‘Avatar’ and the Myth of the Noble ‘Blueskins’: Part One
by Dan GagliassoWith the success of James Cameron’s Avatar, audiences are once again being assaulted by Hollywood’s assumption of self-hate and false politically correct “truths” about who America is today and what we were in our past. Of course we shouldn’t be surprised, a look at James Cameron’s past films with military characters like Aliens and The Abyss show a similar disdain for the military. His scientists are always good and noble, but his military types, whether official or the contractor type as in Avatar remain uneducated, redneck killers. After all this is a film that lying propagandist, so-called “filmmaker” Michael Moore has declared, “a brilliant film for our times.”
I much prefer the balance of say the great 1951 black and white classic The Thing, where James Arness’s murderous, but very smart alien runs amok in an isolated Arctic research station. That is until captain Ken Toby and his wisecracking Army Air Corps crew and few common sense scientists manage to fry said killer alien’s ass with a makeshift electric chair.
The Thing’s military guys get all the really good lines, too. In level headed response to the naive head scientist’s crazy insistence that “…our lives do not matter. Knowledge, that’s the only reason to live, it knows far more then we do. We can learn from it. Just think we’ve split the atom.” Toby’s co-pilot responds wryly, “Yeah, and that sure made the world happy didn’t it.” But what do I know? I love westerns and military films; only the rare common sense science fiction film like The Thing or a grand adventure like Star Wars captures my fancy.
Fortunately I also know a good amount of military and western history, too. Since Avatar really is a politically correct sci-fi fantasy version of our own Indian Wars. More then one critic has accurately compared the plot to Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves, while even a National Public Radio reviewer dared suggest that the script was actually a bunch of scripts thrown into a blender. Though no one mentioned whether the blender was put on chop or grate, since the story line is so crude it certainly wasn’t blended in any sort of smooth fashion. Like Plains Indians Cameron’s Na’vi break and ride horses, six-legged ones on their home planet of Pandora and domesticate dragon-like flying creatures bringing to mind Plains Indians who used to lay in wait for eagles to turn their feathers into war trophy head gear.
Both Avatar and Dances With Wolves share the most evil, villainous and genocidal military killers since Little Big Man in 1970. It wasn’t true then and of course it isn’t true in Afghanistan or Iraq today. All modern civilized countries armies have had rare murderous aberrations in their history like My Lai or Sand Creek, but these have always been the exception not the rule. The Sand Creek massacre in 1864 featuring scum of the earth militia recruited out of the dregs of Denver’s saloons wiping out a good part of a Cheyenne village promised official government protection. Still, Sand Creek was also a ill-fated response to the continuing line up of mutilated settler’s bodies, women and children as well that the Cheyenne were leaving on the Colorado and Kansas plains.
To the uninformed, and let’s face it we haven’t taught fact-based history in this country for several generations, Avatar’s chief of security is just a evil George Armstrong Custer clone from Little Big Man and his “soldiers” copies of that same film’s cowardly and murderous cavalry troopers. Top professional western historians like Robert Utley, Paul Hutton and most recently James Donavan in his suburb 2007 book A Terrible Glory have repatriated Custer’s reputation based on facts.
From time in memorial in the heat and confusion of battle non-combatants have often been killed. Yet at the battle of the Washita in 1868 against the same Cheyenne from Sand Creek (numerous young hot headed warriors had continued unabated murderous raids on the Kansas frontier, partially because of the atrocities at Sand Creek) but Custer went out of his way to stop any killing of women and children and took over fifty prisoners, including old warriors. It was Custer’s Osage scouts who killed most of the non-combatants, just another day at the “office” against their tribal enemies. Yes, he did wipe out the Cheyenne’s 1,000 horse herd because they were war materials, the same as destroying buffalo meat in the village or a gasoline dump or truck park in Iraq today. An unhorsed Cheyenne warrior wasn’t much of a warrior at all. As a cavalryman who loved and depended on horses, Custer didn’t like it much either, but that’s war.
Actually I really like Costner’s Dances With Wolves even if I disagree with the politically correct stances that it takes. It’s a beautifully made film, captures the warrior spirit quite well and shows that each tribe like the Lakota Sioux and the Pawnee were distinct tribal groups unto their own. Though through strength of numbers, white man’s guns and the decimation of tribes like the Crow, Pawnee and Arikaree by small pox it was actually the Sioux who were the “imperialistic conquerors” chasing the weaker Crows, Kiowa and Cheyenne out of the Black Hills in the Dakotas around 1800. So much for Sioux claims that, “this land has been ours for as long as the sky has been blue and the grass has been green.”
By the way, the Sioux escaped the ravages of small pox because United States contract medical teams vaccinated them back in the 1820s! You can look it up, the “evil” old US of A was worried that the disease might wipe out the western tribes and sent out those medical expeditions, except the Pawnees, Crows and a few others were at odds with white folks back then and kept their distance. It wound up being good for the Sioux and bad for other tribes, since the Lakota eventually grew into the most powerful tribe on the northern Plains. That’s why the Pawnee, Crows and Arikaree eventually became scouts for the U.S. Army. One year after Custer’s death at the Little Bighorn, once the army had run the Sioux to the ground many Lakota warriors signed on with the U.S. Cavalry to fight their age old enemies Chief Joseph’s Nez Perce. Once a warrior it was best to do your damnedest to stay a warrior, if only in spirit and demeanor.
