Monday, 21 December 2009
Rami takes a deliberately unpopular position.
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In full 3D, despite the heavy glasses making my regular ones dig into my nose, Avatar is breathtaking. The world is gorgeously realized, with every blade of grass and twisting vine carefully placed and rendered; the Na'vi are beautifully done, detailed and expressive and not at all cartoony; and the technology -- from the remote-consciousness-transfer Avatars to the planet-wide neural network -- unstoppably cool. And there are a few positive messages in the story. The aliens' neural-network biology, for instance, is miles beyond the evident level of human technology. The lead scientist is an intelligent, independent woman whose beauty (I don't care that she's more than thirty years older than me, Sigourney Weaver still makes my knees go weak) is never turned against her. There are positive minority characters -- Michelle Rodriguez as yet another kick-ass woman, and Dileep Rao as the second-in-command scientist.
Now, I know the general consensus is that Avatar failed on a number of levels. And I can't disagree with that: from the mildly immersion-breaking interruption of Sam Worthington's uneven American accent to the frustratingly slavish trope-following transparency of the plot to the unbelievably patronizing portrayal of an indigenous people, there is plenty to get angry about.
But it's an amazing film, and Joe Letteri deserves to be congratulated for it.
Themes: Damage Report, TV & Movies, Topical, Sci-fi / Fantasy
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I'm only going from the previews, but I found them cartoony looking. I feel like technology has given us the excuse not to be creative with make-up and prosthetics. I actually very much miss the days of Jim Henson studios, but I can accept that using the technology takes just as much ingenuity as creation with make up. But one of the reasons I found Pan's Labyrinth so breath-taking had a lot to do with its costuming and make-up. They used some CG, but it was mostly done the old-fashioned way, and it was gorgeous to me. This may just be a difference in what we each find aesthetically pleasing too. :-)
Plus, it's hardly that unpopular a position when Ebert supports it. :)
. . . who gets fridged. As does Michelle Rodriguez. The only main female character who doesn't die (with the possible exception of Neytiri's mother) is Neytiri herself, and that's only because Jake wants to fuck her.
I've lost all ability to be impressed with CGI.
As have I. The relative prettiness of the film doesn't matter to me- all I want to know is, can I care about the characters? And Avatar completely failed in that respect. Not one character ever rose above the CGI they were constructed from. Plus, 3-D glasses hurt. My face was sore by the end of the movie.
I don't consider that a particularly reliable gauge of how good a film is. As I've said, I think Avatar is visually stunning and definitely worth the money... but that doesn't make it a good film, that just makes it a very shiny one. I happen to like shiny things.
Good luck :-( I found it difficult, because the problems with the story were so pervasive that they constantly impinged on my enjoyment of the film, and there's only so much of the shininess that you can concentrate on...
I guess a bit like with Mamma Mia or H.P. Lovecraft, I feel split between fully acknowledging what's wrong about it and yet still somehow enjoying it in spite of that. I'm not quite sure if that's a tenable position.
at two hours my face hurt, my head hurt, my eyes hurt, I had to go to bathroom and i was feeling a bit more than vaguely insulted.
So I'm going to present a likely unpopular opinion: I think it should have been shorter.
All the critics would probably disagree with you, but I think you're spot on. Shorter would probably have meant less patronizing, after all ;-)
It's made much more bearable, however, if you have fun by counting the exact number of plot points Disney could use to sue it. I was honestly expecting them to burst into 'Colours Of The Wind' at any moment...
