Read as a straightforward attack on capitalism in a blue-green hue, many conservatives have angrily vented across all media platforms belittling “Avatar” as yet another Hollywood-leftist-socialist-homosexual-pantheistic-anthrophobic diatribe.
This conclusion is painfully myopic and does not take into account any level of nuance, which is where director James Cameron truly shows his esoteric genius.
Full disclosure — I wholeheartedly believe “Titanic” was an obvious parable for the Cuban Missile Crisis (Leonardo DiCaprio is JFK, Kate Winslet is the Soviet Union and, of course, the boat is the soul of Karl Marx. Cuba is the iceberg, and Fidel Castro looks pretty much exactly like Billy Zane anyway).
Seeing that American conservatives are the indigenous, blue humanoid population of the planet Pandora isn’t exactly groundbreaking. The Na’vi would rather die than give up their weapons, and their fiercely libertarian take on property rights was even mentioned in a Washington Post blog last week.
Cameron, though, evidently meant to set up the Na’vi not just as American conservatives, but as specific conservative commentators. Seething with righteous rage yet sensitive enough to cry, the female protagonist Neytiri looks eerily like a caricature of Sarah Palin. Pretty, more than a little bit earthy, handy with a bow and arrow and oblivious to global political ramifications — sounds like a match to me.
Neytiri’s regal-but-doomed family is clearly a nod to the Bush administration in a time of great tumult and disarray for the right, with Dick Cheney conspicuously depicted as Neytiri’s mom — the all-knowing witch doctor.
The Tree of Souls, where everyone goes to get plugged in and recharged before battle, represents the Fox News Channel. The shows and hosts rejuvenate viewers with a buoyant feeling not unlike the power of the mystical tree. In fact, when Glenn Beck drops acid and starts thinking about FEMA, his tail begins to glow with a soft white light.
Obama and the Dems in Congress are the evil military industrialists in my deduction, and it is hardly a stretch — even the name of the quasi-governmental corporation they all work for, the Resources Development Administration, sounds like something to which Obama would appoint a czar.
Obama orders his Congressional troops to blow to smithereens the limits on political power that keep the government from interfering with the American economy (Hometree), and then he wants to use nuclear weapons to enact a series of wholesale changes to American life. Unobtanium, the precious resource atop which the Na’vi have developed their society, is the symbolic soul of American wildcat independence — like a magical pickle jar containing Andrew Jackson’s heart and testicles.
Seen in this new light, “Avatar” is instantly transformed into a redemptive Republican flick worthy of praise from even the staunchest conservative. Fun DVD extra to look out for: About two and a half hours into the movie, one can clearly see scared gunship pilot Harry Reid have his face smashed in by Na’vi warrior Glenn Beck, riding a majestic and angry flying Toruk that looks suspiciously like Rush Limbaugh.
Tommy Maple is an international communications graduate student. His column appears on Thursdays.