Avatar’s twelve foot tall, blue-skinned Na’vi and the film’s themes of socialistic and egalitarian hunters at one with nature are right out of all of those numerous “Noble Redskin” movies, but not factual history. Yet even some American Indians – that’s right Indian, since that is what almost all American Indian people refer to themselves as and Native American is a 1970s title that some comfortable, white, liberal college professor with a guilty conscience made up somewhere along the line – generally Indians recognize that their ancestors were warriors, generally pretty damn fierce ones at that and not a bunch of “happy hippies” peacefully fornicating in the hills. Even today most American Indians remain some of the most patriotic people in the United States and send an incredibly large percentage of their young people to serve in the U. S. Military, the same military that James Cameron insults so egregiously in Avatar.
Today, one successful film on a particular historically themed subject becomes the benchmark for knowledge on that subject. High school history teachers and even college professors often pick one film to show a class or give extra credit for watching out of class. Want to know about the Civil War, show them Glory, D-Day and World War II then show them Saving Private Ryan, the Kennedy Assassination show them Oliver Stone’s JFK. History is so out of fashion today that most students won’t watch a film on history out of the classroom. Films may indeed mainly be entertainment, but they can have tremendous influence for the better or the worse.
I grew up during a time when there were a number of films and even dramatic television shows on a particular historical subject over a matter of a few years. For some of us the fact that the movies and TV episodes didn’t even agree on say Custer and the Little Bighorn or what happened at the Alamo sent us to the library. On those library shelves we quickly learned that the books didn’t even agree and some of them appeared to be written and researched far better then others. It did something for our critical thinking eventually we even got curious about those pesky little numbers called footnotes and primary sources.
The danger of a vapid politically correct fantasy like Avatar is that for most of the audience there is no alternative opinion to the “America as Evil Fascist Empire” train of thought that it passes off as entertainment. That is particularly disturbing when director James Cameron freely admits that the evil corporate lackeys and military contractors who serve as his films antagonists are his comment on American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
[Ed. Note: This is part one of a two-part series which concludes tomorrow.]
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123 Comments
Ah. The noble savage. Oddly enough the majority of native american tribes were themselves militaristic in their makeup. The menfolk waging continous war against their neighbors early and often.
Pesky facts, complexity and nuance are reserved for liberals to deploy against their ideological opponents. That's what revisionist history is all about: You attack some simplistic charicature of the opponents' beliefs – like 'brave white pioneers vs. evil, primitive Indians' – and pick it apart with counter-facts about massacres and smallpox blankets. Having polished off the presumed myth, they offer in its place their own myth – 'noble, one-with-nature Indians vs. greedy, genocidal white pioneers.' Trouble is, anyone who's read a couple of books about American westward expansion knows that neither myth is complete; that they're really complementary, both true and false. In other words, history is complicated no matter how you look at it.
I think you mean "from time immemorial."
Like the tribes in Afghanistan.
From time to time, I have had lefty friends go on and on about the Evil White Man and his oppression of the Indians. Usually as a prequel to the announcement that they are 1/16 or 1/32 Native American and hate what was done to 'their people' by 'whites'. It never fails to amaze them when I respond that an entire branch of my family (on my father's mother's side) was massacred by Indians in Alabama in the early 1800s. Their crime? They trusted the local tribes when they were told they would have safe passage through to Louisiana (they were just passing through en route to New Orleans). My ancestors were then set-upon unawares, killed, and their wagons looted. Which proves that nasty people can come in any color, and so can innocent victims.
I notice that a lot here lately. All three "Big" sites are in dire need of editors, and at the same time, conservatives who write columns need to learn a few things about style, punctuation, spelling, homonyms, and sentence structure. It seems that the average quality of writing at political sites has gone downhill a few miles in a few years. It started in the comments sections, and now even the head articles are full of elementary-school errors.
Like a president giving a presser without a necktie, it makes conservative thought look sloppy and lazy and apathetic.
Having seen Avatar (enjoying its technological glory while constantly stifling guffaws at its arrogant naivete, cardboard characters and simplistic plotlines), it would seem that anyone with half a brain could come up with honest, authentic stories that ring true to the complexity of history, and that hold true to the Natural Rights of Man.
Let's leave aside Avatars hippie-dippie lovefest with Gaia, its posturing of scientists as pure, the military as techno-evil, and capitalism as callous and uncaring curs.
Avatar inadvertently supports the concepts of individual property rights, freedom of religion to an ethereal God, freedom of expression, and 2nd amendment rights (that allow people to defend themselves against a tyrannical government). Not to mention that Cameron will make millions from this movie, which supports the idea of capitalism and free markets.
You see: The left cannot even make a movie that does not violate its own precepts, such is the logic and purity of the Natural Rights of man.
I saw Avatar. The 3D IMAX preview of the NASA movie made the "stunning Avatar visual experience" look like a Warner Bros. cartoon. The movie is just plain silly. The target audience must be 9 year olds because there was absolutely no depth to anything.
Sorry, but this movie has no importantance. And those that assign ANY importance to it need meds STAT…..
Interesting thing about the Indians/Native Americans debate: Some have even begun to shy away from the use of the latter, on the grounds that "Americans" derives from Amerigo Vespucci, a white European explorer and thus has no real connection to the native tribes. Instead, they now prefer to use the word "Amerindian," which ironically is just a combination of the two supposedly offensive terms. This, of course, was also the invention of another white liberal in the education field.
