Cinefantastique Online

Due to technical difficulties that have recently restricted access to the Internet, yesterday’s Sense of Wonder column – “Conservative critics carp at Avatar (surprise!)“ was written in some haste, omitting a couple of points I wanted to make. I came back to add an update at the bottom, but the length of the comments seemed worthy of posting separately.

First, I think the following quote from John Podhoretz at the Weekly Standard is worth singling out for particular scorn:

“The conclusion does ask the audience to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency. So it is a deep expression of anti-Americanism-kind of,” [...]

The very language betrays a hint of silliness, veering from emphatic (the anti-Americanism is “deep”) to wishy-washy (”kind of”) in a single sentence. More important Podhoretz overlooks the fact that there are no American soldiers in AVATAR, only mercenaries from Earth, whose nationality is never specified. Soldier fight for reasons of patriotism and national defense; mercenaries do it for the money.

Only in the cuckoo crazy conservative world of Podhoretz and his ilk could defeating mercenaries be read as “anti-American.” Stop and consider the premise underlying this thesis: aggressive military action in defense of coroporate profit, regardless of the harm to innocents, is equated with “Americanism,” and being against this is somehow un-American. You have to wonder what kind of “America” Podhoretz imagines he is living in.

The second point I overlooked is more of a Big Picture type: the real reason conservatives gasbags are ganging up on AVATAR is that it is popular. They may whine that the film is simple or not nuanced, but this is mere camoflage; what really bugs them is that people are responding to it in an overwhelmingly positive manner.

Why is this an issue? Because one of the myths of conservatism for the past few decades has been that movie ticket sales are down because Hollywood has lost touch with real American values. Never mind competition from television, home video, computer games, and the Internet; the conservative party line is that American is a bastion of conservative values, but Hollywood is preaching a liberal message that appeals only to hippies on the West Coast and the liberal elite on the East Coast. They like to point to weak box office performers like REDACTED as proof of this belief, and rather unconvincingly claim that blockbusters like THE DARK KNIGHT offer support for Bush’s War on Terror. When a truly conservative manifesto like AN AMERICAN CAROL tanks, they blame liberal conspiracies to suppress conservative voices. And when something like AVATAR comes along and makes millions, these pseudo-intellectuals suffer from an overdose of cognitive dissonance.

Personally, I thought James Cameron was a bit too ham-handed with his message in AVATAR, but now I am starting to enjoy that fact. Had Cameron been subtle, no doubt his conservative critics would be accusing him of insidiously indoctrinating American viewers on a subliminal level. With the message right out there in the open, there can be no doubt that America has embraced the film’s themes without falling for any subterfuge. It turns out that viewers will patronize a liberal-minded film without apology and with no need to tone down the message to appease the apologists for colonization, greed, and mindless military action.

It’s enough to make the gas bags’ heads explode.

This article has been edited since its original posting, to correct errors and clarify meaning.