Why Cameron Failed.

[ISV Venture Star]

I'm OK with the idea that American accented English will be ubiquitous by the 2150s.

[ISV Venture Star]

Oh, BTW, here's one of my favourite James Cameron quotes:

If you make a comment about the Iraq war and American imperialism in the Middle East, you’re going to get a lot of people pissed off at you in this country, but you do it in a science-fiction context, where you do it at a metaphorical level, people get swept in by the story and they get to the end of the movie before they realize they’ve been rooting for the Iraqis"

[Human No More]

I genuinely don't see it as being about Iraq. The people of Iraq were the ones being oppressed BEFORE the invasion, by a dictator.
Remember it was written BEFORE the war started

I do see what he means if he was using it as an analogy though, in which case is is true.

[ISV Venture Star]

Agreed, more or less. I just thought it would be fun to drop that quote into the thread and see what happens.

[Rainbowhawk1993]

Originally Posted by ScottWashburn

Actually, just a quick count gives over 30 RDA personnel with speaking lines in the movie and there are probably more. Every one of them sounds like an American. But whatever the number it still comes down to 100% of them talking like Americans. Not a single non-American accent to be found. An easily corrected thing if Cameron had wanted to correct it.

I can't take it any more, I will have to bring up a far worse story of avatar that already happened: King leopold II and the congo.


BBC NEWS | Africa | King Leopold's legacy of DR Congo violence


When I learned about this in world history class, I thought "O God, This is a real world avatar." King leopold II of Belgium Colonized the congo in the 19th century and he did things so horrered that I just had to be depressed in world history class for the rest of the unit. He hired mercinaries to torment the natives so Leopold could get them to collect rubber for Belgium. The soilders there chopped off the native's hands and displayed them, (If that's not grusom enought, they cut off their privates and displayed them). And of course, nothing is complete with out rape.

I believe that Avatar is a milder verson of the congo than Americans with the Indains. So try to stomach this and think if JC is intending to screw americans soloy.

[Grifff]

Originally Posted by joeylovesgaia

Reposting this.

People were rooting for the RDA. Not everyone, but many. If Cameron meant this story as more than entertainment (and he clearly did), if he meant to change people's minds with this, then he screwed up. What looks evil to a liberal looks justifiable, even honorable, to a conservative. And with the scene in SE showing that the attack on Hometree was provoked, well...civilian targets have been bombed before, and the casualties accepted as a cost of war.

Now to anyone who was following the Na'vi, sympathizing with the Na'vi, the loss of Hometree is felt as a holocaust, a horror. But to boys who idolized Quaritch, loved all the cool hardware, and felt bored (and maybe grossed out) by this "unity of people and nature" thing, it was a victorious battle.

James, you failed. You should have made Quaritch, Selfridge, and the RDA more of a clear villain if you wanted to convert people. You should have screen-tested this movie to conservatives, and tweaked it until they agreed that the RDA was in the wrong. You should have shown the true horrors that empires inflict on the innocent. Slavery and rape, even macho hardasses understand that these are wrong.

i agreed with you up till there, nobidy wants to see that in a movie

[ISV Venture Star]

I think it might have been worthwhile to see RDA personnel killing or mutilating the fallen (I'm thinking of the Wainfleet/Tsu'tey encounter here), just to really, really drive the point home for audience members particularly lacking in empathy. I think it's likely JC will put more scenes of human brutality in the sequel.

[Isard]

Originally Posted by ISV Venture Star

Oh, BTW, here's one of my favourite James Cameron quotes:

So he just compared the Na'vi clan leaders to a maniacal dictator that tortured their own people?

Nice.

[ISV Venture Star]

Originally Posted by Aihwa

So he just compared the Na'vi clan leaders to a maniacal dictator that tortured their own people?

Nice.

I don't think the analogy stretches that far.

[joeylovesgaia]

Originally Posted by ISV Venture Star

I don't think the analogy stretches that far.

