![\"avatar_1.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/12\/avatar_1.jpg?resize=162%2C110&ssl=1\"){kind=avatar}
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Bambi fights back<\/em><\/p>\n Kvond<\/a> has a beautifully written post on James Cameron’s latest, Avatar: The Density of Being<\/a> (you can tell he’s been reading Brian Massumi<\/a>), to which I can only add my own quick thoughts after seeing the film this weekend.<\/p>\n 1) New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat<\/a> has it partly right: with its tree\/Goddess-worshipping, tribal-shamanic-indigenous-hunter-gatherer-Daoist-pagan New-Age all-is-One-ism, Avatar is an expression of the longstanding American tradition of pantheist nature spirituality. Douthat thinks that that’s mainstream and that Hollywood is fully behind it, but it’s really still the insurgent religion to muscular Christianity and militarist nationalism. This is one of the rare films in which the Goddess (Mother Nature & the Natives) takes on the Capitalist War Machine and… well, you’ll have to see who wins.<\/p>\n 2) It is<\/em> James Cameron: with its rollercoaster-ride, shoot-em-up, special-FX thrills and chills (cf. Terminator, Aliens), it’s probably the most exorbitant and expensive such film in history. There’s cheesy dialogue (JC needs a scriptwriter) and gratuitous violence, with the never-say-die eternally recurrent monster, Schwarzenegger’s “I’ll be back” in the form of the Dr. Strangelove-ish Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang). All put to the service of a fairy tale storyline (cf. Titanic, Terminator) of good guys and bad guys and class tension, with the white-boy hero as an intermediary caught between the two and becoming-heroic by siding with — and leading — the underdog. The broken-bodied (war-victimized) and misunderstood marine with a “good heart” is given a (genetically engineered) new body and falls in love with the dark girl — Pocahontas replayed for the millionth time. The good white boy messianically leads the natives in rebellion against their overlord invaders — which makes it Christmassy in more ways than Douthat’s Solstice-timed op-ed suggests. It is, after all, that Messiah story too (cf. Terminator 2, just no virgin in this version). (Cameron’s initials aren’t JC for nothing: the king of Hollywood born in a manger in Kapuskasing, Ontario.)<\/p>\n 3) The Na’vi and their planet, Pandora (Pan-Thea, the tree-forest-rhizome-neural-network Goddess and World Soul, Pandora whose box, when opened, unleashed a million megatons of reality on humanity — it’s pagan mythology with a sledgehammer; gotta love it): They are beautiful — as all the reviews<\/a> say, there are scenes that are among the most beautiful ever put to screen. Cutting-edge CGI in the service of animating and re-enchanting nature, the movie is a cine-kinetic fusion of Bambi, Terminator, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (and much else; see kvond).<\/p>\n There are strong resonances with Ursula LeGuin’s novella “The Word for World is Forest” (a Vietnam war-like attack on a beautiful planet and its indigenous inhabitants) and her utopian ethnographic-poetic-musical epic novel Always Coming Home<\/a>, its future-primitive Pacific Coastal ‘Kesh’ people being a kind of west coast precursor to the Na’vi. The ethnographic theme — the translation\/mediation between two opposed cultural worlds, science and anthropology’s dependence and ultimate answerability only to empire\/colonialism\/militarism, and the cultural intermediary’s desire to go native, is overly stereotypical but, for the Hollywood thriller format, not badly done. It will propagate the gone-to-Croatan<\/a> meme for a new generation.<\/p>\n 4) Ideology: Behind it all is the Spielberg factor, i.e., that the overt message (‘Man vs. Nature’, or rather high-modernist techno-capitalism vs. Body-Shop-nature-tech) is undercut by the implicit message that it is science, technology, and Hollywood magic — the Image Industry, the Spectacle — that enchants us and brings us what we really want. And they bring us new life, maybe eternal life, through the New Age science of neuro-energetics, gene-splicing, virtual-reality, and all the rest. ‘Jake Sully’ the Na’vi avatar (not the marine) is, after all, a zombie: his body is a remote-controlled, genetically-engineered robot. Are we really supposed to believe that this guy will save the universe and that Na’vi wouldn’t all choke to death laughing at the whole idea? There are resonant images here, but also an underlying subtext: what’s the balance between the two? (This repeats a friendly spat <\/a> I’ve been having with Pat Brereton over his book Hollywood Utopia<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Yes, it’s entertainment, and ideology, and religion, and politics… Happy Solstice to all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat has it partly right: with its tree\/Goddess-worshipping, tribal-shamanic-indigenous-hunter-gatherer-Daoist-pagan New-Age all-is-One-ism, Avatar is an expression of the longstanding American tradition of pantheist nature spirituality. Douthat thinks that that’s mainstream and that Hollywood is fully behind it, but it’s really still the insurgent religion to muscular Christianity and militarist nationalism. This is one of the rare films in which the Goddess (Mother Nature & the Natives) takes on the Capitalist War Machine and… well, you’ll have to see who wins.