There is a curious coincidence in the world of cinema this year. Two filmmakers -- once married to each other -- find their films nominated in the Golden Globe Awards for Best Picture and themselves nominated for Best Director.
Because I don't follow the gossip mags -- only movies -- I don't know how close James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow have remained after their divorce. What strikes me is how close their views of America and the American mindset that has fucked up our planet are. Bigelow's premise is displayed in big letters in the first frame of "The Hurt Locker" -- "War is a drug." Her vision of a bomb-squad expert whose every day can be reduced to disarming one bomb that could potentially kill him after another is chilling, especially because he "re-ups" at the end of the film, and signs up for another tour of duty. If I had to invent a similar four-word synopsis for Cameron's "Avatar," it would be "Gaming is a drug." His film is doing great box office, but it is coming under fire from two sections of the population -- hard-core gamers and hard-core right-wing "Me first-ers," the kinds of people who think selling their planet down the river is not only cool but admirable if you just get a good enough price for it. And well they should criticize Cameron's vision. There has rarely ever been a more scathing portrait of the American gamer mentality -- for what else *is* both its war-driven, tech-worshiping military mindset and its profit-driven, "if they won't get out of the way just drive over them" corporate mentality but an extension of gaming. Gaming is a drug just as surely as war is a drug, and both the soldiers and the soulless corporate toady in "Avatar" are addicts. And interestingly, part *of* their game mental- ity is compulsively putting down and reducing to ridicule anything that is *not* game- and winning-oriented as weak or effeminate or "gay." Even though "Avatar" has some of the best action scenes and "blowing up stuff" scenes in movie history, the gamers are hating it. Why? Because it portrays them as losers, and as seriously *missing something* by being unable to appreciate or identify with in any way a more holistic view of life. Just as the soldiers and the corporate toadies in the film make fun of the "blue monkeys" and their Woo Woo, one-with- the-planet lifestyle, free of the need to "win" or "accumu- late points" (which is, after all, the goal of both war and Capitalism), the real-life gamers and corporate apologists on the Net are going apoplectic in ridiculing Cameron's film. I find it fascinating that the word I hear most often in these screeds, hurled as an epithet, is "Gay!" I'm not sure whether these gamers and Capitalists have just never seen near-naked bodies before and are suppressing their closet desires to have their way with them, or whether they have just been trained over the years to demean anything "planet oriented" or "ecology oriented" as gay, but it's interesting to hear that term applied to "Avatar." From my safely hetero point of view, there have never *been* more virile, comfort- able-in-their-bodies, powerful male and female beings shown on a movie screen than the Na'vi. And there have never been more comfortable-in-their-lives, comfortable-in-their- relationship-with-their-environment, free-from-the-constant- need-to-"win" male and female beings portrayed onscreen. I think that's why there is such hatred being expressed for this film. It dumps on everything the "Just gotta win, just gotta score points (make money)" mindset that has been catered to by computer games *and* Capitalism for decades stands for, and portrays them as Ultimate Losers. And the winners are these "gay" blue-skinned beings who are romping around the forest, not having to "win" anything, not having to "own" anything, just Being. OF COURSE the "Gotta win"-addicted gamers and the "Gotta- win"-addicted Capitalists hate this movie. It shows them for what they are -- addicted. And worse, it presents a vision of what life might be like if one were *not* addicted. Can't have that.
