Jonathan Brun

James Cameron’s Avatar has two fundamental problems. Most criticism centers around the simple story-line, but beyond simplicity there is something more profoundly wrong. Fundamentally, the film departs too far from reality – I am not referring to the aliens, special effects or foreign planet. The film does two things which do not hold up to inspection. First, it presents a caricature of both the indigenous and the foreigners rather than a nuanced portrait of conflicting interests. Second, it pretends that a small, poorly equiped group of individuals can do head on battle with a superiour force and win – that just does not happen.

Stereotypes

The film portrays the ruthless conqueror, hungry for gold, against a peaceful and harmonious native communities. This idealistic view of native tribes, the noble savage, presented by Rousseau and other enlightenment figures simply does not hold up to inspection. Many studies of indigenous tribes demonstrate very high levels of violence. While resource hungry conquerors have many crimes to account for, they also bring technology, medicine and new ideas.

Through the alien world, Cameron clearly hopes to help us realize the nature of our crimes. Placing people and events in a new setting can sometimes help us see their true nature; however, most Avatar viewers came away with little new morality. Cameron has changed the world, but he keeps pushing a known stereotype. The average person knows modern civilization abuses nature and minorities and the sensitive native is in touch with nature. This is well laid out in films such as Dances with the Wolves, Last of the Mohicans, Pocahontas and others. Emphasizing the most known characteristics of a people simply reinforces the stereotype instead of dispelling it. If we really want people to realize our common societal problems (pollution, health-care, violence..), we need to show them the unexpected in both the dominated and the dominator.

Reality

Avatar fails to enlighten us because its story conflicts with our history. On earth, when the weak fight a vastly superiour force they rarely emerge victorious. When they do, it is not through a head on battle on the conquerors terms – but rather through guerilla tactics (Vietnam), non-violent protest (India, Civil Rights in the US) and this always takes a long, long time. There are examples of David vs Goliath, but perhaps it does not happen like Avatar – take for example, the fight against South African Apartheid.

In Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, “A Long Walk to Freedom”, he recounts his childhood in a traditional african village with a benevolent ruler. He both confirms and dispels the tribal stereotype through the description of rituals and injustices between people in these villages. Still a young boy, Mandela, leaves the village and enters the oppressor’s system of schools and institutions. After years of admiring the white man for his technological advances and institutions, he eventually realizes the true nature of South Africa. It is a country where the blacks are servants to the whites. Their submission to the whites is not due to any particular inferiority; the whites simply arrived and overwhelmed them militarily, politically and economically.

After his studies, Mandela embarks on a struggle against white rule, and quickly realizes of the odds he is facing. He struggles through both non-violence and violence, ending up in jail for over twenty years. Throughout the struggle, he never compromises his morals, always indulges the enemy in patient explanations of the struggle and eventually shows the world why white rule is bad. The story of Mandela is similar to other freedom fighters – King, Gandhi, and others before them. To defeat a vastly greater opponent, one must be patient, stubborn, and infinitely resourceful.

Avatar denies the challenge of freedom struggles by compressing the Naavi’s struggle in time, emotion, and complexity. Story book endings with the natives rising up, confronting the oppressor and emerging victorious never happen.

Whenever a guerilla force fights against an overwhelming power, it takes two things to succeed – time and effort. Never does a frontal assault work. By portraying this tactic as victorious, Cameron reinforces completely unrealistic expectations that play to the advantage of the dominant force. The dominant power wants you to play be their rules, but the only way to beat them is to change the playbook.

Avatar is an amazing feat of engineering and art, but it fails to convey the message Cameron wishes us to understand: Our insatiable thirst for resources is consuming the world.

Two possible endings would have been far more instructive to the world. In one scenario, the natives are annihilated and we mine the resources, this is a sad, but common reality on earth. In another, the natives embark on a long and treacherous fight using non-violence and violence to show to the human population their own faults – eventually converting them to the cause. Though those endings may not be typical crowd pleasers, perhaps they would have been more instructive.

What’s Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science

Dispatches from the future is a collection of essays by young scientists on the cutting edge. The topics vary from dark energy, to linguistics to neuroscience. All the essays are interesting and reveal young fields which will surely develop in the next decade. Some of the essays offer little major revelations, they simply explain a phenomenon or area of research.

Of the fifteen essays, two stuck out for the implications with respect to social interactions and behaviours of societies:

* Mirror Neurons and whether our ability to mimic others enables us to be more compassionate and ethical. (A similar article found here)

* How our mother tongue affects the way we think about objects, people, and our place in the universe.

A bunch of these essays (I think) can be found on the amazing website, http://www.edge.org

Buy the book here:

I just purchased a one-way ticket to Toronto on the Via Rail website. The experience was decent enough, though one thing did baffle me. Take a look at the screen-shot below of the last screen before the purchase. It states that the ticket is “Non-exchangeable and non-refundable” and below it says it is “Fully refundable prior to paper ticket issuance…”. If this is not contradictory, I do not know what is – very confusing.

In early January 2010, my girlfriend and I rented a fully-equipped igloo for two nights in the provincial Parc des Monts-Valins near Chicoutimi. For about 140$ per night you got two sleeping bags, two snowshoes, two mats and a candle to get rid of the moisture. The lady at the welcome centre warned us that if it got too cold at night we could sleep in the heated entrance of the welcome centre. She warned that the vast majority of people caved in around midnight and that two nights in their igloos was unheard of.

The igloo was resembled a snowfort of my youth more than a textbook igloo; the structure was made of compacted snow dug from the inside out, but perhaps that is what an igloo is? As night fell, we prepared a fire and settled in. After much talking and eating, we prepared ourselves for bed, only to realize it was only 19:30 – the sun sets early on a january Chicoutimi night.

