Posted on 02/04/2010 9:19:48 PM PST by GonzoII
| Avatar: Cameron’s Utopia | |
| Written by Luiz Sérgio Solimeo |
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| Wednesday, 03 February 2010 16:02 |
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 Canadian born James Cameron, has certainly outdone himself in his production of Avatar with all of its technical prowess. Cameron’s visual presentation largely compensates for his lack of unique content. His story line is nothing more than part and parcel of the incessant drumbeat we have come to expect from Hollywood: a constant denial of Catholic doctrine and a bizarre Gnostic and egalitarian solution to today’s problems. One might ask, what is in a name, why did Cameron choose Avatar? The word refers to the incarnation of the Hindu deity Vishnu in human form, the preserver god of the Hindu sacred triad. Today it is commonly understood as a virtual alter ego. So this begs the question, just what is Cameron trying to teach us?
The movie imagines the Na'vi tribe from the planet Pandora who is extra-terrestrial, eco-pantheistic and lives in a supposed perfect harmony with nature. They are aggressed by greedy businessmen who are supported by the Marines in an attempt to expropriate the poor natives of their lands and wealth. Sounds like a Technicolor version of the evils of Western expansionism taught in every grade school across America. Man decayed when he started walking on his hind legs.
The plot narrates an attempted mission from Earth to dig a mine that would produce a highly valuable ore, but for this end they would have to expel the local inhabitants, who are seven-foot tall humanoids with tails and a long braid of hair. Ironically, they look very similar to the myriad illustrations of devils we have seen for centuries in Catholic tradition.
This exploitation of Pandora is because man has depleted the Earth of all of its resources. The intent to mine a valuable ore from another planet will destroy the purity of their culture that is in perfect commune with nature. This message is not subliminal: it is clear and in your face. Man and everything he does is bad, and nature and extra-terrestrials are good.
There are various failed attempts by the humans to co-opt the inhabitants and convince them to leave their village that is installed in a huge tree, under which is found the deposit of this valuable ore. The humans then produce some humanoid bodies in a laboratory, to which they periodically transfer a human spirit from a few volunteers in order to infiltrate the locals. During the night when the humanoid spies are asleep, the scientists bring back the human spirits through a machine to their respective bodies and retrieve the information obtained. The migration of man’s soul into the humanoids takes place through the power of one of the trees. Druid?
During this time, some of these humanoid volunteers befriend the locals, end up rebelling against the attempt to dominate them and fight on their side against the humans. Cameron manages to introduce a romance for an additional sentimental appeal. The hero of the plot ends up by falling in love with a Na'vi humanoid and becoming her mate. Throughout the movie, there are explicit scenes of pantheism in which the natives communicate with animals and plants through their hair. In the end, the humanoids defeat and expel the humans through the aid of animals, despite the human’s sophisticated weapons. The hero finally gives up his human nature definitively to live as a Na'vi humanoid.
While dazzling the audience with a purely secondary aspect, its technical presentation, the movie attempts to evoke an emotional sympathy for the eco-pantheistic Na'vi tribe and a dislike for the imperialistic aggressors in a convoluted plot by showing only one side of what to the world is today. This bizarre illusion Cameron presents, is the movie’s main theme; Pandora is the perfect world toward which we must progress. The basic message denies any idea of creation, original sin, redemption, the sacraments, grace, judgment, heaven or hell. One legitimately asks if the Na'vi tribe is part of creation, did they participate in original sin, were they redeemed by Our Lord Jesus Christ, will they go to heaven or hell? Perhaps Cameron’s strange idea is nothing more than a modern rendition of the Communist mantra; imagine no heaven, no hell, just nature and man, and when we die, it all ends.
It is no wonder many are leaving the theater after watching this bizarre fiction tempted to depression, suicide and the loss of faith as made explicit in the article in the Daily Mail. The Avatar effect: Movie-goers feel depressed and even suicidal at not being able to visit utopian alien planet. When the sacred truth is not professed and practiced, abundant errors flood in to fill the void. While the world proclaims the great success of Avatar, we ask; "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” But for Avatar?
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| Last Updated on Thursday, 04 February 2010 17:35 |
Normally I’d rush out to see the latest flick that’s got everyone talking—especially a SF or fantasy one—but I have zero interest in this. It looks like such a chore to sit through. Reading the rundown of the story makes me cringe and chuckle at the lameness, the PC foolishness, and I simply can’t imagine a fate more horrible than sitting through yet another multi-million-dollar technophile’s silly rant against capitalism and machinery. If just once one of these Hollywood libs who hate the military and technology would chuck it all and go live on a farm, I might be interested in listening to them, but they don’t, so they won’t be seeing my money.
