I finally fell for the 3D carrot and went to see James Cameron’s “Avatar”. I never knew he was such a capitalist!

(Spoiler Warning!)
People say the plot is basically “Trees good! Capitalism wrong!” and there are plenty of right-wingers freaking out about the message, if not for the supposedly anti-corporate one, for the “new agey” religious message. But really, James Cameron is a friggin’ genius. He has cleverly disguised a movie that is at it’s roots totally in love with conservative thought as leftist propaganda. Why do I say this movie is a bastion of conservative thought?

Please consider the following:
1.) The whole movie is about property rights
2.) Everyone has weapons on Pandora
3.) Everyone on Pandora hunts (and does it well)
4.) It’s obvious in this movie that if there is a U.N.-like structure around, it does nothing
5.) The Na’vi culture is uber-religious, mate-for-life types

Okay, I’m mostly joking about many of these points, but seriously when I walked away from this movie I did say to myself, this is all about property rights. Capitalism as an ideal is a trade system where both parties come to mutually agreed upon terms to exchange goods for currency. It must be a win-win situation, by at least some margin, or else one of the parties would refuse the trade. In this system, property rights must be respected. Taking by force is anti-capitalist in it’s nature. How can you have a trade market if people may simply take by force?

This is not to say that there are never those in a capitalist system that use violence and coercion, but it is morally opposed to the capitalist ideal. The whole idea of being civilized grown ups is living in a world where you must work and pay for what you desire, you cannot just take it from others like a schoolyard bully. In this movie, the bad guys were corporate mercenaries who had driven off a moral cliff like a bunch of lemmings – in fact, they were exposed as merely thieves with serious resources. Of course it’s natural that we should come to loathe them in the movie, despite being the human characters, for they are morally corrupt. They stand squarely against the foundations of a capitalist society – that you must trade not take, and that each party must decide what is beneficial for themselves.

Because the evil-doers in this movie happen to be from a corporation, people think it’s leftist propaganda. But what if the mercenaries were still Marines and they were claiming the resources under eminent domain? I would find it intriguing to read those reviews. The problem is not the organization they happen to be working for, it’s the use of force to steal resources from another. It all comes down to property rights.

As of twenty hours ago, Avatar has made $659.6 million for News Corp (yes, that News Corp). Don’t let James Cameron fool you into thinking he’s some sort of anti-capitalist proletarian. His movie just made two very big statements: 1.) no one has the right to disarm you of your property, even if you’re blue, and 2.) I am so rich I swim in money like Scrooge McDuck.

As a side note, if Jake has just jumped on the giant pterodactyl thing towards the beginning of the movie to show the people he was the sixth chosen one who would bring balance to the Force, he could have easily convinced the Smurf tribe to move to Timbuktu, married Pocahontas, and probably negotiated some sort of clean mining process for Fern Gully. Also, the movie would have only been about an hour long and I’d have two hours of my life back. I’m still never seeing Titanic. That is, unless it’s re-released in 3D. ;-)