'Avatar': Why do conservatives hate the most popular movie in years?

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2010/01/avatar-why-do-conservatives-hate-the-most-popular-movie-in-years.html

'Avatar': Why do conservatives hate the most popular movie in years?

January 4, 2010 | 6:42 pm

It's no secret that "Avatar" has been stunningly successful on nearly every front. The James Cameron-directed sci-fi epic is already the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time, having earned more than $1 billion around the globe in less than three weeks of theatrical release. The film also has garnered effusive praise from critics, who've been planting its flag on a variety of critics Top 10 lists (it has earned an impressive 83 score on Rotten Tomatoes). The 3-D trip to Pandora is also viewed as a veritable shoo-in for a best picture Oscar nomination when the academy announces its nominees on Feb. 2.

But amid this avalanche of praise and popularity, guess who hates the movie? America's prickly cadre of political conservatives.

…

To say that the film has evoked a storm of ire on the right would be an understatement. Big Hollywood's John Nolte, one of my favorite outspoken right-wing film essayists, http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/12/11/review-camerons-avatar-is-a-big-dull-america-hating-pc-revenge-fantasy/">blasted the film, calling it "a sanctimonious thud of a movie so infested with one-dimensional characters and PC cliches that not a single plot turn, large or small, surprises.... Think of 'Avatar' as 'Death Wish' for leftists, a simplistic, revisionist revenge fantasy where if you freakin' hate the bad guys (America) you're able to forgive the by-the-numbers predictability of it all."

John Podhoretz, the Weekly Standard's film critic, called the film "blitheringly stupid; indeed, it's among the dumbest movies I've ever seen." He http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/350fozta.asp">goes on to say: "You're going to hear a lot over the next couple of weeks about the movie's politics -- about how it's a Green epic about despoiling the environment, and an attack on the war in Iraq.... The conclusion does ask the audience to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency. So it is a deep expression of anti-Americanism -- kind of. The thing is, one would be giving Jim Cameron too much credit to take 'Avatar' -- with its ... hatred of the military and American institutions and the notion that to be human is just way uncool -- at all seriously as a political document. It's more interesting as an example of how deeply rooted these standard issue counterculture cliches in Hollywood have become by now."

…

[onehandle]

1. They would hate Jesus if he came back too.

He was the original simplistic leftist.

[mucifer]

2. the movie also tries to make you root for a white guy becoming the ruler of indigenous

people of color. I thought that part was creepy. The movie would have been better if it ended with the protagonists in jail. It would have been depressing and a bit more realistic than a one day battle with the white guy being king.

[hunter]

31. I was thinking maybe in Avatar II the Blue People hit back and turn the earth green...

One of those jellyfish-seed things makes it back to earth and merges with a giant fungus colony and the next thing you know our coal fired power plants and war machines are dissolving into the dirt and the sky is filling up with huge flocks of passenger pigeons and dodo birds are tipping our cans and digging through our garbage.

Those Avatar people were obviously created by the planet Pandora to get inside our human heads. They don't look anything like the natives. Hell, didn't we get a clue when we found our DNA and theirs was so easily merged?

We are idiots, I tell you, idiots!It's a trap, it's a trap! Danger Will Robinson Danger!

When your car starts growing roots and sprouting leaves, never to leave your driveway again, your girlfriend or boyfriend turns blue and grows a tail, and little humming birds start talking in your ear, don't say I didn't warn you. Our filthy technological civilization is about to be destroyed! We are all going to be turned into half naked blue tree huggers!

[mainer]

3. Conservatives are calling it "anti-American"

because it dares to criticize military adventurism.

[HughMoran]

4. Now I want to see it

If they hate it, it can't be all that bad ;)

[Bjorn Against]

7. When you see it you will understand exactly why the right-wing hates it so much

Not only is it an amazing movie, but the story is filled with many obvious jabs against the neo-cons. Do not miss this one.

[Psephos]

5. Because the story is predictable, logically inconsistent, and preachy?

:shrug:

Should have hired a screenwriter who understands storycraft. But hey, at least the graphics are great.

[pnwmom]

19. Yeah, they might actually be selling some tickets if they had a decent screenwriter.

:rofl:

[wtmusic]

22. They probably hired 20 of them

Always a surefire recipe for consistency.

And then when the plot is just right...enter the suits

[Psephos]

23. Exactly. nt

[DavidDvorkin]

25. I didn't even like the graphics

It never seemed real to me.

[muntrv]

6. That's right John! "Team America World Police" is what Americans should

be watching!:sarcasm:

[Cheap_Trick]

8. When two puppets fucking is the highlight of your film, you got trouble.....

Avatar, Fuck Yeah!

