Well, Whiskey’s take on the sales (more precisely, the lack of them) of the movie Avatar inspired me to try to understand the why. Why did a movie with such an enormous cost garner so little profit? Since I was dragged in by my family to see it (one of those gatherings), and since I had to wait through 30 minutes of advertising (mostly commissioned by the government of my country, and totally lame, mainly because they spout bullshit and everybody knows it) to finally see it, I’m going to let you know why it is one of the most disgusting attempts at manipulation that I have ever seen.

A point by point analysis of the plot doesn’t do much, since it is a bunch of cliches that can be cut and pasted to any agenda (boring), but let’s check the subtle and insidious aspects of it:

  • The shape of the native aliens. Blue because it is a calming color, with big eyes and round faces, which are  signs on babies designed to look “adorable” and a surprising lack of evidence of age. My gut tells me that they were designed with the specific purpose of being favorable to the audience.
  • The society where they live. It looks like it came straight from a PC handbook, with males as warriors and females as “spiritual” advisers AND warriors. In a primitive tribe, females needed to be kept barefoot and pregnant to ensure the survival of said tribe due to the high amount of males dying from causes such as lack of antibiotics, natural accidents, wars among tribes and the fauna that tries to kill said people. Tribes who didn’t do this went extinct. Don’t blame me, blame natural selection.
  • Another page of the PC handbook, no actual raising of children by a mother or a father. All the children seem to flock to Dr. Grace, the oldest member of the scientific team. Looks like a commercial for “It takes a village.”
  • The synaptic connection between nature and everybody (which wins the fight at the end). This talk of “energy flows”, of the cult of the Goddess, Mother Earth, I mean, “Ka’ ja”, the huge amount of hand holding and humming wouldn’t be out of place in a hippie/Greenpeace camp.

All that wouldn’t have bothered me too much, but what really makes me angry is that along with all that “Noble Savage” propaganda (Read: Bullshit) they paint the military guys as a bunch of mercenaries and merciless savages engaged in a long, drawn out war designed to steal oil at gunpoint from a bunch of terrorists, no matter who is in the middle. It isn’t too far away from the truth, but the rank and file soldier is a human being, who has self doubts, but puts them away while serving his country (poor guys don’t realize that their country sees them as cannon fodder except when it is too late). Funny how that isn’t mentioned except for the guys that betray their planet for the natives.

One would think that a country that is at war should be more, I don’t know, supportive of the guys that are killing and dying in the war, but that would require an elite that isn’t comprised of a bunch of megalomaniac aristocrats with a desire of controlling the masses, no matter the price, even if it is ruling through thuggish satraps. No chance of that happening.

I just have to laugh, since that decadent elite is going to be one of the first to be exterminated in case of an invasion. And all the ass-kissing in the world isn’t going to change that.

Conclusion: They missed the Obama and Greenpeace logos. Maye they are concealed in an attempt at subliminal control. That wouldn’t surprise me.