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.

The Jaguar Shark

It was only months before that I crossed state lines in my two door focus to catch a glimpse of the whale sharks of the Georgia Aquarium. Little did I know, I would soon see whale sharks in their natural habitat.

There's a scene in Wes Anderson's film The Life Aquatic in which the characters, angered and hurt by one another, come across the much anticipated jaguar shark. Though Steve Zissou intends to kill this shark in order to avenge his friend, seeing this shark swimming in the wild is so profound that no one can do anything but stare. "Staraflur" by Sigur Rós plays in the background and despite how much of an asshole Steve has been through the entire film because he has difficulty expressing human emotion, he wonders if the shark remembers him. It is at this point in the film where reconciliation occurs, as everyone in the cramped submarine places their hand on Steve as an act of human connection and comfort. Thus, this beautiful shark, though he may have taken a life, has brought everyone in the submarine together. (watch the scene, abbreviated, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ8U9t4MgN8)

While in the Gladden Spit Placencia Sanctuary, a few biologists, biology students and I went diving into the open ocean. Literally all we could see was an abyss of blue all around us. Beneath us, however, was the ocean floor, over 125' below us and perfectly visible. We spent nearly an hour blowing bubbles and attempting to attract a whale shark, as bubbles can be mistaken for snapper eggs. The dive was unsuccessful though, and we begrudgingly climbed back into the boat. While finding a place for a second dive, however, my professor points out a fin and yells "DOLPHIN!" Upon the animal's second surfacing, we realized it was definitely not a dolphin. Rather, it was a juvenile whale shark. Almost without speaking, the entire boat dives into the water and swims after it. The whale shark swam so close to us that I had to swim out of the way in order not to touch him, as I wanted to respect the wild animal in a sanctuary. The entire moment was unreal--that creature less than two feet from me was one of the most beautiful animals I had ever seen. Even as a juvenile he was so much larger than me, yet he couldn't harm me at all. Of course, I forgot to grab my camera in the excitement of the moment, but I wasn't mad at myself. If anything, I got to enjoy the moment more fully than I could've with a camera to prove I had experienced it. We swam after the whale shark for a while. One of our girls even lost her flipper from a boat engine that was turned on despite the swimmers all across the water.

I didn't really even want to go diving again, my heart was beating so fast and I could feel warm tears on my face with the cool salt water. I had just seen my favorite animal, the largest fish in the world and the creature whose plush stuffed animal version I sleep with at night. But, the dive master threw our BCDs in, and we strapped our equipment on before descending again. This time, instead of the sandy bottom, we saw a swarm of snappers. They were a complete blur because there were so many of them, constantly swimming and engulfing the entire abyss. Suddenly we found ourselves with another dive group and we all kept swimming in circles, over and over, and I kept getting confused as to who I was supposed to be following. Then our dive master points his finger out into the blue abyss, and I try to make out what he's pointing at. Then, out of complete darkness, a figure emerges. I keep staring at the dark figure as it slowly starts to take a recognizable shape, and I see white spots. Once again my chest starts pounding and I have to remind myself that I'm 50' below the water and need to stay calm--it was a 35' whale shark. I start to swim faster than I knew I could swim after him, snapping pictures with my dive camera and completely disregarding the need to keep breathing. I just find myself staring at him, wanting to understand what I was looking at and in awe of just how huge he was and how he didn't seem to care that we were watching. I was so excited that I actually threw up through my regulator, a habit I've never had, but being someone who swears they were a fish in another life witnessing a whale shark will make you act quite strangely.

I think Wes Anderson captured the scene of complete awe with something so powerful in nature quite perfectly. Aquariums like the one I worked at help others to truly see what else exists in the world and builds curiosity and passion for such life. But actually seeing it in the wild and feeling completely insignificant to a life so profound is a concept beyond my limited understanding. This feeling must be what John Muir felt exploring the Sierra Nevada or why sailors were so afraid of whales. This feeling is what keeps people fighting for the environment when it's completely exhausting. The current situation in the Gulf of Mexico has made me hardly able to eat. To think that not only an entire ecosystem is being hurt by the inefficiency of a corporation living up to its responsibility, but an entire culture is now devastated. Perhaps this disaster will help our political leaders better comprehend how vulnerable the natural world is to our responsibilities. Even if it's hard to convince a politician to protect the whale sharks that he has no idea just how beautiful they truly are, it must mean something to see an entire region infuriated, seafood markets and tourism devastated, and an important coastline flooded with oil and suffering life.

What is Nature?

How would you define nature?