Two things. First, if you compare the movie with the 1970 movie A Man Called Horse, you might think it's the same plot (white man gets captured by Indians, must become One Of Them to return home, marries sister of chief, has to endure excruciating and difficult rituals, etc etc) but you'd be wrong. A Man Called Horse is about a white aristocrat whose world collapses. When he gets captured by Indians, his title and money means nothing. He must relay on his wits, endure and learn to escape. The Indians are portrayed as people. Not Noble Savages, no any 'in tune with nature' crap. They are shown as both caring as well as startlingly cruel. Then there is Avatar. In Avatar, white men are EVIL and GREEDY and DESTRUCTIVE, they call the Na'Vi 'monkeys' and sneer at their religion (jeez, they might as well have given the nazi salute!) whilst the Na'Vi are Gentle and Noble and Kind.. They are in Tune With Nature. The White Guy Jake Sully wants to become one of them, and not only does he succeed, but he becomes a better Na'Vi than even the Na'Vi! White Man's Guilt is dripping off the screen, but wait! When you were feeling guilty for being white, the movie tells you that the Na'Vi are lost and dying and in need of white guy Jake to rescue them! Gosh! I can feel all Politically Correct guilty about my race and yet feel all superior as well! No wonder the movie does well at the box office!
But that is also largely to blame with the anti-intellectual stance the movie takes. I'm sure the Harry Potter generation just gobbled this shit up.
I mean, seriously! Jake had a twin brother who was a Phd, who was working with the Avatar program for five years. Twin dies, so Jake gets the job. Jake proudly proclaims himself to be as uneducated and uninterested in anything resembling knowledge as possible. He's a fighter, not a thinker! So he sneers at the scientists for being eggheads, and snubs Dr. Augustine (who has more intelligence in her big toe than he has in his entire body) that 'he got tired of listening to doctors' and so never spend more than two minutes preparing for what his brother, the Phd, needed five years for. And whaddaya know? He's a natural! At every bloody thing! Learning the Na'Vi language? Less than two months. Learning how to fly a dragon? He can do it like Harry Potter could ride a broom, Just Like That Because He's Just That Awesome.
On, he's also the Chosen One. The Holy Tree showered him with Holy Seeds, so the Na'vi accept him. The whole 'learning to be one of them' is an afterthought, not a prerequisite.
All through the movie I was shocked at how anti-intellectual the movie was. 'You don't need brains', the movie seemed to say, 'just Heart and Emotion'. So the movie's scientists are ineffectual, marginalised and cannonfodder and the movie's 'hero' glories in his moronic 'jarhead' persona, who isn't good at thinking, but very good at fighting and grandstanding.
Ugh. Just... Ugh.
Quoting trusty wikipedia: "Civilization" is often used as a synonym for the broader term "culture" in both popular and academic circles. Every human being participates in a culture, defined as "the arts, customs, habits... beliefs, values, behavior and material habits that constitute a people's way of life". However, in its most widely used definition, civilization is a descriptive term for a relatively complex agricultural and urban culture. Civilizations can be distinguished from other cultures by their high level of social complexity and organization, and by their diverse economic and cultural activities."
So what are the 'unnecessary trappings of civilisations' why the Na'Vi lack? Cities? An economy? Buildings? Agriculture? Science? Technology? Literature? History?
Excuse my snarkiness. Euphoric 'back to nature' pipe-dreams like Avatar annoy me on several levels, not in the least the knowledge that most of the teenagers who buy into the Noble Savage idyll of the Na'vi and would So Totally become Na'vi themselves and ride dragons and Be One With Nature if they only could, most of those teenagers would be reduced to gibbering heapse of misery when they had to camp for two days and couldn't check their e-mail.
Here's a people which have a neural usb-stick in their fricking heads with which they can connect to animals and even plants, and what do they do to 'connect' to each other erotically? They kiss.
Many African cultures don't kiss. The Japanese don't kiss in love-play. Erotic kissing hasn't even been around all that long in Western cultures, so why do the Na'Vi kiss?
If Ney'tiri - or whatever her name was - had slapped Jake away the moment he stuck his tongue in her mouth, because she did not understand the significance of the gesture, then the movie would've scored a point with me (a small point, but still). If they had 'mated' by connecting their usb-portal braids, it would've scored another point.
