Avatar, The Movie

Saturday, Friedrick and I had a fun date to Fayetteville, where we saw Avatar in 3-D and ate at Fayetteville's most acclaimed Asian restaraunt, Taste of Thai.

Mike Pinkerton, Stilwell Pharmacist, and I were in first grade together, in the classroom of Mrs. Duvall and intern Delores Sumner at Cheorkee Elementary in Tahlequah.  He owns Stilwell Pharmacy now.  He couldn't put into words why I should see Avatar, only, "YOU JUST GOTTA."  I had been pushing that movie to the back of my list for a couple of reasons.  It is cold winter, and thus the convenient movies are the ones on Pay Per View.  Pay Per View costs less, too.  That was a fact not lost on me as a woman newly out of work.  Never before have I been a housewife or full-time artist.  I've always had a demanding, more-than-40 *real* job outside the home mostly.  Besides, I couldn't get over the fact this movie was an animation.  I'm a computer geek from back in the days when a Radio Shack TRS-80 had 16k of ram and you programmed all morning to finally play pong on a black and white TV.  And Friedrick is a gamer, so I'm weary of animation because it seems too clunky almost always.

All I can say is "WOW!"  The animators in this movie have done a credible job of creating a seamless fantasy world of beauty with lots of causation and insight about nature.  There's a long history of movies themed around travelling in and out of different realities.  Avatar does something different though.  Everything happens in just one world.  So, as in Wizards and Lord of the Rings, the action takes place with animated characters and model real warriors in one spot.  One of my fave movies from the 1990s was Ferngully, and Avatar has some commonalities with that simple, sweet storied film.

 There's another timely theme:  Wes Studi plays the (animated) Na-vi Chief.  It sort of delighted me to hear some Cherokee words in the movie.  I think they were describing the stream of exterminators coming for them as "Uktena."  That is a Cherokee cultural concept--- a simple way to talk about it would be a huge giant snake.  A cool thing about Cherokee is that there is a lot of attitude or worldview in each speaker's conversation.  To call it an Ukten when a stream of troops is marching in to kill you, is to bridge a huge culture gap in the thinking of people.  

(Here's an aside:  Cherokees, like a lot of indigeous peoples who survive at least somewhat intact (albeit, assimilated to survive) have groupthink.  Its a way of looking out for each other and valuing the good of the whole group.  Cherokees aren't too tuned-in to being the Chiefs of various things.  Cherokees are mostly about getting stuff done together.  THAT'S all I'll say about that.)

Anyway, this movie does a breathtaking job of lining up indigenous people against global capitalism-- a faceless ideological opposite which is an enemy too nebulous to take-on except vicariously thru its shock-troops.  Is it fantasy?  I'm sad to report no.  This conflict is playing out in Brasil and Venezuela, where forest tribes are facing venture capital projects about drilling for fossil fuels or clearing rain forest to plant plantations.  It isn't even a new story.  Indigenous people have been giving way to evolving social darwinism since hegemony began.

More about that, some time.  See this movie, Avatar.  See it because it is fanciful.  See it because it will make your heart ache with unkept promises.  See it to remember what heroes are like.