It is especially difficult to hold back when the theme of the movie has to do with socio-political reality or history. I barely saw Avatar last night…spoiler alert. Avatar was well received in the progressive community internationally, and Filmmaker James Cameron, become recognized as a champion of indigenous and environmental rights almost overnight.

Perhaps it was this acclaim that allowed me to begin watching Avatar with a generally open mind. I usually expect the worst when Hollywood picks up such a theme, but I thought I would give the movie a chance.

The movie acts as a mirror for today’s corporate-driven imperialist politics. It is an allegory for what is happening today in Afghanistan and what has happened historically at the hands of white imperialism.

In the film, it becomes clear early on, and in no uncertain terms, that the invading, white human army is after a mineral deposit which sits under the tree that the Na’vi, an alien race, inhabit. The tree is miles tall and houses thousands of Na’vi families.

One of the techniques used by the humans to get the Na’vi to leave the tree is to create a Na’vi look-alike with some human DNA. This creation is called an Avatar. This Avatar is controlled by a white human counterpart named Jake Sully.

This was a reference to the racial politics of early Spanish and English colonization, where explicit imperialist strategies were to inter-marry invading men with native female royalty. One northern native elder called this strain of imperialists, “liberal” imperialists. The goal of the liberal was very much to take land, gold and women from the natives. They only disagreed with their conservative counterparts as to the most useful strategy.

This Avatar was to ingratiate himself with the Na’vi and influence them to move elsewhere. It was clear that if the Avatar was unsuccessful, the corporate contractor would then authorize the military to move in and blast the tree and the civilization to Mictlan. The corporate administrator, played by Giovanni Ribisi, says something along the lines of, “Shareholders are greatly bothered by media images of natives being slaughtered, but they are bothered much more by quarterly losses, so hurry up an get them to move.”

Long story short, Jake fails to persuade the Na’vi to move, and he falls in love with an alien native. He never warns the natives that they will be under attack. It is only until the military begins its assault that Jake bothers to protest.

The army does come in and does blast the Tree of Life and the Na’vi to Mictlan. The Na’vi leave and mount a conventional counter-attack on the invading whites. Some Na’vi die, but in the end, Jake is successful in uniting different clans of the alien race, and under his leadership he defeats the white humans. The Na’vi goddess permanently transfers his soul from his human body to his Avatar body, and he becomes a hero of the resistance and a recognized leader of the Na’vi.

Generally, the movie did an adequate job in portraying the imperialist culture as one which has no problems with trading the lives of “savages and their children” for corporate profits. For all of the leftist acclaim, I found it surprising that it was, at essence a white savior film. It took a white alien human to unite the Na’vi and create the new technology (the domestication of a large bird) to defeat the white aliens. I mean, come on, really? For being a darling of the left, Avatar sure played into this tired ass theme. The white savior complex has been done almost everytime there has been a story about uplifting minorities: Wildcats, Dangerous Minds, The Last Samurai, Dances With Wolves, Gran Torino, The Blind Side, Mississippi Burning, but the list is really endless.

I also took issue with the fact that the liberal imperialist ended up as the hero. Jake conspired to have their society destroyed, and he never for one minute before the invasion tipped off the Na’vi that it was coming. He was an agent for liberal white imperialism and ended up as the hero of the film.

The film also fetishizes the response of the Na’vi. In the white mind, the only honorable way for an oppressed, obliterated, colonized society is to pull itself up from it’s bootstraps and engage in a conventional warfare response. Even in this Hollywood version of resistance, the response of native people is held to a higher, double standard. In reality, most colonized people have beaten the colonizer not by engaging in conventional warfare, but by being elusive and using effective, guerrilla tactics, by tiring and exasperating the invaders so much that they lose their will to occupy.

Finally, in the Hollywood version of colonial resistance, the native army simply rounded up the invaders and sent them back home with not so much as a handcuff to inconvenience them. The white psyche only wishes that the resistance would be so forgiving, even though the invaders themselves are guilty of intentionally killing unarmed civilian children. Deep in the white psyche, it is just for them to be strongly reprimanded and sent home. wrong. Think more along the lines of scorched earth.

The film did a good job of characterizing colonialist tendencies, which admittedly I did not cover in depth in this post, but it did a characteristically poor job in characterizing native response to colonialism. In the end, I give the film the score of fifty out of a hundred, which is higher than all other Hollywood films of a similar nature.