And, as I pointed out in another discussion a while back, the bad guys in Avatar are how the far left envisions the military and big business to be, which is why they come off as one dimensional straw men to be knocked over rather than real people. Cameron never really delves into the character of his bad guys because they don't have any. They are cartoon villains for the good guys to knock down.
great column…
And we completely agree with Mr Gagliasso in both substance and tone, although we might replace 'Little Big Man' with 'Soldier Blue' as a more onerous example. Arthur Penn's comic take on the old west 'Little Big Man' , while admittedly leftist skewers just about everybody in it's looney deconstruction.
"Dances With Wolves' is a beautiful film. Politically correct? yes. Innacurate? sure. But superb nonetheless.
'Avatar' is a melange of other people's ideas- classic Jim Cameron- and will ultimately suffer the fate all derivative tales do- the fate of being inconsequential.
Like 'Titanic', which although very popular added nothing to the folklore of the tragic tale, 'Avatar' will set the template for future eye candy but do nothing to advance the art of storytelling…
really, unless the salad fork is on the left you can't eat?
A culture is only as good as it treats its women. The Na vi were curiously sexless, probably the result of millenia of femina vi's !
Seriously though, certain tribes would banish their women to bear their children alone in the woods, as in Dances with Wolves. If that isn't barbaric, then what is ? Your mother, wife, sister or daughter .
It's because these come from personal BLOGS, the editor can't control the spelling/grammar or style. He can only control how/when/where they are placed.
That actually made no sense at all to me.
My criticism was constructive, meant to be helpful.
Do you want conservative thought looking sloppy, lazy, and apathetic?
Salad fork? You downding me because I notice a crapload of errors and suggest a more careful approach to posting? Are you okay?
So what you’re saying is “F-Troop,” lied to us?
TexasVA and Suburban get no downdings, and no raggin'-on from you. Why is that?
Was my criticism, which was in the same vein as the other two, but a few words longer, too long for you, and so you felt you had to give a thumbs-down to mine only? Are you okay?
Dr. Josef Mengele was a very good scientist and made several observations that we use today in medicine and helped forward the science of genetics. But I don't think we'd consider him "pure" in the least….
I'm warning you Dobbs!!!!!
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Wait wait, Oliver Stones JFK?? That piece fo trash was the worst form of paranoid conspiracy theory out today. How can you even mention Stone as a serious director, he is a pot smoking hack.
No, "F Troop" was actually Kevin Costner's original source for "Dances with Wolves" — including the peace-loving Indians and the young officer who inadvertently does something (Lt. Parmenter's accidental charge, Lt. Dumbbell's attempted suicide ride) that seems heroic to his superiors.
So you see, they were both true to life!
Well George Armstrong Custer was a fine soldier and leader of men warts and all. People forget that he like a lot of men who when west after the Civil War, were hard veterans of that war, and to this day it's the most bloody and brutal war that we ever fought as a Nation. We fight our wars very differently since that unfortunate event. George Custer was just 23 when he was made a Brig. General. Think about that! 23 and look at 23 year old's you know. But he was not the only one there Was Adelbert Ames and Gulicia Pennypacker, he was just one month short of 21 when he became a Brig General. The Youngest then and now for the US Army. You would have to look to the 8th Airforce in World War II to see such young men with such responsibility if that war lasted an other year or two you would have seen a lot of 20 year old Colonel's and 21 year old Generals. Lucky for the men of the 8th that it ended when it did. As for the Great horse Culture of the Northern Plains, they were who they were, till the Spanish came, 300 years earlier, and brought the horse, there was no horses in America. nor could they win the fight they had to dempend on white's for things like guns and ammo. they gave up the bow very quickly when they were intoduced to the rifle. Custer and his command got caught, because they didn't know what was out in front of them, they lost the intel war that day and lost the batter because of it. All you have to do is go there and the land will tell you. He had no airplanes , helicopters or Preditors to scout for him and tell him what was out there, nor did he have radio's to talk to the others that were close but did not come into the fight. The Indians won a victory, and it was a puric one at that. They would loose the war, but they didn't loose themselves, they are still around, The army names its helicopters after the Tribe's they do this out of respect for a enemy that at one time was one of the finest Light Cav. To be found anywhere. To do better you would have to look at the Mongol's of the 13th century of Genghis Khan. Avatar is a good piece of tech film making, nothing more. What they can do now in film is something that is amazing. All you need is a good story and a good director and actors and we just might be in the new Golden Age for Movies and Toon's, The problem is no good stories or good direcrtor's and actors anymore. Oh and George Custer's brother, who died at the Little Big Horn was awarded the MOH twice! He is one of only 14 such men out of over 3000 such awards. They were not fools no matter what the PC crowd would have you belief.
That perspective should be played up, it would drive the left mad.
I remember conservatarian commentary about Forrest Gump having the same effect.
Heck, when you think about it, even using the English language to refer to native tribes is oppressive and racist. Let's all learn Cherokee or Sioux or whatever other tongue if we wish to talk about them!
I'm with you on Stone. How long before he makes a 9/11 truther movie?
Thanks Calumet…that’s a relief. Now I can get back to reality, my important job straightening out nails. LOL!