<\/p>\n But behind it all is the Spielberg factor, i.e., that the overt message (‘Man vs. Nature’, or rather high-modernist techno-capitalism vs. Body-Shop-nature-tech) is undercut by the implicit message that it is science, technology, and Hollywood magic — the Image Industry, the Spectacle — that enchants us and brings us what we really want. And they bring us new life, maybe eternal life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688745,196,691847,689354],"tags":[291,4448,352,387,16842,4416,416],"class_list":["post-1168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cinema_zone","category-ecoculture","category-religion-spirituality","category-image_nation","tag-ecocriticism","tag-ecopolitics","tag-film","tag-hollywood","tag-ideology","tag-paganism","tag-pantheism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-iQ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1199,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/02\/15\/avatars-global-affects\/","url_meta":{"origin":1168,"position":0},"title":"Avatar’s global affects","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It's been fascinating to watch the unfolding public conversation about Avatar (much of which, come to think of it, my early review had anticipated): environmentalist celebrations of how it portrays the Earth rising up against the megamachine of capitalism and patriarchy; critiques of how the film perpetuates the stereotyping of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/tag\/animism\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Protesters-dressed-as-cha-002.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2010\/02\/Protesters-dressed-as-cha-002-thumb.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6007,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/06\/07\/nature-the-popular-imagination-keynote\/","url_meta":{"origin":1168,"position":1},"title":"Nature & the Popular Imagination keynote","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 7, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the abstract for the keynote I will be giving at Nature and the Popular Imagination in Malibu this August. It builds on my recent talk at Bucks College, but without the nod to pop-cultural interest in Avatar. THE AGE OF THE WORLD MOTION PICTURE starring the Cinematic Earth, with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7016,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/11\/08\/society-space-interview\/","url_meta":{"origin":1168,"position":2},"title":"Society & Space interview","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Society and Space has posted a conversation\/interview that Harlan Morehouse carried out with me in early October. While it's focused on Ecologies of the Moving Image, we talk about plenty of other things -- nature and culture, the eco-humanities, the Anthropocene, ontology, critical geography, Buddhism, Zizek, Peirce, nationalism, withdrawn objects,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1203,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/02\/22\/films-best-of-lists\/","url_meta":{"origin":1168,"position":3},"title":"films (& best-of lists)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The decade isn't really over yet: there was no \"year zero,\" which means that the year 2000 was the two-thousandth year of its calendar, and that this year is the 2010th, the last of the third millennium's first decade, not the first of its second. But I've seen so many\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6185,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/10\/22\/2-or-3-things-about-the-cinema-book\/","url_meta":{"origin":1168,"position":4},"title":"2 or 3 things about the cinema book","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Ecologies of the Moving Image is a book of ecophilosophy that happens to be about cinema, and about the 12-decade history of cinema at that. What makes it ecophilosophy? It is philosophy that is deeply informed both by an understanding of ecological science and an interdisciplinary appreciation for today's ecological\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_EWY1PJsPzBA\/Sy7A-os24mI\/AAAAAAAAAyI\/71YlZjgAk8M\/s400\/stalker26.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6390,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/12\/30\/wlu-press-catalog-out\/","url_meta":{"origin":1168,"position":5},"title":"WLU Press catalog out","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Wilfrid Laurier University Press page for Ecologies of the Moving Image is up, here. Their Spring catalogue, which can be downloaded here, includes two new books on Jean-Luc Godard (adding to an impressive back catalog of film titles), as well as Gary Genosko's When Technocultures Collide, Kamboureli and Verduyn's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1168"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4932,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions\/4932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}