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Avatar Infects China with the Plague of Protectionism
As James Cameron's brainchild, Avatar, continues to light up the box office the world over, relentlessly charging towards a date with damn near every conceivable box office high score imaginable (like Billy Mitchell on the 255th level of Pac-Man), the Chinese government has (rather predictably) succumb to the specter of Avatar's most elementary symbolism and attempted to Short Circuit it's unparalleled success.
Good luck with 'that' CFGC ~ China Film Group; ask the RIAA how 'that' worked with N.W.A.
The quasi-communist / quasi-mercantilist nation's state-run movie distributor, China Film Group Corporation, pulled the film of the year last week from 1,628 2-D screens (what a humorously random #) in favor of a biography of the ancient philosopher Confucius.
Way to get around to that, after the fact, and then half-ass it by leaving 3-D ... what other brilliant big screen gap management / market timing ideas might those genii have ?
Great timing, mo rons; sure that half-assed Red herring will be a gem, even though it won't be included within the GEM.
The LA times reports that:
" The communist nation's state-run movie distributor, China Film Group, unexpectedly began pulling the blockbuster science-fiction picture from 1,628 2-D screens this week in favor of a biography of the ancient philosopher Confucius.
Paul Hanneman, co-president of international distribution for 20th Century Fox, the movie's distributor, confirmed the move, which the studio learned about Monday evening.
According to the Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, the switch was made at the urging of propaganda officials who are concerned that "Avatar" is taking too much market share from Chinese films and drawing unwanted attention to the sensitive issue of forced evictions.
Millions of Chinese have been uprooted to make way for high-rise buildings and government infrastructure projects in the fast-growing country. In "Avatar," human colonists try to demolish the village of an alien race to obtain a precious energy source buried under it.
Although losing the 2-D screens is a blow to the hugely successful "Avatar," which has grossed more than $1.6 billion around the world, it will not knock out the movie's primary revenue source in the country. Nearly 900 3-D screens in China have generated $49 million of its $76 million in ticket sales there so far, according to Fox. It's already the most successful movie of all time in the country, the studio said.
Calls to China Film Group were not returned. "
But WHY has Cameron's masterpiece been ostensibly handcuffed by bureaucrats in Beijing ?
An interview last month in the Telegraph tells us that:
" James Cameron, the director of Avatar, has hailed the message of his film as a lesson for humankind to stop damaging the environment.
The Titanic director - whose new 3D blockbuster is set in the future on an alien planet which mankind is pillaging for natural resources - told how he hoped we can learn to change our ways.
Cameron said: ''I see it as a broader metaphor, not so intensely politicised as some would make it, but rather that's how we treat the natural world as well.
''There's a sense of entitlement - 'We're here, we're big, we've got the guns, we've got the technology, we've got the brains, we therefore are entitled to every damn thing on this planet.'
''That's not how it works and we're going to find out the hard way if we don't wise up and start seeking a life that's in balance with the natural cycles of life on earth.''
Cameron first conceived Avatar 15 years ago and it has been in production for more than four-and-a-half years. Its ground-breaking technology makes it the most expensive film ever made.
The movie stars Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saldana as alien creatures and is filmed using a virtual camera and computer-generated animation. The story sees the indigenous species of the planet harmonise with nature to fight back against the invading humans.
The 55-year-old Canadian director also told how he was influenced by the history of America being invaded and taken from its indigenous people.
He said: ''It's a way of connecting a thread through history. I take that thread further back to the 16th and 17th centuries and to how the Europeans pretty much took over South and Central America and displaced and marginalised the indigenous peoples there.
''There's just this long, wonderful history of the human race written in blood going back as far as we can remember, where we have this tendency to just take what we want without asking.'' "
After receiving the Golden Globe award for Best Director, Cameron told the crowd:
" This is [the] best job in the world; it really. Avatar asks us to see that everything is connected ~ all human beings to each other and us to the Earth.
And if you have to go four and a half light years to another, made-up planet to appreciate this miracle of the world that we have right here: well, you know what, that's the wonder of cinema right there; that's the magic."
“ At best, news is the tardy recognition of forces that have already been at work for some time and is startling only to those unaware of the trend. ”
- “The Value of News,” R.N. Elliott’s Masterworks: The Definitive Collection, ed. Robert R. Prechter, Jr., p 277
Social mood always lead "the news" and right now the direction of Chinese social mood is headed firmly south.
