Month 10, Day 29: The Auteurial Imagination….

The Modesto Bee, a small California paper, notes that film director James Cameron has come out against the odious Proposition 23.

That is to say:

It’s good to hear James Cameron joining Governor Schwarzenegger in opposition to Proposition 23 in the last few days before the election, when the Koch brothers and their collaborators from the extractive industry sector are pouring surreal quantities of money into the campaign to suspend AB 32, California’s excellent climate change law. We recognize these conscienceless billionaires in two of Cameron’s creations: they occupied the Titanic’s most luxurious staterooms, and they’re the principal shareholders of “Avatar’s” RDA Corporation. These latter-day robber barons ignore the crucial truth that global climate change is likely to trigger a “domino effect” of infrastructural collapse, which would surely be bad for business. The worst-case scenarios suggested by climatologists can be summed up in one word: Venus. A film based on that planet would challenge any directorial imagination: hot and empty. Nobody to buy oil. A defeat of Proposition 23 will benefit the Koch brothers and their allies, too.

Warren Senders