Film Review: Avatar, A Humanist Call from Mt. Hollywood

Avatar may well be the biggest anti War film of all time. It stands against everything the West is identified with. It is against greed and capitalism, it is against interventionalism, it is against colonialism and imperialism, it is against technological orientation, it is against America and Britain. It puts Wolfowitz, Blair and Bush on trial without even mentioning their names. It enlightens the true meaning of ethics as a dynamic judgmental process rather than fixed moral guidelines (such as the Ten Commandments or the 1948 Human Right Declaration). It throws a very dark light on our murderous tendencies towards other people, their belief and rituals. But it doesn’t just stop there. In the same breath, very much like German Leben philosophers (1), it praises the power of nature and the attempt to bond in harmony with soil, the forest and the wildlife. It advises us all to integrate with our surrounding reality rather than impose ourselves on it. Very much like German Idealists and early Romanticists, it raises questions to do with essence, existence and the absolute. It celebrates the true meaning of life and livelihood.

It is pretty astonishing and cheering to discover Hollywood paving the way to the victorious return of German philosophical thought.

To view trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyDQoXEBkGw

The year is 2154 and the RDA corporation is mining planet Pandora digging for Unobtanium, a unique mineral that defies gravity and sells for top cash. Pandora is a remote planet inhabited by the Na’vi, a species that shares some human features. Like humans the Na’vi have their own developed language and high culture. Yet unlike westerners they integrate with their surrounding reality searching for harmony in nature rather than looking for a means to exploit it. The Na’vi are a few feet taller than humans, they are extremely strong, they also possess a long impressive tail and a long plait with a unique bond at its end that operate as an organic USB connection. The bond allows the Na’vi to form a mental and spiritual union with their surrounding organic reality. The Na’vi cherish their planet, they look after it. They also worship a mother goddess called Eywa, who encompasses the integrated spiritual and physical centre of their universe and it’s past.

In order to penetrate into the Na’vi, human scientists genetically engineered human-na’vi hybrid bodies called Avatars. Like in all Western interventionalist and colonial wars, the foreign invader insists on convincing itself that it can create some false needs amongst the indigenous population. The RDA corporation takes pride in its attempt ‘to bring culture to Pandora’. The Avatars are there to communicate with the Na’vi. They are there to teach them English and Western values. They are there to maintain order so that the Na’vi fail to notice that their soil is raped and robbed by the Humans. But as we soon learn, such an attempt is in vein. The Humans have nothing to offer which the Na’vi are willing to take.

Jake Sully a paraplegic former marine is an Avatar. With the support of the appropriate advanced technology and machinery he operates a Na’vi/Avatar hybrid.

Pretty soon Jake, as an Avatar, manages to make contact with the Na’vi. He even manages to infiltrate into their civilisation. Colonel Miles Quaritch, the fierce mercenary leader of the security forces, offers Jake to have his legs repaired in exchange for providing intelligence about the Na’vi.

Though Jake is initially happy to provide the goods, it is just a question of time before the ex- marine, changes his league. Through the eyes of the Avatar, Jake sees truthfulness in harmony. However, through his training and life experience he knows what Human genocidal brutality is all about. He prefers harmony over racial brotherhood.

As the plot evolves, both Jake and the Avatar scientific team understand that the corporation and Colonel Quaritch are preparing for a total war against the Na’vi and their civilization. The scientific team unite together with Jake against the corporation and the mercenary force. They are committed to save the Na’vi. Augustine, the professor behind the Avatar project who is genuinely fascinated by the Pandora magic and motivated by true knowledge-seeking, makes up her mind; she says NO to technology. She betrays the company that finances her research and eventually gives her life to her subject of research instead.

As the movie reaches its dramatic peak, Jake, the Avatar, the ex-human spy is leading the Na’vi defensive war against the Humans. As the mercenary colonel is closing in on the sacred site, the Na’vi fight back fiercely against the superior technological might. The Na’vi suffer heavy casualties. When all hope seems lost, the Pandoran wildlife joins the Na’vi and attack the humans in great numbers, overwhelming them in the air and on the ground.

The film ends with Jake being successfully transplanted into his Na’vi Avatar. We also see the remnants of the human army marching to a sky shuttle that will transport them out of Pandora. The message of the 300 million cinematic spectacle is clear: NO to war, NO to greed, NO to intervention, No to throwing bombs, YES to nature, harmony and respecting the beliefs of others.

I recently learned that Avatar drew some criticism for its alleged ‘racist subtext’. “Na’vi might be blue aliens” says one British commentator “but they’re also blue aliens with Masai-style necklaces…acted by mostly black actors. They’re also rescued from destruction by a white character – played, of course, by a white actor – who becomes one of them”. The idea of a “white liberal man as the saviour of the so-called primitive natives” seems to deliver a ‘patronising’ message.

