James Cameron has redeemed himself.
It is one of the ironies of the Empire's decline that the neoconservatives, once the linchpin of Wall Street's rule, are increasingly turning against their Empire. Former Fed Chair Paul Volcker is one of the most prominent examples of this logic: Volcker was the architect of the labor-bashing, capital-enriching austerity of the early 1980s, but has unequivocally denounced Wall Street's $14 trillion Federal bailout as the oligarchic looting of America it indeed is.
This tendency now has its aesthetic moment, in James Cameron's latest sci-fi blockbuster, "Avatar". Cameron's "Terminator" (1984) and "Aliens" (1986), the best of their respective franchises, were the leading embodiments of 1980s neoconservativism, and had all the contradictions of such -- i.e. pulse-pounding visuals, topnotch scripts and genuine suspense, all deployed in the service of a deeply regressive micropolitics, or what amounted to a speculative form outrunning its content.
This wasn't Cameron's fault. It's no accident that the greatest visual innovators of the late 1980s and early 1990s were located outside Hollywood altogether -- e.g. Polish director Krysztof Kieslowski and Hong Kong director John Woo. Simply, Cameron went as far as the Hollywood studio system of the day would let anyone go. (Not everyone can be as lucky as Peter Jackson, who had the advantage of DVD sales, an independent New Zealand animation team, and a highly mobilized fan community to create a genuinely progressive version of the Lord of the Rings).
The very word "avatar", as the etymologists remind us, comes from Sanskrit, and entered the English language through the British Orientalists of the late 18th century. Cameron's sci-fi fable updates this ancient Orientalism with a veneer of biotech survivalism. During any other historical moment, the result would have been an aesthetic disaster.
But Cameron channeled his disgust with the Empire's Iraqicide/Afghanicide into something constructive. For all its limitations (i.e. heroic white guy saves noble indigenous beings), "Avatar" is the first Hollywood film since "Apocalypse Now" which denounces American colonialism as the barbarism it indeed is.
What is most striking about the film aren't the fourteen-foot blue aliens sporting dreadlocks, elf-ears, anime-style eyes, and USB-compatible braids (a.k.a. the Kingston-Osaka-Lothlorien look) or FIOS-neon jungles, but the remarkable number of videogame references. The hunting, climbing, dragon-riding and action sequences pastiche huge chunks of the platformer and action genres, while half the creatures and one quarter of the scenery are spin-offs from "Final Fantasy". And that is all to the good -- Cameron had the sense to quote from the very best.
No, "Avatar" isn't the world-changing work of art which Hideo Kojima's "Metal Gear Solid 4" is. But Cameron finally gets something right: colonial Empires are death, the pursuit of profit via organized mass murder. We must end it, before it ends us all.
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