WASHINGTON DC, United States – Not many believed that the box office megahit Avatar would topple 1997’s Titanic as the top grossing movie of all time. In only 39 days of its historic run, Avatar has surpassed Titanic’s $1.8 billion box office record and continues to soar.

Avatar will most likely breach the $2 billion box office mark in the next few weeks. The more that it’s talked about, the more it’s criticized, the stronger it will get. Publicity increases awareness and spurns interest. By mid-2010, after DVD release and Netflix availability, Avatar will most likely be the most discussed movie in history. It wouldn’t be surprising if high schools devote substantial class periods dissecting its messages.

Avatar has been widely criticized by commentators and ordinary folks alike. It’s been described as anti-military, anti-commercialism, anti-business, and anti-religion. Some even dare say it is an anti-American film made by, paradoxically, a staunch American film maker. It has been attacked on so many levels that people who haven’t watched it are compelled to see it for themselves.

It is said to be anti-military as it portrays the Marines deployed on the Pandora moon in the Alpha Centauri star system as rogue, greedy and savage, and serves as the muscle of a perverted corporation. It is anti-commercialism as it depicts commerce as highly exploitative and uncaring.

It is anti-business as it implies that corporate leaders and board directors behind the RDA Corporation, which sent Marines such as the paraplegic Jake Sully to mine Pandora for the mineral unobtanium , as ruthless and solely profit-motivated. It is anti-religion as it allegedly promotes the worship of nature represented by the mother goddess Eywa.

It’s also accused of encouraging smoking since Sigourney Weaver’s character, the scientist who invented the genetically engineered blue bodies (Avatar) of the Na’vi indigenous humanoids, is typified as a chain smoker. Heavily smoking, it presumably alleviates her job stress.

Indigenous Peoples and other controversial issues

Does Avatar deserve to be maligned as much as it is now? To an important extent, it deserves all the attention it gets, whether it’s in the form of harsh criticism or appreciative lauding. It’s a movie that puts on the world stage controversial issues such as indigeneity, indigenous peoples, corrupted military, colonialism, racial extermination, ecological preservation, the balance of nature, human rights and traditional knowledge. This means controversy – lots of them.

These are highly debatable topics in the international arena. The United Nations, UNICEF, UNCTAD, World Bank, WHO and other international organizations have been debating these issues during world conferences for decades. Imagine these in full display in a commercially successful movie. The result is that these debates take on newer, albeit simpler, forms in the family dinner tables, bars, offices, subway cars, Facebook, chatrooms and blogs.

Culture of Impunity

What stands out in the film, apart from its never before seen film making technology, is the rampant culture of impunity practiced by the RDA Corporation and its military arm. As depicted in the film, the corporation will pull all stops, even the eradication of a race, just to satisfy its insatiable hunger for profit. It instructed its Marines to do everything within its power to secure the indigenous people’s (Omaticaya) Hometree as it’s the repository of the unobtanium mineral.

This culture of impunity by the RDA Corporation is resonated throughout the film. It used superior firepower technology to subjugate the indigenous and exploited human spies with Avatars to unravel secrets. It wasn’t accountable to anybody, it wasn’t policed in any way, nor was it regulated by any government agency. It felt superior, all-knowing and with a burden to teach its language and culture. It was free from any sanction or punishment. It was untouchable.

The RDA Corporation and its military arm are representative of the traditional form of colonialism. “Discover” a land mass and evaluate its resources, “impose” the colonial culture and language, “force” the local inhabitants to surrender the land in exchange for lesser ruthlessness, and then “annex” the area. These are all guised in bringing forth civility, religion and organization. In between discovery and annexation, the colonizers’ actions can simply be described as senseless, soulless and depraved. That’s pure impunity.

Maybe the world needs a contemporary film like Avatar that showcases this culture of impunity. It’s representative of the problems facing the world today anyway.

For example, in the Philippines, a country described by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists as the “poster child of impunity”, journalists are killed regularly. The government is unable or, worse, disabled to solve the murders. On November 23, 2009, in the predominantly Moslem town of Ampatuan located in the Maguindanao province, 57 people were ambushed and buried in shallow graves in a politically-charged event. Allegedly masterminded by local mayor Andal Ampatuan, Jr., who’s seeking the governor’s post in the May 2010 election, the 57 unarmed people were composed of a rival candidate’s wife, sisters, lawyers, aides and at least 22 journalists. Most were women. Mercilessly, instinct-propelled and with impunity, the armed convoy of animals-dressed-as-men mowed the group down. Mayor Ampatuan belongs to a wealthy, well-connected politico-warlord elite.

Journalists are usually the target the world over, be it war time or peace time, by insurgents and government militia. Whether serving as broadcasters of truth or whistleblowers of corruption, journalists in Russia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and Iraq are pursued relentlessly and with impunity. If they don’t shut up or change how they report, they are murdered or in some quarters “sacrificed”.

Blackwater, a private military group and security contractor founded in 1997 by a former Navy Seal, was accused of shooting unarmed civilians in 2007 in Baghdad. As a CIA contractor, Blackwater (now known as Xe) regularly deployed its armed units in hotspots such as Iraq and Afghanistan to protect U.S. diplomats and civilian contractors. But on September 16, 2007, five Blackwater security agents guarding U.S. diplomats allegedly fired upon civilians in Nisoor Square in Baghdad killing 17 people including women and children. It is claimed that the shooting was unprovoked. However, a federal judge recently dismissed manslaughter charges against the five Blackwater guards.

According to the U.N. Higher Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) report last year, Brazilian police strategically engaged in abusive practices such as torture and extrajudicial executions, and that indigenous populations faced threats and violence over land distribution. In the first six months of 2008, police were reported to have been involved in one of every five intentional killings, or an average of four per day in the six-month period. Indiscriminate shooting, summary executions, and inhuman detention centers plague the country.

In Sudan, the oppressive regime has been accused of mass murder and rape of the non-Arab people of Darfur. This seven-year genocidal conflict has killed between 300,000 - 400,000 people. In January 2008 in Kenya, the opposition-linked militia allegedly attacked the Kikuyu (Kenya’s most populous ethnic group) and killed over 1,000 innocents and dislocated hundreds of thousands from their homes. In August 2008 in South Ossetia, Ossetian militias reportedly avenged Georgia's attack by murdering Georgian villagers and compelled displacement.

Whether it’s a fictitious corporation, a local warlord, hooded executioners of journalists, rouge paramilitary agents, lawless policemen or genocidal thugs, the culture of impunity has no place in the world. Though impunity in its most visible form – torture, executions, waterboarding and disappearances – are standard fare in daily international news, Avatar put a face to it.

Reminiscing Dances with Wolves

Certainly, watching Avatar on 3-D makes one reminisce about Kevin Costner's epic Dances with Wolves. It’s like watching that 1990 award-winning movie on steroids given Avatar’s beautiful effects. In fact, James Cameron acknowledges that his film is a homage to Dances with Wolves and the lesser known 1991 film At Play in the Fields of the Lord.

Avatar can be interpreted in so many ways using various doctrines, beliefs, dogma and perspectives. It can be leveled as anti-this and pro-that. But what’s clear is that it’s a film clamoring against the excesses of corporate greed, the overbearing nature of military force, and the continuous subjugation of indigenous peoples for land and resources. It’s a call against colonialism both in its primitive and modern-day forms.

It’s a movie fiercely arguing against the culture of impunity. Now that’s thematically correct.
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The author is a U.S. & Japan-trained and educated lawyer with a Master of Laws degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a Certificate in Business from Wharton. Send comments to carlo.osi@gmail.com or thru http://eastofturtleisland.blogspot.com/.