The Noble Savage and Paradise Lost

I finally got to see Avatar this past weekend (IMAX 3D, real high end stuff) with son D this past weekend.  Really impressive technical achievement from my vantage point (in a high back, velour coated chair).  The experience is really bordering on immersive, the visual clarity of the large screen and depth of field is stunning with a nice complimentary edited audio track.  It is the first time I've seen a CGI film where the eyes didn't have that funny "shark eye" look.  It is something to experience.

At the same time the story has that vague Rousseau-like obsession with the uncorrupted nature of "savage" man.  Technology, and trade are ultimatedly corrupting evils driven by man's pride, vanity and avarice.  Of course, the fact that the fictional Navi could never make this movie, or derive any pleasure from seeing it, is an irony more than one person has commented on (not to mention the fact it has made more money than any movie previously made).  Add to that a fair dollop of pantheism, and you have a very new age fantasy of the paradise Western Civilization has lost for us.

Does any of this square with my understanding of life in primitive cultures?  No, but it's probably best to ignore the cultural labels so obviously hung from Mr. Cameron's work.  I'll go see it again because it's an entrancing piece of visual work, and I'll try to convince myself, to paraphrase S.Freud, sometimes a cigar is just a good smoke.