Avatar

I saw Avatar in glorious 3D on Sunday. Thank you to Sarita and Bill. It was a fantastic film. Everyone had a view beforehand on whether the 3D was a good idea. Kazim had seen it in 2D and said 3D was a gimmick. Jamie had seen it in 3 and 2D and said the 2D was better. Me, I was swept up in the 3D-ness of it all. When that gas cannister bounced into the audience, I jumped out the way!

I always tend to see political analogies in films, and to me Avatar was a damning criticism of the USA's presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Through art, can the US see its actions in a different light? Can art make people better? The standard rebuttal is the Nazis, who had a subtle appreciation of art.

Nietzsche devotes a whole section of Human, All Too Human to a discussion of art. His view is that we are right to admire great works of art, but the conditions of religious feeling that generated them no longer obtain. Art then to Nietzsche has an elegaic quality, to appreciate but not repeat.

Nietzsche is wrong. Art, like maths, can't be put in a box.