A 'surprise' Jan. 20 announcement by the China Banking Regulatory Commission was credited, afterthe fact, with causing a surge in the DX / $USD as well as a slide across the commodity space and €EURO related crosses ~ which, is, utter nonnsense.
Technicians and chartists alike had been screaming major dollar bottom, major gold & euro top for days; some of us even had been doing so for weeks (with actual technical merits / 'reasons' to boot).
Combine this omnipresent socio-cultural fear with all-time box office records in China and an extremely antsy Chinese gov't who just got caught with their pants down while hacking into Google's back-end... and what you get is this: a rather predictable, fleeting attempt by the Chinese powers-that-be to mitigate not only the film's potential socio-cultural reverberations but also the domestic box office mkt share currently captured by Cameron's chock-full-of cultural / historical reference (instant-classic) creation.
As a rabid Socionomist, student of The Heart of Darkness / Apocalypse Now and fellow fan 'o Fibonacci (who loved the Matrix(es) while finding them overwhelmingly human-centric), I had tears in my eyes during several scenes within Avatar's 161-minute and 34-second official run-time ~ the product of one part IMAX-3D shock, one part Cameron-genius awe and one part Purell (from copious liquid ounce-age brandished upon publicly shared 3D glasses given).
Much like Marlow's task within The Heart of Darnkess ~ to covertly find / retrieve another ivory trader and return him 'back' to "civilization" (in true Sid Meier sense) ~ and Captain Willard'sorder to "terminate Colonel Kurtz with extreme prejudice" (who "had left the farm to live amongst the natives", not unlke Neel Kashkari) within Apocalypse Now, Avatar'sseeeming protagonist, Jake Sully, begrudginly accepts the task of infiltrating the natives in explicit design of undermining their defense.
Set 144 (Fibonacci) years in the futures (2154) on Pandora, a lush, Earth-like moon of the planet Polyphemus, the RDA Corporation and its trigger-happy U.S. marine security force seek to displace the native Na'vi in order to mine a mother-load of unobtanium found within Na'vi holy lands. The Na'vi, who live in multi-variate harmony with nature while worshipping a mother goddess known as Eywa, are a blue-skinned species of sapient humanoids with feline characteristics who are physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually taller than their human 'counterparts.'
Pandora's atmosphere is toxic to humans, necessitating the use of breathing masks. Attempting to improve relations with the natives and learn about Pandora's biology, scientists grow Na'vi bodies modified with human DNA, called avatars, that are controlled by genetically matched, mentally linked human operators. Jake Sully, a paraplegic former marine, replaces his murdered twin brother, a scientist trained to be an avatar operator. Doctor Grace Augustine, the head of the Avatar Program, considers Sully an inadequate replacement for his brother and relegates him to a bodyguard role.
Drama ensues.
While everyone who sees Avatar will marvel at is profound graphical brilliance ...
most will fail to see the clearest beauty underlying the writer / director / producer's ingenious brainchild
Cameron's three primary literary allusions are:
(1) "Polyphemus" ~ in Homer's Odyssey, a Cyclops who confines Odysseus and his companions in a cave until Odysseus blinds him so that they can escape
(2) "unobtanium" ~ engineers have long used the term unobtanium when referring to unusual or costly materials, or when theoretically considering a material perfect for their needs in all respects save that it doesn't exist
(3) the film's multivariate entendre-rich title, "Avatar", which refers not only to an online identity but also (and much, much more importantly) to the Bhagavad Gita.
The film runs rampant with mildly masked Fibonacci references from the official run time (161-minutes, 34-seconds) to the most basic numerology of the title itself ...
where each letter within AVaTaR is used once, such that:
A = 1,
V = 22,
T = 20,
R = 18
1 + 22 + 20 + 18 = 61
~ hence the most basic numerology of "Avatar" is that of a " 61 / 4 "
Bottom line: Avatar is a gold mine of artistic entendres and profoundly patterned sub-motifs, which range from the cursory (Grace Augustine ~ GA ~ Genetic Algorithm) to the truly profound (Saint Augustine is called the Professor of Grace ~ Doctor_Gratiae in Latin ... "It is Augustine who gave us the Reformation").