A little information on the event:

Protest Rally at Chevron in Houston
Wednesday, May 26 2010 7-11am
Houston, TX
On May 26, 2010, Chevron will move its annual shareholder meeting from San Ramon, California (where it is based) to its Houston, Texas headquarters (in the infamous Enron Building). Chevron is trying to run from its critics.

Chevron can run, but with your help, it cannot hide!

Community leaders from Angola, Burma, New Mexico, Australia, Kazakhstan, Alaska, Ecuador, Texas, Nigeria, California, Colombia, Mississippi, Canada, Thailand, Wyoming, and more will go inside the meeting to address the gathered shareholders. Outside, there will be a celebratory, colorful, and fun protest rally at Chevron’s headquarters at 1500 Louisiana.
Please join us!

Location:
Chevron’s Houston Headquarters
1500 Louisiana
Houston, TX

Sponsored By:
The True Cost of Chevron Network

Apparently, even certain shareholders and properly credentialed individuals were being denied access. When his father got too close to the entrance, Bryan Parras, says that his father was detained by two law enforcement officers and put in the back of the transport vehicle. Bryan says that he did not think his father was injured in any way.

In his interview with Candy Crowley, Allen confirmed my initial thoughts: the government is acting so permissively, because they don’t have the power to do otherwise. I don’t mean the formal, regulatory power. What I mean is that the government does not have the technical power to oversee what is going on. Neither did they have the power to properly regulate the rig before the spill.

What those at the top do not openly dare admit is that private industry has surpassed the abilities of the US government in several sectors. Private industry has more technology, more creativity, more discipline and more knowledge than the agencies which pretend to regulate them.

The Admiral admitted that in the instance of the oil spill, BP had the technology required to work on the spill and the government does not. He said that “partnering” with BP to shut off the oil spill was the “necessary modality” which will be used to shut off the spill. He was later asked if he trusts BP. If the Admiral does not have the technology to do his own work, what choice does he have but to trust BP?  He is required to trust BP because he can’t do his own verifications.

Private industry has surpassed the ability of its regulators in many industries including, finance, weapons, computer tech and energy. I don’t say this to argue for the free market. I say this to warn against my previous prediction that the decline of government’s authority could one day make democracy irrelevant to the “masters of the universe,” the CEOs of these multi-nationals.

In this case, the government serves only as the guy in the room saying, “um do you think you can kind of hurry up? Do you need some water uh or help or something?”

In the end, the Admiral was forced to answer the question, “Do you trust BP?” He responded something like, “I trust Tony Hayward (BP’s CEO). I even have his cel phone, and he picks right up when I call him.” For real? That’s why? He answers your phone calls and answers your questions? He kind of sounded like a teenager bragging that they had spoken to one of their singing idols. Let’s hope Hayward doesn’t change his cel phone number.

Citlali with her perfect attendence award

The Earth is what we live in. Millions of people everyday are wasting paper, plastic and such, but you can help. Tell your friends,family everybody to recycle, conserve energy and anything to help our friend Earth. Try at least once a month to turn off all electricity for a minute or more.Can you help save our home? 

The study suggests setting a uniform international cap on how much carbon dioxide each person could emit in order to limit global emissions; since rich people emit more, they are the ones likely to reach or exceed this cap, whether they live in a rich country or a poor one….

By counting the emissions of all the individuals likely to exceed this level, world leaders could provide target emissions cuts for each country. Currently, the world average for individual annual carbon emissions is about 5 tons; each European produces 10 tons and each American produces 20 tons…

Rich people’s lives tend to give off more greenhouse gases because they drive more fossil-fueled vehicles, travel frequently by air and live in big houses that take more fuel to heat and cool.

What about creating an international system in which there is a much smaller difference between the rich and the poor?

High Spirits At The Protest

As an answer to the massacres, violation of civil and human rights and the non respect and offensive exploitation by the hypocritical and abusive governments against our indigenous people and Mother Earth, in our different continents, the defenders of the tradition of our ancestors, and other organizations… We will be taking actions ! A movement for the defense of indigenous peoples and Mother Earth has begun !
Our first step will be to denounce and demand from the Peruvian government, the foreign companies inside Peru and the United States government, to respect the rights and life of the indigenous peoples, to get out of their territory, and to STOP the exploitation and damaging of the first lung of Mother Earth in Anahuac/Cemananahuac, the Peruvian Amazon !
Details of our demands and future actions will be announced in our Press Conference…

WHAT: Press Conference
WHO: “SAVE OUR MOTHER EARTH”, Other organizations…
WHERE: Consulate of Peru ( 5177 Richmond Ave.)
WHEN Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
TIME: 12:00 -1:00pm