SLUH Review 1.7

Page 1

ET COGNOSCETIS VERITATEM ET VERITAS LIBERABIT VOS

SLUH REVIEW Vol. 1 Issue 7

A journal of Faith, thought, and civics

Avatar By Luke Chellis, Senior Editor

February 1, 2010

That’s a story we ought to be able to understand. Resources are scarce. And the private property Avatar champions is indispensible for any society no matter how it measures societal wealth. But if the Na’vi want to keep their property, it’s time for a smart business decision. It’s not entirely true, as Sully claims, “(the Sky People) have nothing (the Na’vi want.” Jake is wrong. The Na’vi need arms. They need to make permanent the pilot chick’s (Michelle Rodriguez) defense in the final battle as she says, “That’s right. You’re not the only one with a gun.” In fact, the invasion is only repelled because of Jake’s placement of a few tactical grenades.

Forget its hippyish themes. At its core, James Cameron’s Avatar is about defending property rights against arbitrary coercion. Many have been very critical of the Golden Globewinning film Avatar for its mystical mélange of trite leftist themes. My favorite is Frederica Mathewes-Green, who mocked its dreamy vision of “the apparently eternal conflict between gentle people with flowers in their hair and technologycrazed meanies.” But what they have missed (and I suspect James Cameron and his cronies missed it too) is that the essential conflict in the story is a battle over property rights. They fail to see what’s really happening. The Sky People (a private company with a military bigger than that of most countries) have traveled to Pandora to take something that belongs to the Na’vi: their land and the minerals under it, and they are willing to use murder, terror, and mass destruction to get it. That’s a stark violation of property rights, the foundation of the free market and indeed of civilization.

At the end, Jake and company pack the surviving Sky People on their ships and send them home. But the overlooked question is what happens when they come back? Jake has no more grenades and their only scorpion helicopter was shot down. What if the next time the tree of Eywa is nuked from the upper atmosphere? If the Na’vi are smart, they will mine the valuable mineral in an unobtrusive way and trade it for Sky People weapons. Perhaps if they would have done that originally, they would still have Home Tree.

When the Pfizer Corp. and the city of New London, Conn. tried to take her land using eminent domain, Susette Kelo was unreasonable too, like the Na’vi: She wasn’t holding out for a better price; she just didn’t want to sell her house. As Jake tells his bosses, “They’re not going to give up their home.”

Avatar has its problems, from its barely serviceable, stilted dialogue to its embrace of the longdiscredited myth of the “noble savage” in tune with its goddess nature. But I, for one, appreciate a rare defense of property rights coming out of Hollywood.

Avatar is like a space opera of the Kelo case, which went to the Supreme Court in 2005. Peaceful people defend their property against outsiders who want it and who have vastly more power. Jake rallies the Na’vi with the stirring cry, “And we will show the Sky People that they cannot take whatever they want! And that this is our land!”

Who Was Che? Logan W. Hayward, Junior Editor A muddled picture of his visionary visage occupies many t-shirts, sold to many self-professed revolutionaries. Mike Tyson has a tattoo of him on his abdomen. A Burlington Coat Factory advertisement shows a youth wearing a shirt with -1-


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.