Brothers, did anyone else notice the wierd racial politics of this film ? I mean the ex-marine is played by a white dude and the blue alien is played by a colored chick. Then the white character becomes blue (courtesy of that vile technology) and they fall in love. It's like, outside we're all the same color.

Man, I can't stand all these pro-technology, anti-imperialism, pro fucking with the other, Hollywood crap. Messes up my love for Western Civilization !

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Seanchai;352183I don't care to. I have no desire to over-intellectualize movies, particularly ones that aren't especially intellectual to begin with, and defend them from the ravings of someone who can't even be bothered to see them before spouting off a bunch of nonsense about them.

Hear, hear. I only expressed my negative opinion because I was tired of reading heaps of praise around forumsphere, or "...yeah, but the effects are awesome!" weak attempts at defending a very weak story.

And in please note, before posting my "ravings" I did went and see the bloody thing.

I could write explaining why I personaly labeled this movie as "anti-human"; but Senchai is right in what he says about over-intellectualizing movies.


Bottom line. Someone likes Avatar and enjoyed seeing it? Great! More power to them. Just don't try to pretend it's a quality work of cinematic art or a serious sci-fi tale...because it ain't neither, no matter how pretty the pretty pictures were.

A mature rational human being should be capable of separating his fondness for something from it's quality. I readily admit a lot of stuff I like is crap: like the traditional fried pig fat and blood "sausage-thing" that's a traditional food from my mother's village or the equally traditional liquor from the Arbutus unedo that gives pure vodka a run for its money in alchool content (of the ethanol variety) and can cause brain lesions if taken in excess.

Both of these are crap, they are bad for you, but I enjoy them. It's an aquired taste and I would not fault anyone for spitting the stuff after tasting for the first time.

Avatar is like these...its crap. A variety of crap that many find entertaining, but that doesn't change its crappiness. And those that enjoy the crap that is Avatar should not feel ashamed by it and feel the need to defend it when someone points out the fact that it is indeed cinematographic crap.

Quote from: David R;352244Brothers, did anyone else notice the wierd racial politics of this film ? I mean the ex-marine is played by a white dude and the blue alien is played by a colored chick. Then the white character becomes blue (courtesy of that vile technology) and they fall in love. It's like, outside we're all the same color.

An excellent point by my colleague from Malaysia.  I yield my remaining time to him.  

Quote from: jeff37923;352210Then please clarify the difference so that we may discuss it.

(As far as I can see, what a fictional intelligent alien species has in a movie is sufficiently nebulous that it can be termed either or both a civilization and culture for this discussion.)

It could take a long time to explain the difference between culture and civilization to someone who sincerely doesn't grasp it, but the long and short of it is that a civilization has as one of its precepts the concept of human beings (well, sentients, in this case) being able to develop beyond the state of mere subsistence in a natural environment. It comes from the root Civis, which is to say "City".

RPGPundit

Quote from: Seanchai;352233But that's not what you did, right? You didn't post, "I've decided not to watch Avatar." You posted, "Avatar is evil. You should think it's evil, too, because I do." And you didn't mention that the information on which you based your decision for us to start thinking that Avatar is evil was all third hand.

You keep trying to portray your actions as something they're not. This is not our first rodeo. Pundit doesn't exist without something to rail against, to decry as damaging and harmful, and so when you ran out of your standard fodder, you saw an opportunity with Avatar.

Seanchai

Whatever, dude. Nowhere in this thread did I suggest that I had seen Avatar before I actually had.

Feel free to get back to something relevant in this thread by trying to provide an actual counter-argument explaining how my points about this film are wrong.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;352257It could take a long time to explain the difference between culture and civilization to someone who sincerely doesn't grasp it, but the long and short of it is that a civilization has as one of its precepts the concept of human beings (well, sentients, in this case) being able to develop beyond the state of mere subsistence in a natural environment. It comes from the root Civis, which is to say "City".

RPGPundit

I'd say you did a fairly good job defining the difference. Not that it really matters in this case.

Quote from: StormBringer;352241No, it presents a stereotype of this particular corporation as almost completely corrupt and evil.  They take pains to remind people that the 'military' folks in the movie were ex-military, for example.  Likely because of the very behavioural traits they exhibit in the movie, ie: ruthless, more savage than the 'savages', and wholly remorseless in their brutality.

If you think the mercenaries and the few corporate folks shown in the movie represent the whole of civilization, you are really projecting things onto the script that simply aren't there.  Michelle Rodriguez' pilot character pulls out of the first firefight, and Sam Worthington's ex-Marine returns from the ruthless, focus on the mission 'machine' back to his inherent humanity and empathy.  If the film presented the stereotype you claim, there would be no development of Worthington's character, the other scientists would be just as bloodthirsty, and the jungle would have been leveled five years before Worthington's character arrived in theatre, obviating the need for a movie at all.  As it is, they spent some portion of the six years that team was in transit trying to negotiate with the natives, which completely negates your characterization of 'hopelessly corrupt and evil'.  They also gave him three months to work out a deal with the natives; hardly the mark of all consuming evil.  Spike may not like it, but this is a clear case of confirmation bias on the part of yourself and several others.  A movie where the humans don't win every time is hardly an anti-humanist propaganda piece.

