“Relax, it’s just a movie.”

You often hear that when you step up to point out the lefty assumptions, biases and what John Nolte calls the “liberal tells” within popular entertainment.  You are allowed to praise the technical achievements of an Avatar – such as they are, since many of us think it looks freakin’ stupid – but heaven forbid that you dare question the hackneyed liberal noble savage clichés that James Cameron offers up instead of a story.  The message is clear – our proper role as pop culture consumers is to sit back, open our eyes, slacken our jaws and swallow Hollywood’s agenda.

But what is remarkable – and crucial – is that we are no longer passively accepting whatever Hollywood dumps on us.  The backlash to Avatar’s flabby thinking and tired ideology is the new paradigm, with even reviewers outside the conservative movement slagging it for its staggering intellectual hypocrisy, cardboard military/corporate villains and sophomoric Mother Earth enviro-babblings.

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