If we had had *any* starry-eyed reaction of Jake of what it felt like to connect his mind to another living creature: point. If Jake *hadn't* reacted to connecting to his 'dragon' bond-beast (a connection which sealed a live-long exclusive bond between rider and beast, we are told) with a 'oh no you don't, you're mine!': point. If Jake had tried to russle up some help from the scientist, trying to get the humans off the planet without killing half the native population a la Charge of the Light Brigade: point (how about using the planet's bio-awareness and creating a human 'anti-body' which will gobble up any human presence like a white blood cell gobbles up a microbe)
Heck, if the movie had giving us truly *alien* Na'vi, or simply *ugly* Na'vi instead of those ten-feet blue cat-walk models.. you know, with four arms (all the other mammals on the planet had six legs, so why didn't the Na'vi?) and five eyes on top of their heads and nose-tentacles or something like that. Or with three sexes (one to produce the egg, one for the sperm and one to carry the children - and Jake's Avatar being a 'carrier'), now that would've been fun. But nooo... they're all pretty, and nice, and noble, and in tune with nature, and they're never hungry, or ill, or any off the things we invented civilisation for.
It's not only boring and preachy, but it simply isn't even science fiction. It's Disney's Pocahontas with slightly different names:
http://failblog.org/2010/01/10/avatar-plot-fail/
Sheez, with more that 300 million bucks, couldn't they come up with something slightly more interesting than cardboard cut-out characters and a rehashed plot?
I don't mean to nitpick, but are you referring to ancient Japanese culture or the current one? Because nowadays they most definitely DO kiss. And based on my experience with Japan, they view kissing much the same way American or similar western cultures do.
Supposedly there's a deleted scene that did just this! I heard about it on the Colbert Report yesterday. But the fact that they mate this way makes it even weirder to me that they ALSO kiss. That is odd.
You're on dangerous ground here. If they don't have a civilisation, that kind of makes them uncivilised, which kind of makes them a bunch of barbarians and savages.
The reason "civilisation" is used as a synonym for "culture" is that the word "civilisation" has some fairly specific value judgments attached to it. "That's a culture, not a civilisation" is a dangerous statement to make about somebody else's society, even if it's a fictional one.
Why should this be a dangereous statement? This is what the word bloody *means*. English is not my mother language, and it is difficult enough for me to convey my thoughts and feelings on a webpage in cyberspace in a foreign language without being scolded for using the correct meaning of words because I might possibly insult people and be exclusionary. Political correctness gone crazy, I call that.
I might not use the English language with quite the flourish as some on Ferretbrain, but I am a Historian (I specialize in Ancient Medicine), and I know the history of the concept 'civilisation' and 'barbarian' better than most, thank you very much.
Now, to get back to my original question; Rami stated that he felt that Jake's sneering attitude towards learning was because intellectual pursuits were 'unnecissary trappings of civilisation' which, to extrapolate logically, means that the reason why Jake fit so well with the Na'Vi was that they lack these 'unnecessary trappings of civilisation' (ie: Rami seems to think that the Na'Vi are indeed barbarians, which they are, according to the dictionary AND the movie - that's the whole POINT of the movie, to show the superiority of the Noble SAVAGE, not the superiority of the Noble CIVILIAN! But I digress)
So far, so good. I agree with Rami that Jake fits in well with the Na'vi because he has no use for intellectual pursuits, but the word 'unnecessary' sticks somewhat in my craw. What is so unnecessary about science, learning etc?
Specifically, if we're going to fall back on linguistics, civilisation is characterised by the building of cities and settlements, and the establishment of the sort of infrastructure and practices that make such things possible. No city, no civilisation; the one word is derived directly from the other.
I've still not seen Avatar, and at this point are unlikely to. But it strikes me that one of two things are the case: either the Na'vi live in permanent settlements of some kind, and thus pretty much have to qualify as some sort of civilisation by the strict definition, or they're nomads, and by definition are a culture but not a civilisation.
