I C U, BITCA! LOL (Beardblog #20)

Have you seen a bearded cat before?

Rowr.

Was working 'til 3:05 a.m. so I'm gonna do a bit of cheating now. Am stealing a lame little Thoughts on Avatar in under 400 words I did for class, so I can stick on Idol, fall asleep and keep on working tomorrow. You will forgive me. Yes?

The world-building prowess displayed by James Cameron in Avatar (2009) is of epic proportions. However, the plot aspect of the same film wasn't exactly worth the twelve-year wait. Visually, Avatar is a breakthrough in cinema. Most of the earlier sequences showcase that strength.

Consider Jake Sully's arrival at the army base. As he disembarks in his wheelchair, Avatars going about their business, soldiers moving in familiar formations, seen so many times on film, the audience is given a perfect non-verbal understanding of the dynamics of the place. Thus, Cameron uses his new technology to provide the necessary exposition in a seamless, graceful way.

Likewise, the detail in which the nature of Pandora is presented is powerful in how much it imparts, non-verbally. Sully gradually comes in closer contact with the new world. Starting with the glow-in-the-dark plants, he moves onto larger and more fearsome creatures, culminating in meeting love interest, Neytiri. It is a clear visual course Sully is on, that can be followed by the viewer viscerally. But when words come into the picture...

The naming conventions of Avatar are off-puttingly on the nose. Naming the planet after the mythological Pandora (of Pandora's Box fame) creates a crack in the fourth wall that goes against the work put in creating the splendor of Pandora, the planet. Meanwhile, calling an unobtainable power-source “unobtainium” -while relatively scientifically accurate- presents a certain lack of artfulness. As if there were place-holder words in the script that Cameron never substituted with something better.

For instance, the Na'vi braids, with which they connect to nature, are equated in dialogue to human genitalia (“Don't play with that, you'll go blind”). That leads to some very unfortunate and uncomfortable rape overtones in the scenes where Sully has to “break” an Ikran. Meanwhile, the white-man-learns-from-savages-then-saves-them paradigm leaned too heavily on the white man's supposed greatness. In general, the write-by-numbers crassness of the plot keeps fighting the beauty of the visual storytelling.

The argument is that Avatar tells a basic story to focus on the astounding new way this story can be illustrated. It would be unfair to say Avatar is just Pocahontas (1995) meets Ferngully (1992) with Smurf-Thundercats on steroids. But it does appear Cameron was so enamored with the new technology, he focused on the visual wonderment to such an extent that he wasn't too careful with the weight of his words.

Beard Status:
Self-cleaning (if only).