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<br>I wrote a little on the film on my website at the end of last year, and check-listed both Miyazaki and Oshii in my piece, as well as some thoughts inspired by reading Thomas LaMarre's new book The Anime Machine. I was going to write a bit more on the film, but simply haven't had time yet this year.<br><br>Anyway, you can read my thoughts at http://jaspersharp.com/blog/news/cinematism-realism-and-spectacle-part-1-avatar/<br><br><br>Jasper Sharp<br><br>Midnight Eye: The Latest and Best in Japanese Cinema<br>www.midnighteye.com<br><br>More details about me on http://jaspersharp.com/<br><br><br><br><br>> Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:38:04 +0900<br>> From: aaron.gerow@yale.edu<br>> To: KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu<br>> Subject: Re: Avatar<br>> <br>> Just a quick response:<br>> <br>> When you look at it, the similarities with Miyazaki are there: the <br>> image of the forest, the non-human world, of flying, etc. But I do <br>> wonder if this film doesn't have a very different vision of nature. <br>> Miyazaki's paean to natural forces is not unrelated to his insistence <br>> on sticking to some analog animation techniques, but Cameron's film <br>> falls into the contradiction that many cinematic celebrations of <br>> nature do: they praise the premodern, pre-technological world using <br>> the most advanced technology there is. Avatar, I think, tries to avoid <br>> this, but only by radically re-defining nature in a way I doubt <br>> Miyazaki would approve. Many can of course see that the narrative <br>> situation of Avatar is essentially that of video games, especially <br>> online RPG where you, immobile at your station, get to roam the world, <br>> kill people, and get the girl via your avatar. Avatar plays off the <br>> discontent with modern technological reality by offering the fantasy <br>> of really abandoning one's body for the game world. But the trick here <br>> is that the Avatar planet, with its database of souls and memories, of <br>> creatures with Firewire plugs, of trees that allow one access to the <br>> network, is essentially the Internet rendered into a Gaia-like deity. <br>> In other words, I think Avatar tries to have its ideological cake and <br>> eat it too by spouting a critique of industrial technological <br>> capitalism (mining and machines) and praising a natural, premodern <br>> society, while all the while defining that society as precisely the <br>> new media technological capitalism that we have today. I very much <br>> doubt Miyazaki, regardless of all his own ideological ambiguities, <br>> would buy this.<br>> <br>> That was my initial reaction upon seeing the film (albeit at a theater <br>> in Japan with a bunch of technological glitches--quite appropriate, I <br>> might add!).<br>> <br>> Aaron Gerow<br>> Associate Professor<br>> Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures<br>> Yale University<br>> 53 Wall Street, Room 316<br>> PO Box 208363<br>> New Haven, CT 06520-8363<br>> USA<br>> Phone: 1-203-432-7082<br>> Fax: 1-203-432-6764<br>> e-mail: aaron.gerow@yale.edu<br>> site: www.aarongerow.com<br>> <br>> <br>> <br> <br /><hr />Do you want a Hotmail account? <a href='http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/' target='_new'>Sign-up now - Free</a></body>
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