James Cameron’s Avatar has opened strongly, despite the winter storm on the east coast of the US, and is said to have made $232m on its opening weekend around the world.
It is, however, not pleasing everyone. In particular, the story of how the Na’vi, a race living on the distant planet of Pandora, see off an attempt by a corporation to move them from their wooded idyll in order to exploit their mineral rights, is raising some hackles.
James Pinkerton, the Fox News reviewer, put it thus:
OK, so the politics of “Avatar” are left-wing, anti-corporate and anti-imperialist. There are even some even some indirect digs at George W. Bush and Operation Iraqi Freedom. A left-leaning Hollywood movie: no surprise there. So Third Worlders will eat it up. The Iranians, for example, should love “Avatar” – if, of course, their government would let them see it, which surely won’t happen.
So which is the left-leaning company that has produced this soft-minded bilge? Well, that would be 20th Century Fox, another arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
Avatar will probably be one of the biggest money-spinners for News Corp, as was Titanic, Mr Cameron‘s 1997 epic. That, incidentally, also had a rather leftist tone, with the poor people stuck in steerage displaying more moral fibre than the rich folks above.
Mr Murdoch is known for his right-wing views, expressed through papers such as The Sun and now the Wall Street Journal. But the entertainment arm of Fox has a history of producing films and television programmes with a subversive edge – notably The Simpsons.
Hollywood loves nothing more than native tribes fighting back against oppressors, and people trying to save the environment, so Avatar fits well in that tradition.
Mr Murdoch, of course, has declared his own environmental sympathies. He is not known for being left-wing or anti-corporate, but he puts up with it at his own studio.
