Avatar and the sublime art of hypnotizing simulation

SPOILER ALERT
I mention in the description of this blog that I don't intend to look at popular box office films, but I feel compelled to write about James Cameron's new endeavor, not because I am a fan of Cameron or of "Avatar," but because the film illustrates all my fears concerning the end of cinematic art. Therefore, I violated my own vow of chastity and gave my 6.90 pounds to the multiplex which was showing Avatar (and evidently to Cameron's overflowing with cash pocket).So here goes.

First let me mention the positive aspects of the film, which it justifiably deserves. Avatar is a breath taking adventure of epic proportions. A film evidently about the concept of immersion (to which I will return later)that contains spectacular action scenes of bangs and booms and suspense. Moreover it contains kind messages about peace, respect, anti-racism and ecology. Of course lets not forget the new leap in technology that this high definition 3D-God knows what else-film is making. A step for cinema, a leap for the industry. Now lets get to the core of what goes on in Avatar.
Cinema, since the first Lumiere film, has been by and large a spectacle appealing to the senses, made to thrill and entertain audiences. When French audiences in the turn of the nineteenth century saw the Lumiere's short "L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de la Ciotat", they were fleeing the cinema room because they actually believed that a train will run over them. Nowadays, it seems that the attempts of early movie makers to evoke the third dimension in their films texture has been perfected. But is it actually necessary and evidently, so spectacular as has been prophecised by its messiahs, like James Cameron? Speaking from personal experience, I find 3D cinema to be interesting in its uncanny reflexive nature which evokes the tactile quality of the screen and the image. But in the end it made me dizzy, I hardly ever jumped from my seat feeling that a train will run over me and what's more its quite pointless to show a man sitting eating a meal in three dimensions. At least one could argue that it works better for cartoons.
In the case of "Avatar," the technology is one that suggests an intense experience of simulation (something that the title itself implies). I don't want to get into details, but Cameron filmed Avatar solely in front of a "green screen", using a high definition camera which filtered the images through a virtual camera. The actors portraying the indigenous tribe of the Na'vi were wearing motion capture sensors like those used for the Golum in "The Lord of the Rings" (2001). As one can understand,the directors eye (and evidently his vision)is highly mediated and devoid of subjectivity, an important concept for delivering a personal cinematic vision. So I would argue then that the audience experiences through its immersion in the world of Pandora a simmulation of cinema, a false experience where by no matter how close the image is to you, you still can't actually "feel" it. And lastly, our peripheral vision allows us to see around our 3D glasses, the heads of other spectators and their surroundings, which are not in 3D. Personally i would take every 10 minutes or so the glasses off to rub my eyes. In a time where every image, moving or still, is mediated through secondary cameras, screens etc., "Avatar" stresses the issue of an image that has no clear and specific source.

So, after all it seems that the 3D package is exactly that. The plate on which the product is served. In "Avatar" what matters is the plate. It has to be big, flashy, full of colors and mind-boggling in its grandiosity. Indeed, one could argue that the third high definition virtual dimension serves a certain purpose in the scenes of Pandora. One should feel absolutely immersed in this ideal and hippie-LSD infused planet, in order to experience the experience itself. But as I mentioned earlier, even scenes of people sitting and eating are filmed in high definition 3D... oh God I can't remember what.
In addition, the film's title, the only probably sophisticated element of "Avatar", implies exactly the experience of the audience. The avatar is the foreign body of a native which carries the conscious being of a marine soldier. The actors of the film are a spirit in a foreign inhabitant, the body of the 3D green screen Na'vi. Nothing is authentic in this film; a representation of a representation. Like a Picasso painting on a postcard which shows in the back a smaller repetition of the image.

"Avatar's" story is quite simple and square. Good guys versus bad guys. The good guys are the kind and nature loving indigenous Na'vi. They are blue gigantic figures that resemble elves, African Bushmen and mainly Native Americans, especially Mohawks. The bad guys are American troops who have invaded the planet in order to excavate the land of Pandora for a fossil fuel which is extremely expensive to buy on Earth and is also environmentally friendly (a hint to nuclear energy?). The main bad guy is a stereotype of a general. Ex Vietnam-gritty veteran, with scars on his face with a square jaw who spatters lines like "kill these savages" "you want to be like the blue monkeys?". He is a very schematic and unlayered character. Another cliche in a vast collection of predictable cliches that Cameron has created in his films. The general has no respect for "otherness" and any other race than his own. Of course, Cameron is politically correct and doesn't mention the USA. but just the Earth, home. In scenes where he orders attacks to Pandora, he uses a number of names and soldiers laugh and grab their weapons, ready to kill blue elves. Such scenes are a matrix by now for the creation of simplistic notions of good and bad, basically black and white perceptions which have certain easy and familiar qualities (facial expressions, stupid lines etc.). The good guys on the other hand are the exact opposite. I don't have to explain really. Think of two other films which are similar to "Avatar" in their concept. "Dances with Wolves" (1990), "The Mission" (1986) and "Lawrence of Arabia"(1962). All more or less concern the conquest of the "other" be that here for example a foreign race, an indigenous tribe and their land. But apart from this topic, "Avatar" is nothing like the aforementioned.