An oleaginous sentimentality about the "innocent" savage and the moral inferiority of civilization has been an elitist trope since the mid-17th Century and the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau. It remained an on-and-off-again staple with the intelligentsia until the 1960's when the revisionist/Marxist view of history gained currency within the academic and teaching community. Since then we have the repeated monodramas of socially "perfect" societies being bludgeoned out of existence by a rapacious Euro-American culture. The advent of enviromentalism has added "living in harmony with nature" as another virtue of native superiority. This sort of sentimentalizing is a way that "progressives" can take min-vacations in their own sense of superiority (see James Cameron) with the sure knowledge that nobody is actually going to ask THEM to live that way. By harkening back to a lost edenic paradise (or forward to one that is pure fiction) the progressive absolves himself of being one of "the exploiters" and assuages any guilt for their own large-scale and enthusiastic consumptoions of the pleasures of civilization.
The movie is a politically correct POS, but the novel "Little Big Man" is an even-handed and enlightening study of the conflict between Indians and the American government.
if they put some of them on Rosetta Stone I'd learn some
in most languages thier name means "the people"
why can't we just refer to every one as the people and dump this hyphenation garbage.
Art imitating life. It is just a movie. Why do you people take such delight in spewing endlessly about films you despise?
As I've been saying for awhile about Avatar, the movie has self evident truths of natural law showing how men are able to reason and determine right from wrong. Amoung these truths are the right to aquire and protect property, which assumes the right to self . The Na'vi are not "noble savages". They are able to reason just as well as humans however "primitive" they may be. While I certainly understand the allegory that Cameron projects with whatever bias you want to call it, the fixation on this detracts from the universal TRUTHS of the movie, many of which i'm not sure James Cameron even realizes. Liberty, property, self-reliance, and the right to defend these ideas from external aggression and oppression. Everyone should be FOR those things. US foreign policy does and had made mistakes just like it makes domestic mistakes (see the direction our debt is heading). I'm glad those on here that are starting to wake up to looking at things from an objective point of view while dismisses the obvious slant/bias that is also contained.
http://andykatherman.blogspot.com/2010/01/natural...
Excellent point and I've been saying similar things for awhile about the movie. It's sad that many independent thinking people are able to disregard the straw men Cameron puts up and focus on the self evident truths of natural law that shockingly are revealed quite clearly…. at least to me.
http://andykatherman.blogspot.com/2010/01/natural...
Dan Gagliasso says:
> More then one critic has accurately compared
> the plot to Kevin Costner’s DANCES WITH WOLVES. . .
> Both AVATAR and DANCES WITH WOLVES share the
> most evil, villainous and genocidal military killers
> since Little Big Man in 1970.
DANCES WITH WOLVES — that allegedly PC, whitewashed lib-tard version of Western history — shows many whites killed by Indians, more than a few murdered in cold blood. Yet it doesn't show a SINGLE white commit a SINGLE atrocity against the Indians. The only instance of an Indian being killed at the hands of a white man occurs when Kevin Costner's hero helps defend the Sioux tribe against the (ruthless and bloodthirsty and savage) Pawnee invaders.
Even when the soldiers arrive at the end of the film, their stated mission is not to kill Indians, or drive them from their land, or knock down their sacred tree so they can mine the gold from them thar' hills. It is (in their own words), "apprehending hostiles and recovering stolen property — retrieving white captives taken in hostile raidings." A NOBLE goal, to any sensible conservative's mind.
So no, DANCES WITH WOLVES does not in fact feature whites as "evil, villainous and genocidal military killers." It is a brilliant, fair-minded, complex, and morally sound film that in no way merits serious comparison with the self-loathing and morally wretched AVATAR.
For the folks in wet Los Angeles, there are two wonderful John Ford cavalry films playing tonight at the Aero in Santa Monica. Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Complex, interesting characters, and unsurpassed western cinematography. Far superior films to anything mentioned above.
Well, not all of them – but many were. And they all had their conflictsand power plays and political games. The Jamestowne colonists and the Pilgrims stepped right in the middle of two of them.
Wahunsunacock – aka Powhatan – was a real piece of work: a petty empire-builder who both feared the English and wanted their help to control his subjects and defeat his enemies. There's a story that he massacred an entire band of subject Indians because they'd had contact with the Roanoke colonists. The diplomatic cat-and-mouse game between him, his more militant brother Opechancanough, and John Smith makes interesting reading.
Massassoit of the Wampanoags welcomed the Pilgrims because his people were beset on all sides by hostile tribes – the Micmac, the Pequot, and especially the Narragansett. They were taking over his territory and forcing him to pay tribute. He wanted English allies and English steel to fight his enemies with. If the Wampanoags hadn't been at war with their neighbors, the Pilgrims might have been killed or driven away as soon as they landed.
Did I read that correctly? Oliver Stone´s JFK??? That mass of paranoia and lies teaches you about the mindset of the conspiracy theorist and that´s it.
One should not learn history primarily from movies, but there are some fine historical movies. "JFK" is not one of them. If you want to learn about the assassination, read Posner´s Case Closed. If you want to learn about the political fallout, read Pieresons´s Camelot and the Cultural Revolution.
Gotta agree about Little Big Man. It's not just a satire that contrasts the "sane" Indians and their way of life with the "insane" white people. The book and the movie both go beyond the "good Indians/evil White Man" paradigm and raise interesting questions about identity. The characters constantly assume and discard their identities, change roles, even switch races and, apparently, genders. Nobody is really what he or she seems. Both the whites and the Indians have trouble dealing with this kind of flux. Nope – Little Big Man is not a simple morality tale at all. It's more complex than Dances with Wolves or Avatar.
