How Cinema Has Become Our Avatar's That Show Us to Give a HootAbout a Modern Day District 9. By: Emily DelGiorno

We forget we live in a culture where it just makes sense to us. Where what we’re currently experiencing is more or less a “duh, that’s just how it goes” than anything else. The same can be said for every era of music, piece of literature, art, or in this case: film. Science fiction was born out of an era of fear of the “Red Scare” and pending nuclear holocaust. It wasn’t really aliens being depicted in all those Twilight Zone episodes, just allegories and allusions to the present undercurrent of panic and terror for tomorrow. People may not have known it entirely then, but we’re also a culture that loves to look back and analyze everything. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. If we look hard enough at almost any film, we can see shifts in perception, content, and surprising undertones. I’m hoping that I’m not the only one who noticed even a shift in the young-girl crushing dreams of “Princess in the Frog” as that their wishes on stars don’t always come true or that they was seriously and undercutting of economic fear. (Don’t make promises and debts with crazy witchdoctors, kids.)

But currently, (in an entire topic shift…) I want to discuss the films of the past year and take a look at what we were trying to tell ourselves and everyone else, whether anyone knew it or not. Avatar. District 9. Invictus. Daybreakers. How to Train Your Dragon. Planet 51. The Surrogates. Watchmen. Gamer. Taken.

How about these? : Call and Response. Invisible Children. Flow, For Love of Water. Crude. The Linguists. War/Dance. Darfur Now. As We Forgive. To be perfectly honest, I looked at one site and even saw most of the first films on midnight premieres or close enough to them. The second list I had to hunt through various content to find them and haven’t had the opportunity to view any. The first list is all within this past year. The second may take a step or two back in time.

The first list is obviously all blockbuster hits that made it to the big time on the big silver screen with over priced popcorn and stadium seating. (…At least where I’m from. You can feed a family of four from taco bell with one movie ticket. All hail the great Long Island. Your movie tickets and property taxes suck.) The second list may or may not be so familiar, dependent on how addicted you are to apple.com/trailers. The second list is a handful of documentaries sharing the tragedies of water scarcity, exploitation, sex trafficking, war, inequality, prejudice, and genocide. You know what? All the movies in the first list deal with a lot of the same issues.

But then, what’s the difference?

The two bluntest I see this paradigm shift occurring in are Avatar and District 9. In these films are very obvious and even painful views of exploiting “lower life-forms;” treating them less than human because, well…they weren’t. They lied somewhere between animals and humans, still being able to communicate and congregate but certainly not at the same level important as us pink fleshy type. District 9 was even filmed in a documentary sense: choppy, quick camera shifts to show sudden action, and commentary from lay-folk and academia. Then in Avatar, being the keen observer of all the goings-on as you saw nothing more than the bluntest abuse of a resource called “unobtainium.” (Really, James Cameron? You create an entire new world, but can’t come up a better name for the mineral. Guess he ran out of creative juices at that point.) Backlash. Massacre. Refusal to understand. Revolutionary attempts at understanding their way of life. Do I see some sort of connection here? These “heroes” are thrown into these other cultures quite literally; turning into the “prawns” or “blue furry creatures” willingly and not. Then and only then are we thrusted into their “way of life” and become sympathetic to their cause. We hurt when they do, rise in anger when they do, and openly cheer when victory is achieved. Our emotionality rise and fall as the characters enter into total danger and slim odds of success (which of course always ends up becoming epic wins because it wouldn’t be Hollywood otherwise.)

Think back. I watched District 9 with a friend of mine who literally cringed in pain and couldn’t bare to look when the prawns were getting beaten to death, or when it was revealed that they were being used in scientific experiments and bio-warfare. Your stomach dropped as Vickus wailed out in pain as he “lost his humanness” and because a weapon himself, losing all sense of worth beyond what damage his being could produce to mega-corporations. (Cold-hearted bastards.)

How about Taken? This action thriller involved a type of international agent’s daughter getting captured by a sex trafficking ring in Europe and his valiant efforts to do whatever it takes to save her. You grew sick to your stomach as you saw the torment in the young girl’s eyes as they were being beaten, raped, and drugged all for the industry. “Please understand... it was all business. It wasn't personal.” Business. All business. Doesn’t that make your skin crawl? You’re disgusted at how a young woman can become so objectified to the dollar sign. As a young female myself, I became racked with the same fear and mortification with the thought, “what if that was me?”

his concept of the lack of humanity continues in movies like Gamer, where real-life flesh and blood are turned into a MMORPG whereas big deal if your character dies in Halo, but where literal people are blown to former less-in-tact versions of themselves. Or Surrogates, where all emotion, sensation, passion, and humanity dissolves literally and figuratively as we embody (and only in body) perfect versions of ourselves and in fact real people have been deemed the enemy and persecuted, much in the same light as Daybreakers where vampires rule and people are hunted for their blood. No regard for life.