The character of Jake Sully infiltrates as an avatar Na'vi the tribe and becomes one of them. Of course he falls in love with the local hottie, who very much like any female warrior figure, has a pair of perfectly shaped breasts, a rear end that is indulging even for Homo "Sapiens", long braided hair and has an accent reminiscent of African women. This is sexist and racist. Very simply basically. To apply such characteristics to a figure almost like an Ursula Andres African Bushwoman is patronizing and simplistic, almost childish. There are again the stereotypes that Africans, or indigenous Amazon tribes, live in the forests, ride large beasts and worship a deity of nature by performing a yoga-like ritual, holding hands and chanting. These are western stereotypes on primitiveness and tribal ways of life.
The clash of good and evil takes place mainly on an allegorical level. The bad guys are the Americans invading the peaceful Muslims of Iraq. They come in peace, maybe even to save them, but their main goal is to take the petrol from the land at any cost. The land of Pandora is the once beautiful planet Earth, covered in virgin green forests. This land is being attacked, burned and bombarded. A na'vi mentions at one point "you have destroyed your land". Well, indeed, these are "messages" concerning the salvation of the Earth and the animosity of war.One feels so immersed in "Avatar" that he/she might even feel depressed when returning to our true land which is an industrial wasteland.

However, is cinema an art or a means for creating messages and schematic binary ideas? The second is basically called propaganda and in a film that is absolutely politically correct (let us all remember Van Sant's "Milk")the director is merely a step away from creating grandiose propaganda. For the messages of the film are clearly patronizing. They don't allow the spectator to experience a sensation concerning war and the destruction of the earth (recall "Apocalypse Now" or "Come and See" and Tarkovsky's "Ivan's Childhood"). The messages are ready and processed, an offering for quick consumption. Such binary and schematic associations are at the core of the sublime nature of the film, which is horrifically clouded by the dominating spectacle of 3D action scenes, to which Cameron passes every time quickly after each ridiculous and childish dialogue. It is as if the audience have to be fed quickly, and stuffed with video-clips of the hero learning to become a Na'vi, always with a garnish of swift flying and bashing action. Lets not forget also that the notion of creating messages is forceful and disengaging from the opportunity of debate or even posterior thought. You can recall "Requiem for a Dream"(2000) where a virtuoso director and editor said: "Don't take drugs, otherwise your dreams and aspirations will be destroyed." Of course, if you have arranged to take with you a heaping portion of candy and ultra large hot-dogs from the bar,then maybe you wont feel anything. After all, how can we at all think when we are experiencing a simulation of a simulation of a Simulation of reality? There isn't any strict reference to an artistic source or vision.

"Avatar" is the ultimate film of our schizophrenic days. Every year another film will make its breakthrough. It will have the most amazing special CGI effects.One first example is "Star Wars" (1977) which now is in the pantheon of geek cult-ness a film which can be celebrated at least for its innocence in a period of American history where innocence was much more politically incorrect than activism. Then came the "Matrix" (1999), "Star Wars episodes" (1999), Lord of the Rings trilogy etc. Each film claiming to be the most impressive and with innovative effects, always in favor of the spectacle and not the sublime. Just as "Avatar," these films are advertised in any form of franchise. Corn Flakes, sunglasses, television, potato chips, t-shirts, you name it. Cinema, more than ever has become a capitalist consumption product, where by the the form of the screen doesn't matter, the art is lost to the breath taking appeal to the senses and the producers get richer and richer.

Maybe "Avatar" and 3D cinema are a great revolution that we should embrace. After all many directors are already taking on the lead given by Cameron. Yet this revolution has nothing in common with that of sound in 1928. Thanks to sound the art expanded and became a new category, that of the seventh art form.If the future of cinema is 3D then will we be seeing 3D editions of Chaplin or of Fellini? I hope not.

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