The politics and proxies of James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar provide the focus for Chris and Alex in Episode 76, as they plug into Pandora to make sense of the relationships between the film’s ecological sensibilities and its technological prowess. Joining them is Rupert Read, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia who specialises in everything from the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein to the contemporary climate crisis. Rupert was also a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion (authoring the 2020 book Extinction Rebellion: Insights from the Inside), and was a Green Party councillor from 2004-2011 (having stood for both national parliamentary and European elections). Topics for this episode include Avatar’s anti-imperialist message and discourses of the post-racial in Obama’s America; racial passing, the politics of motion-capture and what Cameron’s reflexive puppet show says about the ‘state of the art’; fantasies of control, surrogacy, perception and the trust we place in (digital) bodies; blurred formal and stylistic distinctions between live-action/humanity and CG/Na’vi; the act of ‘reverse anthropology’ and Avatar’s claims for the power of ancient wisdoms; the awe of 3D technologies, the meaning of spectacle and links to ritualistic communal viewing experiences; digital farms, new media culture and human/machine connectivity; the material, mineral dimension of our own media consumption and creation, and the carbon footprint of digital backlots; and how in asking what we as spectators are going to do to ‘wake up’, Avatar invites us into a very real politics of ecology and activism.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) (with Yvonne Tasker)
Footnote #48 - Visual Effects
Dungeons & Dragons - The Fantasy Adventure Board Game (with Cat Mahoney)
Footnote #47 - Aura
Toy Story (1995) (with Lucy Fife Donaldson)
Footnote #46 - Multiplanarity
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) (with Sarah Thomas)
Footnote #45 - The Disney Renaissance (with Peter Kunze)
Beauty and the Beast (1991) (with Peter Kunze)
Footnote #44 - Hanna-Barbera (with Jared Bahir Browsh)
The Flintstones (1960-1966) (with Jared Bahir Browsh)
Footnote #43 - Disney Princesses (with Robyn Muir)
Wish (2023) (with Robyn Muir)
Footnote #42 - Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Footnote #41 - Canons
Life, Animated (2016) (with Janet Harbord)
Footnote #40 - Puppetry
The Dark Crystal (1982) (with Tanya Kirk)
Arthur Christmas (2011)
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