Oil "Avatars": James Cameron, Obama (from Ctheory.net)

Theory Beyond the Codes, Event-Scene

 The Obama Avatar
 ================


 ~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]