Commentary
Boris Johnson in today's Daily Telgraph weighs in with his views on what the success of Avatar means culturally and socially. Far from just being a crass and simple-minded attack on Western materialist imperialism, it is, he writes, a veritable triumph of capitalism:
Avatar is rooted in just about every film Hollywood made about cowboys and Indians. And that is why all those who think this is an anti-American film are also laughably mistaken. Why is Avatar being cheered by audiences of rednecks in Kentucky? Because it is the all-American movie – and not just because the white, American hero is given a messiah role among the blue-noses.
It is a feature of powerful military empires that they like to romanticise their victims and luxuriate guiltily in the pathos of their suffering. Think of the Roman crowds pleading for the lives of captured barbarians in the amphitheatre. Think of the statue of The Dying Gaul. The eco-conscience of Avatar is an example of how a dominant consumerist society is able to exhibit its better nature, to parade its guilt, to feel good about feeling bad.
And I can't believe that many of these gloomy post-Avatar Westerners, when they really think about it, would want to up sticks to Pandora and take part in Na'vi society, with its obstinate illiteracy, undemocratic adherence to a monarchy based on male primogeniture and complete absence of restaurants. The final irony, of course, is that this entrancing vision of prelapsarian innocence is the product of the most ruthless and sophisticated money-machine the world has ever seen. With a budget of $237 million and with takings already at £1 billion, this exquisite capitalist guilt trip represents one of the great triumphs of capitalism.
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Submitted by peterwhittle on Mon, 2010-01-25 12:29.
As of today, NCF director Peter Whittle will be starting a personal blog on the Standpoint magazine website, where he joins Nick Cohen, Joshua Rozenberg, Daniel Johnson and Jessica Duchen. Please feel free to visit and comment!
Contributions here will of course carry on as usual. Keep a look out for details of our up-coming events
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Submitted by peterwhittle on Mon, 2010-01-11 13:50.
We should ignore the underlying political messages in films such as Avatar, writes James Delingpole in this week's Spectator, or we risk leading barren cultural lives:
'If we conservatives were to spend our lives vetoing works of art on the grounds that we disagreed with their creators’ ludicrously misguided politics, then we’d scarcely be able to look at a painting or read a poem, let alone listen to a pop record. Luckily, thanks to our constitutional pragmatism, we are generally able to rise above such annoying distractions. It’s a bit like having tinnitus. When you’re enjoying a Radiohead album, say, you learn to filter out that part of the message which says ‘capitalism is wrong; man is evil; we must make amends by giving all our money to Al Gore and Third World kleptocrat dictators’, and simply go: ‘Gosh, what a pretty voice. I expect it has something to do with the fact that Abingdon gave the boy such a marvellous public-school education.’
A council of despair? James thinks we need to pick our targets carefully. Read the piece here.
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Submitted by peterwhittle on Fri, 2010-01-08 10:15.
Last night on BBC 2's Newsnight there was a lengthy discussion on the deeper effects of the kind of snowfall that we're walking up to in Britain today. A weatherman, a church man and a psychologist ruminated on the change of mood which occurs when one looks beyond the media coverage of 'travel misery' and 'snow chaos.' The main point to emerge was that such weather brings out the child within all of us.
That might be true, but little was made of a more widespread response - that which happens in people when confronted with the utterly beautiful.
They are made still. They are made quiet. They are, quite literally, stopped in their tracks by something bigger than themselves, which fills them with awe and yet makes them feel individually completely alive.
It is the same effect as a great work of art can have on the observer. When we stare silently at the Sistine Chapel ceiling we're not admiring its 'energy' or 'relevance.' We are simply reacting to something which we instinctively realise has the ability to transcend.
Seeing Narnia where yesterday there was only an average suburban street is perhaps the mark of a real aesthete. That then makes most of us lovers of beauty. Those who see only inconvenience, or who are unnerved by the sudden shift of attention away from their own selves, are the true philistines.
PW
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Submitted by peterwhittle on Wed, 2010-01-06 05:54.
