The Tribal Mind: When a simple bit of sci-fi becomes a Rorschach test

Wednesday May 9, 2007 04:08 PM

Who We Are

by David Dale
Two things followed immediately upon this column's assertion last week that Avatar needs a more interesting plot to match its visual splendour: 1) Avatar became the highest grossing film in Australian history, selling $69 million worth of tickets in 4 weeks; 2) Cardinal George Pell, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, condemned it as "old-fashioned pagan propaganda".

Other commentators have complained that Avatar promotes a leftist or greenie agenda, but Cardinal Pell knows where the real danger lies. He is an expert on the activities of pagan propagandists. Back in 2001, he warned: "We must not allow the situation to deteriorate as it had in Elijah's time, 850 years before Christ, where monotheism was nearly swamped by the aggressive paganism of the followers of Baal." (Baal was a Phoenician fertility god).

Now it would seem that Baal is back, in the person of writer-director James Cameron. Cardinal Pell is disturbed by Cameron's speculation that a planet might function as a giant organic computer into which all living things are connected. Reviewing Avatar in The Sunday Telegraph last Sunday, he wrote: "Worship of the powerful forces of nature is half right, a primitive stage in the movement towards acknowledging the one: the single transcendent God, above and beyond nature. It is a symptom of our age that Hollywood is pumping out this old-fashioned pagan propaganda".

Avatar has managed what no other piece of popular culture has achieved in living memory - it dragged the intellectuals, the philosophers, and the academics out of their ivory towers and into the multiplex, curious to see what had made the vulgar masses so excited. Then it polarised them.

In Britain, the social theorist George Monbiot came down on the opposite side from Cardinal Pell. Writing in The Guardian, he said Avatar is "both profoundly silly and profound ... it speaks of a truth more important - and more dangerous - than those contained in a thousand arthouse movies. The metaphor is conscious and precise: this is the story of European engagement with the native peoples of the Americas" (so not Iraq and not Vietnam, as others have suggested).

Monbiot believes it symbolises the brutality with which Europeans have exploited "the New World" since the time of Christopher Columbus (whose soldiers "tore babies from their mothers and dashed their heads against rocks" and "ordered all the native people to deliver a certain amount of gold every three months; anyone who failed had his hands cut off".)

For the deep thinkers, Avatar has become an inkblot test, into which they read meanings that reveal more about themselves than about the film. All sides agree that this is powerful propaganda. They differ on what it is doing to its audience.

To reassure George Pell that fewer people have been brainwashed into paganism than he feared, and to disappoint George Monbiot that fewer people have been radicalised about indigenous rights than he hoped, we offer two charts ...

The films that made the most money in Australia:
1 Avatar (2009) $69 million
2 Titanic (1997) $58m
3 Shrek 2 (2004) $50.5m
4 The Return of the King (2003) $49.5m
5 Crocodile Dundee (1986) $48m
6 Fellowship of the Ring (2001) $47.5m
7 The Dark Knight (2008) $46m
8 The Two Towers (2002) $46m.
The films that sold the most tickets in Australia:
1 The Sound of Music (1965 and later reshowings)
2 Crocodile Dundee (1986)
3 Star Wars (1977 and 97)
4 Gone With The Wind (1939 and reshowings)
5 Titanic (1997)
6 E.T (1982)
7 Dr Zhivago (1966)
8 Grease (1978 and reshowings).
(For full details, go to The films Australia loved).

So the film seen by the greatest number of people in this country is The Sound of Music (which some might call "old-fashioned Catholic propaganda"). At modern ticket prices, Avatar will need to gross $100 million to surpass Maria's audience. Reaching that figure is about as likely as a land converted to paganism or a Spanish apology for Columbus.

Go to Comments to discuss whether Avatar is anti-God.

David Dale is the author of The Little Book of Australia -- A snapshot of who we are (Allen and Unwin). For daily updates on Australian attitudes, bookmark blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.

