Avatar has turned out to be a politically explosive film. By and large, most writers see the film as a challenge to militarism/corporatism/fascism and a rejection of colonialism that extols the values of indigenous people. Chinese viewers see in the film a challenge to corporate interests that pay off corrupt officials to raze the homes of people unable to defend themselves.
Like an earlier article from Germany’s Die Zeit: Avatar: A Shameful Example of Western Cultural Imperialism, this article from France’s Le Monde, is counter-intuitive, but has some logic behind it. The writer assumes that in making this film, James Cameron, for the sake of profit, wanted to lessen the guilt and encourage the patriotism of Americans, embarrassed over Vietnam and injured by September 11.
For Le Monde, Professor Pierre Desjardins writes in part:
Naively, many took James Cameron’s film Avatar to be anti-war and even pacifist and environmentalist. However, it’s nothing of the sort! Quite to the contrary, this film is meant to eulogize violence and war. It is true that, in reversing the roles and caricaturing the U.S. Army, this film is just shuffling the cards and has confused more than a few. But beneath its idyllic outdoor settings, the film conceals a view that is remarkably caustic: that of justifying war for us peaceful Westerners!
First of all, let’s recall the scene of that enormous tree falling with a crash in the midst of a distraught population. How can one not see the analogy with the collapse of the towers of the World Trade Center? … This hero, a simple American soldier crippled by war and reborn into a new body, will return to war, but this time for a worthy cause!
Every war, even those that seem the most insane, always occurs for the “right reasons” because they’re for defense (there’s a reason we speak of the “Ministry of Defense”). Let’s recall that even for Hitler, the war was just: it was about enlarging German territory to ensure the survival of his people [lebensraum or living space]. We don’t go to war to fight, whatever any warmonger says, but to defend ourselves!
We should also note how the numerous battle scenes in the jungle remind us of what the Vietnam War did to the Americans. There, despite the use of napalm, the mighty Americans were trampled upon and humiliated. This film surreptitiously suggests that, henceforth, one must know how to respond intelligently to this type of humiliation. Not by insolently crushing everything in our path or by stupidly using poison gas, but by precise targeting of the enemy in concert with the other threatened nations. And there we find the perfect justification for the war in Afghanistan, do we not?
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