Wow...thanks for taking the time to put together that comment!
For the most part, I agree heartily with your statements. On the topic of the Civil War, I'd disagree slightly - I'm not sure I agree that the price paid was worth it, but I appreciate that you've weighed the actual evidence and concluded otherwise. Most people just accept what they read in their high school textbook, or cling to "The South will rise again" fantasies.
The reason I drew a comparison to Nazi movies, rather than generic propaganda films, is the racial nature of the conflict in Avatar. The fundamental Big Lie of Nazism was that Aryans were superior to, and being oppressed by, the lesser races. The Big Lie of Soviet Communism, on the other hand, was about the oppression of one class of people by another, and the inevitability of a classless society. It has a human universalism that Nazism lacks.
To make my point in another way, the movie could just as easily (speaking as someone who is not James Cameron) have featured two warring factions of Na'vi - traditionalist and technological - in which case I probably wouldn't have drawn the Nazi movie comparison.
And now, I'm off to learn more about the Sengoku period :-)
For the most part, I agree heartily with your statements. On the topic of the Civil War, I'd disagree slightly - I'm not sure I agree that the price paid was worth it, but I appreciate that you've weighed the actual evidence and concluded otherwise. Most people just accept what they read in their high school textbook, or cling to "The South will rise again" fantasies.
The reason I drew a comparison to Nazi movies, rather than generic propaganda films, is the racial nature of the conflict in Avatar. The fundamental Big Lie of Nazism was that Aryans were superior to, and being oppressed by, the lesser races. The Big Lie of Soviet Communism, on the other hand, was about the oppression of one class of people by another, and the inevitability of a classless society. It has a human universalism that Nazism lacks.
To make my point in another way, the movie could just as easily (speaking as someone who is not James Cameron) have featured two warring factions of Na'vi - traditionalist and technological - in which case I probably wouldn't have drawn the Nazi movie comparison.
And now, I'm off to learn more about the Sengoku period :-)