Some old friends took me out to the suburbs to see the first showing of Avatar on an Imax screen. We were overwhelmed. The motion-capture and 3D technologies were employed intelligently, to tell a compelling story, and to create a kind of Maxfield Parrish beauty that underlined its theme. It was appropriate to see it in Mississauga, the place where Imax was invented. James Cameron was, apparently, determined to make the 3D experience feel normal, rather than treat it as a marketing gimmick, with relentless poking and zooming.
More than just a showcase of new film technology, Avatar will resonate with both traditional science fiction fans and with people, like the Tibetans, who have suffered conquest and oppression by imperial powers. The plot is a Resistance Myth, deploying traditional elements from history and mythology. As in most such stories, the hero is an outsider who converts to the cause of the victimized people, the victimized society is portrayed in romantic terms, and it turns out that their magical beliefs are in some sense true (and the key to their miraculous defeat of the conquerors). Cameron constructs a sort of composite of all the world’s conquered peoples (Amazonian and American native peoples, Aboriginal Australians, Tibetans, Darfurians…) and turns them into aliens on another planet. All this is done with deft skill. The story is constructed on classical lines without missing a trick, and the details all work together. This is because resistance myths reflect reality as far as the bad part is concerned. This is pretty much how conquerers behave in reality, and how the conquered react. But the miraculous turnaround and victory of the oppressed, unfortunately, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy. However, without such hopes, the oppressed are left with nothing but absolute surrender to absolute power. Maintaining hope without a belief in miracles is the hardest thing to achieve for the world’s oppressed.
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