Ruminations - 19jan2010

George Rebane

• Avatar – the screenplay
• Haiti and foreign aid

I was reminded of my naivete by an email from a RR reader with a link to an article that discussed the message delivered by the film Avatar.  This blockbuster raises the bar for producing movies rich in very realistic computer graphics and extends all this into 3D.  I covered some of the implications of the film’s technology in ‘Avatars Lauren and Bogie, Together Again’.  But the Avatar storyline is something else.  It is typically simplistic Hollywood leftwing pabulum which I thought would come through in spades to everyone who saw it.  Wrong.  When our kids took us to see it over Christmas, we all talked about the anti-capitalist, anti-western culture, anti-religious (and a few more antis) propaganda content that seemed to hit the viewer squarely between his 3D glasses from almost every scene.

It turns out, of course, that not everyone picks this up, and to that extent the film delivers another powerful punch as it is shown worldwide.  Everyone comes to it with their own view of history, and most young people with no such view at all.  How diverse these realities of the past can be was again illuminated in the comment threads to my Jan column (here and here) in The Union.  Collectivism did not fall with the Wall in 1989, it just changed clothes, putting on a much brighter and colorful coat that makes it blend in better with its competition.

These pages have discussed the effects of foreign aid to poor countries, most recently in the context of post-disaster Haiti (‘Haiti – After the Dust and Tears’).  Bret Stephens in today’s WSJ writes ‘To Help Haiti, End Foreign Aid’ and cites the 2006 report from the National Academy of Public Administration entitled ‘Why Foreign Aid to Haiti Failed’.  Foreign aid to poor countries has failed uniformly and by any measure, perpetuating misery and death.  This has been documented in Easterly’s White Man’s Burden (here), and now the cry is coming also from citizens of the recipient countries.  Perhaps most heart-rending is from Kenyan economist James Shikwati’s “For God’s sake, please just stop.”

Comments

[Robin Milam]

George,

RE: Avatar

One can choose to see all the "anti's" and bashing of whatever "ism's" in Avatar if that is what one wants. What resonated so powerfully and beautifully for me is the deep, profoundly cellular/bio-neural INTERCONNECTEDNESS with all life elements that the Na'vi are in tune with. Unfortunately warfare and what was presented as a capitalistic power move was an overriding theme.

For me the core message is a divinely spiritual one.

Robin

[Steven Frisch]

My wife and I went to see Wicked a couple of months the night before 8 of my colleagues went to see it. I saw all 8 friends the next day at a meeting in San Francisco. I commented on the clear message in Wicked about the power of totalitarianism and the propensity of societies to overreact to threat. No one else saw it.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, but would we want to censor art? I don't think so. (I know no one here was talking censorship)

Art shapes culture so culture can shape art. I want Avatar to have a message, just as I want other movies whose message I may disagree with to have a message. That's part of what art is, social message. It makes us question.

[George Rebane]

Robin and Steve, I take no exception to your remarks, nor do I want in any way to inhibit artistic or political expression in privately funded films. My rumination was on the ability of viewers to grasp the semantic components that the movie communicated.

[American]

Brown 53 % Coakley 46%. OMG!!!!!