Maybe unobtainium is actually a type of naturally-occurring steroid. The Na'vi eat it, grow to enormous size, and their women start to look kind of like dudes…
As for banishment – don't forget that many "primitive" people also insist that women be isolated in special lodges during menstruation. They are ritually unclean and open to bad spiritual influences. Obviously one way to avoid the monthly mood swings – but no way to treat a lady.
"Actually I really like Costner’s Dances With Wolves even if I disagree"
Ehhhh. Give me Deadwood. Vulgarity vs. distortion. I can stomach vulgarity done well. Blatant bullcrap no matter how pretty is still bullcrap.
Bullshit.
Define "Harmony."
And while you're at it, define "PRIVATE PROPERTY" as a pre-Columbian Indian understood it.
Um…because it irritates you?
"Avatar inadvertently supports the concepts of individual property rights"
People keep saying that and still it makes no sense. Did I miss the part where a Navi says: "Hey, that´s MY tree!"? Can individual Navi own land? Do they have a right to exclude others from the use of their property? If they don´t, there is no concept of individual property which they could defend.
In fact, they are a collective. They defend the collective. Not the same thing at all.
As for "freedom of religion to an ethereal God", well, it´s only freedom of religion if you can opt out. The idea of a living earth-god doesn´t leave much room for doubters or dissenters.
"Not to mention that Cameron will make millions from this movie, which supports the idea of capitalism and free markets."
You know who else is pretty rich? Kim Jong-il, that´s who. I guess he helps capitalism and free markets too? And so do Michael Moore, George Soros, Al Gore, Louis XIV or Emperor Nero. It´s a miracle there are any commies left at all!
I would agree that DWW is *more* balanced, fair-minded and complex than Avatar. That is, it was more about human beings in a situation than about teaching us lessons. For what it's worth, though, I did find that DWW depicted Indians, for the most part, as clean-living, noble, happy, humorous, "regular folk," while it depicted *most* whites as low, ignorant, boorish, dirty and sometimes insane. This might have been done merely to highlight Dunbar's discontentment and his desire to escape to the fresh purity of the open frontier. If so, it worked. And there's also some sympathy for characters like the crazy district commander and the muleskinner. They actually have important narrative and symbolic roles in the story. Not straw men or stereotypes.
In interesting side light on this: when the Alaskan began to hunt for reparations back in the 60s, they had to figure out an umbrella term that covered all groups: Aleuts, Eskimos (Yupik and Inupiaq), Indians (Athapascan and Tlinget). So, they settled upon "Alaska NATIVE Landclaims". Thus the term, "Natives". In Canada, the umbrella term has devolved or evolved to "First Nations", which is interesting since that makes me a "Second Nation" or a "Third Nation" depending upon whether we count the Quebecois as a separate "Nation", which they do, actually.
Lawyers love frolicking in these fields of insanity.
definitely harmonious until they got rifles and horses… and then, goodbye buffalo. In the north, to this day, the "First Nations" have their own WWII with rifles, slaughtering caribou as they cross a river.
It is much wiser to see your ancestors and yourself as a HUMAN BEING first. Also, I do wish there was more interest in history, real history, not Victorian morality plays.
Ah, Stergeye, you beat me to it. The book was excellent…nothing at all what I expected after seeing the movie.
I've been a substitute teacher for six years. Teachers like to leave me films to show students when those teachers are too lazy or too sick to come up with an actual lesson plan. Often the films they choose are feature films meant to "teach" the kids something. I have gotten into many, many arguments with teenagers who think that what they are seeing on the screen is actual history. I always find this disturbing. Kids tend to think if something is down on paper or on the screen, it's real. I don't think enough time nor effort is spent teaching them to be critcal consumers of media.
Since WWII, how many American incursions into foreign countries have been for the purpose merely of ripping off those countries? I mean of going in, colonizing them, treating the natives like slaves, taking their stuff and giving nothing in return? I guess your answer depends on how much of a lefty conspiracy theorist you are. My answer is: None.
Cameron is not pointing out "mistakes" in our foreign policy. Mistakes are when you start with good intentions and make a mess of things. I can't really argue with that characterization of our adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. But that's now how Cameron is characterizing them. Cameron is attributing to our government, our military, and our business concerns the SPECIFIC motivation of Greed. Not mistakes, not good intentions gone wrong, not bull-in-a-china-shop America, but heedless, uncaring, unintelligent, uncontrollable GREED.
The environmental take? Same thing: We're not falling all over ourselves to protect the environment because we're GREEDY! Not because it's massively, globally difficult and complex to find new energy sources, rebuild our entire energy-supply infrastructure, adapt our energy-use to the new system, etc. It's just that we don't want to pay for it and big, evil companies don't want it to eat into their profits. That's all. Plain old greed.
Now, do you still believe Cameron is seeing his pet issues clearly and commenting on them honestly? Or is he a left-wing ideologue?
My 17 year old granddaughter loved the movie, but pronounced it was Pocahantas. She loved Pocahantas and the music was better. So much for deep themes. This girl child has an IQ out the wahzoo, was home schooled until 6th grade, and has a very discerning and logical mind. She knows a copy of a Disney movie when she sees one, and all the messages therein contained.
Did I say anything about the purpose of war to rip people off? You start with a false premise, so that is where I will start. Declaring war is explicitly left to the Congress under Article I Section 8 since WWII. Ever since WWII, we have engaged in unconstitutional wars and nation building with disregard to the Constitution. Wars should formally be declared precisely so the people are behind it and know exactly what is at stake since capital, production, savings, and investment will be sacrificed. Wars expand the role of government and become a drain on the economy.
