I’d put this in the comments on Justin’s post, but Milliner’s review of Avatar and its conservative reviewers merits deserves a broad audience.
The blue people do it better. Harmony with nature, respect for food sources, sensitivity to the earth, liturgical vitality, rites of passage, lifelong marriage commitments, horse whispering—all the key ingredients to a harmonious agrarian society. How could one not be attracted to the ideals so beautifully presented in this film? The problem is, Avatar is not describing how the world might be if Wendell Berry were president; it’s describing a world without a Fall.
Milliner’s analysis is, in my opinion, the definitive word on the film. He understands why post-Avatar depression seems to be a real phenomenon:
Seen not only through 3-D glasses, but through the lens of Lewis’Space Trilogy, Avatar emerges not as a defense of Pantheism, an anti-American screed or as a vision of ideals realizable on this planet: Instead, it’s a depiction of Eden.
As they say, read the whole thing.
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