My wife and I watched Avatar the other night at the theater. The nearly three-hour-long movie was so engrossing that it hardly seemed at all that long. It was a tour de force of the silver screen. If only no one would subscribed to its hackneyed an inaccurate treatment of an important subject--the environment.
The more I think about it, the more irritated I am by the cliched character of the movie's Colonel Miles Quaritch, who employed militaristic command and control to obtain his dream, that of destroying the environment for the "unobtainable" possibility of saving the world through the mining and development of a mineral called "unobtainium".
Imagine my laughter, then, when I found this video clip on the BBC, wherein Avatar's director, James Cameron advocates the same militaristic tactics to obtain his dream, that of destroying the freedom of mankind through the militaristic marshaling of the supposed saviors of mankind to rescue the world from the still unproven, unlikely, and "unobtainable" possibility of catastrophic man-made global warming.
"We need to mobilize like we did in World War II, and we need to see the threat as that severe to the safety and security of [us] and our children," Cameron said.
Very ironic indeed. I probably should have, but I didn't see the plot so much as environmental as human (er, humanoid) protection rights - the right for people to live peacefully. The environmental stuff was just a fantasy side note type of thing for me.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think that we'd be doing things like removing subsidies and other law encouragements on environmentally harmful activities instead of levying taxes and other forms of control. Then again, it's usually not really about the environment, is it?
You are so far from the reality of science-based policy. Also, not sure if "Freudianly" is a word. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI would have thought that you were the last person in Americana to see "Avatar," except this morning George Will said on TV that he hasn't seen it.
ReplyDeleteThese advocates of free love and humanism are always opposed to force EXCEPT when it comes to their twisted cause(s) then they're all for controlling others. Hollywood's people and creations are rife with this contradiction. I posted a negative review of Avatar on IMDB.com and was skewered by 200 people who mocked my views of the movie, because I invoked a natural rights/freedom/God perspective in my review. Many of these "critics" who called me names and mocked me were obviously supportive of Colonel Cameron's secularist, "worship the earth," viewpoints. The movie, for me, was a beautifully wrapped concoction of Marxist Baalism.
ReplyDeleteThomas: Great point! It's something that I (as a former conservative and now libertarian) used to have problems with when it came to moral issues.
ReplyDeleteRichard: I actually didn't know the plot going in. My kids had seen it and said it was awesome, so my wife and I went on a date! It was quite well done. I actually appreciated the environmental aspects of it. The only thing that bothered me was the tired, cliche'd, over-the-top Colonel Quaritch.
In real life, though, I think a toned-down version of his character has a place, but more in the form of mega-corporations that rape the earth of natural minerals, vegetation, etc.
Frank, you've taken Cameron's statement WAY out of context. He's not talking about a militaristic offensive, like the kind Quaritch leads in the movie, he's talking about one that's more like the defensive response of the natives of Pandora.
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact, Frank, Cameron's comments are more like when Jake was trying to wake the Na'vi up to the threat, but they wouldn't listen to him. And then reality finally hit them. Here's the REAL irony, Fank: You're ignorant perspective is like the Na'vi. There is a real threat, Frank. Like it or not it's coming. Time to wake up!
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