What Is wrong with Avatar: part one

After wanting to see the movie for a couple of weeks and fending off non-3D versions of it - cracked on DVD or shown on mini-screen in busses with a hickupping sound system in Spanish -, this weekend I finally went to see it: 3D, in English, the Full Monty! I schlepped R along, which took a lot of convincing. I still don't know what to respond to the earnest entreaty "But N... you studied literature, surely you must agree with me that the Oscars are only for blockbusters and basically worthless crap giving awards to the worst movies, entirely manipulated by mammon and box office numbers skyrocketing and (continued tirade)".

I'm not sure what studying literature has to do with this, apart from making me feel very much like an imposter. (Although of course I do look and behave like a bookish bluestocking snorting about Proust jokes.)

The problem is not so much with the argument on the Oscars, and more with a lack of a space for a real discussion, as in "diverse opinion, civil conversation, interested back-and-forth of point of views". Maybe I just went to university for too long. On a side note, nothing beats the look on the guys' faces when I announce my being feminist, after they ranted for some time about some mina (chick). Since I gave up discussing the topic (nobody wants to) or trying to educate (nobody listens to me and I would be an idiot), watching these expressions is my secret reward.

I digress. (or do I) This is a post about Avatar! For although my eyes hurt - a lot - and I had a strong headache afterwards, I am totally happy about having done "the 3D experience"... I was truly impressed, happy, and even thankful for returning to a kid's perspective of awe and wonder again...

BUT. I wouldn't be me if I could that supreme crap of a story stand uncommented. PLEASE feel free to add your points to this list. Spoiler alert.

What's wrong with Avatar, no chronological order

- The natives all secretly speak English. They resort to their dialect when they are pissed off and want to shun out skypeople. Otherwise they happily express themselves in English, especially at emotional moments of "mating" or saving lives. If a skyperson says something in their language (like "please" or "thank you") it's to throw them a cookie, to make them happy. The real talking is done in English, of course.

- The military general exists only as a , a potpourri of clichés (with a coffee cup on the plane? Really?! Why not have him say straight out "I love the smell of napalm in a hanging forest"?). Even the corporate guy has more conscience than the military guy. (By the way, I LOVE Giovanni Ribisi. He's like the doppelgänger to Edward Norton; like Tilda Swinton is to Jodie Foster (as Passepartout once said)

- Scientist are not only totally inept pricks - after all, you can learn to be the Über-Na'vi in less than three months. If you are a brainless marine, that is. Scientists are also BULLIES!

- If you are a brainless marine, you will agree to spy on those people who - for no reason whatsoever - decided to trust you and to teach you "their ways". In a totally illogical move, they will also show you their most secret place, to which no outsiders are permitted, even before you become a man and thus one of them. You will agree to spy even before having been offered new legs. You will continue to do so while living with the Na'vi, without qualms, until about the time when you mate with one of them. Then you will waste much important time on self-gratifying excuses and talking about how bad you feel about all of this.

- Then you will propose a mission in which all of your friends and uncounted un-individualized Na'vi's - "a herd of natives" - will die. When your friends point out the idiocy of your plan (of putting into danger the most important and sacred place of the Na'vi people) your answer is we better don't let that happen then! Yeah. Great. For a douchebag.

- for no reason whatsoever the Na'vi girl will fall in love with you. Despite all the feline elegant noiseless moving and behaving, at this moment there will be the usual carnal scenes. boring.

- after having betrayed her trust and her secrets of her people, your Na'vi woman will apologize to you for having been pissed off, if you only come flying along on a big red dinosaur.

- to understand and help the Na'vi you actually have to turn into them. So much for dialogue, intercultural or interracial understanding, to hell with hybridity and individualism, this is an arachaic question of Who is better.

And who is better and cooler (and I can already see the videogames)? Those who have the cooler toys, such as flying on dinosaurs and playing tarzan. Jake Sully has not understood shit of Na'vi life at no point: He talks in the same idiotic way, with the same idiotic Marine metaphors, the same mindset, he only has switched camp, to where he is bigger, bluer, cooler, has a woman and other toys.

Also, the eventual "solution" is throwing out all the humans from Pandora "except for a selected few". A-ha. Great point.

So far. I'm still pissed at Jake Sully. and at Cameron. Maybe I'll have it a bit more digested by tomorrow.