{"id":4126,"date":"2009-12-28T23:07:07","date_gmt":"2009-12-29T06:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/?p=4126"},"modified":"2017-08-18T17:59:28","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T17:59:28","slug":"avatar-on-its-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2009\/12\/28\/avatar-on-its-face\/","title":{"rendered":"Avatar On Its Face"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"AVTR\"<\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Strangely \u2014 because I trained to be a cynic-critic \u2014 I actually enjoyed Avatar. I don’t know if I expected much more of a nuanced story from James Cameron, so I didn’t go in there looking for insight and reflection on the complexities of sci-tech versus anti-tech (delivered, ironically, by a super high tech
\nproduction), exploitive corporations versus pristine cultures (created, ironically, by a corporation spending $250M on its production), militarism versus peaceful warriors (by the guy who materialized his fantasy of the battlesuit-wearing Space Marine), sentamentalist essentialism versus… Cameron didn’t fool me into thinking he had something important to say about cultures’ relationships with *nature* or *the other*.<\/p>\n

I already know how the Noble Savage<\/a> works as a pivot point for wrangling my emotions in a film’s narrative round-up. Or \u2014 *gasp* \u2014\u00a0the white man’s burden<\/a>. To work that angle<\/a> is tiring as a critique, however topical it might be. To critique it over and over again. And again.<\/p>\n

*Sigh*<\/p>\n

But..that’s me. I spent many years in a smarty-pants lit-crit-swaggering grad school. Been there, read that, saw it over and over again. What else is in there? Anything at all? Is it just a roughshod rehashed ham-fisted anti-colonialist apologist’s romp? Really? Is that all I get for my $12.50 Imax 3D experience?<\/p>\n

I mean..it’s James Cameron. The animation and production ruled the day. It’s best understood either as a 3 hour treatment for a video game, an advert for the Global Consciousness Project<\/a>, or a simple Pocahontas-y Christmas story. Simple stories for simple people on holiday. If one of those simpletons thinks for a moment about the sinewy interconnectedness of all living things, I’d be surprised. That’s a MacGuffin to move us to a battle sequence that shows that steel and explosives can’t bend a mind’s will. This point, however you can make it, is worth the price of admission and can never be said enough \u2014 even with a moronic, chanting-in-teh-forestz-with-drums plot line. It’s simple, but 8 years of Bush-Cheney will take lots of stupid stories with important principles underneath them to clear up their mess.<\/p>\n

If anything, what I enjoyed most is this latest addition to a growing line of sci-fi visual commentaries on the growing displacement of consciousness \u2014 plugging ourselves into other selves and other places: Brainstorm<\/a>, The Matrix<\/a>, Surrogates<\/a>, Gamer<\/a>..there’s a curious theme and, despite the flat-footed, easily critiqued, buffoonish scripts \u2014 brilliant invective of the era of the *online*, the *Avatar* just below the surface of a middling (or worse) story.<\/p>\n

Still \u2014 Avatar is a good film for reasons *other* than the story.<\/p>\n

cf. Sascha’s review<\/a><\/p>\n

cf. Steven Shaviro’s \/ Pinnocchio Theory’slong-but-worth-it analysis of Gamer<\/a><\/p>\n

cf. David Denby’s Avatar review in The New Yorker<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Strangely \u2014 because I trained to be a cynic-critic \u2014 I actually enjoyed Avatar. I don’t know if I expected much more of a nuanced story from James Cameron, so I didn’t go in there looking for insight and reflection on the complexities of sci-tech versus anti-tech (delivered, ironically, by a super high tech production), … Continue reading Avatar On Its Face<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[47,50,67,152],"tags":[286,1188,516,643,759,940],"yoast_head":"\nAvatar On Its Face - Near Future Laboratory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2009\/12\/28\/avatar-on-its-face\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Avatar On Its Face - Near Future Laboratory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Strangely \u2014 because I trained to be a cynic-critic \u2014 I actually enjoyed Avatar. 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