Just completed 3 hour journey of Avatar. Amazing. Some thoughts:
- When to good words conflicts, which takes priority. When justice conflicts with the home country, Jack didn’t hesitate to betray his country – in this movie, betray his own race.
- Wendy said: If I were Jack, I won’t be back too – how good it is to be the hero, and be strong. I said: That is why people love to play online game like WOW.
The message of Avatar is clear, a higher moral cause could trump the cause of patriotism. Patriotism is often fanned by the control class of the nation to solidify their control. Patriotism is a way to make the leaders look legitimate. The movie seems to describe a condition where a higher moral ground exists that transcends shallow patriotism.
“When justice conflicts with the home country, Jack didn’t hesitate to betray his country – in this movie, betray his own race. ”
The above statement is not necessarily correct. Jack didn’t betray his race. He betrayed the desire of capitalists from his race or the policies of the ruling class from his race. He didn’t intend to betray the general race in his nation. You see, there are many ordinary people in his own race that holds the same view as Jack, and helping him, as described in the movie.
@jqian, exactly, although Jack’s behavior is generally referred to by those “bad guys”, like the commander, as betray.
What bothers me most in recent discussion on many “sensitive” topic among my friends is, follow the interest of the country is always the highest standard, and the polically right standard.
People love freedom.
People love life, and
People love their country.
People love the higher moral standard,
People love to do the right thing.
But what if any two of them conflicts? What if you have to choose freedom and your country, freedom, and life? life and country? The right thing and freedom? What I worry is, if the mainstream media is always propoganda on patroitism, people sacrafice all the others, without even thinking about it.
Who is a better patriot?
One who decides to do something against a crime that is being committed by his country, even if he disobeys his own government, or one that blindly participates in the crime?
A person like Oskar Schindler comes to my mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Schindler
“But what if any two of them conflicts? What if you have to choose freedom and your country, freedom, and life? life and country? The right thing and freedom? What I worry is, if the mainstream media is always propoganda on patroitism, people sacrafice all the others, without even thinking about it.”
True, pretty hard to understand why people seem to automatically support the government’s stance in just about anything e.g. google, while they are clearly the direct victims of the government’s internet censorship programme. Perhaps in these people’s minds, ‘national interests’ (what sort of?) always take precedence over their own interests. It’s also pretty strange that in China ‘national interests’ often conflict with most people’s interests (I don’t think anyone would disagree that it’s in one’s own interests to have access to all information available on the REAL internet).
This movie is a hot button topic. The story line is not that great it is a copy of Dances with Wolves. IN my opinion Jack is not a hero fighting injustice. He is a brain washed or badly misguided incompetent individual who betrays his friends, his employer as well as the local people to achieve personal power. Why do I say this?
He is assigned a simple job to guard a science team and can not even perform this well as he gets separated and captured. The people he works with are employees of a company trying to make a living and were his friends. Remember this is not a country but a corporation.
I strongly disagree with the message of the movie that the local people have a superior life style because they are ” closer to nature”. The facts are the locals are very war like and well armed. They clearly were this way before the company came to strip mine the planet. If they were so in tune with nature why did they need so many warriors and weapons. Clearly to fight against other tribes.
Back to Jack. He is asked to spy on the locals and he does so giving all their weaknesses to his boss ( the bad guy but is he so bad?) The Col. does get a special operation approved for Jack to have his legs restored but instead of going home Jack decides to go crazy and it is actually Jack that causes the conflict. Jack is an anti hero. Instead of trying to negociate as his boss asked to get the locals to relocate or create some kind of mutual acceptable treaty he tells the locals to arm and attack the humans. We find out toward the end that their are many clans living in other places so it was possible to move. There is no attempt by Jack to talk to the locals and come up with a scenario that would work for both sides. Because he is in love with his new form and this girl he betrays all he knows what is the result.
For personal power he leads the locals in some misguided attack on the humans and gets countless locals and humans killed in a battle that did not have to be fought. Jack is actually the cause of the conflict. Its his personal report that he logs that the locals will never move that creates the company’s decision to attack their home tree. At no time does Jack attempt to negociate or help either side. Jack is a grunt a former marine corporal and he ends up putting both sides into a bloodly conflict.
Was justice done? What is the end result. History tells us the same story. The minerals are desparately needed by Earth. Locals attack the company and kill lots of people. The result is the same whether you look at the american indians, British in China or India, even back to ancient rome. The company will go back to Earth. They will say out of control locals killed citizens. The real army will return and attack the locals or wipe them out. There is no happy ending.
In fact the story is so weak that in reality Jack would have gotten the locals all killed but he receives divine intervention from all the local animals that attack the humans. A lame way in movies to save the character from his bad decisions. I dont even want to discuss the implication that a giant tree should be worshipped as God.
My point is Jack a hero or a villian? Or is it his inability to do anything but show off that leads both sides to what should have been an avoidable conflict. Remember Jack was not the one who should have gone in the first place it was his brother.
The movie may imply that he betrays his race to right injustice. I see it as he betrays his race for personal power, gets lots of people killed on both sides, the locals still lose their home and he solves nothing long term. All so he can impress some girl.
Watch the movie again and you will see Jack actually creates this negative scenario.
@JS,
You are right. It’s extremely hard to choose side when patriotism gets in the way of moral ground. Most governments, that includes Chinese government and US government, have been trying from day one to unite patriotism with their ideology or policies. They always describes their policies to be based on a moral need by the majority of citizen. They want citizens to believe that behave under the abidance of national policies is a moral move as well as a patriotic move. The government tries to blur the line between policies and its moral consequence.
Most governments in the world understand that their legit right to control the power is based on meeting a moral standard perceived by their citizens. Once such moral ground is gone, their god-given right to control the country will soon be gone too. So, they will try all they can to seize this high ground via the channels of propaganda.
If one happens to disagree with certain government policy, different nations treat things differently, for example, in the US, he/she can lobby the message to the congress and hope that his/her voices be heard and the government can modify its policy. In China, he/she may do the same thing in principal, but in reality, it’s not so easy.
The show was meant to be a fantasy. I am glad I was able to escape for a while from the world we are living in. I don’t think James Cameron made it with a purpose to generate deep thoughts. Sometimes we should just lighten up.
“When two good words conflicts, which takes priority.” – Good question! Besides conflicts between freedom, life, country, higher moral standard, there is another element for soldiers that they have to consider – order.
Every soldier is required to swear to take orders as their bounden duty. But what if an order seems not that correct?
We have seen movie of a Japanese soldier’s introspection on Nanjing massacre. And I’m sure there will be a movie of a Chinese soldier’s introspection on T** massacre in future. Just don’t know how long it will take Chinese people to produce this movie.
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