Avatar

[Stefan Nutz]

Actually I don't think Cameron was influenced by Miyazaki at all. I  
even would consider Cameron as having no doubt what Miyazaki does or  
who he is. I guess the whole design of the film was created by visual  
artists who are very aware of Japanese popculture... who are aware of  
the fact that Mecha-fighters were cool (Scott's Alien 2) and are still  
very popular among RPG players.
I am not really into videogames but as one growing up in the late 70's  
and 80's I do remember nearly every RPG from Japan had floating  
islands (Final Fantasy, Zelda, Phantasy Star...) and so I think these  
RPG influenced rather the animation artists then Cameron himself.

Just a thought

Stefan



Am 20.01.2010 um 05:38 schrieb Aaron Gerow <aaron.gerow at yale.edu>:

> Just a quick response:
>
> When you look at it, the similarities with Miyazaki are there: the  
> image of the forest, the non-human world, of flying, etc. But I do  
> wonder if this film doesn't have a very different vision of nature.  
> Miyazaki's paean to natural forces is not unrelated to his  
> insistence on sticking to some analog animation techniques, but  
> Cameron's film falls into the contradiction that many cinematic  
> celebrations of nature do: they praise the premodern, pre- 
> technological world using the most advanced technology there is.  
> Avatar, I think, tries to avoid this, but only by radically re- 
> defining nature in a way I doubt Miyazaki would approve. Many can of  
> course see that the narrative situation of Avatar is essentially  
> that of video games, especially online RPG where you, immobile at  
> your station, get to roam the world, kill people, and get the girl  
> via your avatar. Avatar plays off the discontent with modern  
> technological reality by offering the fantasy of really abandoning  
> one's body for the game world. But the trick here is that the Avatar  
> planet, with its database of souls and memories, of creatures with  
> Firewire plugs, of trees that allow one access to the network, is  
> essentially the Internet rendered into a Gaia-like deity. In other  
> words, I think Avatar tries to have its ideological cake and eat it  
> too by spouting a critique of industrial technological capitalism  
> (mining and machines) and praising a natural, premodern society,  
> while all the while defining that society as precisely the new media  
> technological capitalism that we have today. I very much doubt  
> Miyazaki, regardless of all his own ideological ambiguities, would  
> buy this.
>
> That was my initial reaction upon seeing the film (albeit at a  
> theater in Japan with a bunch of technological glitches--quite  
> appropriate, I might add!).
>
> Aaron Gerow
> Associate Professor
> Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
> Yale University
> 53 Wall Street, Room 316
> PO Box 208363
> New Haven, CT 06520-8363
> USA
> Phone: 1-203-432-7082
> Fax: 1-203-432-6764
> e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
> site: www.aarongerow.com
>
>