Even on a juvenile level with Planet 51 and soon to come out How to Train Your Dragon, there’s another lack of understanding with a fear coming from that lack of knowledge of the “other kind” and more often then not, exploitation, destruction, and elimination. (Because we all know how much easier that is that actually learning the other culture.) The aliens want to capture the astronaut because he’s otherworldly (and what a wonderful role reversal that is) until a few young daring individuals seek to learn more and as usual, learn more than they expected to. Then with HtTYD, (hey, I like my abbreviations. My article, my rules.) Dragons are captured and killed because Vikings see them as the enemy until the one little dorky kid has enough softness in his heart to not kill the one he captured, but train and learn from it as an equal. Even the little boy in the trailer proclaims, “everything we knew about them is wrong.”

So what is my point with all this dialogue? Recent studies have been done since the debut of Avatar that people are becoming depressed. And not just a “holy frick! I totally wish I was a Na’vi!” Like a type of prolonged depression stemming from the desire for an escapism adventure like in the created world of Pandora. If you don’t believe me, read this: http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html

(That alone could be an entire other article about our culture…but I’m not going there. For now anyway. I’m too busy contemplating my demise after unsuccessfully creating my avatar. Damn, I wish those glowy spinning reptiles were real. I think I need to go…*sob*)

What does it say about us, and our relevance for humanity? Can we only care when it’s not of our own? This research to me is utterly tragic; demonstrating that we feel more for these fake beings.

The second list that was mentioned way back the beginning of this article, (which by the way, kudos for getting this far before double-checking your status on Facebook. Your mother would be proud.) All of those films relate to our own reality. You mean problems like in these movies are actually relevant in our way of life?? Yes, mostly. We haven’t invented life-like robots or have been my extraterrestrials (though some beg to differ…), but we most certainly encounter massive tragedies which undercurrent the blockbusters.

“Call and Response” is a documentary of the sex-trafficking industry. Again, I know I haven’t seen these films, but even the gist of them I feel is appropriate to look into because of the obvious parallels that can be made. This film calls to reveal the staggering statistic of the 27 million slaves still existing in our world today, which as they claim the highest it’s ever been in human history. It delves into the lives of these victims on intimate levels as well as discussions of prominent political and cultural figures as well as popular musicians on the matter.

The Linguists documents two well, linguists who’s main desire to document languages that are becoming extinct, which currently is about half of them. They travel to the far reaching corners of the earth to listen to whispers of people groups who’s words may never be heard from again with the rise of globalization and international pressures of dominant languages as being “correct.” Even means of communication between people, a most basic human concept and principle, is being deemed unworthy to be uttered by people groups and corporations in seeking to make it easier for themselves in terms of trade and interaction.

Then there’s Flow, For Love of Water and Crude which deal with the exploitation of our simplest resources of water and oil and how that’s affecting the smallest of communities who don’t have voices of themselves until documentaries such as these step in to shed a revealing light on the calamity of their situations in the shadow of domineering globo-monolithic corporations.

And of course, the documentaries on Darfur and other world conflicts we don’t think about as we download another app on our iPhone while sipping our Frappa-whatever with child soldiers and chronic genocide as in Invisible Children, War/Dance, Darfur Now, and As We Forgive.

How are we supposed to react? How do we obviously care more about fictitious storylines and fantastical figures while these very apparent realities swirl around with the motion of the earth daily? I think of Taken as I stared in horror at the movie theatre. Not only did I panic about the possibility in being part of such a degradation, I was reminded how this is seriously a billion dollar industry worldwide with no clear future in sight.

Our current film production is very obviously telling us something in the light of story and special effects: we’re really screwed up right now in our world, and the only way we’ll be able to pay attention in the slightest is through box office breakers, not grassroots documentaries. Apparently, these film makers are aware of our current state, otherwise they wouldn’t have been produced, and with such common themes streaming through these movies, it’s hard to ignore them. Our world is suffering, but we just don’t how to recognize or approach it. To what end, though? Alright, our current film is informing us of our tragic state through fiction, but let’s take a step back. James Cameron’s film cost (with some speculation) roughly 500 million dollars over its entire course. Half a billion at its most. Sure, he made an incredible contribution to the film industry, but in reality…what could we have realistically done with half a billion dollars?

What’s the price of entertainment and shoddy awareness of our fragile global state?

It’s obvious our current film mindset is a reflection of something, even if it’s a warped, bended one. The definition of humanity is wearing thin and what it truly stands for is wearing thin, people are dispensable, and everything in the name of “progress” (whatever the heck that word means.)

Emily DelGiorno