Ok, great ... but how does this relate to China sowing salient seeds which could blossom into a Plague of Protectionism?
While most of us Western Civ'vers are content to bask in the graphical brilliance of Avatar's fireworks, the Chinese gov't isn't nearly as smitten with shiny bursts of stereoscopic gunpowder and remains just a wee bit concerned with the treasure trove of symbolism steeped throughout the film.
Much like the rather blatant employment of the Merovingian within the latter Matrix-es, the rhythmic pulse of Avatar beats to a steady-stream of Hindu theology / philosophy (Astika / Nastika); not exactly a thread that the beurocrats of Beijing are interested in furthering.
Then there are the constant visuals of US Marines turned first-person-shooter video game cartoon characters, the Boiler Room-paced US mining company executive chicanery, the Ghostbusters / Alien lady as the brilliant female scientist responsible for the 'Pioneering Studies' within the 'Avatar Program' ... welp, that in and of itself was likely just a tadtoo much for the tastebuds of the PNC, who, between shutting down the first "Mr. Gay China Pageant" just one hour before it was scheduled to begin (on 1/15) and then being caught with their hand in GOOG's POP3 / port 995cookie jar in the days following, will probably have a few more outburts of intolerance, xenophobia and protectionism of all stripes to 'surprise' us all with in the weeks and months directly ahead.
[Caijing] Dealing with Rising Urbanization
" At the end of every year, Chinese migrant workers face a dilemma: Should they continue to live in their adopted cities, or should they return home? The contemporary rural-urban system in China has initiated several problems for the Chinese labor market. The current system consists of a rigid household registration system that limits rural residents’ property rights. And, a lack of a rural social insurance system widens the income gap between rural and urban areas. China’s urbanization is increasing at an annual rate of 1 percent. In 2009, the percentage of China’s population that lived in urban areas was 46 percent. At this rate, half of the Chinese population will live in urban areas within the next five years. "
[Politics Daily] 'Avatar' Screenings Limited in China; Officials Fear Tale Could Cause Civil Unrest
James Cameron's Golden Globe-winning "Avatar" has spent over a month atop the worldwide box office charts, raking in nearly $2 billion and staying on track to become the highest grossing movie of all time. But it won't be getting any help from the world's most populous nation: Just after its release in China, a state-run film group has ordered that "Avatar" be shown only in 3D, effectively keeping it out of the country because China has so few 3D theaters. The film was expected to make another 500 million yuan (about $73 million) in China, the London Telegraph reports [dead link].
Chinese officials are worried that the plot of "Avatar," which involves a former U.S. Marine who joins an indigenous tribe to fight against the destruction of their planet by an American corporation, would lead to civil unrest. Some drew parallels between the film's militant corporate antagonists and predatory property developers in China.
"Reportedly, the authorities have two reasons for this check on 'Avatar': first, it has taken in too much money and has seized market share from domestic films, and second, it may lead audiences to think about forced removal, and may possibly incite violence," Hong Kong's Apple Daily reported.
For the brief time it was available, "Avatar" drew long lines to Chinese theaters despite one of the country's coldest winters in years. The few IMAX 3D showings available are now booked for weeks.
Prior to its release, there was simply no question whatsoever that Avatar would smash box office records across the globe and become at least the second-highest grossing film of all-time; even / especially in China, Avatar was destined for unparalleled commercial success and critical acclaim.
HONG KONG (CBS) - Jan 6 2010 - Already a global hit, James Cameron's "Avatar" raced to a $4.8 million first day in populous China, with a publicist predicting the sci-fi blockbuster will set a new Chinese box office record.
"Avatar" raked in 33.03 million Chinese yuan ($4.8 million) on Monday, in a 3-D, 2-D and IMAX joint release, Weng Li, spokesman for state-run film importer China Film Group told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Wednesday.
Weng called the result a strong showing but wasn't sure if it was a first-day record. The modern benchmark for a hit in China is 100 million yuan ($14.6 million), and "Avatar" is on track to easily pass that mark in several days.