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. They don't all hate it.

Take a look at the reader's comments on this article from the Orlando Sentinel.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7384281

[Lint Head]

10. Because the color for Democrats is blue.

[depakid]

27. ...

:rofl:

That's hilarious because Republicans and their ilk really will read almost anything into films, art or music.

[ORDagnabbit]

11. If you want to see absolute delusional hate then bring up the movie "Ferngully" to the whackjobs.

[Jane Austin]

12. I didn't think the bad guys were the American military.

I am pretty sure they were mercenaries.

The guy identified as a Marine and a jarhead was the hero.

[villager]

13. interesting leftish criticism of "Avatar" here:

http://dunedinschool.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/cinema-as-exorcism-four-avatar-as-european-orientalist-fantasy/

<snip>

I would give a synopsis of the plot, but I don’t need to if you’ve seen Dances with Wolves, Glory, Seven Years in Tibet, Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai, The Children of Huang Shi, or any other film where a white European character stumbles into a culture of noble but blinkered primitives and then proceeds to save them not only from his (and it is always his) fellow Europeans, but also from themselves.

In Avatar, the protagonist is an ex Marine named Jake, who is sent to a lush planet called Pandora to help run the Na’vi people (essentially three metre tall humanoids with better abs) off of their sacred land so a nameless company can harvest the minerals that lie beneath it. This is that same story, again, though done without any of the subversive gestures that distinguished the recent District 9, which shares a good few plot elements with all of these films but manages to be something other than the standard Orientalist bullshit. From the opening generic tribal drumming, Avatar confirms every last sentence of Edward Said’s Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism.

<snip>

[depakid]

28. They forgot "Fern Gully"

[jimlup]

14. must have hit a nerve

Otherwise the right wing bastards wouldn't be complaining so loudly.

[iris27]

15. That's because white guilt fantasies only play well with

fauxgressives who want to believe that they would've totes been the one to stand with the oppressed people of color if only they had lived back then.

[patrice]

17. Aside from being incoherent . . . "only play well with . . ." = Bullshit!

[patrice]

16. I loved it. Avatar is a nearly perfect example of its genre, like a graphic novel, but better, it is

not SUPPOSED to be Melville or Shakespeare. It should be respected for the same reason that we respect Mark Twain or Charles Dickens.

As far as the ethnic criticisms are concerned: an essential aspect of the plot is the unity of all life, something that you'd think those who fault the movie for exemplifying indigenous people as "the White Man's Burden" would recognize as the triumph of THEIR culture.

[bhikkhu]

18. I thought the Na'vi were small gov'mt, gun toting freedom lovers

...or at least if I were a conservative I don't think I'd have a problem doing the traditional "the good guys reminds me of me" thing. I haven't heard any complaints myself, and watched it in a packed theater the other day with my family. Excellent movie.

[Fly by night]

20. Avatar has also gotten much criticism here on DU, primarily for the politics of the studio ...

... rather than the content and quality of the film.

Some of the comments on this thread seem particularly ill-informed, as if the film were being criticized by people who haven't seen it. All I can say to them is ... whatever.

Glad to see the film is doing so well. I expect many more people are returning for multiple viewings who may not be counted in the gross receipts. Here in Nashville, I've witnessed teens buying tickets for other (cheaper) films while holding their 3-D glasses in hand, then going into Avatar for another three hour thrill-ride.

[hatrack]

21. Funny how when it comes to Palin's book, "The Market has spoken!"

Not so much in this case.

:evilgrin:

[silverweb]

24. They hate it when "the shoe fits."

They can't help but recognize themselves and their neocon, war-mongering, planet-raping, money-hungry propensities -- and they just can't stand being so thoroughly exposed for what they are.

When the shoe fits....

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DavidDvorkin]

29. Here's my very negative review

http://eyeblister.blogspot.com/2010/01/avatar-made-me-blue.html

[hunter]

30. Humans always cheer when humans are defeated. It's our nature.

Kill some Nazis, kill some terrorists, we win, we're number one!!! The body human cheers as it blows off various bits of its own self.

I think, however, we've bit off more than we can chew thinking we can always manipulate nature to our own advantage. The earth itself is winding up to kick human ass. We are about to discover the hard way that we are subject to the same natural population dynamics as any other animal. We are little more than an exploding population of mice run amok in a granary, experiencing near exponential population growth which will be inevitably followed by population collapse.

We don't need any blue people and a sentient planet to defeat us. We will defeat ourselves.