Joe Klein saw Avatar the other night, and he came away pleasantly surprised:
But that wasn't the most amazing thing about the movie: the Americans were the bad guys. They were a mercenary army working for corporate villains who wanted to strip-mine a tribe of alien, cerulean nice-guy, enviro-theists. The dialogue was awful; the characterizations were crude...and I'm sure that conservatives will dismiss this as another excretion of the Hollywood left. But still, it was something for a mainstream--indeed, a blockbuster--motion picture to have you rooting for the blue dudes flying about on birds painted like Chinese fans...and rooting against the humans, none of whom had the requisite Eastern European or Arab villain accents.
Klein believes this is a sign of a changing zeitgeist: Americans are willing to shell out bucks to watch themselves get killed by blue aliens. I have no doubt the movie's anti-Americanism is one reason it's doing so well overseas. But isn't it just as likely that the movie is doing well in the States despite James Cameron's ridiculously heavy-handed and semi-parodic political message? Americans are tolerant people, and I'm betting they are willing to overlook the sillier parts of the movie in order to enjoy the revolutionary special effects. I know I did.
The journalistic tendency to describe every cultural event in terms of a larger trend can be pretty silly. Case in point: "The zeitgeist is a subtle thing," Klein writes, "and the impact of Avatar is bound to ripple in all sorts of lovely, little enviro-theistic ways."
Hold it--"lovely, little enviro-theistic ways"? Is the Time columnist saying enviro-theism is better than other religions?