A whole new world

Having seen Avatar for the second time today, I have perhaps a responsibility to share some thoughts on it to validate my experience. Not that it's infinitely awesome and I couldn't wait to see it the second day in a row—yesterday's was a gift and today's was just 200 shillings ($1 = Ksh 75). But you should watch it. Don't necessarily pay 8 bucks if that's not in your budget, but see it sometime. It is a tale of corporation and nature interacting. It is the story of Dune, the story of resource grabbing, and the story of wealth. The main character laments, "I was a warrior who thought he could bring peace, but sooner or later we all have to wake up."
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Jake Sully, paraplegic ex-marine, arrives on Pandora, a planet orbiting a gas giant after waking in orbit from five years of cryosleep. Replacing his late twin brother at the last minute in the Avatar Project, he gets a big blue body to drive around the jungles of this dangerous, untamed, primitive world. While he lies in his coffin with neural apparatus surrounding him, his avatar, who looks almost like a native but is mixed enough with his DNA to have his face, climbs trees, leaps around and tames wild beasts. Basically, he goes native and doesn't wish to do recon any more on his people. But it is too late—he has known the whole time that Home Tree sat on the largest deposit of unobtainium the company had found. The destruction and revelations make Jake an outcast from both corporation and tribe. The revelations continue—the trees are like neurons of the brain of the deity of the people, who rallies the animals as the clans rally for a final stand against the corporation's security forces.
The contrasts of the movie were intentionally drastic. In the first five minutes, the shuttle takes people in from orbit, passing over verdant jungle with huge trees on low gravity to a mechanical octagonal fortress of metal, concrete and looming towers. Technology, fueled by resource-seeking industry, meets natural, balanced life. The life on the planet is so advanced that the trees together make a world brain, and touch-sensitive phosphorescent plants light the path of the Na'vi, the people, at night. The Na'vi can even interface with the network of trees to upload memories or with animals to ride. I assume millenia of deliberate selection have caused this outcome in an already condusive biology, compared with the millenia of science and progress that consumed Earth by this time. The fire that Jake lights as soon as it becomes night leads to unneccessary wildlife death, and the first spat with his future lover. Such symbolism of nature and technology swept through the entire film—James Cameron stayed general enough that different people saw different things. There was intentionally no direct connection to specific situations—natives did not dress or speak exactly like Zulu or Cherokee or Maya.What people saw in the movie was not always universal. Yesterday when I saw it someone saw mostly an environmental message—don't mess with the Earth, she'll kick back. But I had been entirely in imperialism mode—people were deliberately pushed aside because they couldn't have understood the "wealth" they were sitting on. A tree thousands of years old was destroyed, the ancestral home of thousands of people, for millions of dollars of ore. But the processes of environmental destruction and of imperialism are the same. Human life and animal life are both consumed in the furnace of technology and resource-grabbing. It makes me wonder if the shareholder model of business is flawed because we don't see what our money does. I wonder, too, at the press that came out of Pandora. I assume that it would be very expensive to get there, so in the absence of professional journalists, the company could filter information however they saw fit. Or, after a flurry of interest initially, future information was not as interesting, not as profitable for the press.

The one thing this movie did not do was connect the wealth dots. In Dune, the unique features of the planet are all part of a complex process. Avatar's Pandora had resources not connected at all to the way of life (as far as we know). I felt like this led itself better to imperialist allegory—undiscovered oil underground is typically entirely incidental (as far as I know) to the life of people above.

Avatar was more moving than I thought, especially living in a place where people fought in 2007 because they felt like land had been taken away from them for political reasons. And political reasons are never far removed from wealth, here as anywhere. The best roads in the country connect the commercial centers pretty well and the presidents' hometowns very well. We walked through a library yesterday downtown erected by "His Excellency, the Governor of Kenya..." in 1929 or something.

So, besides being mildly depressing, the movie pointed me to the press, to look out for such blatant resource-grabbing that has simply lost our interest in today's entertainment climate. I've been pointed recently to Southern Sudan and its border-drawing, coming referendum, and continuing conflict. I also add material to my story, my glasses. These processes are the backdrop for our world—corporations or governments reaching ends by uncreative means. So, this movie, in its cliche way, made me think that it would be a good idea to punch somebody sometimes. Cuz the bad guy just really made me angry. And his nose would be a small price to pay for the lives of people he would be unable to shoot down covering his face. I've been pretty idealist about this in the past—violence begets more violence is surely true. But I guess there are probably things worth fighting for. Not sure about killing for yet, but definitely fighting for. Fight the good fight, people. And don't kill the earth. She might kill you right back.