Avatar- oddly familiar?

James Cameron seems to have recreated his magic with his latest blockbuster Avatar that has grossed over 1.6 billion USD at the box office. Last night the movie had 2 wins at Golden Globes and using cutting edge special effects to the budget of a whopping 500 million USD!


It's a futuristic movie with a wildly original story, but it resonates with themes and imagery set a little too many bells ringing in my mind. As one critic put it: "The technology and technique are as shiny and innovative as the story and themes are familiar and recycled, and the end result is something like ordering and eating a $100 burger at some white-linen four-star restaurant."
For example..

 

• The representation of the Na’avi: This tribe from distant planet of Pandora. Peace loving, 7ft tall, blue skinned and proud, living in perfect harmony with nature. Reminiscent of popular culture representations of a tribe anywhere in the world: bandanas, chunky jewellery, warrior face paint, swinging from tree to tree…

• The latest colony- Pandora: The materialistic and mercenary human race, having depleted the resources on their own planet, come to Pandora to seek “unobtainium”.The next gen colonial frontier, maybe?
  
• The white man saves the day: As David Brooks, a columnist writing in the New York Times puts it: 'Avatar is a racial fantasy par excellence ... It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic.” Jake Sully is portrayed as the white messiah who arrives to fight the battles of the weaker race, the Na'avi.
  
• It reminds me of the Pocahontas story, where the exotic native woman reveals to the white male protagonist the mysteries of the forests of Pandora. After he learns the ways of the tribe, he acts as their savior from his own people.

Well, for a blockbuster success that delivers to Mr. Cameron the return on his investment, mass appeal is important. And so, the imagery plays to popular representations of the " exotic other". The Na’avi’s look and rituals fits quite well into our mental image of a distant tribal race, so much so that by the end of the movie we find ourselves rooting for the Na’avi, as the underdog, over our own race. The Na’avi somehow seem to appear even more “humane” than our own human race.

A well made movie, no doubt…

Call me a sucker for rosy endings if you will, but with all the gloom and doom of 2012 and the doomsday prophesies, I would have just liked it more if we could have saved ourselves…