Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar and “Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out”

jseliger.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 21 posts

Re: Thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar and “Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out”

#11

Post by dagw »

jcnnghm wrote: post #6

Cameron's thinly veiled message clearly seemed to be that the corporations are out to destroy the earth and everything green causing overpopulation. The whole thing seemed kind of juvenile, especially when you consider the abundance that has been caused by corporate competition, which has in turn directly lead to decreasing birth rates in developed countries. The two factors, overpopulation and corporations destroyin…

I think people are reading too much in this movie. The only message from Cameron I got out of it was; wow look at all the cool things I can do with computers, I can make glowing plants and dinosaurs fight fighter jets. How awesome is that!!!

The story was entirely incidental to showing off cool tech and exciting action scenes. We might as well discuss his anti-technology stance in Terminator 2.

Re: Thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar and “Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out”

#12

Post by guessy »

(spoiler alert)

A lot of the themes and messages in Avatar are very common in science fiction, in particular the parallels with the story of Dune are striking:

- greedy corporation seeks to exploit a resource with little regard for the native population (spice/unobtainium)

- saviour from same race as greedy corporation is accepted into native population and through a mythical prophecy, becomes leader and unites tribes against greedy corporation

- native population and their natural habitat are massively underestimated and through help of saviour defeat greedy corporation

Re: Thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar and “Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out”

#13

Post by ojbyrne »

I saw the movie yesterday, and I also watched "District 9" yesterday. I'm kind of amazed at how the 2 movies approached the same basic idea - humans oppressing aliens - and ended up entirely different. While I enjoyed all the visual effects of Avatar, I think District 9 had a more interesting treatment of the idea, mostly because it was less utopian.

Re: Thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar and “Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out”

#14

Post by jcnnghm »

StrawberryFrog wrote: post #7
jcnnghm wrote: post #6

Cameron's thinly veiled message clearly seemed to be that the corporations are out to destroy the earth and everything green causing overpopulation. The whole thing seemed kind of juvenile, especially when you consider the abundance that has been caused by corporate competition, which has in turn directly lead to decreasing birth rates in developed countries. The two factors, overpopulation and corporations destroyin…

I disagree. Corporations don't have to have any goal to "destroy the earth" or "cause overpopulation". Pursuit of short-term profits while externalising the risks and wastes is bad enough. If you consider the "the abundance that has been caused" you should also consider the common tactic of trying to ignore and hide the drawbacks (e.g. tobacco industry) and drag feet on any effective action to change thigns (e.g. rec…

The changes advocated at Copenhagen only make sense if your financial future is tied to either green tech or carbon trading. If the stuff was economically viable or offered an attractive alternative (e.g. Tankless water heaters never run out of hot water. Plugging in a car should be much cheaper and easier than visiting a gas station.) it wouldn't require legislation.

Re: Thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar and “Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out”

#15

Post by kingkongreveng_ »

ojbyrne wrote: post #13

I saw the movie yesterday, and I also watched "District 9" yesterday. I'm kind of amazed at how the 2 movies approached the same basic idea - humans oppressing aliens - and ended up entirely different. While I enjoyed all the visual effects of Avatar, I think District 9 had a more interesting treatment of the idea, mostly because it was less utopian.

District 9 is a movie about refugees made by a refugee.

Re: Thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar and “Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out”

#16

Post by kingkongreveng_ »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #3

While there are some interesting points in this article, I didn't take this movie as either anti-corporate or anti-technology. It's more anti-military / anti-imperialism than anti-corporate. Yes, the bad guys are a corporation, but I get the feeling that they did that to make the film more marketable. Americans probably would have a much harder time cheering for the aliens who are slaughtering US Marines. But very li…

I haven't seen it yet, but I assume it's just a regurgitation of a "noble savage" story.

I want to make a movie about a technologically and culturally advanced people who encounter a primitive race. The primitives have high murder & infanticide rates, endless stupid tribal wars, etc. The technologically advanced people force assimilate or drive off the primitives and live happily ever after. The End.