But culture and civilisation are used so interchangeably these days that I suspect only linguists, historians and pedants would bother to make the distinction.
Not to put words in Rami's mouth, but I thought he meant that the film was depicting such things as unnecessary, rather than they are, in fact, unnecessary.
Given that 90% of the people reading this site wouldn't even be alive were it not for medicine and agriculture, I don't think any of us are in a good position to high-handedly declare civilisation unnecessary. Unless someone here is actually posting from a self-sufficient, sustainable mountain hideout or something.
Thanks Arthur -- that's pretty much what I was saying. I don't buy into the film's veneration of 'savageness' at all.
Sorry, Marionros, I didn't actually say that -- I don't think his disdain for intellectualism makes him fit in well with the Na'vi at all. The Na'vi priesthood is depicted as somewhat intellectual, and the nature of their bio-network and their attitude to it, to me, implies a great deal of respect for knowledge and study. (This may be my own cultural prejudices showing). As a matter of fact, if Jake did actually learn everything he needed to know to live amongst the Na'vi, he would have had to spend days carefully studying the local plant life to learn which plants are poisonous, which can be used to bandage a wound, etc -- just one instance of an intellectual pursuit which, of course, the film skipped over because it's not quite as sexy as watching him try to ride a dragon.
Sorry if you've felt like you're being scolded, Marionros. I think the intention was more of a friendly pointer to why it's dangerous ground -- and I don't think it's political correctness gone crazy to tread carefully around those words. Why accidentally insult someone when you don't have to? That having been said, I agree fully with your choice of words, since the film does deliberately portray the Na'vi as un-'civilized'.
One could, if one was being generous to Cameron, see this as a portrayal of a clearly advanced culture going another way from us: a counter-factual aimed at making us question the benefits of a highly urban civilization...
The same reason, if you'll forgive me for using the nuclear option, that it's dangerous to call a black person a "negro".
After all, why should people be offended by a perfectly legitimate description of their ethnic origin - it's what the word *means*.
The offensive use of "civilisation" in the past came, not in applying that label to people, but denying it to them. And in many cases, that wasn't even slightly accurate. The British Empire was justified on the grounds that it brought the light of "civilisation" to benighted, "uncivilised" parts of the world. The concept is offensive for two reasons. Firstly, it assumed that cultures that do not constitute a civilisation in the dictionary sense of the word (by not building towns or cities) needed Europeans to straighten them out. Secondly, it flatly mischaracterised the very people that the Empire was dealing with. India has a history of civilisation that may well be longer than Britain's. Numerous African civilisations existed in regions which, to the colonialists, were mere backwaters of savagery. The list goes on. In fact, the list of peoples colonised by the British in the name of "civilising" them when, in fact, they qualified as a perfectly adequate "civilisation" in the strict sense of the term, is probably longer than the list of people who genuinely had never built a town in their histories.
Calling a black person a "negro" is offensive because it recalls a history of dehumanisation, and is furthermore a tactic used in said process of dehumanisation. Calling a man from India "uncivilised" is offensive because it's an outright lie, as well as recalling a bloody and grim history. In the Avatar context, saying that the Na'vi are a culture but not a civilisation is dangerous if a) you're arguing that what the humans are doing to them is a-OK, which is a position exactly nobody seems to be taking, or b) they do in fact exhibit precisely the sort of qualities the term "civilisation" implies (namely, the building of towns and cities), but you're flat-out ignoring them - and whether b) is the case here is something people who have seen the film can answer better than me.
Rami does, in fact, raise an interesting point that the film may be suggesting the idea that highly "advanced" cultures are possible without following the path of civilisation (defined as the establishment of towns and cities, which most cultures in our world seem to do once they hit a certain critical mass).
That said, I do agree with you to the extent that anyone who says "the Na'vi are a culture but not a civilisation" needs to make it very clear that they are using the term "civilisation" in the technical sense of "cultures that do the city thing", rather than using "civilisation" as a synonym for "a culture worthy of respect and approval". But it's naughty to use the word in the latter sense anyway.
