Avatar, the latest sci-fi adventure by world-famous director James Cameron, has achieved the ninth-largest opening weekend gross of all time. At the current gross sum of $745,078,889 worldwide, the movie has obviously been wildly successful. Much of this success can be attributed to the stunning visual effects and sizable budget, reputed to be nearly half a billion dollars between production and marketing.  While I must admit the film was aesthetically impressive, the feature that struck me the most was its blatant anti-Western, anti-American bias.

The story takes place in the year 2154 on a distant moon called Pandora, where an American corporation has established a base in order to mine the moon's rare and valuable ore. Pandora's indigenous are the Na’vi, a primitive, pagan people who greet the human explorers with mistrust and hatred.

The film's plot focuses on the main character Jake Sully, a former U.S. Marine who travels to Pandora to replace his twin brother in a quasi-military operation to protect the base and the field researchers. To do so, Jake periodically becomes an avatar – a remotely controlled, human-Na’vi hybrid. Jake enters the world of the Na'vi with the original intent of negotiating terms of relocation with the indigenous, but ends up assimilating to their culture and beliefs, culminating in the eventual betrayal of his own country and people.

Throughout the movie, James Cameron’s obvious hatred of American history is portrayed. He displays Americans as evil, war-mongering imperialists who are motivated by greed and are ready and eager to commit the genocide of the native people to achieve their ultimate goal of making a profit. Predictably, all of the oppressors are white. The exception is a female, Hispanic helicopter pilot (Michelle Rodriguez) whose conscience comes around as she too turns against the American forces. The only redeemed whites are those who "go native" à la Dances with Wolves and are considered "race-traitors."

When Jake Sully completes his training to become a warrior of the Na’vi, he ritualistically sheds his culture and civilization by participating in a pagan rite dedicated to the natives' mother goddess, Eywa. His new loyalty to the natives eventually leads him to turn on his own country and people, as he coordinates an attack on the American colonists, slaughtering a great number of them. The twisted part of this movie is that Jake Sully and his band of America-hating murderers are portrayed as heroes, while the Americans are presented as evil, capitalist exploiters who attack the traditionalist, cultured tribesmen with complete disregard for their belief systems and cultural symbols.

Clearly, the film is a not-so-subtle critique of America's founding (and European colonialism in general) and the War in Iraq. Here, however, Cameron seems to contradict himself. In one of the more notable scenes, the film's chief antagonist, Colonel Miles Quaritch, leads an attack on the Na'vi's dwelling place, Hometree.  The scene is a mix between the helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now (I half expected "Ride of the Valkyries" to start playing) and the footage of the attacks from September 11.  In an interview, Cameron said he was "surprised at how much it did look like September 11." Problematic to his critique, however, Cameron portrays the Na'vi reacting to the assault by mounting an attack of their own and decimating the forces of the "terrorists."

Of course, this all fits in with the liberal narrative that non-white, indigenous peoples alone have the right and privilege to be "xenophobic" defenders of their own culture and heritage. Before Jake can become one of the Na'vi, he must learn their ways and fully assimilate into their culture.  Peoples such as the Na'vi achieve their highest purpose in defending their civilization, while whites are only redeemed by abandoning and actively fighting against their own civilization in defense of primitive, pre-industrial societies.

While I believe the critique of excessive industrialism and unfettered capitalism is somewhat valid, it need not be presented in the context of an anti-American, anti-Western plot.  Many intellectuals such as the Southern Agrarians and J.R.R. Tolkien have managed to achieve just that. Mr. Cameron, however, couldn't help but express his deep-seated hatred of the West.

This past Sunday, I went with my cousins and Oma to see Disney’s 3D animated movie A Christmas Carol and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Not only does the movie have tremendous graphics and great voice acting by Jim Carrey (who, fortunately, doesn’t attempt to make the role comedic) as Ebenezer Scrooge, it also retains the original story’s wholesome message, unshaped by modern society’s ailments.  

Ebenezer Scrooge is an archetypal Objectivist, forsaking love and happiness to line his pockets. He is scornful of the needy and refuses to donate any of his money to charity or even spend an extra schilling to ensure his life-long partner's ascension to Heaven. This movie thoroughly repudiates the sort of greedy individualism that is pervasive throughout American society. When Scrooge sees the future he is creating for himself and others because of his selfishness, he is finally able to see the light, and not only overcome his vicious ways but also find happiness. Our elites, on the other hand, have seen the future they are creating as well and have yet to change their ways.

The three ghosts Scrooge encounters are some of the most memorable characters I’ve encountered in cinema. The Ghost of Christmas Past, trapped in purgatory because of Scrooge’s stinginess, reveals the tragic story of Scrooge’s past. While some Christmas villians have no redeeming qualities whatsoever, one is truly touched by the story of Scrooge’s troubled past, while still seeing that his problems are his own doing. The Ghost of Christmas Present is probably the most unforgettable character in the film. Robust and merry, I found myself reminded of a mythical god, maybe Zeus or even Thor. The third ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a mere shadow which leads it to be perhaps the most intriguing, as the viewer is left to his or her own imagination to decide what he is like.

What I found most surprising about the movie is its consistency with the old story and the fact that it remained untouched by modernity’s multiculti-madness. After being exposed to the horrendous movie Shrek and the "virtues" it advocated (crudeness, ugliness, commonality etc.), I figured the likelihood of Disney producing a wholesome flick would be minimal. One friend gave me his opinion on Shrek, saying that “It teaches that tolerance is the sole virtue towering above the rest. All other merits are insignificant.” After a long hiatus from Disney movies, I was quite pleased to see this flick reassert traditional values like generosity, charity, and most importantly, community.

This movie not only doesn't feel the need to affirm multicultural ethics, it doesn’t have the compulsion to reshape the image of old British society, as the BBC so frequently does, with fictional token minorities. Instead, it portrays 19^th century Britain as it was ethnically and morally with a society that fully gathered around the wonderful holiday that is Christmas. The English aren’t portrayed as having the obligation to acknowledge the supremacy of Mohammed and celebrating the great religious diversity their Sikh population provides, in spite of their adherence to the nihilism of Richard Dawkins.  Instead, they gather around their community and traditions and have simple, life-affirming love for their own.

Robert Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol is a true classic because of the simple fact that it stays true to itself. No need to alter a classic just to indulge every constituency, just a sincere, wholesome story.