CHAIRMAN MAUPIN'S CINEMA CLUB
CPI Department of Information
Film: Avatar (2009)
Director: James Cameron
Rating: 3/10 - A Vaginic Fantasy in Phallic Clothing
James Cameron’s Avatar is a masterpiece of ideological deception. It presents itself as a radical, anti-imperialist, pro-environmental fable, but beneath its stunning visual spectacle lies a profoundly Malthusian, anti-human, and reactionary core. It is a film that hijacks righteous anti-capitalist sentiment to preach a gospel of sterile primitivism and biological determinism.
The Na'vi are presented as the ideal: tall, strong, connected to nature, and fighting a defensive war against extractive imperialism. This seems to align with a certain rugged, sovereign ideal. Their connection to their land (Eywa) via a biological neural network (the "Tree of Souls") mimics a kind of collective consciousness.
The film's moral universe is clear: technology is evil, primitive existence is holy. The Na'vi win not by developing superior technology or strategy, but by summoning a literal deus ex machina, the planet's fauna, through mystical communion. This is not a Phallic narrative of overcoming through will and innovation; it is a Vaginic fantasy of regression, a longing to return to a pre-conscious, pre-technological state of animalistic unity with the Earth Mother. It is a bizarre Malthusian wet dream: humanity must renounce its tools and become passive parts of an ecosystem, rather than its conscious shapers.
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