Often times we think of "nature" as green, beautiful landscapes. We think of nature as "natural" and define a word with the very word we are trying to define.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (Man, I'm going to miss being a college student), nature is:

1. Senses relating to physical or bodily power, strength, or substance.
2. Senses relating to mental or physical impulses and requirements.
3.Senses relating to innate character.
4. Senses relating to the material world.

How does this help us to define what nature is? Nature is the sensory experience of bodily strength? Nature is our physical impulses or mental requirements? Nature is the senses related to who we really are? Nature is what is experienced in the material, tangible world?

Timothy Morton discusses how to disassociate our idea of nature as landscape and butterflies, for every aspect of our lives is nature. Just as music is about notes and sounds, music is also about the silences in between notes. Nature is not just what we see, but nature is the mere act of seeing something and the act of perceiving sight through sensory organs. By understanding nature as all of these things and not just pastoral images, ecology must take on new significance. I have no idea what Morton does with this newly constructed ecology as I have only read a chapter of his book, but I'll let you know when I do. (See for yourself: http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/, Zizek claims Morton's book is "Outstanding")

Why do I seek to define what nature is? I think we all too often put nature outside ourselves. We are Homo sapiens, of the Mammalia class, the order of Primates, the phylum Chordata and the Animalia kingdom. Thus, we are part of nature. Even me typing this into a computer is an action I've acquired through natural tendencies of the society I live in. Perhaps by seeing nature in all things, we can better see how intricately interrelated all of nature is and the dire need to resolve the ecological crises. If not for ethics, then we must better tend to our relatives plants, other animals and organic matter because their decline will lead in our own demise.

Walking as Retracing Steps

Despite how much I love food, going to the grocery store every other week becomes tedious and mundane. It takes up my money and time; I always want to buy more than I can afford. Driving over there, I often experience the “joy” that is New Orleans drivers and usually arrive to the store slightly flustered from avoiding swerving vehicles.

Yet, food is what nourishes us; it gives us the strength and energy to live our lives. It builds a communion between families, houses and friends. Why should going to the grocery store be so draining and agonizing?

My roommate Courtney and I decided to walk through Audubon Park to the grocery store. On our walk, we gawked at all the beautiful and inconsistent architecture, about her colorful friends back in Seattle, about my nervousness of graduating. The weather was beautiful, and we even befriended a particularly large turtle that was attempting to crawl through a fence.

While walking, we were able to notice details of our path that we can never see while driving or even riding a bike, as one is normally too concerned with safety.

We arrived at Whole Foods, though it is not a place I particularly enjoy shopping, and did research on the rhetoric of their products and company values. (To be discussed later). Normally when I’m at Whole Foods, I’m incredibly antsy from busy women nearly running me over with grocery carts and the bustle of particularly unhappy people. Yet, I walked around making fun of green marketing with Courtney and actually enjoyed walking around Whole Foods. We even asked questions to the meat employees about what is locally grown and what cloth-aged cheese is to the cheese employees.

And, for the first time, I walked out of Whole Foods feeling content instead of accosted or robbed. (part of this is because I didn’t buy anything). Courtney and I walked back and even befriended a kitty walking around Calhoun Street.


“For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels” (Thoreau, “Walking”) Perhaps Courtney and I were not “re-conquer-ing” the Holy Land of Audubon Park and Magazine Street, but we were learning to seek the presence of beauty in the space we too often overlook and cannot fully see. By making a walk out of a simple chore, such as walking to the grocery store, we become more able to better appreciate the place we live in and its constant changes, the act of acquiring food for our own nourishment and enjoying the presence of good company, as “half the walk is but retracing our steps.” The other must be to better understand the steps we take so that we can walk further.

Lionfish--Flamboyant Badasses of the Reef

This beautiful little baby is a Volitans pterois, otherwise known as a lionfish.

While they may not look particularly violent or dangerous, those spines are filled with venom that can kill other fish and cause extreme pain and breathing difficulties in humans.

Lionfish are carnivorous and attack their prey by herding it by alternating motions of their pectoral fins. When a fish tries to escape, however, the lionfish will stab it and thereby stun it with it's spine. Once stunned, the lionfish will swallow its prey whole.

Each lionfish generally leaves a solitary life unless they are breeding or in infancy. In fact, lionfish will remain hidden in caves floating suspended and ignore other fish, unless they want to eat one. Perhaps more interesting, lionfish males will mate with about three different females. Thus, lionfish are not dangerous and excellent hunters, they are also "players," to use a vernacular term.