Thanks for the ad hominem attack. I didn't know that talking about liberty, property, and self evident truths that John Locke understood would win me that award of being a "lefty conspiracy theorist."
http://andykatherman.blogspot.com/2010/01/constit...
I doubt he's endorsing the film; he's just reporting truthfully. Sadly, in my high school US History course we watched a portion of the film. For the record, we also saw a portion of "Titanic" in that course (to highlight the conspicuous consumption of the rich), and in my Civics course we were forced to watch "All the President's Men." Ugh!
Nation building is exactly the intent of "good intentions" that lead to disasters and blow back like we are seeing (and continue to see in Iraq). Initially, i thought the Iraq invasion was about WMDs. But, that clearly wasn't the intent as we know now. It was about setting up a "democracy in the middle east." In doing so, we've sacrificed so much blood and treasure and now our military is stretched very thin. I argue Cameron's film, Avatar, has deeper ideas that are more important than the straw man military/corporate state thing. Greed is the desire of taking something that you want (i.e. "property") and currently do not possess. In that regard, I argee that in the film the aggressors are the human/americans unlawfully trying to plunder through (with greed as their mo) the use of forces someone else property. Common sense would tell you that's theft. Can't say that is a revolutionary movie theme.
I'll enlighten you. As St. Collumbcille said, "Everything is but a story; it would better for thee, then, to choose the more enduring story." 'History' doesn't happen way we like to think, i.e., that first we do something, then we tell stories about it that becomes our history. Quite the opposite, actually. FIRST we tell stories, then we act them out and that becomes our history. Each of us, individually and collectively are nothing more and nothing less than the stories we tell each ourselves and each other. Or, as the Christ taught us, "As a man thinketh, so is he." Get it? If you want to be noble and true, think of noble and true things; tell yourself (and others) noble and true stories. Those who dwell on the savage ultimately become savages. The stories we tell are INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT, because that is the stuff we *will* become. That is why I refuse to even see 'Avatar,' but why I read and watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy many times.
You are (we are) "what we eat," to utilize the old proverb. It behooves us all, then, to "choose the more enduring story."
Again, I think you almost hit on the right ideas, but miss the key points. The Na'vi clearly have property rights to the minerals under their homestead. Through the homestead principle, they are fully entitled to these mineral deposits as property. The problem now lies with the fact the Humans/Americans have nothing the Na'vi want as trade for the mineral rights. I don't necessarily think that the humans excavating minerals around the planet that are more "unclaimed" as bad or unlawful. But, when you want to plunder someone else's property and then use force/aggression to take it, that is theft and not greed…..(continued)
Greed should not be confused with human action in which all of us try to improve our lot in life according to our wants and needs. That's not greed at all. The Na'vi themselves are able to use practices of self-sufficiency and self-reliance to suit all of their needs however primitive. Ironically, I believe all of the things I've mentioned Cameron has no idea they exist in his movie. But, that is the great thing about art sometimes. It means different things to different people. I probably disagree with Cameron 99% with his politics or ideology. yet, I'm able to reason what makes sense to me from a different point of view.
http://www.libertyforlaymen.com
Well, not exactly. But that is the idealist view, isn't it? The Indians did NOT live "in harmony with their environment" any more than the European settlers who first lived of the land in the west. When they hunted all the game out in one area they just moved on like all nomadic peoples do. Many lived in squalor and died early of disease. Most tribes did not have a developed system of property rights, but just treated everything as a collective "commons." Your point is well taken about the author's tendency to ennoble the pioneers at the expense of indigenous people's, but the Indians were massacring each other over the land on a regular basis before the European were even aware of the 'new world.' The 'white man' just added another color to the ages old squabble over who gets to control the bounties of the land.
To your first point, you might want to understand the "homestead principle". It relates to property rights. The Na'vi are able to use reason and logic much like we can and have unalienable rights: one being property rights. They certainly do not have rights over the entire planet, but they definitely have rights to their homestead they have chosen to inhabit.
Guess I'm not really sure what doesn't make sense about property rights in this case.
If you want to get really technical, they're not even first nations in the literal sense, as people were there before the current ethnic groups; going as far back as the Alaska-Russia land bridge. Clovis et. al. beat them there.
Yes, a good article, but an editor needs to proofread it more closely.
Oh, please, let's not do that. I never hear someone on TV or in a classroom drop the phrase "the people" without wanting to upchuck, much less "the American people." Hyphenations only compound the insanity, though.
Bugs says:
"I did find that DWW depicted Indians, for the most part, as clean-living, noble, happy, humorous, 'regular folk,' while it depicted *most* whites as low, ignorant, boorish, dirty and sometimes insane."
The first Indians we see promptly murder a defenseless white and steal his valuables like common crooks. Dunbar's first three run-ins with the Sioux concern their attempts to steal his horse. His first sight of his future wife has her covered in blood in a barbaric and ghastly mourning ceremony. After he kindly returns her to the Sioux tribe, he is about to be killed and scalped for his trouble until a single Indian — one possessed of the same cross-cultural curiosity and lonely wanderlust as Dunbar — stops them. Later, the Indians look quite ignorant as Dunbar teaches them about simple things like sugar, and has to yell at them during a battle to "Shoot the gun!" rather than use it as a club. When he rushes to their camp to tell them about seeing the buffalo, they beat him senseless and again would have killed him if Kicking Bird hadn't intervened. After the hunt Dunbar recoils at having to partake in their barbaric ritual of eating a raw buffalo liver, and that night almost comes to blows with an Indian who stole his hat.
