Avatar

One of the most expensive films to date, James Cameron's Avatar, is heavily laced with ecological overtones and borrows from classic films that came before it. Yet it is more than "dances with smurfs," as it examines the struggle between science for research and science for the sake of control; reality unto the imagined; heroism and martyrdom; and passion versus professional education.

I first saw the film over Christmas break at a 10pm showing with my father and brother. I wasn't prepared for the 2 hours and 40 minutes of a head-ache inducing 3-D acid trip. I was indeed overwhelmingly impressed with the advancement of CGI, the imagination and thoughtfulness of the film's visual design, and the attempt to argue for ecological awareness. Upon the car ride home, however, I could not say whether or not I liked the film; I was stuck debating whether or not I thought the climactic scene of a literal war on terrorism was ethical for the "network of all living things" to undertake. I hated how predictable and corny the dialogue was, I didn't like that the unobtainable resource bringing the humans to invade another planet was actually called "unobtainium," though I was interested in this plot as an allegory to the war on terrorism/war for oil in the Middle East.

After being undecided on my feelings towards the film, I bought the movie while in Fredericksburg, Texas. My stepfather is an avid science fiction lover and will spend his free weekends watching the Sy Fy channel and recorded Stargate episodes. My cousin is visiting from Arkansas and has a genuine appreciation for the world around her. We watched the film this evening, and I tried to ignore my English major's learned hesitancy towards an overwhelmingly Hollywood style production.

After having spent two weeks in Belize with a bunch of biologists, I was impressed with how closely related the CGI created nature was to a real jungle. Most of the life was recognizable, though with obvious deviations, and accurately represented an earthly balance of a complex ecosystem. The seeds of the sacred tree look exactly like bri-bri flowers (see above picture), and the lemurs acted and looked particularly like the spider monkeys who annoyingly swung from all the trees.

Interestingly enough, Cameron had his crew stay in Hawaii in order to get a feel for the "rain forest." With 60% of the film being computer generated, there was no actual rain forest set design for the actors to work with. The cast went hiking, built campfires and ate fish. At night, however, they slept in the Four Seasons hotel (imdb). Hawaii is also a series of small volcanic islands and the islands do not contain any sort of large mammal like the jaguar-like cat or the rhino-like tapir in the film. This attempt to be "one with nature" as an acting technique through false, unrealistic means is similar to that of the premise of the film. Jake Skully finds freedom through being an Avatar. The word avatar was first employed to mean an incarnation of a Hindu deity (Merriem-Webster). It was only recently used to define an electronic image controlled and representing a computer user. Through this "electronic" world, Jake is able to walk and move freely despite his actual paralysis. This is why Jake foolishly rushes outside of the hospital, gets bored in the forest and thereby gets attacked by a panther(?), and is also why he is chosen by Eywa in the first place--for he literally has nothing to lose since the virtual world gives him so much more freedom than the real world, therefore he has nothing to fear. In summation, Jake must artificially experience nature in order to understand it. Though he is racing with dragons and dating the chief's daughter, his real body is still sleeping in a machine.

This is much like the way we experience "nature." I scuba dive in order to better understand the ocean's inhabitants. I often believe I was a fish in a former life, yet I am still a human not built to breath underwater relying on equipment to keep my lungs from collapsing. Being a scuba diver is not much different than being a dual DNA Avatar in a fictitious planet. When we go hiking in national parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone, we are not trekking through raw, wild nature. We are walking paths set for us where many people have been and therefore chased off most wildlife we would normally see. It is a tamed wilderness, not much different than a zoo, and is a false image of what natural truly is.

If we can shake the hokey blue man Avatar image from our minds and put our own experience of nature in the film's intentions, we can arrive at a particularly valuable lesson. Jake begins to explore nature as a Marine, or as taking orders. We begin to experience nature because a. it's an "escape from reality" (though what's more real than nature?) b. we are curious, interested in travel and exploration and c. we are adventurous. Yet like Jake, once we immerse ourselves more deeply within nature and attempt to "read"the forest, we begin to notice things. Certain bird calls mean that the sun will rise the next day, leaf-cutter ants come out after a heavy rain, jaguars can smell the scent of a human and is thereby why they are so hard to see in the wild. Once we begin to understand the language of nature, we begin to lose the shell we go into nature with. This is comparable to the old fogy Thoreau himself when he stops fishing and merely watches the fish--we go into the woods and live falsely; the more we let go of what we think we should do and allow ourselves to be open, the more we actually contemplate nature.

I'm not saying we should gather all of our forests friends and take "an eye for an eye" as Cameron's film suggests. I am still bothered by this epic conclusion in which Cameron justifies warfare in order to achieve peace. I do think Avatar's simple use of the avatar to get into nature and teach the audience how to begin thinking ecologically is successful. Still, we must remind ourselves that we are still living falsely in reality. Green "fashion" is not true ecological consciousness, as while I am writing this blog entry, I am using energy and polluting the environment. Yet the more we pay attention to our actions, the more we are able to be conscious of how to read the world around us. The more we read of the trail, tracks, scents and sounds around us, the more we are able to return to the nature we live as avatars within.