Unless you want to argue that corporations, and especially American corporations, are really misunderstood philanthropists, and are unfairly portrayed in this film.

In the film, they make it pretty clear from early on why they didn't just massacre the Navi in the first place.  

Still, you at least are trying to argue the actual points, which I have to give you some credit for. Yes, if you want to be very very generous, we can all imagine that back on Earth there's a wonderful and conscientious society focused on Human Rights (which, by the way, is essentially an invention of OUR civilization, all those wonderful primitive cultures had no space for such peripheral nonsense), and that this corporation is somehow a complete outlier, totally contrary to the mainstream situation on Earth. But the few snippets of information we get about earth, and the overall depiction of humanity in the film, does not seem to back up that assertion.

RPGPundit

Quote from: StormBringer;352248An excellent point by my colleague from Malaysia.  I yield my remaining time to him.  

Please don't. You and jeff are making some very good points

Regards,
David R

Quote from: RPGPundit;352257It could take a long time to explain the difference between culture and civilization to someone who sincerely doesn't grasp it, but the long and short of it is that a civilization has as one of its precepts the concept of human beings (well, sentients, in this case) being able to develop beyond the state of mere subsistence in a natural environment. It comes from the root Civis, which is to say "City".

RPGPundit

A little patronizing, but OK. Now, here is where I will quibble with you.

You have said that a civilization has as one of its precepts the concept of sentients being able to develop beyond mere subsistence in a natural environment. I would say that culture is an artifact of sentient existance that can only occur when mere subsistence is no longer an obstical for that race, so culture is an aspect of civilization. I would even go so far as to claim that they are both intertwined, you cannot have a civilization without culture and culture cannot exist outside of a civilization.

When you use the term civilization, I think you are meaning something more akin to technology, something more modern or progressive. This is because in the Hollywood Noble Savage stereotype it is strongly suggested that technology or any kind of modern applied sciences is not needed and should be abandoned in exchange for a greater oneness with nature, that technology interferes with our ability to commune with nature and thus renders us soulless or spiritually retarded. This idea, I agree, is total bullshit.

The key here in our disagreement is that I think that a civilization or the culture within that civilization can exist with only a bare minimum of technology. That minimum being language because the sentients must have a tool for communication of the ideas and concepts which make up their culture which is a building block for their civilization.

Your thoughts on the above, please.

It takes more than language to avoid starving to death or being eaten by a tiger.

You can end up creating a civilization out of very limited technology; the Mayans and Aztecs had civilizations. On the other hand, you had barbarian tribes, with language (like all humans had language for at least quite some time now), but that had no real civilization.  What civilization requires is the ability to move beyond the strictest confines of the tribal structure, and to have your society set up for things greater than just survival in and of itself.

RPGPundit

Quote from: jeff37923;352313When you use the term civilization, I think you are meaning something more akin to technology, something more modern or progressive. This is because in the Hollywood Noble Savage stereotype it is strongly suggested that technology or any kind of modern applied sciences is not needed and should be abandoned in exchange for a greater oneness with nature, that technology interferes with our ability to commune with nature and thus renders us soulless or spiritually retarded. This idea, I agree, is total bullshit.

The key here in our disagreement is that I think that a civilization or the culture within that civilization can exist with only a bare minimum of technology. That minimum being language because the sentients must have a tool for communication of the ideas and concepts which make up their culture which is a building block for their civilization.

I'll tell you what is bullshit.  We are in agreement here.  What happened to the days we could scream at each other over the little things, Jeff?  

As I mentioned before, I don't have a problem with technology, nor its progress, per se.  While Jeff makes a good point about the bare minimum, I prefer our current level and look forward to future developments.  What many people are starting to have a problem with, however, is the destruction and blight that almost always accompanies technological advances.  More plastic for iPods means more plastic in landfills, along with lithium-ion battery waste seeping into the ground water.  Higher levels of production for food products leads to higher waste production as well, along with unhealthy food.

Technology has reached a point where we can maintain a standard of living, health, and comfort without 80% of the arable land becoming a Human Occupied Landfill.  We can maintain that standard without concentrating the wealth in the hands of less than 1% of the population.  We can maintain that standard without belching coal soot and toxic chemicals into the air.  Most of the producers of technology just want to get rich from selling it, but there is a fast growing number of ordinary people who want technology to start working for them to improve their lives without threatening it on some other front.

That is really the undercurrent to the movie.  They can put people into stasis for six years and travel to another planet, but they can't find a sustainable method for extracting this ore?  An ore which has no other value, according to the movie, except being worth $20mil an ounce.  The point is not 'we should live like the natives', but rather 'we can do better than we have in the past'.