I find it hard to take these arguments seriously. The Sci-fi genre is creating an imaginary fantastic reality that thrives on familiarity. James Cameron, the man behind the Avatar spectacle, based the Na’vi on an amalgam of many non-white aspects: African tribal markings, Native American settings, Jamaican hair styles and so on. Yet, he manages to evoke empathy in us towards the so-called ‘alien’ rather than towards the Human. This alone should be enough to defy the politically correct accusation of ‘racist subtext’ behind the film.

However, the criticism against Cameron drew my attention to the role of the Avatar as a double agent. Towards the final scene Colonel Quaritch blames Jake for “betraying his race”. Jake indeed changes sides; he is doing it for a good cause. And as it seems, the Na’vi and Pandora couldn’t prevail without him, they needed his leadership. In order to win the battle they needed a leader that is deeply familiar with the enemy’s tactics and mode of thought.

One of the reasons that America is defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan is the obvious fact that many Iraqis and Afghanis had been educated in American universities and are familiar with the American way, yet, not many within the American elite or military command understand Islam. Not many amongst the American or British leadership are graduates of Kabul or Baghdad universities.

However, as in the case of Avatar, by the time America and Britain will start to train its forces to understand Islam, it may as well be ready for its new enlightened soldiers to change sides once they arrive on the battlefield.

I would maintain that to stand up against your own people for an ethical cause is the real meaning of humanism and liberty. Yet, it is pretty astonishing that such an inspiring message is delivered by Hollywood. We may have to admit, once again, that it is the artist and creative mind (rather than the politician) who is there to shape our reality and present a prospect of a better amicable future by the means of aesthetics.

(1) Lebensphilosophie- German, life philosophy, or philosophy of life. A term for the general emphasis on ‘life’ as an important philosophical vocabulary. Generally speaking the Leben Philosophers stood for paying philosophical attention to life as it is lived ‘from the inside’, as opposed to Kantian abstractions, scientific reductions, positivism and naturalism.

‘Religious’ Zionism As A New Political Force

PRIOR TO THE FOUNDING OF THE JEWISH STATE OF ISRAEL IN 1948, and since the destruction of Jerusalem in the 2nd century, the Jews never had their own territorially-defined state like the peoples of Europe.

Throughout the centuries, Jewry’s religious community, as shaped by Talmudic Judaism, took on the role of a state by ensuring the preservation, propagation, and future of Jewry as a race. With respect to the peoples of Christendom, ensuring their preservation as a people of faith was primarily the function of the state in conjunction with the Church.

The rabbis, as the leaders of Judaism’s religious community, underscored a distinct difference between Jews and Gentiles with whom they lived in their various host nations.

This rabbinic-defined difference had as its underpinning a religious reaction: rejection of Jesus Christ as the Messiah of Whom the Gentiles had embraced. Upon this reaction, the rabbis built their case with the Talmud’s denigration of “non-Jews” as being “sub-human,” as “cattle.”

Since the founding of the Church in 33 AD and the subsequent dispersion of the Jews from Palestine, Judaism moved from being a positive belief system to being a reactionary religion in which the struggle for survival and hatred for non-Jews became its essential import.

Throughout the diaspora, which continues today despite the founding of the state of Israel, the rabbis taught that to embrace Christ and Christianity — “to assimilate” — “to go over to the other side” — meant the destruction of the Jewish people. After the coming of Christ, Judaism became based on the self-preservation of Jews as a race – ‘a superior race’ – with an emphasis against assimilation.

By creating a complex system of customs and rituals and malevolent attitudes towards Gentiles, the rabbis sought to preserve the Jewish people from assimilation. Judaism, formed by this Talmudic tautology, became essentially a religion of Jewish survival rather than a religion of belief.

The current state of Israel has as its primary political force, radical ‘religious’ Zionism, the settlers’ movement, whose ideology underlines the preservation of the Jewish people through an expansionist thrust into the occupied territories and beyond. This thrust has been named by them, “The Whole Land Of Israel Movement.”

Both the Likud Party and its agents in America, the powerful Jewish Lobby, are dedicated to the expansionist quest of the Israeli settlers. All politicians in America bow before this powerful political force, including the Zionist puppet, Barack Hussein Obama.

THE RISE OF RELIGIOUS ZIONISM

THE RELIGIOUS APPROACH TO ZIONISM became enshrined in synagogue prayers, expressing a yearning to return to the land of Israel from which Jewry had been exiled. These prayers are recited in synagogues wherever Jewry resides up to the present day.

