Conservative critics have begun a new chapter in film review: Ignoring the merits of a great film and ridiculing the incidental political landscape of the film itself. According to the Los Angeles Times, right-wing commentators have been lining up to slam Cameron’s film as a soiled, suspect product of Obama’s America. Have they forgotten that Avatar has been in the making for past 4 years? Last I checked, Obama was elected just over a year ago. Well played critics.
Through their polarized spectacles, they stared at the faraway planet of Pandora and perceived a dubious pro-environmental message and a thinly-veiled onslaught against American imperialism. And they do not like what they see.
Armond White of the New York Press claimed Avatar “misrepresents the facts of militarism, capitalism and imperialism” and described it as “a guilt-ridden 9/11 death wish”. This view is echoed by John Nolte on his Big Hollywood blog, who dubbed it “a Death Wish for leftists; a simplistic, revisionist revenge fantasy”.
Based on their behavior and their motives, the characters that died or lost the battle in the end deserved it, and I’m not sure that’s really up for debate. When has killing natives for resources and land ever been acceptable? Oh yeah.
According to John Podhoretz, the film critic for the Weekly Standard, the film “asks the audience to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency”, which makes it “a deep expression of anti-Americanism”.
While the corporation did seem to speak American English, what facts do we have to show that the group was in fact American, and not just an Earth-borne directorate? Regardless, the audience didn’t seem to have a problem with it either way, and the “expression of anti-Americanism” is complete bullshit, conservative or liberal. And just for fun, I’d like to point out that this insurgency (an armed rebellion against a constituted authority—in this case, natives attempting to protect their homeland from destruction) doesn’t seem to be all that different from what happened in Iraq over the past 8 years.
However, Govindini Murty, a writer on the conservative website Libertas, offers a crumb of comfort. “Even though Avatar has an incredibly disturbing anti-human, anti-military, anti-western world view, it has incredible spectacle and technology and great film-making to capture people’s attention,” Murty writes. “The politics are going right over people’s heads.”
There’s a big difference between the message of a movie “going right over people’s heads” and the audience basically agreeing with the movie wholeheartedly. In fact, if you actually watched the movie, and thought about it, these left-sided critics are playing out the role of the corporation and military from the film pretty well I’d say. Bravo!
Our political system has come so far in the past few years. By prime example, compulsive conservatives are attempting to turn a movie that’s earned $1b+ at movie theaters, using the term ‘propaganda’ no less, into a political javelin. No shame whatsoever. And clearly, the public is appalled as well. Rebel!