Lionfish also do not fear humans who scuba dive. In fact, lionfish often sting divers and cause much more serious effects than the many jellyfish species. This does, however, enable

lionfish to be easy captured for the aquarium industry.

In response to the growth of the aquarium industry, lionfish leaked into the ocean from "recycled" aquariums, causing an invasion in the Georgia and Florida Atlantic coastline. As these fish are particularly "bad ass" due to the aforementioned reasons, their species remains unchecked and have few predators. Thus, they are slowly taking over coastal habitats.

These are both pictures taken at the Georgia Aquarium, aka the most amazing place ever.

Obviously, I take a strong liking to these creatures due to their bizarre natural history.

Journey to the Whaleshark

For my last Spring Break of my undergraduate career, I decided to drive 1,100 miles roundtrip to see the whaleshark at the Georgia Aquarium (which happens to be the largest aquarium in the entire world).

Of course, this roadtrip consisted of camping in particularly cold weather, sleeping on uneven ground and lying on a sunny beach in which the 50 degree wind made us wear sweatshirts. This journey, even if it was miserable in some aspects (especially Wal-mart in Montgomery, AL), rejuvenated my anxiety of graduating and making something of myself. Alain de Botton tells us that the ideal of travel is only achieved in reflecting on one's travels, as the actual experience of traveling is exhausting and never the way one wants it to go.

However, while traveling across five states with my best friend, I found myself enjoying even the most unenjoyable of moments because life is best lived in good humor. We began the journey after spending 5 hours at Pep Boys; my tires were in need of replacing and a. the alignment guy was late by 2 hours b. they didn't know how to start my car and c. they broke the clutch pin, so I had to start my car by getting on my knees and pressing in this broken clutch pin while Jennifer turned the keys. Thus, from the very beginning, our journey was much like the film Little Miss Sunshine.

The Georgia Aquarium was a religious experience for me. The first thing I encountered was a touch pool the size of a classroom full of cownose sting rays and bonnethead sharks. The aquarium divided their exhibits between different ecosystems in the aquatic world: coral reefs, deep ocean, cold water, amazon, gulf coast, etc. They integrated the different ecosystem into the exhibits themselves; The Amazon exhibit was layered with waterfalls, trees, tanks of giant fish on the ceiling to illustrate how interwoven the jungle is, and plenty of information cards detailing information that wasn't merely elementary. People around us were speaking French, German, Spanish, English and Chinese. We had to wait a few minutes by every tank because the aquarium was packed with people united from all different places just to stare at odd animals. Even though there were children screaming and squawking, running into my legs and knocking over each other, I was completely at peace.

I think this is why I believe in zoos. Obviously, there is an ethical and an unethical way to keep an animal in captivity. When handled intelligently, these places like the Georgia Aquarium can help people gain a consciousness of the interconnectedness and complexity of the world outside his or her own life.

Milton's Paradise Revisited (But not Regained)

While reading Muir's account on his thousand mile walk, I found it interesting that one of his few belongings in his satchel was Paradise Lost. Additionally, Gary Snyder composed a poem on reading Paradise Lost from a mountaintop in California. How is it that two naturalists bring an epic poem on the fall of man and lost paradise while they trek through the wilderness? Snyder obviously takes a tongue and cheek approach to the poem by pointing out that the Garden will outlive fallen man (Myths and Texts), but why would they chose a poem specifically about man rather than nature? (Instead of something like Wordsworth)

Consider the opening of Paradise Lost:

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death upon the world, and all our woe.

Here, man's first disobedience--his fall--is that he takes the fruit from a tree that he is forbidden to take from. Thus, he takes the seeds and potentiality for the tree to grow from the tree and in stealing from a tree, he brings the problem of death and suffering unto man. In this sense, it could be interpreted that man's dominion over nature denies his place in Paradise.

The thesis to Paradise Lost is as follows:

What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support,
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.

Milton's point in writing Paradise Lost is to make sense of the suffering and death in the world. i.e. to help others understand why Paradise has been lost. (And if Paradise is lost because Satan (representation of dominion) convinces Eve to steal an apple that isn't hers, this says a lot about man's attempt to overpower the natural world)

And, to jump ahead, after Adam and Eve join hands and walk away from the Garden, we can turn to Milton's poem Paradise Regained in which Jesus regains Paradise for men by denying Satan and his dominion.

In all honesty, this is not how I read Paradise Lost. It's one of my favorite poems because it allows us to understand and even like Satan, making sense of why people do terrible things and helping us to better reconcile injustice. Reinterpretating Genesis to teach stewardship over dominion, however, is a worthwhile art in adapting our culture to a more ecological consciousness.