And if you play it backward Ney’tiri is really saying “serve Satan”.
Sorry, but I don’t think ol’ Jim Cameron’s a devil-worshipper. He’s just not deep enough.
It’s called “Avatar” because the character in his Na’vi form is an avatar of the main protagonist...just like the little pictures people use to represent themselves on blog postings is called an “avatar”, or how the characters people create in Second Life are “avatars” to represent themselves in virtual space. That seemed pretty apparent in the movie.
District 9 is better.
I don’t think he’s a devil-worshipper. I just don’t think he likes this country.
Wonder why he doesn’t move to a Country more to his liking?
Pray for America
It is just a movie, a movie that has already made two billion dollars.
And from what I can tell, they are not forcing people at gunpoint to go see Avatar.
It literally is just Dances With Wolves with Blue people
but Zoe Saldana’s little blue butt even at 10 feet tall is till nice looking at..
It does reek of Gaia garbage and a fair amount of anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism and a little whites as bogeymen though some of the bad guys are not white or guys
all the heroes are either women, minority, dirt freak, lesbian or crippled (can I say crippled?)
and all the Smurfs sound black or rastafarian or Trini...afro-hindi...cept Zoe
it sucks politically but it is something to see in 3D..not as hamfisted as American Beauty or Bless the Beast and the Children
I spoke too soon. I should have added that the Na’vi have a direct link to (Eywah.) If we could communicate with God and loved ones past through an organic “network” the way the Na’vi did, it would be a different world for certain. That’s a ground-breaking step I hadn’t seen in a movie (unless you count The Force).
The roots of it all.
Babylon.
The beginning of mans worship to satan.
Trying to create heaven on earth without GOD.
It can not be done because man is corrupt with sin.
Only the lord can take away that sin.
Acts 7:43 Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.
I just saw an advance screening of From Paris with Love. It’s a shoot em up with a high satisfactory body count of Pakistani terrorists and others all over Paris. Avatar was sold out in the IMAX 3d version but I think we had more fun at our screening.
The made up creatures look obnoxious. Not interested.
How true.
Pantheism has become Hollywood's newest religion.
Pantheism is slowly replacing communism as
the lefts replacement of the Lord for salvation.
Instead the left seek salvation in nature.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America
WHAT CAUSES DEMOCRATIC NATIONS
TO INCLINE TOWARDS PANTHEISM
I SHALL show hereafter how the preponderant taste of a democratic people for very general ideas manifests itself in politics, but I wish to point out at present its principal effect on philosophy.
It cannot be denied that pantheism has made great progress in our age. The writings of a part of Europe bear visible marks of it: the Germans introduce it into philosophy, and the French into literature. Most of the works of imagination published in France contain some opinions or some tinge caught from pantheistic doctrines or they disclose some tendency to such doctrines in their authors. This appears to me not to proceed only from an accidental, but from a permanent cause.
When the conditions of society are becoming more equal and each individual man becomes more like all the rest, more weak and insignificant, a habit grows up of ceasing to notice the citizens and considering only the people, of overlooking individuals to think only of their kind. At such times the human mind seeks to embrace a multitude of different objects at once, and it constantly strives to connect a variety of consequences with a single cause. The idea of unity so possesses man and is sought by him so generally that if he thinks he has found it, he readily yields himself to repose in that belief. Not content with the discovery that there is nothing in the world but a creation and a Creator, he is still embarrassed by this primary division of things and seeks to expand and simplify his conception by including God and the universe in one great whole.
If there is a philosophical system which teaches that all things material and immaterial, visible and invisible, which the world contains are to be considered only as the several parts of an immense Being, who alone remains eternal amidst the continual change and ceaseless transformation of all that constitutes him, we may readily infer that such a system, although it destroy the individuality of man, or rather because it destroys that individuality, will have secret charms for men living in democracies. All their habits of thought prepare them to conceive it and predispose them to adopt it. It naturally attracts and fixes their imagination; it fosters the pride while it soothes the indolence of their minds.
Among the different systems by whose aid philosophy endeavors to explain the universe I believe pantheism to be one of those most fitted to seduce the human mind in democratic times. Against it all who abide in their attachment to the true greatness of man should combine and struggle.
Salvation can not be found in nature, because nature "is" suffering and death.
Besides ashes to ashes, dust to dust, nature can not take us to heaven.
I don't know James Cameron and I doubt he draws pentagrams and chants over them but:If there is a God and He did create this world then devil worship or evil or what have you would be the default setting to accepting God as Truth. We have a choice in life between serving Heaven or serving Hell-there is no middle ground.
What surprised me is that “Avatar” has been nominated for the Oscar, and a first, with nine other movies as well.
....But we CAN praise God for HIS creation because HE created it.
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