Avatar: The Way of Woke

One can never be woke enough. Arguments based on fairy tales and myth cannot be won.

I’ll probably watch James Cameron’s latest Avatar offering when it gets to one of the streaming services for which I already pay.

I thought the original Avatar film was creative and did a good job of selling its anti-western civilization, anti-white, anti-colonialist plot, albeit in an idealized world called Pandora that never had natural disasters, disease, overpopulation, tribal war, or any other challenge to the Na’vi’s existence. Pandora provided everything in perfect balance, there was no hunger, no worries about waste disposal or overpopulation, everything existed in a state of perfection, and everybody got along. The Na’vi lived without a care in a world.

Cameron himself said of the movies that they are “a science fiction retelling of the history of North and South America in the early colonial period.”

While Cameron’s first Avatar movie was groundbreaking at the time, it was based on the same romantic primitivism/noble savage myth that was all the rage in the western world during the 17th century.

The theory of the “noble savage” or romantic primitivism is, in literature and philosophy, an idealized concept of uncivilized man, a savage who symbolizes the innate goodness of one not exposed to the corrupting influences of civilization. It presupposes that before technology and development, men and women were living in an innocent and harmonious state with nature, that they were basically living as Adam and Eve. It was a belief that the indigenous people, unsullied by the advancement of civilization existed in a pure, natural state in symbiotic perfection with nature.

Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was among the major political philosophers of the Enlightenment often cited as espousing the most sympathetic version of the noble savage myth. In his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men and The Social Contract, he wrote that men in a state of nature do not know good and evil, but their independence, along with “the peacefulness of their passions, and their ignorance of vice”, keep them from doing ill.

That’s sounds great, what with all unicorn riding and my personal favorite, the romping around semi-naked and whatnot, but unfortunately this was less of a real theory and more of a pure myth.

One must ignore the pure savagery of ritual sacrifice, the constant wars, the slavery, disease, the starvation of a subsistence existence, torture, genocide, and in some cases, cannibalism, that existed in the cultures of indigenous people in both North and South America to believe in romantic primitivism.

But romantic primitivism is widely incorporated in today’s woke culture and James Cameron is all about woke.

According to reports, Cameron went all in during the filming of Avatar: The Way of Water.

He forced the cast go vegan, invested in plant-based food initiatives and is spending his Hollywood capital on message projects like “The Game Changers”, documentary film about athletes who live on plant-based diets.

Worship mother Gaia as they do on Pandora – or else.

But the wokeness doesn’t stop at plant-based alternatives. Cameron threw shade at the Marvel franchise, by claiming the pregnant female warriors in “The Way of Water,” trumped the MCU when it came to female empowerment. A few weeks ago, it came out that he blasted male testosterone, calling it a “toxin” that needs to be purged from the body.

But as the great philosopher Ricky Nelson sang in 1972:

“But it's all right now, I've learned my lesson well. You see, you can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself."

None of Cameron’s woke messaging protected him from even more woke critics, largely because in the woke world of Pandora, one can never be woke enough.

Because the leading character was once a white soldier (played by Sam Worthington) before his soul was transferred to a Na’vi body in the first movie, Cameron was accused of perpetuating the “White Savior” myth. He was accused of making a film riddled with cultural appropriation for commercial gain. He was accused of “using an amalgamation of the histories of various Indigenous cultures for a film that features a largely white cast” and creating a fiction while ignoring the real histories of indigenous cultures.

And as would be expected, Cameron himself has been attacked by so-called leaders of the various POC grievance groups for being a rich white dude and having the temerity to even be thinking about the plight of conquered indigenous people.

How dare he.

What this is all about, and I include all wokeness in the “all”, is a rewriting of history where the losers win, where the myth of the noble savage is deemed real, that the savagery of the history of indigenous people is ignored, and all the POPs, the people of pallor (of white northern European descent), are the demons hell bent on raping and destroying an idyllic Pandora that never existed in the first place.

Every advance that has made life on the very real planet Earth created by POPs must also be discounted as evil and to be hated, even as people benefit from those advancements while demeaning them.

Wokeism is a least common denominator, circular argument that spirals into infinity. You can never be woke enough. James Cameron is finding out that arguments based on myth cannot be won.

Christian Toto, the award-winning conservative entertainment critic, noted:

“Cameron is Hollywood royalty, an Oscar winner with a celebrated film resume including ‘Aliens’ and ‘The Terminator.’ He’s a King in the industry, and deservedly so given his box office success.

He still didn’t realize an artist can never be woke enough in today’s society. He’s learning that lesson the hard way.”