Oil "Avatars": James Cameron, Obama (from Ctheory.net)
Friday, June 4, 2010 at 10:52AM
Theory Beyond the Codes, Event-Scene
The Obama Avatar
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~Arthur and Marilouise Kroker~
There's a Titanic in every life, an Abyss in every relationship,
an Alien in the very best of us, and hopefully a saving Avatar
at the end of the day.
What do Barack Obama and James Cameron have in common? It turns out,
maybe quite a lot. Both are technocrats with a burning purpose. Obama
is a skilled practitioner of the technocratic regime of politics,
that magical process of fusing diverse interests into the commons of
public policy. Cameron practices the art of cinematic technology,
translating the latest configurations of software technology and
prosthetic devices into haunting stories of catastrophe. Taken
together, they are the DNA of American liberal thought, expanding
politics and cinema to new and unexpected degrees of freedom while at
the same time expressing the limits of politics and cinema when
reason wars with passion....[More at Ctheory]
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