But the publicist said the story of aliens on a foreign planet fending off American colonizers is set for even greater box office heights, predicting it will break the all-time box office record recently set by another Hollywood production, "2012." That disaster film had made 460 million yuan ($67.3 million) as of Dec. 23.
The film's story focuses on a military-backed corporation coming to a lush planet to mine out its underground natural resources, at the expense and displacement of the native creatures living in the surrounding forests. Attempts to "civilize the natives" run afoul of the world's natural harmony.
Weng said "Avatar" could make 500 million yuan ($73.2 million).
"I think it has very good momentum. I think it should break the '2012' record," he said.
The strong results on Monday came despite heavy snowfall Sunday in the Chinese capital Beijing, a major movie market.
Cameron is already a box office darling in China, with his last movie "Titanic" pulling in a then-unprecedented 360 million yuan in 1998 — a record that stood until last year, when it was broken by "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and "2012." The Hollywood director also promoted "Avatar" in person in Beijing last month.
Elsewhere in China, in wealthy Hong Kong, a former British colony that maintains a separate political system, "Avatar" has earned 84.8 million Hong Kong dollars ($10.9 million) from Dec. 17 to Tuesday, Adrian Lo, a publicist for the Hong Kong distributor for Hollywood studio 20th Century Fox, said Wednesday.The movie made more than $1 billion worldwide as of last weekend.
Like in other countries, the box office performance of "Avatar" in China was lifted by more expensive tickets for 3-D movies — although they are relatively cheaper in China, where wages still lag the developed world. Weng said a 2-D ticket costs about 30 to 40 yuan ($4.4 to $6); a 3-D ticket 60 to 80 yuan ($9 to $12) and an IMAX ticket 130 to 150 yuan ($19 to $22).
Chinese box office revenues are still small compared to the U.S., but they are growing rapidly, so Hollywood studios are keen that the Chinese government lifts its restrictions on revenue sharing for film imports. Currently, China Film Group only shares revenues on imports for about 20 films a year and pays flat fees for the other movies.
Government statistics show that revenues surged from 920 million yuan in 2003 to 4.3 billion yuan ($630 million) in 2008 — compared to $9.8 billion in the U.S. in the same year. China had 4,100 movie screens as of the end of 2008.
“ At best, news is the tardy recognition of forces that have already been at work for some time and is startling only to those unaware of the trend. ”
- “The Value of News,” R.N. Elliott’s Masterworks: The Definitive Collection, ed. Robert R. Prechter, Jr., p 277
Social mood always lead "the news" and right now the direction of Chinese social mood is headed firmly south.
A 'surprise' Jan. 20 announcement by the China Banking Regulatory Commission was credited, afterthe fact, with causing a surge in the DX / $USD as well as a slide across the commodity space and €EURO related crosses ~ which, is, utter nonnsense.
Technicians and chartists alike had been screaming major dollar bottom, major gold & euro top for days; some of us even had been doing so for weeks (with actual technical merits / 'reasons' to boot).
Combine this omnipresent socio-cultural fear with all-time box office records in China and an extremely antsy Chinese gov't who just got caught with their pants down while hacking into Google's back-end... and what you get is this: a rather predictable, fleeting attempt by the Chinese powers-that-be to mitigate not only the film's potential socio-cultural reverberations but also the domestic box office mkt share currently captured by Cameron's chock-full-of cultural / historical reference (instant-classic) creation.
Across a litany of incessantly weak attempts to knock Avatar / Cameron, one critical review sticks out like a sore thumb as the single finest expert description of the single finest film of the year. Hats offto Jay Michaelson, whose 1/22/10 Huff Po depiction of Ai'wa & the Na'vi is the most expertly nuanced since Occarina of Time snuck one in.
by Jay Michaelson
The Meaning of Avatar: Everything is God (A Response to Ross Douthat and other naysayers of 'pantheism')
" "If you're an author or Ph.D. candidate who had the foresight to propose a book on the philosophy of "Avatar" before the film was even released in theaters, the past week (and the blogosphere) has been very, very good to you." - Dave Itzkoff, NY Times, Dec. 22, 2009
Well, good news for me! I'm an author and a Ph.D. candidate whose book on the philosophy of Avatar, a book called "Everything is God," was published by Shambhala two months ago. I wrote the book not because I got a shooting copy of the script last year, but because, contrary to the cries of some critics, the philosophy of the movie has actually been around, in East and West, for thousands of years.
