AVATAR

The film Avatar has been out and about for four months(12/09 to 4/10) after being in development since 1994. I have read many reviews, listened to many comments and discussed it’s style and content with many both in cyberspace and in our wide-wide-world. This prose-poem tries to encapsulate some of my initial thoughts on this blockbuster, its initial reception and some of its meaning.

James Cameron, who wrote, produced and directed the film, stated in an interview that an avatar is: “an incarnation of one of the Hindu gods taking a flesh form." In this film, though, avatar has more to do with human technology in the future being capable of injecting a human's intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body. "It's not an avatar in the sense of just existing as ones and zeroes in cyberspace,” said Cameron; “it's actually a physical body." The great student of myth, Joseph Campbell(1), should have been at the film’s premier in London on 10 December 2009. I wonder what he would have said.

Composer James Horner scored the film, his third collaboration with Cameron after Aliens and Titanic. A field guide of 224 pages for the film's fictional setting of the planet of Pandora was released by Harper Entertainment in late November 2009. The guide was entitled Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora. With an estimated $310 million to produce the film and $150 million for marketing, the film has generated a myriad positive reviews from film critics as well as its share of criticism especially over what many reviewers refer to as the film’s simplisitc content.

Roger Ebert, one of the more prestigious of film critics, wrote: “An extraordinary film: Avatar is not simply sensational entertainment, although it is that. It's a technical breakthrough."-Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia, 5 April 2010.

Like viewing Star Wars back in ’77
some said/an obvious script with an
earnestness & corniness/part of what
makes it absorbing/said another/Gives
you a world, a place/worth visiting/eh?

Alive with action and a soundtrack that
pops with robust sci-fi shoot-'em-ups...
A mild critique of American militarism
and industrialism.....yes the military are
pure evil........the Pandoran tribespeople
are nature-loving, eco-harmonious, wise
Braveheart smurf warriors. Received....
nominations for the Critics' Choice Awards
of the Broadcast Film Critics Association &
on and on go the recommendations for the..
best this and that and everything else. What
do you think of all this Joseph Campbell???

You said we all have to work our own myth(1)
in our pentapolar, multicultural-dimensional
world with endless phantoms of our wrongly
informed imagination, with our tangled fears,
our pundits of error, ill-equipped to interpret
the social commotion tearing our world apart
and at play on planetizing-globalizing Earth.(2)

(1)If readers google Joseph Campbell they can find some contemporary insights into the individualized myth that Campbell says we all have to work out in our postmodern world.
(2)The Prophet-Founder of the Bahá'í Faith, Bahá'u'lláh, has been presented as an avatar in India beginning, arguably, in the 1960s. There were only 1000 Baha’is in India in 1960 and now more than 2 million. Baha’u’llah has been associated in the Bahá'í teaching initiatives with the kalkin avatar who, according to a major Hindu holy text, will appear at the end of the kali yuga, one of the four main stages of history, for the purpose of reestablishing an era of righteousness.

There are many examples of what one might call a quasi-cross-cultural messianistic approach to Bahá'í teaching in India. This approach has included: (a) emphasizing the figures of Buddha and Krishna as past Manifestations of God or avatars; (b) making references to Hindu scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita, (c) the substitution of Sanskrit-based terminology for Arabic and Persian terms where possible; for example, Bhagavan Baha for Bahá'u'lláh, (d) the incorporation in both Bahá'í song and literature of Hindu holy spots, hero-figures and poetic images and (e) using heavily Sanskritized-Hindi translations of Baha'i scriptures and prayers.

Ron Price
5 April 2010

Funny, that struck as me as a distinctly impersonal comment

Not to sound like an idiot but... I'm confused.

That was an interesting review; the writing style didn't flow very well, but I liked your interpretation of the film!

I'm a little confused too.

Maybe Joseph Campbell would write another book all about the symbols and allusions to other "myths"? I don't understand this idea of individual myth of Campbell, and how it can lead us to a life of "bliss".

I don't know much about Bahá'í but apparently Ron Price does! Wrote a few books on it. Rather interesting...

Here's my personal comment, which I'm guessing is a common opinion.

Avatar was a beautiful movie. As time moves forward and younger generations forget, it is a good reminder to have movies like this that highlight the repercussions of the pursuit of power and resources. Pocahontas? Dances with Wolves? Any other examples? Getting rid of people and destroying the natural environment to fuel our industrialized society. Sounds lovely...:S

It's funny to think about the fact that this movie is promoting a more sustainable/harmonious lifestyle of the and criticizing the industrial world while the production itself is wasting energy and resources on silly things like 3D glasses. I duno, I just felt alot of dissonance when I experience this. I saw signs posted that the glasses were to be sanitized and reused. Think that happened very often? Had to probably be shipped off somewhere and back to do it if they did. Hmm...gas for transport, energy for sanitizing...how long does it take plastic to biodegrade? I enjoyed the non-3D version just as much. Frankly some of the 3D scenes in the beginning prior to Pandora looked a little strange.

Originally Posted by taylojl

Avatar was a beautiful movie. As time moves forward and younger generations forget, it is a good reminder to have movies like this that highlight the repercussions of the pursuit of power and resources. Pocahontas? Dances with Wolves? Any other examples? Getting rid of people and destroying the natural environment to fuel our industrialized society. Sounds lovely...:S

Point taken, but Pocahontas story told by Disney is nothing anywhere true to the real one. And Dances with Wolves (a book first, then a movie) was written by a white guy who knows nothing about Lakota culture. If you can watch Reel Injun; it looks at the misrepresentations of Indigenous persons in film since the early 20th century.

Originally Posted by taylojl

It's funny to think about the fact that this movie is promoting a more sustainable/harmonious lifestyle of the and criticizing the industrial world while the production itself is wasting energy and resources on silly things like 3D glasses. I duno, I just felt alot of dissonance when I experience this. I saw signs posted that the glasses were to be sanitized and reused. Think that happened very often? Had to probably be shipped off somewhere and back to do it if they did. Hmm...gas for transport, energy for sanitizing...how long does it take plastic to biodegrade?

In IMAX theatres they are sanitized on-site. They are loaded onto these cart thingies which puts them through some sort of wet + heat system (boiling water perhaps?). When I saw the film in IMAX they were giving us the glasses off the cart and they were still damp.

As for normal theaters, I'm not sure.

The theatre I went to had the glasses in individually wrapped packages.

Since I have not had a good chat with McMaster folks since about April of 1966 or perhaps November 1966 when I came back from Windsor to attend my graduation ceremony, it was indeed a pleasure to read these responses to my post. As far as individual mths are conerned, Campbell deals with this in the his four volume work The Masks of God--especially his final volume "Creative Mthology." I leave this with you to follow up on your own terms.-Ron in Tasmania