On the white side of things, Dunbar's friend on the Civil War front lines is caring and humorous. The General who, deeply stirred by Dunbar's courage, finds him on the battlefield and vows to save his foot is quite noble. The family of Stands-With-A-Fist, seen in flashback, are clean-living and happy "regular folk," and the film pulls no punches in showing them slaughtered without cause by murderous, savage Indians. Toward the end of the film, offsetting the trio of low-brow bad apples in the unit of soldiers, is a Lieutenant played by the late Charles Rocket, who clearly has a noble spirit and sympathy for Dunbar.
So no, I don't agree that the film depicts Indians "for the most part, as clean-living, noble, happy, humorous, 'regular folk,' while it depicted *most* whites as low, ignorant, boorish, dirty and sometimes insane." There is far more variety and nuance on both sides than that.
Don't forget RECLAIMING HISTORY by Vincent Bugliosi, which has a whole lengthy chapter that completely discredits Stone's (virtuoso) film from top to bottom, and also corrects a host of Posner's errors of fact and omission. If someone can read RECLAIMING HISTORY from cover to cover and still believe in any Kennedy conspiracy theory, they're hopeless.
WOW!!! GREAT STUFF! Great article and comments!
thats not what our kids are learning in school.
Thank you,
You are the first person responding who actually got the real issue I was getting at.
Dan Gagliasso
Smart Granddaughter you have there Ruth H. I have a hunch that the kids are not going to buy into all this BS. They are going to have to work hard to pay for all this debt and they know it. Nothing like putting a big obstacle in front, they will not have the time for the PC junk.
There were plenty of "harmless" native people – ones who lived off the land, minded their own business, got along with their neighbors, didn't fight with white people (or at least not until we started pressuring them). But they were no more typical than the warlike ones.
Again – generalities don't work. Indians were fully-developed, complex, grownup human beings, not innocent forest children. They did all the things – good and evil – that that all human beings are capable of. Before white people came along, they did them to each other. After white people came along, they did them to each other and to us – and we did them to the Indians.
Yes, they were absolutely the victims of European/American expansionism, racism, greed, etc. Those are just the facts. And there's nothing wrong with objecting when a powerful group does something to a weaker group. But let's not warp the story into something it's not by making the victims out to be saints. They were not.
Exactly. Again, this is not to minimize what happened to the Indians. It was horrible. The incidents you read about are true. But the Left is constantly pointing out all the terrible things Americans have done because they want to "set the record straight." That blade cuts both ways. Let's have the WHOLE truth about European expansion in North America and about the Indians who had to deal with it. Let's hear about Indians who fought each other, Indians who fought with white people against other Indians, Indians who didn't get put on reservations, or about white people who didn't cheat Indians or kill them or force them onto reservations, white people who tried to help Indians, white government officials who fought for Indians' rights, white scholars and artists who tried to help us understand Indians – the whole mix, not just the kindergarten morality tale.
Amerigo Vespucci never explored anything. He was an Italian map maker who never left Europe.
Very well said, and sorry for the inadvertent ad hominen. My "you" referred to "you in general" not "you, Andy." I should have said "one" instead. My badd.
I think one of us is reading something into Cameron's picture that's not really there. He seemed pretty explicit about the points he was trying to make. Still, the property rights angle is worth considering. Natural rights in general, actually – what the founding fathers believed in. The Na'vi presumably have them just like any sentient beings do. Obviously the company people didn't believe that. I have a feeling they didn't even know the concept existed.
While he was primarily a mapmaker, he also is believed to have made one or two voyages to South America (or at least he said he did). Not that that's the point or anything…
Good examples, and you're absolutely right! Makes me want to see the movie again w. this whole discussion in mind.
Thanks!
New and improved 'First Nations', now with even less pesky euro references!
Cool. Like I said elsewhere, I don't want to minimize what was done to the Indians. It's just that the real story – the whole story – is much more interesting than the simple morality tales frequently peddled by Hollywood.
No worries
. I appreciate the apology. I agree with you about the natural rights of the Na'vi. See, my whole point here is that Cameron probably would never argue what I'm saying about his movie. He'd rather you focus on the straw man he's put up (which he obviously has done with so many people foaming at the mouth over it). Good discussion and I enjoy talking about this movie, since it's got a lot of moving parts. I think so many people are mad because the "aliens" are the ones with the moral compass versus the humans/americans/military.
The issue I have is that Avatar was so incredibly stupid and naive, that it's hard to believe anyone could get anything from it.
But then again, these are leftists …
i just read your blog with my 11 yr old daughter. THANKS.
"Still, Sand Creek was also a ill-fated response to the continuing line up of mutilated settler’s bodies, women and children as well that the Cheyenne were leaving on the Colorado and Kansas plain" This deluded author seems to want to rewrite history by jumpingh into the center of the events instead of acknowledging that the Cheyenne and ALL other tribes whose land was taken by force began to push back against these "settlers" who were breaking treaties time and time again. In this land of PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS we seem to be willing to forget how WE took the PRIVATE PROPERTY of the red man as we swept across this continent. To DEFEND the Sand Creek Massacre of innocent women, children, and elders by the Colorado Militia shows just how far this writer will go to delude the reader. Visit Sand Creek and read the history of that massacre…you can bet this writer hasn't. Nobility is in the intent and actions of each of us. The natives who occupied this continent before our arrival battled one another for hunting land, etc but they lived in harmony with their environment until the arrival of the Euro peons.
