Avatar: A Wake Up Call for Humanity

Last week’s Sunday Times article on the film Avatar was a real eye-opener. Apparently the film is causing all sorts of small-minded, parochial outrage particularly in America.

• David Brooks, a rightwing New York Times columnist finds the film offensive with the hero “going native” and leading a “righteous crusade against his own rotten civilisation”.

• There’s talk of blatant anti-Americanism by the Canadian producer, James Cameron…that sounds like a guilt complex to me! They say he’s offering a critique of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq…again guilt complex! Apparently we’re being asked to “root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency.”

• There are also complaints that the film’s racist, because the natives are incapable of doing their own fighting.

• The Vatican has attacked the film for “trying to replace divinity with nature.”

• George Monbiot, the British environmentalist is much closer to the mark; he has praised Avatar for “its profound show of resistance to capitalism.”

Wake up people!! The themes in the film are way bigger than these poxy little self-centred whingings. This film is a wake up call for our whole way of life. It points out the flaws in the complete Western system, which is based on consumerism and materialism.

As individuals, we are expected to shop, shop, shop; we end up with wardrobes full of clothes we never wear, cupboards full of toys we never play with and we throw out last years’ model in favour of this years’ new shinier model.

The majority of these “products” that we purchase are made by massive corporations whose sole end game is to look after a very small part of the population. Sod the customers (yes that’s right the people who are buying!), sod the employees, sod the distribution chain…the only ones we care about are the shareholders!

The fundamental flaw in capitalism is that this is the only real mark of a successful company; it looks after one stakeholder who bangs the table for his dividend. So we end up killing innocent, defenceless people, throwing them out of their ancestral homes and devastating the planet.

Avatar represents a fantastic opportunity for the human race to hold a mirror up to itself and to take a good look, because if we don’t, our children’s world will be a very scary place.

All revolutions come from the bottom up and we have to be reaching the “Tipping Point” soon; we’re all fed up with the politicians and the bankers, we all know the Iraq War was wrong, we all know that the planet is dying.

This why the “big knobs” are upset by the film; their cosy, materialistic lives are under threat and they’re scared. Thank you James Cameron; let’s hope the average Joe can see beyond the parochial selfish whinges of the militarists and the moneymen; let’s see it as a rallying point.

There’s a lot of work to do people. Viva la revolucion!!!