"Avatar" by James Cameron as an example of fine social trolling

The film “Avatar” by James Cameron, in addition to setting an absolute record for box office, also caused a sickly boiling of various substances on the Internet. Any self-respecting blogger found it necessary to express his opinion. Here are the most notable examples:

Goblin - “The avatar is visually impressive, but somehow it’s impossible to empathize with the blue boys and the Judas who joined them” ( link ).
u_96 - “But Not Ours do not have any rights (since they are not Ours), okromya as the rights to voluntarily kill ourselves against the wall in order to save Our time and ammunition” ( link ).
kladun - “After all, a film is an ideological turd. But it’s made so awesome that viewers eat this shit, prikavivaya, and ask for supplements ”( link ).
dr-piliulkin - “Was Jack right, taking the side of the aborigines, organizing resistance to his former colleagues, in fact - betraying the Earth and people?” ( link .)
Yuri Nersesov - “In the Russian triumph of Avatar, besides the incredibly beautiful video sequence, the audience hunger for wrestling films was not played by abstract villains from fictional worlds, but by quite earthly, high-ranking and easily recognizable scum” ( link ).
Leonid Kaganov - “Everything is beautiful in the film - both computer graphics, scenery, and actors, and the plot are quite good” ( link ).
krylov - “If someone sees in the said apology of betrayal as such - to hell with you. “To understand in a bad sense” you can even multiply the table ”( link ).

Each reviewer sees some revelations in this film; at the same time, almost everyone agrees that the plot of the film is banal. The question "why such a trivial plot causes such fierce battles", apparently, nobody asked himself.
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Avatar, in a sense, is similar to the works of Franz Kafka. In Kafka, heroes are always fundamentally underdetermined, and each reader determines them based on their own ideas. So here: Cameron is generous with such lures-uncertainties.

Number one: an ecological disaster on Earth

Cameron as a whole makes it clear that everything on Earth is pretty bad. BUT: there is not a single word giving any certainty about this issue in the film. Jake Sally emotionally tells us that people have shattered their planet - but, frankly, this can be said about today's Earth, and about a century ago. You think this is an accident? I suppose not. Cameron let the viewer think out for himself. And the viewers did quite well! I quote dr-piliulkin:

From pieces of information it is clear that life on Earth is not sugar. And the mineral mined at Navi is not just a whim, but perhaps the last human hope for salvation. All people on another planet will not move, they will not turn into charming tail giants. So the choice is between the life of one and the other race. Either we or they. And then Jack kills his planet and his people.

In fact, the answer to the question "what is there on Earth" should answer the question - whether people on Pandora are to be considered just a branch of an evil corporation or to identify with humanity as a whole. Cameron does not give an answer.

Number two: Pandora's ecology

Just as in the case of the Earth, Cameron does not give answers regarding the randomness / non-randomness of the coincidence of the unobtanium reserves with the Na'vi settlement. As well as not responding, which prevents people from developing other fields. Provides to think out on their own. Voila! I quote kladun:

For the same need to cut down a whole tree on the planet Pandora, and there are very few of these trees - only a trillion. To scream at dying people is much more terrible to grieve with a felled tree a couple of hundred blue-headed tailors - that would be a real tragedy.

The ethical assessment of people's actions depends on the answer to these questions: it is one thing to drive the local population away from stocks of valuable mineral on which they sit like a dog in their hay; another thing (assuming that the necessary trees grow only above the unobtanium deposits) is to destroy the local population in order to extract the unobtanium more cheaply.

Number three: the betrayal of Jake Sally

As we have seen, Cameron (consciously?) Does not answer the question of identifying people on Pandora with humanity as a whole or with a greedy corporation. Hence the evaluation of the act of Jake Sully - Cameron generously scattered the arguments "for" and "against." On the one hand, there is no social connection with Jake Sully, and absolutely all people on the planet Pandora treat him with intense disdain and / or strive to use for their own purposes. I quote Krylov:

But let me. And what, in the world of Jake Sally have any "their"?

Think about it. The word "your", taken seriously, implies some meaningful connections between people, real or at least imaginary. Belonging to some kind of community. Values ​​shared by all. Trust and sympathy. At least some common story, dear memories.