Roughly speaking, Avatar's Na'Vi subscribe to a combination of pantheism and theism, a view scholars today call "panentheism." As scholar of religion Gershom Scholem observed, panentheism is usually rooted less in faith, as the New York Times's Ross Douthat said, than in experience. Like mystics here on Earth, the Na'Vi have an experience of unity of consciousness with other beings, all of which (themselves included) are really just manifestations of one Being, which they call Ai'wa. Unlike Earth-bound mystics, the Na'Vi have a convenient plug, attached to their bodies, which physically unites them to other beings (such as steeds, winged or otherwise) and to Aiwa Herself/Itself.
Of course, the experience is one thing, the interpretation another. No one can doubt that, for millennia, contemplatives in Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions - among others - have had similar experiences, albeit without the plug-and-play part. These experiences are described in strikingly, though not exactly, similar ways (the "perennial philosophy" scholars postulated a century ago works as a generality, but not in the details). But of course, how we understand such experiences - tickles of neurons, mind-states, prophecy, Unity with the Source oF life - is another matter.
In the Na'Vi cosmology, what's really happening is the Ai'Wa in me is connecting with the Ai'Wa in you. This is echoed in their greeting, "I see you," a direct translation of the Sanskrit Namaste, which means the same thing. ("Avatar" is also from the Sanskrit, though the film plays on the word's two meanings of an image used in a role-playing game, and a deity appearing on Earth.) As the Na'Vi explain in the film, though, "I see you" doesn't mean ordinary seeing - it, like Namaste, really means "the God in me sees the God in you." I see Myself, in your eyes.
Douthat and others don't like this very much. They complain it's a lowering of the human ambition, from an aspirational skyward gaze to an earthbound one, and that the Earth/the One/Ai'Wa cannot provide the comfort, meaning, and guidance that a traditional God-idea can. But this is incorrect for at least three reasons.
First, the Na'Vi are panentheists, not pantheists. In a crucial moment in the film, our hero Jake Sully prays to Ai'Wa, and She appears to answer, in the form of swarms of birds, dinosaur-like creatures, and other forces of nature who work together to defeat the technologically-advanced human invaders. (The sequence is not unlike the Ents defeating Saruman in The Two Towers or the creatures of Narnia defeating the humans in Prince Caspian.) Strict pantheists like Spinoza would never pray to Being. Indeed, the Na'Vi princess Neytiri scolds Sully for doing so, and I myself clucked my tongue a bit when the Na'Vi started swaying and chanting; it kind of confuses the issue.
But panentheists do pray. They pray all the time. Ramakrishna, the 19th century Hindu sage who, through his disciple Vivekananda, is more responsible than any other individual for the popularization of nonduality - from obscure Vedantic texts to best-sellers by Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra - was both a nondualist sage who believed that All is One, and a devotee of the "Divine Mother" who prayed to Her every day. The Baal Shem Tov and other early Hasidim believed that everything is God, but they also prayed to God as if separate from Him. Rumi and other Sufi poets experienced unity, but also loved yearning for the love of an often-distant Other.
Douthat is wrong that nonduality erases God. In fact, "God" becomes seen as one of many ways of understanding Being. Sometimes God is Christ on the cross, sometimes the Womb of the Earth. Sometimes God is Justice, other times Mercy. This is how sophisticated religionists have understood theology for at least a thousand years: "God" is a series of insufficient explanations of the Absolutely Unknowable, a collection of projections and dreams and who-knows-what-else which, neo-atheists notwithstanding, speak to the core of who we are as human beings.
To me, this is more comforting than old school theology, not less. It allows for multiple paths to the holy, radical ecumenicism and pluralism, and a bit less constriction around our favorite theological myths. God as Friend, Father, "motion and spirit that impels all things" - all of these become dances, tools of the inner life which are available when needed, and enriched, not lessened, by being increased in number.
Second, nonduality/panentheism is not less ethically aspirational than sky-god-worship; it's more so. Thousands of years ago, we may well have needed a Righteous Judge in the Sky as a myth to keep us in line. But now, not only is such a thing philosophically untenable ("Where was God in Auschwitz?"), it's actively counterproductive. The sky god tells us that we humans are masters of the Earth; thus, we, like the humans in Avatar treat Earth as a resource to be exploited. The sky god tells us that only this book is sacred; thus we attack those with another book.