Religious Zionism was specifically formulated by the Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel, Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook, arrogantly calling the state of Israel in 1920, “the foundation of God’s presence in the world.”

Kook viewed the establishment of the state of Israel as “God’s manifest hand” in the world bringing about the “redemption of the Jewish people” as a “light to the nations.” A fervent messianist, Kook believed that the emerging Jewish state would set the stage for the “coming of the messiah.” (He will be the Anti-Christ.)

In promoting the Talmudic view of the Jews as a superior people, Kook taught his followers that “the difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”

And in an effort to reconcile secular Zionists with observant Jews, Kook stated that the secularists were doing God’s work in rebuilding the land. He exhorted religious Zionists to appreciate the role secularists played in redeeming the land and to help them realize that their outlook was not devoid of God.

Rabbi Kook’s son and successor, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, carried his father’s idea even further in advocating that Israel’s military decisions be made on the basis of an impending “messianic age.” Known for bringing the teachings of his father into the language of action, the political ideology of the latter Kook stressed the expansion of the Jews throughout the “whole land of Israel,” including the territories conquered in the Six Day War.

“The State of Israel is divine,” taught Kook. “Not only must there be no retreat from a single kilometer of the Land of Israel, God forbid, but on the contrary, we shall conquer and liberate more and more.”

It is this ideology, created by the latter Rabbi Kook and premised on the idea of a messianic advent, which spurred what today has become the main obstacle to peace, the settlement movement of the occupied territories.

RELIGIOUS ZIONIST SETTLERS & NETANYAHU’S BIG LIE

RELIGIOUS ZIONISTS TOOK THE LEAD in settling Jerusalem and the West Bank immediately after the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six Day War.

East Jerusalem had a religious significance for these Talmudic Jews who viewed the “return” of the Temple Mount to Jewish sovereignty as a “sign” that the “messiah” was “at the door.”

The ultra-religious Land of Israel Movement, founded by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, emerged in 1967, which declared that devotion to the conquered lands and their settlement was equal in importance to ritual observance. Soon, the National Religious Party of Israel, joined forces with the settler movement, which became known as the Gush Emunim (Block of the Faithful) movement.

The rabbis of Gush Emunim spoke of the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, as a “miracle” initiating the “messianic process.” They renamed the “Six Day War,” the “War of Redemption” – so as to define the conquered lands as “holy” and never to be relinquished.

Settlements began to flourish in the occupied territories through the zealous efforts of Gush Emunim. Soon, religious Zionism became Israel’s most powerful political force.

The National Religious Party added to their platform in 1993, a ruling “forbidding Jews to evacuate any settlement” and declared that Israeli soldiers should “disobey” any such evacuation orders. The Likud Party, the present regime under Netanyahu, recognized the Gush Emunim as an official settlement movement and promised huge funding for its settlement activities.

American Jewry then began to add special prayers for Israel in their support for the settlers and their movement. Referring to Israel in their prayers as, “Reishit Shmichat Geulateinu” (”Beginning of our Redemption”), in synagogues and religious gatherings, American Jews sought to underline the settlers’ view that the Jewish state had just as much religious value as it did culturally and politically.

OBAMA BOWS TO ISRAELI SETTLERS

“JERUSALEM IS ISRAEL’S CAPITAL – NOT A SETTLEMENT,” Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, lectured President Obama during their talks last summer.

Although Netanyahu called for a settlement “freeze” on November 25, 2009, it was designed only to “appease” the Zionist puppet Obama, who expressed “dismay” in early November regarding the on-going settlements in the occupied territories. Earlier in the year, Obama demanded a cessation of all settlements – a demand which Israel defied. Did Obama back down? Ha ha. Of course the Zionist puppet Obama backed down.

Netanyahu failed to tell Obama that his recent “freeze” applied only to new settlements on the West Bank, (for a 10 month period – while 3,000 homes under construction would be completed), and that settlements in East Jerusalem, such as the Gilo Project, would continue.

On December 3, 2009, Netanyahu met with “outraged” settlers, assuring them that the “freeze” was a “one-time only order” and that once the 10 month suspension had expired, the settlers could resume building. Calling the settlers, “our brothers,” Netanyahu defiantly asserted that even though Abbas should declare, “Peace now” — “we will begin building as we did before.”

Most American Jews find their identity linked with the state of Israel. Religious Zionism as a new political force has brought Jewish identity into a ’sacred’ realm. The ‘messiah,’ whom the religious Zionists await, will bring that identity to its tragic fruition.

This ‘messiah’ will be Jewry’s leader. He will be their god. He will be the Anti-Christ who will place his final “mark” on their arrogant, wicked, and most assuredly, doomed plight…

http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=470