The Spectacle and the Spirit (Another blog on Avatar)

February 22, 2010Brad Fruhauff

All the buzz about Avatar may be about more than buzz. This film taps into something deep-set in the modern American psyche: the twin burdens of imperialist guilt and an alienation from nature. Cameron's imaginative world, Pandora, offers us something our real world cannot: literal, physical, and organic connections to the world and one another. Sure, it's pantheism, but it's pantheism with a stunning resonance for our 21st century, web 2.0 world.