Re: Thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar and “Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out”

#17

Post by pchristensen »

kiba wrote: post #2

I would imagine that the limited resource on earth would sell for an incredibly high price before getting depleted. Thus Earth would become a conservationist society, careful not to waste resources or produce too many humans. It is hard to imagine that the incentive for space travel to find new source would be outraced by extremely fast usage of resources. Plus there are asteroid belts to mine, and probably tons of t…

Now let's not let realism get in the way of a good movie! Every story gets a few points where you suspend belief, then the rest has to make sense in that context. For this one, let's say that it's an exotic material that has only been found on Pandora. Unrealistic, but so is the fact that the aliens are humanoid shaped.

Re: Thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar and “Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out”

#18

Post by StrawberryFrog »

jcnnghm wrote: post #14
StrawberryFrog wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Corporations don't have to have any goal to "destroy the earth" or "cause overpopulation". Pursuit of short-term profits while externalising the risks and wastes is bad enough. If you consider the "the abundance that has been caused" you should also consider the common tactic of trying to ignore and hide the drawbacks (e.g. tobacco industry) and drag feet on any effective action to change thigns (e.g. rec…

The changes advocated at Copenhagen only make sense if your financial future is tied to either green tech or carbon trading. If the stuff was economically viable or offered an attractive alternative (e.g. Tankless water heaters never run out of hot water. Plugging in a car should be much cheaper and easier than visiting a gas station.) it wouldn't require legislation.

If the stuff was economically viable ... it wouldn't require legislation

I think you're missing the point if what I said. Lots of things are economically viable to a corporation if it can externalise the downsides (either by dumping the wastes or getting a bailout when it make mistakes) or simply get the legislation that favours it (google "oil industry tax breaks" for an example).

You can't get away from legislation. Bailouts are legislation. But making polluters pay requires legislation. There is no mythical free, unlegislated market that will magically do the right thing. There's only good legislation and bad legislation.

Re: Thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar and “Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out”

#19

Post by ryanwaggoner »

kingkongreveng_ wrote: post #16
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #3

While there are some interesting points in this article, I didn't take this movie as either anti-corporate or anti-technology. It's more anti-military / anti-imperialism than anti-corporate. Yes, the bad guys are a corporation, but I get the feeling that they did that to make the film more marketable. Americans probably would have a much harder time cheering for the aliens who are slaughtering US Marines. But very li…

I haven't seen it yet, but I assume it's just a regurgitation of a "noble savage" story. I want to make a movie about a technologically and culturally advanced people who encounter a primitive race. The primitives have high murder & infanticide rates, endless stupid tribal wars, etc. The technologically advanced people force assimilate or drive off the primitives and live happily ever after. The End.

Watch any old western :)

Re: Thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar and “Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out”

#20

Post by jcnnghm »

StrawberryFrog wrote: post #18
jcnnghm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The changes advocated at Copenhagen only make sense if your financial future is tied to either green tech or carbon trading. If the stuff was economically viable or offered an attractive alternative (e.g. Tankless water heaters never run out of hot water. Plugging in a car should be much cheaper and easier than visiting a gas station.) it wouldn't require legislation.

If the stuff was economically viable ... it wouldn't require legislation I think you're missing the point if what I said. Lots of things are economically viable to a corporation if it can externalise the downsides (either by dumping the wastes or getting a bailout when it make mistakes) or simply get the legislation that favours it (google "oil industry tax breaks" for an example). You can't get away from legislation…

Don't polluters already pay? The proposed measures are designed to curtail carbon emissions, aren't there already supply side taxes on carbon generating fuel sources like oil and natural gas. Has carbon actually been scientifically proven to be the sole driver of global warming? By scientifically, I don't mean using a computer model with fudged numbers generated by interested parties with poor programming skills. If it isn't testable and repeatable it also isn't science. The models have made predictions that haven't matched reality thus far, why would we believe they are going to start matching reality in the future?

Aren't there other more pressing forms of pollution than CO2 emmisions? What about strip mining, particulate emissions, and methane? Is this really about curtailing emissions, or creating a lucrative secondary trading market and taxation system to benefit people like Al Gore who are both heavily invested in carbon trading, and part of the legislature.

Post reply on HN