But in this agonizing earthly world, all this is simply not there. There is neither a nation to which it is possible to belong, nor a class to which it is possible to belong, nor like-minded people in whose ranks one can consist ... It seems that there is not even a family. Ah, there was a brother. Bratushka Brother killed. For a pretty penny, just like ours. Packed in a box and burned. Nothing, in general, is left. You can be consoled only by the fact that everyone lives like this. People are absolutely alien to each other, nobody trusts anyone, and nobody sympathizes with anyone. The strongest connection that binds the hero to Earth is the contract he signed. That is - if you take the motives - the hope to earn money for the operation. Loot, yes. The only value that still stands in this world is for lack of the best.

But in parallel with the atomization of Jake Sally, Cameron makes him a former soldier who served in hot spots. He introduces Colonel Kuorich into the narration, who behaves almost flawlessly in relation to his subordinates. Thus, the theme of military duty Cameron again deliberately inserted. And again, the viewer is forced to decide for himself which of the two arguments to give more weight.

Number Four: Jake Sally's Motivation

Here Cameron tried his best. Throughout the film, Sally never gives an explanation, why does he go over to the na'vi side - despite the fact that he constantly says something behind the scenes, keeps a video diary, etc. Do you think this is by chance? Are there too many accidents?

And again, each commentator himself thinks up what drives Sally. dr-piliulkin:

Taras Bulba is right, killing the traitor-son. Andrei is not right in changing his people for the sake of love ( in fact, Jack’s motivation ).

Goblin:

There are problems with the motivation of the characters. Here, for example, the main character heroically cut people in Venezuela, and he was respected for it in his homeland. By the way, it’s a pity, it’s not indicated how long the dictator Chávez’s bloody regime will last. And suddenly the murderer-guardsman becomes incredibly sorry for the blue aliens. So sorry that he, without any pity, begins to bring down yesterday’s colleagues in a dangerous business. It looks strange, something like a war with humanity on the side of cockroaches.

kladun:

After all, who is good? These are those with whom you feel good. And Jake Sully with whom is better? In a wheelchair with people or physically full savage to dissect dyrokon? Yes, he for such pokatushki his former colleagues shot the fuck. But he didn’t do anything wrong, did he? He was for good versus bad. He unleashed an unnecessary war, when everything seemed to have settled down (after all, the savages really had where to go - they live in trees, and around it are just trees). What for? Otherwise, he wouldn’t fly on punch holes anymore, and the blue-eyed bitch wouldn’t give a blow to his tail anymore. And poor Jake was an addicted bestiality, as we remember. [...] Today Jake is well with blue eyes, he is fighting for them against bad people. Tomorrow he will be fine with the yellow bladders, which are the enemies of the blue-eyed ones, and then what? But no remorse, because now the good ones are yellow-eyed, and the blue-eyed ones are already bad, so Jake is again for the good against the bad, again he is true to his ideals and killed many for them. What a nice guy!

As you can see, each commentator adds in its own way. Based on some of their ideas. Cameron did not give any hints. Moreover, at the moment when Quaricus accuses Jake of treason, he does not respond . Does not give any clues.

Number five: substitution

There is one point in all Avatar reviews that surprises me: none of those who spoke expressed themselves about the act of Jake Sully and the actions of earthlings. Meanwhile, these actions require a separate ethical evaluation. The actions of earthlings who destroy na'vi are in no way connected with Jake’s personal moral choice. Nevertheless, I did not find a single review where it would be said: I condemn both the actions of earthlings and the act of Sally; either I condemn neither the actions of earthlings, nor the deed of Sally.

Here it is, the perfect example of fine trolling and clever demagogy. Two completely different judgments are presented as one, and none of the opponents even think to separate them.

Number six: unreal beauty

And finally, the visual range. All reviewers unanimously pay tribute to the quality and beauty of the graphics in the film. However, the more polar the opinion, the sharper it is stated that the picture is a way to read some kind of morality. True, what exactly - critics disagree. kladun writes about “psinobesia”, Goblin about conscientious colonizers-occupiers, Krylov about “indigo children”, Kaganov about harmony with nature, dr-piliulkin about multiplicity of truth. I would venture to express such a thought: the video sequence just distracts the viewer so that he does not notice that Cameron does not read any moral. He just subtly trolls and watches who and what he sees in this story.

And at the end

After much deliberation, I came to the conclusion that the plot of the film was specifically tailored precisely for everyone to see his own in it. There are too many critical defaults in the film and they are too obvious. There is, of course, the probability that in the original (or in the director's version) all these questions are given unambiguous answers, but I honestly do not believe that the Russian translators, but not Cameron, were so finely guided. In any case, it was in such an underdetermined Avatar format that had its own (I must say, tremendous) impact on the blogosphere in particular and on Russian society as a whole.