Real Igloo:

We got lucky, the thermometer hovered around -5 and we lasted the night. At the crack of dawn, we strapped on our snowshoes and headed up the mountain. We climbed nearly 1000 m of height and covered 18kms. Nearing the top we had great views of the Saguenay.

On our trek down, it began to rain. Exhausted and sweaty, we wondered if our snow-home would be able to withstand the warm weather; we were very happy when the welcome centre offered us a cabin instead of the igloo. Using the rain as an excuse, we hapilly obliged.

Though the igloo lacked authenticity, it was a fun experience and the parc staff were fantastic.

Building a real igloo:

Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, “A Long Walk to Freedom“, is fantastic. Well written by Mandala and his associates, the book lays out the struggle for freedom in South Africa – it is a struggle that spanned 75 years and many sacrifices. Mandela himself is an amazing man by any standard. He grew up in a typical rural south african village where he was pegged as a future advisor to the local king. This privilege allowed him to pursue education and opportunities denied to nearly everyone else. Despite these benefits and apparent easy career path, he fled to Johannesburg to search for work. After struggles and help from various people, Mandela eventually entered the legal field and opened his own practice.

It could have stopped there, he could have comfortably rested on his practice, made a good living by African standards and turn a blind eye to the inequalities of the society around him. Instead, Mandela gave everything up – his practice, his family and his loyalties to fight for equality between whites and blacks. His struggle spanned four decades and culminated in the end of apartheid. His decision to use his privilege and status to help others, without hope for compensation, is what makes him stand apart. The noblest human action may be the personal sacrifice for others without expectation of compensation or recognition.

J.K. Rowling gave an amazing 2008 commencement speech at Harvard, where she says among other things,

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

If anything, that is the crux of Mandela – his ability to fight for others, to give his life for the benefit of his fellow citizens.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/photographer/nadine_wiepning

I was surfing around the net for more information on the conflict in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) and I stumbled upon the site Global Issues – it is quite impressive, especially considering it is all written and maintained by 1 person. It is an amazing collection of information, links, and documents. The article on the DRC is not very detailed, but it does have many solid links, Anup Shah, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Global Issues, Updated: March 27, 2008

The conflict in the DRC is probably the worst in the world, with over 5 million dead and between 300 000 and 500 000 woman raped. There are many guilty parties, the Congo, Belgium, the US, Rwanda, Burundi, major corporations and cell-phone users, but no clear answer to solutions.

If one week of television coverage, as we saw with Haiti, were given to the DRC, I am sure the world’s perception of the issue would change dramatically.

Article on Coltan in cell-phones

Article on corporate profits in the DRC

Another article on the general issues in the DRC

Big Bill just launched his new site, pretty nifty, The Gates Notes. It is basically a fancy blog by the richest man in the world, but there are some good bits of info on the site, such as this interview with schoolchildren.

John Ralston Saul’s new book, a Fair Country, lays out a new framework for thinking about Canada. It makes the strong argument that our country has much more aboriginal spirit in it than we might think. The typical approach of analysing Canadian life along the French-English axis misses the third pillar, aboriginal culture.

With countries like England, France, and Germany undergoing an identity crisis, this book brings a breath or relief and a new way of looking at our own national identity. Saul argues that the european nations are built around monolithic cultures while Canada does not hesitate to embrace its diversity and does not insist on suppressing it as was done with Gaelic culture, Bretagne, Basque, and other European minorities. By adding aboriginal philosophy in our image of Canada, we see how and why we are different from the US and Europe. All Canadians should take a look at his ideas and reflect on their implications for the Canadian spirit.

A globe and mail review pretty much summarizes my feelings about the book, so I will let them speak for me.

The one man act entitled “Giacomo sur les planches”, playing in Paris is well worth the ticket price. The actor Giacomo plays out his childhood and first love affair with theatre. He jumps from one character to another, his friends, parents and neighbours  bringing well over 20 unique personalities to life. Each character is unique and distinct – his seamless transition between them is stunning. This play is highly recommended and for the reasonable price of 14 euros it beats any movie out there.

Buy tickets here at a reduction.

More info here.

Russia is big, really big. My brother, girlfriend and I recently to travelled from west to east on the Trans-Siberian railway. Our trip began in St. Petersburg, a very European city, built on the marshes of the North sea by slave labour. The city was once the capital or Russia and French was spoken at all the royal courts. Today, no one speaks anything but Russian.

The Hermitage Museum is the city’s main attraction; one of the largest museums in the world, it offers truly stupendous works of art. In my opinion, The Hermitage is the most impressive museum I have ever seen, the density of priceless art is unparalleled. The building itself is a work of, sometimes overly excessive, art – it was the former palace of the Tsar. While the art is amazing, it is also a testament to the excesses of the Russian royalty who amassed amazing collections while their people starved in the cold winter.

Reaching the St. Petersburg metro, dug deep underground to avoid the numerous canals, requires an impressive five-minute escalator ride to reach. Once arrived, the beauty of the stations is astounding. The Soviets built gorgeous metro stations with chandeliers, marble walls and vaulted ceilings.

After you see their metro, it is clear our public spaces have been done on the cheap. Too often in capitalist societies we only look at the financial costs and forget the emotional impact beautiful spaces can have. The few public venues we accord money to – museums and concert halls are the haunts of the rich while our basic metros, bus stations and streets are used by all citizens. In a democratic society we should provide beauty democratically. A system that transports millions of people everyday should be built to not only transport the body, but also the mind and the heart.

Russian Photos here