COMMENTS

Archbishop Pell puts two and two together and, typically, gets six and a half.
Avatar paints a picture of a world in which the interconnectedness of all living things (including 'people') accesses a 'power' beyond the mundane. From a Christian theological perspective, this is an unremarkable position: it is the interconnectedness of God (supernatural) and humankind (natural) in Jesus that brings about 'salvation'.
The problem for +George is this: he does not see God as existing within this world ("the single Transcendent God, above and beyond nature"). This position - that God does not exist within nature - is the same as the early heresy Docetism, which saw Jesus' humanity as an illusion - Jesus was simply God dressed up in a human costume. This view denies the essential goodness of this world, a position that is not Christian (certainly not Jewish or Islamic) and definitely not biblical.
Avatar says that 'salvation', obtained by the unity of all creation, may still be endangered by self righteous (publicly funded!) thugs-in- power.
+George and his mates might care to consider the consequences of the metaphor for them.

by Kate Mannix on January 16, 2010 at 08:50 AM

People make opinions based on what they want to make of the subject matter.
Having seen the film, I have heard the rightists fume (obviously) but also leftists as well (in that a white person is cast to lead the indigenous tribes).
Meh... just enjoy the film for what it has, the most expensive special effects ever.

by arthur on January 16, 2010 at 09:05 AM

Doesn't anyone go to the movies today to enjoy the story and effects. As grandparents we thoroughly enjoyed it, as did our 8 year old grandson.
If you want to take something out of the movie, then look at mans greed for minerals and wealth, and which nation will be the first to mine Antartica. I think this could lead to a conflict as portrayed in Avatar.

by Ron on January 16, 2010 at 10:24 PM

After generations of stories with heavy Christian propaganda we are hearing the dribble that this movie somehow endangers people, by introducing a so called Pagan view. Lighten up this a movie, a piece of fiction and is just entertainment. Meanwhile nothing wrong with adding another point of view.

by Christopher Blackwell on January 17, 2010 at 02:36 AM

The problem with texts - any kind of text - is that once it leaves the hand of the creators, it is out there and open to interpretation by anyone. The same people I'm sure would hate Romeo and Juliet for glorifying suicide, Oliver for glorifying theft and Top Gear for glorifying speeding. Not having seen Avatar, I can't really comment. But did Pell have specific textual examples demonstrating his theory? Does he have quotes/specific scene analysis/analysis of the shots and framing used? Even then, with all of the evidence in the world, that doesn't mean that it is what the creator intended - one can look at Macbeth these days and say it is a metaphor for the American attitude to running the world - you can't say the interpretation is incorrect if you can back it up with evidence, but it sure as hell wasn't the intention of Shakespeare who probably didn't realise that the US existed, or was very unfamiliar with it at that point. As an English teacher, I am more than aware of the potential of analysis and interpretation of texts. But at the same time, I think Cameron's focus was not so much the political but about the technology, which is the true triumph of the film. If that is what Pell read into it, good for him, but that doesn't mean that all Catholics should avoid it - it is one person's opinion, it should be taken with a very large grain of salt, and each and every person who sees it will have a different reaction. Hell, someone who sees it twice might get a completely different interpretation on a second viewing - nothing wrong with that, just means once again, we all need to be aware that these are interpretations, not facts.
Thats my two cents worth anyway!

Tribal Mind wonders: Why haven't you seen Avatar?

by Beckala on January 17, 2010 at 07:29 PM

Avatar: a leap of faith ? ? ?
I was impressed that the cartoonish movie Avatar could provide such a clear visualization of the Holy and Spiritual part of Life. It bothers me, though, that some only see the spiritual connectedness of life as paganistic.
How much simpler it is to complete the picture by identifying Jesus, of Nazareth, as one born with full understanding of the power and connectedness we all can access through the Spirit of Life (which many call the Holy Spirit of God).
Jesus, the Christ of Christianity, is also known as a prophet in most of the world's religions. So, why fight over differences? Why not work toward a method of acquiring knowledge that includes the extrasensory, as it is verified by the sensory observations of the scientific method.
I was impressed that James Cameron was able to make that leap through the scientists' work in Avatar. When will the church accept the fullness of God's creation through Christ Jesus?
Without suffering we would never sense that life can be better and work toward that end. None of us are yet perfect.
We are such selfish creatures waiting and praying for the immortality of life everlasting, instead of commending our spirit into the Father's both to live and to die in our time.

by Connie Hudson on January 18, 2010 at 01:59 PM

David, Just been reading your great book THE LITTLE BOOK OF AUSTRALIA, just wondering why the ABBA Bandstand special was omitted from the most watched TV shows and Fernando which remained on the charts for 3 months, wasn't mentioned ?
regards Suzy.

DD replies: The answer is that I did not have the data which you clearly have. Can you tell me how you know this?

by Suzy Lubaman on January 19, 2010 at 12:05 PM

[Replying to Ron on January 16]
Since there are no humans who live in Antartica natively, I'm having visions of penguins engaged in warfare to stop humans from mining.
Plus, I want to see a guerilla penguin. I'm sure it'd still look cute, even with blood lust in its eyes and a dagger held in its beak.

by tqd on January 19, 2010 at 01:12 PM

I don't think $100m is totally out of the question TM! Will be interesting to see if you're proved wrong.