Quote from: RPGPundit;352325It takes more than language to avoid starving to death or being eaten by a tiger.

You can end up creating a civilization out of very limited technology; the Mayans and Aztecs had civilizations. On the other hand, you had barbarian tribes, with language (like all humans had language for at least quite some time now), but that had no real civilization.  What civilization requires is the ability to move beyond the strictest confines of the tribal structure, and to have your society set up for things greater than just survival in and of itself.

RPGPundit

Agreed, but now you are talking about technology, and progress, and modernization. All of which are considered evil by the Hollywood Noble Savage proponent because it keeps us from getting back to nature. However, these same HNS proponents conveniently forget that technology and progress allows us to not die prematurely from simple medical problems, that technology allows us to be better environmental conservationists by allowing more efficient use of natural resources, that technology and progress allow for the lifestyle we enjoy today that gives them the luxury to explore a fantasy about a pre-technological existance that never was.

Most of these same modern day Luddites would not be able to survive in the low-technology environment that they claim we should revert to in order to be more environmentally friendly or more in-tune with nature or more spiritually aware of Gaia or whatever pop culture crapulence they are espousing this week.

Now, you have claimed that Avatar is anti-civilization, which I take as anti-technology, but if you look at it - it is actually more against certain kinds of technology while others are considered acceptable. With the pervasive neural interfaces of the Avatar biosphere, it would seem that information technology is found to be acceptable as long as it is biological or eco-friendly in origin. However, the technology that must be in place to support that non-biological neural interface is deemed exploitive and must be rejected.

I feel masturbatory doing this, but here is a quote of mine from the other Avatar thread.

Quote from: jeff37923;350314The things that got me about the life forms was that there was no biological reason to have naturally occuring neural interface for the Na'vi and the rest of the animals. Plus all of the large animals were six limbed and had four eyes  while the Na'vi were four limbed and had two eyes - didn't seem like they had evolved from a common base stock at all.

I came up with an untold backstory where the Na'vi were actually survivors of a crashed starship of human analogues (humanocentric panspermia again) and the various plant neural networks and animals with interfaces were actually the biological tools of this formerly starfaring race. By thinking that, I was able to keep my suspension of disbelief going through the movie.

And I think that is an important point. Because for all the eco-friendly Hollywood Noble Savage crap in the movie, the biological representation of the world of Avatar appears to only make sense when you think of it as an untended artificial creation and not as something naturally occurring.

Which makes the whole message of the movie fuck itself pretty damn hard.

I find it hilarious how much Imperium of Man Neonazi flavored Xeno-hate this movie inspires in the geek population. It's like the whole internet has been flooded with people furiously masturbating to mental images of kinetic kill asteroids wiping out all life on Pandora.

I haven't heard the words "race traitor" used as often in the past two years as I have in the past two weeks.

Quote from: RPGPundit;352257It could take a long time to explain the difference between culture and civilization to someone who sincerely doesn't grasp it, but the long and short of it is that a civilization has as one of its precepts the concept of human beings (well, sentients, in this case) being able to develop beyond the state of mere subsistence in a natural environment. It comes from the root Civis, which is to say "City".

RPGPundit

Mmmm. o.k. Totally not getting what there is to debate about here.

To summarize:

If man is civilized he would cultivate and develop renewable resources and thus would not need to go to Pandora in the first place to strip mine the Moon for, ...let me get this straight? Unobtanium?

If man is not civilized then he/she will (by any means) excercise the habit of resource depletion, which is to say, Will acquire said resources and waste them to obtain yet more resources (possibly expanding said civilization, elsewhere, perhaps where there is different resources that can be utilized...), in an increasingly intensified process, until such time as the original resources are completely exhausted.

The consequences of the second choice has historically been the collapse of said civilization unless some new technology is developed that utilizes other resources, that utilizes existing resources an order of magnitude better, or that is otherwise renewable.

Why would it be anti-human and anti-civilization to turn away from a resource gathering policy that leads to resource depletion?  

Haven't seen the movie yet, just sayin' is all


From Wikipedia:
In Hinduism, Avatar or Avatāra (Devanagari अवतार, Sanskrit for "descent (of a deity)", from the verbal root tṝ "to cross over") refers to the appearance in physical form, having descended from heaven to earth, of a deity. It is mostly translated into English as "incarnation", though more accurately as "appearance" or "manifestation".[

Civilization sometimes requires doing difficult things. If you find out you have to use a non-renewable resource, then you don't say "well fuck it, then!" and crawl back in the caves to die of cholera; you use that fucking resource until you can develop alternatives .

If you have to go to war to preserve your civilization you do it; because you know that civilization, and preserving the light of civilization, is a higher order of good than the alternative, which is darkness and barbarism.

I suppose there are those here who also think that the Romans were evil for resisting the barbarian incursions, too?  Would we all have been better off had we followed Hermann's example, and lived in mud-huts in the dark of the forest slaughtering each other, than if we followed the example of Augustus or Trajan?

RPGPundit