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Tarzan was avatar too
E. Ablorh-Odjidja

In other words, let film be film, an entertainment vehicle that can sometimes teach us something. But very often, this attribute is stretched to exceed its limit.

The story of AVATAR took the film world not exactly by surprise. Its author, James Cameroon, is a known entity.

AVATAR got the world’s attention because of its pictorial or cinematographic majesty and innovations, all because of the skills imparted by Cameron.

But since AVATAR had its preview there has been a world of interpretations out there, most of which have been political. Will Heaven of The Telegraph, UK, for instance, said “James Cameron's Avatar is a stylish film marred by its racist subtext.”

That may be true, but the bigger story embedded in the film, that of a love story between man and woman, has been deemphasized by the critics.

Would it be death or life ever after in the arms of the pretty Navi girl at the end of the movie? A litmus test is to put the chances for revivification of the comatose avatar in the viewer’s hand.

Instead of a love story, the emphasis has been one of cruel exploitation of a primitive society by capitalism gone mad – never mind the fact that the Chinese and the communists are doing the same in parts of Africa today.

AVATAR’s author, James Cameron himself, is a victim of the capitalist exploitation theme. It is such thinking that makes the people of the Third World the “Whiteman’s burden,” and for reasons because it is first assumed that they are plainly infantile.

Naturally, what follows from such thinking is the making of the plot of AVATAR. And unfortunate for us, the people of Pandora (The Third World), we have to be rescued by Jake Sully, a paraplegic hero played by Sam Worthington.

Not that this hasn’t happened before. Tarzan was the first avatar when he showed up naked in his whiteness in Africa.

Jake, the paraplegic, had to undergo a transformation before contacting the people of Pandora. But, regardless of the avatar transformation, this whole idea of a lame hero going to war in the name of capitalism is a bit too surreal!

The movie has its high moments. Jake’s avatar and the Navi (Pandora) girl’s encounter is one that brings out the magic. Though love as a fulfilling movie device has been overused over the ages, a paraplegic in the shape of a virile avatar can still make it here.

Thus the centrality of love to the AVATAR story should have been evident from start, but it became the sub-plot to the tale of capitalist exploitation. The love here is not the Romeo and Juliet kind. But witness how the two are helped along on their romantic quest; the meeting with parents and people, and the taming of nature and the beasts they ride. Love permeates everything else on Pandora.

At the end, you pray that the love for Jake will help the Navi girl restore the comatose avatar (Jake).

Still, it is amusing to view how the theme of helplessness of so called primitive people informs the plot of this movie. A paraplegic warrior in charge of the rescue effort, fiction or not, is a clear mark of the intractable mindset that controls works of western liberals like Cameron.

And so do we become “the White man’s burden” in our own land. Countless helpless “do nothing” natives have been helped in their own jungles by Tarzan. The significant part of this notion is that it is helped along, generation after generation, by our own individual native stupidities.

The saving grace for Cameron’s plot is it never called the Navi stupid. Not a single citizen of Pandora fronts for the capitalist enterprise or betrays his country. Wish the same, in a limited sense, can be said for Africa.

In Africa, all forms of destructive ideas, starting with the purely religious to the acutely insane have representations, some for reasons of personal gains. Thus do we sometimes embrace our own destruction on a scale far beyond the capabilities of mere armaments.

But, the most virulent representation, however, is the thought that Africa, at this stage of her political independence, is the helpless victim of capitalism. Such belief ultimately undercuts our own discernment.

As for the love interest in AVATAR, I say revive comatose Jake and allow him to be with the Navi girl for the sequel.
 

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, May 11, 2010


Permission to publish:  Please feel free to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited.  If posted at a website, email a copy of the web page to publisher@ghanadot.com . Or don't publish at all.

 

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