Yes. It really isn't equivalent to Iraq or Afghanistan, because the Omaticaya weren't suffering under a dictator, and there wasn't even a pretext of altruism to the invasion of their lands. Also Islam does not remotely resemble the beliefs of the Na'vi; Allah and Eywa have very different temperaments.

But the oil analogy is there, all right. Although the Middle East isn't the only place we're fighting over it, literally or metaphorically. And there's other things the unobtanium could stand in for, like coal or diamonds.

[Isard]

Originally Posted by ISV Venture Star

I don't think the analogy stretches that far.

Oh, so it just infers to an "invasion" of sorts. Lets see, that's analogous to...


just about every war in history.

[ISV Venture Star]

It's imperialism in the abstract. Vietnam, America's behaviour in the middle east, Spanish conquistadores... it's all in the mix.

[Fosus]

Sure, a blind war-admiring conservative person cannot see it, but I think that scene makes the movie better, and more effective. It shows how easily people remove value from other beings once they are in the way.

[rapunzel77]

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

Exactly. Like I said once before, if a government went to Pandora, and not a profit-seeking corporation, things would not have gone the way they did. It would've been a mission of diplomacy, not greed.

This is true to an extent

Though too, in all honestly, the recent Wikileaks dump has shown us that the world still has a lot of work to do on diplomacy. We need to learn to coexist on this planet before we drag someone from another planet into this.

Exactly

And I'm not sure we're seeing America in Avatar. More than likely we're seeing the end result of 150 years of this...

You raise a very good point here and I am surprised it isn't discussed more. This is possibly what Cameron could be getting at. Monoculture is probably the most responsible for the extinction of indigenous cultures/languages, etc. It is all the same materialist, globalist culture that you see everywhere. I hate it. I saw it when I lived in Germany. A good example is when I was in HS. We took a field trip to a medieval town called Rothenburg. It still has its walls (granted they were partially destroying in WWII and then rebuilt). Very few cars are allowed inside. There are tons of little shops, mom and pop restaurants featuring traditional German food, etc and in the middle of this cute, quaint town, there is a stupid McDonald's. Where did most of my classmates go to eat for lunch that day?? Did they go to one of the local mom and pop restaurants to get some local flavor? No. They wanted a big mac. Ugh! I think the reason why we don't see a variety of accents and languages with the RDA in Avatar is because as you have pointed out, the monoculture took over almost completely. That is scary. We want to live together in peace and harmony while still maintaining distinctive cultures. Sadly, this "monoculture" has been produced in the U.S. and exported to most parts of the world and continues to be produced. This is why we need to resist it as much as we can.

[Rainbowhawk1993]

Originally Posted by rapunzel77

You raise a very good point here and I am surprised it isn't discussed more. This is possibly what Cameron could be getting at. Monoculture is probably the most responsible for the extinction of indigenous cultures/languages, etc. It is all the same materialist, globalist culture that you see everywhere. I hate it. I saw it when I lived in Germany. A good example is when I was in HS. We took a field trip to a medieval town called Rothenburg. It still has its walls (granted they were partially destroying in WWII and then rebuilt). Very few cars are allowed inside. There are tons of little shops, mom and pop restaurants featuring traditional German food, etc and in the middle of this cute, quaint town, there is a stupid McDonald's. Where did most of my classmates go to eat for lunch that day?? Did they go to one of the local mom and pop restaurants to get some local flavor? No. They wanted a big mac. Ugh! I think the reason why we don't see a variety of accents and languages with the RDA in Avatar is because as you have pointed out, the monoculture took over almost completely. That is scary. We want to live together in peace and harmony while still maintaining distinctive cultures. Sadly, this "monoculture" has been produced in the U.S. and exported to most parts of the world and continues to be produced. This is why we need to resist it as much as we can.

A silly dream I have is to see Mcdonalds burn to ashes some day in the future. If that doesn't happen, at least we might find a place with no fast food or other exploting corparations in the after life.