Avatar

I am already grateful to my opponent for having opened my eyes to the bestiality theme present in Avatar: it just goes to show how deep and multi-layered this film is.I agree that the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo are "awesome works of art," but that is not relevant to the issue of whether Avatar is an awesome work of art as well.My opponent reveals an inconsistency in his argument because were he to scrutinize The Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo by standards analogous to those which my opponent applies against Avatar, then he could not consider those artworks to be awesome, either. Venus de Milo is a totally unoriginal subject matter, and the only reason it's famous is because lots of people advertised it when it was first unearthed http://en.wikipedia.org... (Venus de Milo is apparently a product of hype, which is what my opponent considers Avatar to be.) Likewise, to the extent Avatar is "just another Hollywood blockbuster," so is the Mona Lisa "just another Rennaisance portrait." What makes the Mona Lisa awesome, however, is the same thing that makes Avatar awesome: it has lots of subtle phenomena going on within it that can be the touchstone for artistic speculation and imagination, just as the plot, setting, and characters in Avatar are a touchstone for myriad themes and conversations about philosophy, science, economics, love, and theology, etc. I'm not a Star Wars fan, I'm more of a Trekkie. That being said, I think the original Star Wars trilogy is comparable to Avatar in terms of the revolutionary special effects and in terms of the deep multi-layered plot, though James Cameron accomplished in 1 film what took George Lucas 3 films. For more discussion of Avatar's revolutionary special effects, see http://en.wikipedia.org... Annalee Newitz is a fool because she's forcing a pop-psychology racial theme into the film to insult it. Plus she's dismissive of the fact that people of all races and creeds love Avatar. This transcends Newitz's assertion that the film is just an appeal to white guilt. Nonetheless, I will acknowledge that white guilt can be consired yet another one of Avatar's many engaging themes, and thus any critics who are willing to explore this theme in Avatar are just helping to make the case that it is an awesome epic. Professors of college literature make a living by picking apart literary canon and exploring different themes found in a work (feminism, racism, class, etc.), and the fact that Avatar fits right into this academic tradition just goes to show that it is an important cultural masterpiece, like Moby Dick or anything else that inspires such diverse and unconventional analysis. Avatar did create something tangible: Avatar reels, discs, and assorted memorabilia. What's more powerful, however, is Avatar's moving effect on many millions of people, and its revenue generation of several billion dollars. The "nothing tangible" criticism is not very relevant, anyway, because much awesome artwork (music, stories) is intangible.The predictability of the story does not detract from Avatar's awesomeness. Most awesome stories are predictable, especially epics: the good guys generally win, the bad guys generally lose. Plot twists are not valuable in themselves. Lots of Hollywood trash these days relies on plot twists to make an otherwise boring film interesting. See, e.g., M. Night Shyamalan. My opponent unsuccessfullly rebuts my exploration of Avatar's archetypes. I understand his point about over-analysis, and I think his purposeful over-analyses of White Spy and Mr. Planters are pretty funny, but compare my analysis of the Avatar characters to my opponent's analysis of his characters and you'll see that my analysis is tethered to the actual plot developments driven by the characters, and to the actual motivations for those characters' decisions in the story. I'm not grasping for straws here: the themes are all very obvious if you just pause to reflect on the characters. Therefore, instead of over-analyzing the film, I'm using the appropriate level of analysis to show how deep Avatar truly is. I'll take the opportunity to discuss other themes in Avatar:Environmentalism and Imperialism: These are the two biggest and most obvious themes in Avatar. The Na'vi are a culture defined by their worship of nature and "peaceful coexistee" with it. The humans are out to conquer a foreign land for its resources and destroy the natives if necessary. These characteristics are the basis for the film's primary political message, with which I disagree which I believe was well executed. First Contact: Related to the question of imperialism, the film suggests that in first contact with an alien species, the powerful species will disregard the other's dignity, and will be callously indifferent to their suffering. Stephen Hawking agrees with this view: http://www.inquisitr.com... I, however, believe that our civilization has advanced to the point where we would respect the life and dignity of a weaker alien species, and that our civilization's moral values are very different from those in an earlier era when we might have justified conquering and slaughtering "inferior" primitive people. Avatar invites discussion on this topic. Theology: The Na'vi religion worships their planet as an omniscient, intelligent being. What's interesting is that (outer space notwithstanding) the planet is actually omniscient and intellient. This raises the question: are the Na'vi religious? After all, if their ecology is actually and demonstrably intelligent, and can communicate with all sentient life through a "bio-internet," then the Na'vi brand of animism is not faith-based, but evidence based. (Moreover, it's a fusion of animism with monotheism: the Na'vi believe in "one god"--the planet or the home tree or whatever they call it--but their one god maniests itself in and courses through all sentient lifeforms.) The film doesn't tell us all the details of the Na'vi religion, but we can infer that the arrival of humans challenged the Na'vi theology. After all, once the Na'vi learn that intelligent life exists outside of ther own ecology, then they have to adjust their perception of god. They might conclude that their god is omniscient with respect to their home planet, but not with respect to alien planets, thus maintaining an evidence-based theology. Or the Na'vi can assume a faith-based theology in which their god is also somehow present outside of their own planet. The Na'vi theology presented in Avatar is not only interesting in itself, but also as an allegory for Earthly theology: to what extent can a religion be rational and evidence-based? How should theology change when scientific discovery poses challenges to it? To me, the rational origin of Na'vi religion evokes a time when mythology and miracles were mankind's best explanation for natural phenomena, and the theological challenge to the Na'vi culture by the arrival of mankind suggests episodes in human history such as the discovery of heliocentricity, the emergence of radiometric dating and evolutionary science, and the arrival of European conquerors in the western hemisphere.Technology: Avatar poses the question: is technology natural, or artificial? On one hand, all human technology is created from human innovation and from dramatic, often non-intuitive exploitation of matter. Thus we often conceptualize technology as man-made. And yet all technology only functions because it is consistent with the "laws" of nature: chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, electricity. Mankind doesn't so much "make" technology as it does manipulate matter and name it "technology." Avatar shows us an ecosystem where the Internet appears to have been created spontaneously, perhaps through evolution. It's great sci-fi: evolved bio-internet is no less plausible than evolution from amino acids to humans.