Proud to be Cherokee
I dunno. When I'm having a period, I prefer isolation or the company of another woman (which was allowed in Judaism, I think).
But alone in childbirth? Barbaric.
Aga-a-a-a-arn!!!
The movie may have it's self eveident truths and I don't deny those that you brought up, but unlike a historic event, Cameron chose his protagonists, he chose his antagonists, he chose the situation, he chose to make Earth a wasteland, he chose Pandora to have a rare mineral that would solve problems, he chose the Na'vi to be primative, he chose the conditions for which the humans and the Na'vi would combat. It being fiction, Cameron could have chose any number of alternatives and outcomes, but such would tell a different story than the one he ultimately chose to tell. There are better ways to do a story about property rights without making the humans (Americans) the Bad Guys. Cameron chose not too.
Thing about F-Troop: it made no bones about *both* sides being screw-ups. Which was part of its fun.
Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch were classic.
Good points. You are correct about the characters and antagonist/protagonists and the obvious allegory Cameron is trying to paint. I just figured in my head the "bad people" in the movie were one-world-government-Communists with Al Gore as the current NWO Chancellor who has lead Earth into the third rung of hell. Maybe if we all changed the screenplay to fit those details, we'd see more reviews like mine championing natural law and property rights as paths to prosperity, such as our founders believed.
Your criticism comes off as haughty and condescending. What do you expect?
BTW, Professor…..pointing out grammatical and punctuation errors puts the onus on the accuser to ensure that their own is, shall we say, up to snuff. You do not use commas along with the conjunction "and".
ie,: lazy, and apathetic / downdings (sic), and no…. etc.
Just wouldn't be cricket. Eh, wot?
Now, move along. We have a lot of work to do straightening out the mess the semi-literate, leftist birkenstockers have made to the educational system of this country.
For the record. I'll take straight talk from a dude in his boxer shorts over pablum and drivel from Marxist-oriented elitists, any day.
Re: Living in harmony with nature. I remember reading a description (by a European – full disclosure) of acres and acres of forest burned up so the local Indians could plant their crops. The method, if I understand correctly, was to "ring" the trees so they'd die, then burn out all the undergrowth. Ashes enriched the soil, dead trees put out no leaves so they didn't block the sunlight the crops needed. When the soil was played out, they would repeat the process in a different patch of woods. Eventually, of course, it would all grow back. But until it did, it looked kind of like Hell to European eyes.
So was this an example of living in harmony? Or was it just typical human exploitation?
Or how about pre-Columbian (i.e., horseless) Plains indians driving thousands of buffalo off cliffs? Perfect harmony or wasteful dirty trick?
Wow… A movie review with a Hollywood historical perspective, political comment, AND a bit of US western history thrown in to boot. This was a very good read… I just wish I had more background so I wouldn't have to have read it three or four times to figure out what was being said. However, it makes one want to sell ALL the movies referenced.
I think about all you can do is show them movies that are different from the other movies. Have them read different accounts of the same events. Demonstrate to them that history is complex, issues are complex, and you can't learn all you need to know from one movie or book. They'll still pick whichever narrative most appeals to their egos…but it's a start.
I meant "see" not "sell" ALL the movies…
This film was great and it's really sad and pathetic that people can't just enjoy movies anymore. Every movie these days has to be portrayed as being about race, politics, or discrimination in some way. If a person wants to disown the body and life they had to become a part of some other species then I would say there isn't any kind of messiah complex there. Some people just go looking for race because that's all they see. I bet the same people who are saying this movie is racist are the same people who find racism in every aspect of their life even though it isn't there. What's wrong with being one with nature and having a respect for all living things, that's actually being portrayed as a bad thing. Human beings have war because we respect very little of life on this planet. We take what we want, when we want, and if we have to take it by force then history would show that is what we do. This movie points out the flaws of all living things including human beings and nobody likes having their flaws put out there for the world to see. But basically, you just can't please every body, but considering the movies standing; I would say more people liked it than disliked it.
Good for her! I am so happy she loved the movie! Even though if it was like those other movies, (which it totally was) she was still able to enjoy herself without outside manipulation. Good for her!
That's true. It might have gone over a little better if it was humans vs. humans – say, the evil corp. vs. a group of Earth colonists who've adopted a more "natural" lifestyle on Pandora.
Sorry, Neil, but it's kinda hard to just go with the flow when the director is beating you over the head with his "lessons."
I always saw it as being the age old women manipulating men. The women usually had to serve the men, getting food, wine, etc. When they were "unclean" they were not allowed to touch any food or drink not for themselves nor could they be available, for shall we say, other activities. They got to lounge around in a hut for several days until they were "clean" again. Yeah, we are unclean during menstruation…best that you stay away, but before you go, would you mind grabbing that skin of wine over there and leaving it by the door……
[...] military, and the scientists, gently refuting the movie’s falsehoods. Here are the articles: Part One and Part Two. Please do read it all and prepare to be challenged by Gagliasso’s factually [...]
So enjoyment, for the sake of enjoyment, has no importance?
I enjoyed the movie for what it was…$250 million in graphical special effects.
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