“The message of Avatar is that if you are a good person, you need to come together and destroy America, and literally lay down your life in a violent revolutionary struggle against the American state.

Avatar is telling you that you have to have to be Chelsea Manning … you have to betray your country … you can’t be a cog in the machine and feel bad about it and that’s enough.”

The pastiche quote, everything above this line, is transcripted from the Chapo Trap House podcast #478, dated yesterday. I believe every word is true.

Some other paraphrased snippets worth mentioning:

One of the hosts said that when he saw the movie ten years ago in the theater, during the final battle sequences people were literally on their feet and “cheering for the Viet Cong”. (This is obliquely confirmed on the Wikipedia page by a quote from some preacherman who hated the movie: “… propaganda exists in the film … If you can get a theater full of people in Kentucky to stand and applaud the defeat of their country in war, then you’ve got some amazing special effects”.

According to the movie’s logic, capitalism’s endgame is ‘Oh shit, we’ve used up all the minerals we need here, we’ve got to find another planet to rape and pillage’. (See the Humans from Earth link two days ago. See Elon Musk.)

The highly educated scientists in the movie believe themselves to be morally superior to the soldiers and bureaucrats who violently subdue the Na’vi and their planet. However … the scientists have developed the technology that makes the oppression possible in the first place. (Again, cogs in the machine, Employees of the Institution that is inevitably anti-life and anti-love, and, I might add, probably good Democrats every one.)

From the point of view of the Na’vi, imperialism and the way we live is psychotic insanity, and there are no good counter-arguments to their Theory of Us.

When the Na’vis World Tree is destroyed and collapses in on itself, James Cameron the Director is explicitly invoking 9-11, except … we are the bad guys this time. Like most times, actually. In real life, we do 9-11 all over the world, all the time, routinely.

The long closing discussion is about why Cameron is a real genius fighting for the right side.

***

I will certainly watch it for a third time if the opportunity arises on HBO or whatever. Be advised that your friends at Amazon have taken it upon themselves to edit out some controversial parts, so if you watch it through Bezos’ “Prime” you won’t be getting the version the director wanted you to see.

Incredibly, Wikipedia advises us that “Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 have completed principal filming, and are scheduled to be released on December 16, 2022, and December 20, 2024”.

I hope to be there then.