Does the plot of the film Avatar symbolize the plight of the Native Americans, or of the Palestinians, or the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror? The reader, depending on his or her political orientation, or on his or her list of priorities, can choose what suits that best. The reader can even claim that the film, which won the Golden Globe award for best film drama, and which is well posited to win an Oscar in a few weeks, is concerned with the environment and environmental conservation against global warming, especially that Avatar's director James Cameron made many references to climate change as he received his award as Best Director. The film caught my attention several months ago when I read that the cost of filming in three dimensions and of combining live action scenes with animation was estimated to be about 500 million dollars, which is by far the highest any film has ever cost in the history of filmmaking. So far, Avatar has grossed 1.5 billion dollar. This means that investing in this film was not unwise, as it has overtaken Star Wars which took years to gross 461 million dollars. It is only second to the film Titanic, which grossed 1.8 billion dollars between 1997 and 1998. Cameron is also the director of Titanic. 13 years ago, this film also won the Golden Globe award and then the Oscar, and it seems that his new film's Golden Globe award paves the way for the same scenario at the Academy Awards. Now, since my list of priorities has Palestine on its top, it suits me to consider that Avatar symbolizes this cause, especially when the director Cameron is a Canadian-born liberal who is often a champion of the causes of the oppressed around the world. The above is not my opinion alone. James Wall, who edited the Christian Century magazine for 27 years and who remains one of its senior contributors today, wrote that Avatar is a metaphor for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. He hence proved to be in line with a trend among American Christian churches, and which has been going on for years now, in supporting the Palestinians. They do this so staunchly, that these churches' members are being called on to boycott Israel and to not invest there. However, Wall was almost immediately subjected to a campaign by Likudnik websites that attacked him, while also deriding the director because to them, his film was an attempt to portray American soldiers as evil mercenaries who are fighting to steal other peoples' natural resources. If I had to put aside Palestine and write objectively, I see this last point to be the very essence of the film's underlying message, and that the latter is basically a stand against the wars unleashed by the Bush administration, and against U.S foreign policy in general. Nonetheless, this stand applies to all the victims of Western colonialism, from Native Americans to Palestine and other regions. The film is a science fiction movie, a futuristic drama that tells the story of a people that lives in harmony with nature in the distant world of Pandora. An evil corporation (is it Halliburton and Dick Cheney?) sends a disabled soldier to infiltrate the native population as a prelude to invading them. However, the soldier whom technology gives the ability to mimic the appearance of the native people, (who are almost 3 meters tall and blue), falls in love with one of their princesses and joins them in fighting the invaders. This all reminded me of the Iraq war as I was noting down, in the darkness of the cinema showroom, certain expressions I heard during that criminal invasion such as "shock and awe" as claimed by the then U.S Defence Secretary and war criminal Donald Rumsfeld, and "pre-emptive strike" or "fight terror with terror", and also "they have something valuable underground that we want, and the way to get it is make enemies with the people then justify a war against them". This is exactly what happened in Iraq, with its oil underground. While we always said that the invasion was for oil-related reasons and not because of terror, an official U.S report about the war arrived at the same conclusion; only this was too late, after hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed. It still remains for us to see the war criminals, starting with George W. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, appear before the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. In the meantime, the American Likudnik right wing and its prominent figures such as David Brooks and John Podhoretz attacked the film with their declared reason being that the film criticizes America's war. However, their other tacit reason is that Avatar can be interpreted as symbolizing Israeli occupation. Meanwhile, the film is also being criticized by the left and the Catholic Church, because it portrays a native people that cannot protect itself except with the help of a “White Messiah”, in a reference to the character of the soldier who joins those he was sent to spy on. At any rate, the reader can go watch the film and then choose his or her own conclusions about the message lying at the heart of the film's symbolism. [email protected]
