas Cameron dished out. But, I find it very odd that it was necessary to take the subject on as a serious debate.
Odd that in the world we live in, it can no longer be taken for granted that people know the difference between the reality of nature — (which, of course, provides, and is appreciated as both wonderful and terrible, but which, in order to survive, mankind has had to largely tame and overcome) — and a pure fantasy where nature is only seen as benign and nurturing.
Odd. Something’s not normal here.
kochevnik, do you not see the irony in your words? You, who say how great abortion is, say that mankind is dying due to an inverted demographic pyramid. How can the age pyramid not invert, if we kill our own children? You keep dancing around the Truth, but you do not see. You look, but do not see; you listen, but do not hear; you receive, but do not understand. Your eyes have been blinded, your ears waxed deaf, and your heart made stony and sluggish.
I remember my wise, old acting teacher, who over a period of time taught us how to step into the imaginary world so far that our bodies would physically react. Tears could flow. Faces become red-hot with anger. Trembling.
It was a thin line, he told us, but if you don’t know the difference between the imaginary world and reality, you’ve got a big problem.
Has Cameron and an entire generation (or two — or three) crossed that thin line?
I don’t go to movies very often, like every couple years, because they are so seldom worth the time or money spent. I ventured forth to a local theater to see Avatar in 3D, to find out what all the hullabaloo was about.
I suggest that Avatar should be experienced with the right brain, while deliberately suspending activity in the left brain. The superbly creative story, stunningly beautiful cinematography, and stupefyingly detailed fantasy, synthesized with masterful graphic technique, can only be diminished by analysis of its simple-minded politics, noble-savage fallacy, and tiresome anti-human mindset.
Mr. Cameron is a uniquely creative genius, both artistically and technologically. It’s too much to ask that he also be of sound mind, philosophically and politically.
I chose to forgo analysis, and to be a part of the story. I left the theater staggering, and exhausted, by the most superb cinematic creation I’ve experienced in many years.
#17 TOPKNIFE 80 years ago,memerized viewers of a movie characterized by:”stunningly beautiful cinematography,…”synthesized with a masterful graphic technique”,chose to suspend “activity in the left brain”,in order to..” become part of the story”.The movie:TRIUMPH OF THE WILL.We cannot EVER forego analysis of the political implications of a work of art,no matter how brilliant,or we will be complicit in mind control.
In Avatar, ‘Nature Gets to Fight Back’ Says Cameron
What does Leon de Winter’s obsession with
dirt, disease, and death have to do with
hammerheads stomping on Blackwater Guards ?
A fact which surprised me: There are cases where
social animals under stress/threat do behave with a
common purpose; you might say they “are of one mind”.
@ Owen: Princess Mononoke
…is a wonderful work of Anime’ loaded with animism,
anthropomorphism, and Japanese guilt over pollution.
The allegory is similar, but there is one crucial
difference: Earth, unlike Pandora, does not have
a literal world-wide web of life.
@ jvon: Punch a bear
People do it all the time; Ask Sarah Palin.
A punch of at least 35 caliber is recommended.
@ Class Clown, Nate, et. al: Natural disasters
It was de Leon who animated the dead universe;
Hollywood does that too: Puts a living, often
human face on natural phenomena like tornadoes,
floods, etc.
@ kochevik: To Serve Mankind
Roasted, with some Fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Some of the Neanderthal skeletons do show tool marks.
But seriously: Despair is a sin.
Mankind came down from the trees last week,
and out of the caves yesterday; Give it time.
Your short-range prediction has a non-negligible
probability of coming true; The current economic
mess might cause local collapses to savagery, but
not, I think, a permanent global decivilization.
@ AQUA: Stepping into the Dream Time
Which is what Cameron wants the human race to do:
Empathize with the rest of the living world, so as
to find man’s proper place in it, as conservator.
Cameron said that he designed Avatar to work as
an adventure, a romance, and an environmental warning.
Myself, I think he hid one more message in plain sight:
The Na’Vi, far from being primitives, are the end point
of the evolution of an intelligent species, who got past
hard tech so long ago that they no longer remember lofting
the flying mountains.
You laugh. You sure ? Ask yourselves: Of the human beings
who have seen Avatar, how many would trade the remainder
of their lives for life on Pandora ?
Well, I never saw titanic. The plot sounded corny to me–avatar sounds even more plodding, didactic, cliched, and forumulaic. If the world was full of folks like me, cameron would be a waiter at an Olive Garden restaurant somewhere.
I didn’t even like the titanic soundtrack. Was on a road trip with some gals who played it in the car a few times…
@myth buster
Your screen name is ironic, since this idea about “well, if you made it out of infancy, you probably could live till 70″ has been around forever, and it’s nothing more than an urban legend.
Look at the first actuarial tables. Very, very few people in those tables lived past 50.
Find some archeological evidence for this “life expectancy” of 70 in Cro-Magnon times. Pro-tip: you won’t find it.
Life has been terribly, terribly short for most people for most of human history. Infant mortality won’t explain all of it by a long shot.
The funny thing is 80% of these environmentalists would not last 5 minutes in the woods without their mochachinos and all of the other perks that “evil” corporations have brought us. 95% of them would change their tune if you could show them a crystal ball of how the world would look if they got what they wanted.
“There there were several movies where nature fights back; Willard, Hitchcock’s the Birds, a whole slew of movies about snakes, frogs, bee’s, etc.”
The all-time classic being “Frogs” starring Ray Milland. The climactic scene where the frogs gather in the room with Milland croaking menacingly at him before leaping on him and frogging him to death is a cinema classic.
kochevnik said:
“[...] From a market analysis, it is unprofitable to keep man alive. [...]”
Not profitable for whom? The only known beings in the universe that have anything to do with profit are humans. Same goes for markets, so a market analysis outside of human existence doesn’t mean a thing. And who is doing this keeping of man alive, other than man? So, the gist of what you are saying is that it is not worth the effort expended by each person to keep him or herself alive? Brilliant.
Interesting how on cue scientists discover Avatar-like biology right here on Earth. From New Scientist:
It turns out that Pandora’s interconnected ecosystem may have a
parallel back on Earth: sulfur-eating bacteria that live in muddy
sediments beneath the sea floor.
Some researchers believe that bacteria in ocean sediments are
connected by a network of microbial nanowires. These fine protein
filaments could shuttle electrons back and forth, allowing communities of bacteria to act as one super-organism. Now Lars Peter Nielsen of Aarhus University in Denmark and his team have found tantalising evidence to support this controversial theory.
“The discovery has been almost magic,” says Nielsen. “It goes against everything we have learned so far. Micro-organisms can live in electric symbiosis across great distances. Our understanding of what their life is like, what they can and can’t do – these are all things we have to think of in a different way now.”
24@Dan G.
>So, the gist of what you are saying is that it is not worth the
>effort expended by each person to keep him or herself alive? >Brilliant.
No offense you really need some business school courses, Dan.