I didn't think there was much dispute about that? Interestingly, Wiki claims that some of the first discoveries were unwittingly made by the British, who used archaeologically significant bricks as railway ballast. Which, if true, rather backs up my point above.
Either way, the point I am trying to make is that the term is redeemable, if one is a) careful to use it in its correct sense, and b) rigorously avoids using it to make value judgements, c) actually makes a fair assessment rather than assuming that people unlike you are uncivilised, and d) make it clear you are using civilisation in this sense. "Negro" is a very different kettle of fish, and I think Dan was mildly unfair to bring it up. He's correct that the term "civilisation" is dangerous, but it's not impossible to use at all; like with any dangerous thing, you just need to use the right precautions.
Absolutely. They also had a go at various white groups, although with less success (the Irish, Scottish Gaelic speakers, Welsh, and Boers may wish to quibble).
As Rami points out, the same is, in fact, true of "civilisation" which is sort of why I brought up the analogy.
The problem is that you can't actually do that. You don't get to just stand up and say "I am using this word in its technical sense, therefore I do not have to worry about any connotations it might have". To use an analogy which will probably only make sense to Arthur, it's rather like saying "I am only using the term 'brain damage' in the technical sense". It's a cop-out.
No matter what wikipedia says the word "civilization" *does* in fact imply a value judgment. Sometimes that value judgment is inverted (as appears to be the case with Avatar) with the "uncivilised" culture being presented as having special magic secrets that the "civilised" people have lost. This is actually just as offensive and dehumanising as the alternative (angels being, after all, no more human than demons).
Hell, the same Wikipedia article marion used to supply the original definition of the term continues *in the very next paragraph*:
Again, you *don't get* to say that you're using the "good" definition of a word and not the bad definition. You don't get to say that you're not making a value judgment when you use language that has a long tradition of carrying a value judgment.
Take, for example, the statement "blind people are inferior to sighted people". For a purely technical meaning of the word, the statement is entirely true, blind people lack an ability that sighted people possess, this makes them inferior by the "technical" meaning of the term, but I *do not* get to say "it's okay blind guys, I'm just using the word in the technical sense" that's a silencing strategy.
That said, I do find the blindness example more helpful in seeing where you are coming from. The thing is, it is actually possible to use the term "blind" in a non-offensive context. The phrase you provide is always going to be offensive. I've conceded already that "[X] is a culture but not a civilisation" is going to be the same; hence proposing "as presented in the film, the Na'vi are a culture but not a civilisation" as a more careful way of making the point. The latter makes it clear that the speaker is not making a value judgement about any of the cultures the Na'vi are supposed to remind us of, but they are making a value judgement about the way they are presented in the film. Since lots of discussion of the film focuses on whether or not it buys into an inverted version of the colonialist civilisation-vs-savagery myth, it seems important to be able to discuss whether or not the Na'vi are presented as a civilisation which the humans fail to recognise as such, or genuinely represent James Cameron's utopian alternative to the entire concept of civilisation. The difference strikes me as significant.
I guess my question is: are you objecting to the phrase "a culture but not a civilisation", which I have already agreed is borderline offensive if it is presented without context or clarification, or are you objecting to the word "civilisation" per se? In the latter case, where do we draw the line against bigotry? Do we just surrender words every time they become widely used to justify vileness, or is it possible to turn around and reclaim the ones which have some use beyond being idiotic slurs?
(There is, of course, the possibility that Avatar presents a racefail of such magnitude that it's actually impossible to meaningfully discuss it without falling back on dubious and value-laden terms...)
I would argue that's what happened in cases where people have tried to re-interpret "culture" as a positive opposite to civilisation by emphasising values of simplicity, mysticism, etc. - that way lies the Magic Negro school of racism ...
