Opinion | From ‘Avatar’ to Elon Musk, the exploration is over and the culture wars have begun

The 2022 release of Lightyear and Strange World epitomize this trend. In “Lightyear,” an accident during a mission leaves the crew and colonists stranded on an alien planet. The survivors choose to settle in this new world and make the most of the bad situation rather than trying to continue their spaceflight mission.

All are calm except for Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans), whose efforts to break down the light barrier resulted in him being the same age thanks to general relativity. But my former colleagues have all grown old and formed families. His appetite for exploration is presented as a sort of extended adolescence, culminating in the revelation that the movie’s villain is ultimately Lightyear himself. version of.) Accepting failure and failing to be mediocrity and make do, he becomes a villain, the enemy of mankind.

Something similar is going on with Strange World. On this world, the last descendants of a family of explorers have settled as farmers in the idyllic Avalonian lands. He cultivated miraculous energy-producing plants that brought comfort and luxury to an isolated village surrounded by mountains. This plant was discovered during his final voyage to the strange world his father claimed to be. It turns out that miracle plants are actually killing their habitat. This turns out to be a giant turtle swimming across the ocean planet.

Again, the lesson here is mostly Luddite. Improving the fate of mankind is bad. Rejecting the dangers of exploration is a good thing. The ideal is to settle into the calmness of your home and be content with the little things you have. Nesting should be encouraged. It is basically an anti-human sentiment that treats human growth as a literal cancer that plunders and destroys its host.

The reaction to both films was clear. Rather than wrestling with the core themes, the bystanders turned them into culture war fodder. The mere glimpse of a lesbian couple in “Lightyear” has angered conservatives. This, in turn, led to a reactionary and progressive defense of mediocre animated films as something important.

Meanwhile, “Strange World” featured gay teens, further provoking conservatives who decided Disney was public enemy number one, after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.Avalonia’s diverse setting is the film’s Disabled dog representing inclusion.

This trend is not limited to flops. The biggest movie of the year, Avatar: Path of Water, is decidedly anti-human in an unruly way. In the James Cameron-directed “Avatar” sequel, Homo sapiens, or at least most of them, are portrayed as a menace who only wants to ravage the planet of Pandora for their greedy ends. Early in the film, it explains that the Earth is dying, but whether Pandora itself — with its breathtaking atmosphere and hostile natives — is a potential home for the Earth’s populace, or simply exploitation. It is unknown whether it is a resource that will be used.

Again, there’s less debate about preconceived notions about “Avatar” themes than another silly mess of identity politics, with detractors arguing that pictures of giant, hairy blue aliens are wisely about Native Americans. Cameron himself, in this 12-year-old article, would have fought harder against assimilation if the Lakota knew what the future held. He was accused of suggesting deafness with a slight laugh.

The demise of the human desire for exploration, which coincides with mundane and ultimately meaningless domestic concerns in cinema, coincides with something similar in the real world. No matter what you say about Musk, there’s something very depressing about watching a man trade public identities as an innovator and explorer — to save the world, make electric cars mandatory. A man who understood that he had to look cool instead of a man who made high-speed internet accessible through space, a man who wants humanity back in heaven — a swamp-standard right-winger on Twitter. For your identity as an agitator.

This is not to say Musk doesn’t take his concerns about freedom of expression seriously. Pushing Twitter back to serve as the free speech wing of the Free Speech Party is probably a good thing. These easy endorphins and the Reply Guy’s community of psychofans he’s cultivated seem insignificant when compared to world-changing efforts jeopardized by plummeting stock prices.

Musk is still doing interesting things with Tesla, Starlink and SpaceX. Hopefully, his decision to hand over Twitter’s CEO position to someone else will dampen his desire to provide far-right customer service.

But our broader cultural fatigue is real and worrisome. As the characters in James Cameron’s world used to say, “There is no destiny, but you make it.” We believe that the stories we tell ourselves are windows into the future we want to create. So what does it say about humanity’s hope that we are usually the villains in those stories?