Traditional monotheism has indeed contributed to the growth of civilization, but not it is contributing to its downfall. Yes, the way of the Na'Vi is idealized - Avatar is a Hollywood cartoon. But it, not old-school-theology, holds the ideological promise of a more sustainable future on our planet (as well as Pandora). In our post-industrial age, respect for the web of life is more ethically valuable -- and ecologically urgent -- than fear of Heaven.
Third and finally, let's take a reality check. Douthat and others suggest that all faiths are basically myths, and that we should pick and choose among them by their consequences. Forget what's actually true, if Old Testament God is better for ethics than New Ave Ai'Wa, let's stick with Him. Yet, news flash: Old Testament God probably doesn't exist.
Is Ai'Wa any different? Yes. Here's the thought experiment: right now, please raise your right index finger. Now, reflect for a moment and list out all the various motives you had for raising, or not raising, your finger: curiosity, skepticism, doubt, whatever. All of those factors, if you look closely, are conditioned by things outside of "you" - your genetics, your upbringing, what you ate for lunch, whatever. We may not be able to know all these conditions, but the fact is that your action was 100% determined by those conditions. "Free will" exists as a psychological reality, but not as an ontological one. Who really moved? The conditions moved.
The Na'Vi call "the conditions" by the name Ai'Wa. Hindus call it Brahman. Nondual Jews (Kabbalists, Hasidim, and otherwise) call it Ein Sof, the Infinite - the God beyond "God." Yes, God raised (or didn't raise) your index finger. "You" are a psychological phenomenon. It's not God that's a trick of the neurons in your brain - you are.
Unlike traditional theologies, Nondual "theologies," whether from the Na'Vi or the navi (the Hebrew word for "prophet"), actually describe reality. Read up on your popular neurology books, like Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained or Robert Kane's The Oxford Handbook of Free Will. They'll make the point scientifically, rather than anecdotally or experientially. There is no individual self - it's an illusion, a mirage. "You" exist, sure, but you exist just like a wave on the ocean: here one minute, gone the next, and never apart from the ocean itself. And as the nondual teacher Ram Dass says, you're not a wave, you're water.
In my own life, as in those of millions of contemplatives from around the world, I have found these ideas to have important practical consequences. Most of my neurosis and desires revolve around making my wave bigger or more comfortable than others - remembering that I'm water is an important counterbalance. My desire for "MORE!" is quieted when I settle back out of selfish desire and into a remembering of the nondual truth. And, just my opinion here, I suspect that if more people chilled out about the superiority of their religious or ideological system, we might fight less.
By my estimation, approximately 700,000 people will see Avatar for every 1 that reads Everything is God. Admittedly, it has better special effects. But let's not think that nonduality is something James Cameron, or Hollywood, made up. It's in the Zohar, the Upanishads, the writings of John of the Cross, Rumi, the Tao te Ching, the Heart Sutra, and many other texts written long before Lumiere's train arrived at La Ciotat. Of course, these millennia-old traditions do not fit cleanly into our postmodern world, and so contemporary people adapt them to their lived experience. But at its core, Avatar's philosophy is not new; it is ancient, profound, and liberating. "
If you've yet to see Avatar (build a stable of VIX protection & hedge your physical Au): what the hell are you waiting for ?
Just remember to pre-order your IMAX-3D tickets and not to forget the Purell and tissues to clean the 3D glasses given ~ and, if like me, to explain away why Cameron's crowning achievement brought tears to your eyes.
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China is the closest thing we have to the book 1984. If the fuckers stay on their current path the world will be a writeoff within 100 years. Frankly, every website should start adding text from Tiananmen square massacre on it, so the fuckers have to use their own technology to seal themselves off from the rest of us.
How does it feel to betray your own race?!
I dun't know why I wrote that- it just seemed like the trollest thing to do.
jesus is lord. the only way to the father is through the son.
Every Void in Nature carriers a standing Potential in the exact opposite direction.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1957/
We are indeed witness to the future's most pirated and widely distributed film in underground Chinese History.