I'm pretty sure it actually revolves around a statement which is empirically correct if you accept Mr Edwards' "technical" definition of brain damage (which is effectively synonmous with "learning").
But not the word "inferior" - which was the one I was actually getting at. You can't divorce a word from its connotations just by saying you are.
A classic example here is the use of "gay" as a generic pejorative. An awful lot of people will insist (often vehemently) that because they do not consider themselves to be homophobic, that therefore gay-as-pejorative is not homophobic when they use it. I don't think gay people are bad, therefore it is okay for me to use "gay" to mean "bad".
I'm objecting to "a culture but not a civilisation" used specifically in the context of describing an indigenous culture about which little information is presented, which stronly parallels real world cultures that have been historically margainalised.
I don't object to the word "civilisation" per se, but I do object to its being used to categorise societies, because whatever the intent of the individual speaker, it will always carry a value judgment.
If you want another analogy, consider words like "natural" and "normal". There are plenty of situations in which it's perfectly okay to use them, but there are a number of situations in which it constitutes a value judgment no matter how technically correct it may be.
It is technically correct to say that homosexuals aren't normal (in the sense that they aren't in the majority), and that it is natural for women to take the primary responsibility for raising children (in the sense that there are precedents in nature). Neither of these statements are judgment-free.
This doesn't mean I think we should never use the words natural or normal under any circumstances, but we still have to be aware that in many contexts they include a value judgment.
For what it's worth, I think part of the problem here is that the Na'vi are intended to remind us of actual real-world cultures, but a) the film doesn't present a loyal depiction of any of them, and b) the film buys into some horrendously archaic ideas about civilisation vs native culture. Because of the way Cameron has presented the story, it's quite hard to discuss the Na'vi without making a value judgement on the cultures behind them. But then again, by linking the Na'vi to those cultures in the way he has, and then making a host of value judgements about the Na'vi, Cameron himself has essentially made a lot of judgements about those cultures.
As this discussion shows, it can be quite tricky to talk about the way he does that without sounding like you are doing it yourself.
(On the brain damage though: the thing is, nobody except Ron Edwards interprets brain damage that way. It's like if I called someone a fuckwit, only fuckwit meant "genius" in my own personal dictionary. There's a difference between making a statement which at least some people might understand in the sense it was made, and barking in your private moon language which nobody else understands.)
I don't think that's as insoluble a problem as it seems. In fact, I think the abandonment of broad categories will aid understanding, not impede it. The key is simply to use terminology that focuses on specifics rather than on generalities.
For example, the word "urbanization" provides a simple value-neutral way to describe the building of cities rather than the more problematic "civilisation". "Industrialisation" is again a value-neutral term for "relying on heavy machinery" while "digitised" is widely used to mean "uses lots of computers".
Indeed I'd argue that there is no real benefit to bundling together a lot of unrelated related concepts into a single broad term like "civilized" or "advanced".
That's a really good example of how's it's impossible to disendorse the meaning of a term just by saying you are. The slight difference is that there are non-offensive synonyms in this case, such as "bad". There just isn't a non-offensive synonym for "civilised", but there is clearly a difference between, say, a rainforest tribe and a vast industrial nation, that we might legitimately want to designate in socioligical descriptions. Though perhaps it's more that there's a cluster of determinate differences - such as "industrial", "capitalist", "democratic" - rather than one catch-all term.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. You could, for example, say exactly what you've just said - "the film buys into some horrendously archaic ideas about civilisation vs native culture".
There's a big difference between the following two descriptions:
"The culture of the native people is a poorly realised stereotype of so-called 'primitive' socieites, amongst the most infuriating being the attribute of spiritual authority to these 'simple' people"
"The native people have a primitive culture, but their simple way of life gives them a spiritual understanding that the colonists, with their more sophisticated culture, lack."
They both describe the same situation, but one recognises that portraying a fictional culture like that is, well, bad and the other doesn't.
I believe so, yes.