Tribal Mind replies: Then Cardinal Pell should be very afraid.

by NJK on January 19, 2010 at 02:32 PM

I heartily agree with Cardinal Pell. Having viewed Avatar in 3D at the Imax in Sydney (My head is still spinning from the visual overload) I also felt there were very strong pagan overtones present in the movie. Clearly there was much Earth worshiping going on. You only have to watch the scenes where the indigenous humanoids are rotating in unison on their bottoms while the female shaman mutters incantations and works herself into a frenzy to realize that something evil is taken place. It looked and felt evil to me. The whole premise of worshiping a tree or a tree spirit or a whole planet is absurd. The material universe is created, to believe otherwise goes against reason. One basic principle of true philosophy is "nothing comes from nothing" People who use their common sense and intellect can only arrive at the conclusion that there is a creator God, an uncaused cause who continually causes. All other explanations fail the litmus test of reason.

by Chris Gordon on January 20, 2010 at 10:41 AM

Again, I think James Cameron did a good job of projecting a view of spiritual connectedness which only becomes paganistic when we remove and separate the creator from that which is created.
Often we humans like to make God according to our image of what a creator should be as though nature is a piece of pottery or a painting no less.
Thus, if one thinks that "The whole premise of worshiping a tree or a tree spirit or a whole planet is absurd" or that "The material universe is created, to believe otherwise goes against reason", perhaps it might be helpful to think of creation as part of the creator and not entirely separate.
Afterall, we ourselves create new cellular growth within our own bodies which is not wholly representative of our entire selves, yet nonetheless is part of us and lives because we live.
Does reason require that a God who is the creator be separate from creation? Is our own DNA, which holds the likeness of who we are, separate than we ourselves?
Have we limited our extrasensory spiritual understanding of ourselves by separating the creator from that which is created?
Is it not possible to praise the creator as we begin to recognize and understand even the minutest aspects of the creator as we recognize and give thanks for that which is created?
Personally, I truly like the way James Cameron draws us into an awareness of the extrasensory through his use of the sensory. Pretty Cool Stuff in book :-)

by Connie Hudson on January 20, 2010 at 04:58 PM

That 'rotating on their bottoms in unison' scene was ripped off from the scene in 'Ice Age' with the miniature ground sloths (the ones who mimic the John Leguizamo sloth character who I can't remember the name of) and was also reminiscent of the lemur scene in 'Madagascar' (I like to move it move it), but I don't recall any declarations of watch you kiddies don't start sacrificing goats over those.
And worshipping a tree is nuts but common and sense and intellect leading a logical human being to the conclusion that there is "a creator god, an uncaused cause who continually causes" is sensible?
This movie has been picked to pieces. Miranda Divine asserted the aliens "go around raping fauna with their pigtails" for gawd's sake and that Cameron is some kind of supergreenie out to convert everyone to environmentalism.
Maybe it's just and adventure movie that makes as much sense as 'Star Wars' or 'Aliens'.
When George Pell can explain why we should prefer a god who chose to press the 'smite' button on 200000 innocent Haitians but cure some little old lady of cancer after she prayed to M McKillop over trees and moss I'll start believing.
All I know is it was fun to watch.

by darren on January 22, 2010 at 11:17 AM

i will be excommunicating myself from that institution

by andrew on January 24, 2010 at 09:54 AM

OK, I rectified my error and saw Avatar. Not in 3-D, so I can answer your earlier question about whether it is still entertaining - short answer is no. Maybe the 3D stuff is so amazing you don't notice the god awful predicability of it, the cliches aplenty, Sam Worthington's terrible accent... But I found it to be really ordinary and don't get the hype at all - I'm guessing it must just be the 3D thing, because nobody can truly be that in love with the story or the acting. I really think Pell is just reading WAAAAAYYYYYY too much into it.

by Beckala on January 24, 2010 at 10:35 AM

Dear David
Did you get my info the ABBA phenomonon, wasn't trying to be smart, just wanted you to know the facts ?
Didn't want to offend you, but I've checked and rechecked on the record breaking four months at number 1 for Fernando, the 1.1 MILLION for Best of Abba in 1976 and the infamous Bandstand special !!
Suzy

by Suzy Lubaman on January 24, 2010 at 06:50 PM

The Sun-Herald

Who We Are

The Tribal Mind: When a simple bit of sci-fi becomes a Rorschach test

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