http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/movies/20avatar.html?hpw
You Saw What in ‘Avatar’? Pass Those Glasses! 
Chinese moviegoers donned 3-D glasses to watch “Avatar” in Hefei, in Anhui Province.
By
DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: January 20, 2010 If you thought that “Avatar” was just a high-tech movie about a big-hearted tough guy saving the beguiling natives of a distant moon, you might want to check the prescription on your 3-D glasses.
Since its release in December,
James Cameron’s science-fiction epic has broken box office records and grabbed two Golden Globe awards for best director and best dramatic motion picture. But it has also found itself under fire from a growing list of interest groups, schools of thought and entire nations that have protested its message (as they see it), its morals (as they interpret them) and its philosophy (assuming it has one).
Over the last month, it has been criticized by social and political conservatives who bristle at its depictions of religion and the use of military force; feminists who feel that the male avatar bodies are stronger and more muscular than their female counterparts; antismoking advocates who object to a character who lights up cigarettes; not to mention fans of Soviet-era Russian science fiction; the Chinese; and the Vatican. This week the authorities in China announced that the 2-D version of the film would be pulled from most theaters there to make way for a biography of Confucius.
Advertisements for "Avatar" and a state-backed biography of Confucius in Beijing.
That so many groups have projected their issues onto “Avatar” suggests that it has burrowed into the cultural consciousness in a way that even its immodest director could not have anticipated. Its detractors agree that it is more than a humans-in-space odyssey — even if they do not agree on why that is so.
“Some of the ways people are reading it are significant of Cameron’s intent, and some are just by-products of what people are thinking about,” said
Rebecca Keegan, the author of “The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron.” “It’s really become this Rorschach test for your personal interests and anxieties.”
The “Avatar” camp isn’t endorsing any particular interpretation, but is happy to let others read the ink blots. “Movies that work are movies that have themes that are bigger than their genre,”
Jon Landau, a producer of the film, said in a telephone interview. “The theme is what you leave with and you leave the plot at the theater.”
Mr. Cameron might have opened the door to multiple readings with his declaration that “Avatar” was an environmental parable. In a news conference in London in December, he said he saw the movie “as a broader metaphor, not so intensely politicized as some would make it, but rather that’s how we treat the natural world as well.”
In a column for the Christian entertainment Web site
movieguide.org,
David Outten wrote that “Avatar” maligned capitalism, promoted animism over monotheism and overdramatized the possibility of environmental catastrophe on earth. At another site that offers a conservative critique of the entertainment industry,
bighollywood.breitbart.com,
John Nolte wrote that the film was “a thinly disguised, heavy-handed and simplistic sci-fi fantasy/allegory critical of America from our founding straight through to the Iraq War.”
Not surprisingly, the religious overtones of “Avatar” were of interest in Vatican City, where the film was reviewed by
Gaetano Vallini, a cultural critic for
L’Osservatore Romano, the daily newspaper of the Holy See.
In his review, Mr. Vallini wrote that for all of the “stupefying, enchanting technology” in the film, it “gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature.”
In a telephone interview, Mr. Vallini said his widely reported review might have been overemphasized because of the publication it appeared in. His assignment to write about “Avatar” was not an attempt to advance a particular agenda, he said, but rather “a compulsory choice” given the anticipation surrounding the film.
Ultimately, Mr. Vallini said, “the movie doesn’t provoke many emotions,” and its observations about militarism, imperialism and the environment “are just sketched out as themes.”
“It is Cameron’s narrative choice,” he continued, “as he is aware of the fact that the visual aspect widely compensates for this lack.”
Other viewers say that issues of imperialism are central to the film. In a post on the science-fiction Web site
io9.com,
Annalee Newitz, the site’s editor in chief, wrote that “Avatar” depicted “the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare,” a dimension she said it shared with movies from “The Last Samurai” to “District 9.” (Critics have also said that “Avatar” copied story elements from the movies “Dances With Wolves,” “Pocahontas” and “Ferngully: The Last Rainforest”; the
Poul Anderson novella “Call Me Joe”; and the “Noon Universe” book series by the Russian authors
Arkady and
Boris Strugatsky.)
In movies like “Avatar,” Ms. Newitz wrote, “humans are the cause of alien oppression and distress,” until a white man “switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior.”
Ms. Newitz said in an interview that since publishing that post, she had heard from readers around the world who disagreed with her interpretation, which she appreciated. “Just the idea of whiteness is a local phenomenon,” she said. “It’s certainly not in parts of the world where white people are not dominant.”
In China, for example, the film’s imperialist themes have upset audiences who believe that the plight of the aliens, the Na’vi, who are forced from their home by human industrialists, is a parable for Chinese people whose dwellings have been forcibly razed by local governments to make way for new construction. As one pseudonymous commenter quoted on
Chinasmack.com wrote: “China’s demolition crews must go sue Old Cameron, sue him for piracy/copyright infringement.”
There is, at least, consensus among “Avatar” critics that good science fiction operates on an allegorical level. In novels like “Dune,” films like “Star Wars” or television series like the recent “Battlestar Galactica,” Ms. Newitz said the fantastical elements of these works offer a place of “narrative safety” to contemplate real-life issues like environmental decay, totalitarianism and torture.
“There’s something very satisfying about being able to think through those issues without feeling you’re actually taking a political position,” she said. “Because you’re not – you’re just talking about stories.”
Over the breadth of Mr. Cameron’s career, he has been attracted to outsize themes. Ms. Keegan said that it was possible to read “The Terminator,” his breakthrough 1984 movie, as an anti-technology polemic, an anti-war film or a modern gloss on the birth of Jesus.
“Or,” she said, “ you could just watch it as a movie where
Arnold Schwarzenegger stomps around like a robot.”
Paradoxically, the pileup of arguments surrounding “Avatar” might have made a sympathetic figure out of the outspoken Mr. Cameron, who now finds himself in the underdog position of having to account for every possible message in his ostensible popcorn film.
“Often to his detriment, he says exactly what he thinks,” Ms. Keegan said. “All of that makes him seem outside the Hollywood bubble, even though on paper he couldn’t be more of an insider.”
Ms. Newitz, however, was not sympathetic to Mr. Cameron, who wanted to make a singularly ambitious film, and may have gotten his wish. “It’s like, do you feel bad for
Obama?” she said. “He’s the president — he kind of asked for it.”
Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Rome.
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