The film's protagonist is Jake Sully, a paraplegic former Marine, who is on the planet Pandora where a corporation is mining a precious mineral called unobtainium. After a fiasco occurs, Jake is separated from his group and ends up being incorporated into one of the native tribes living on Pandora. The tribe's spiritual leader instructs her daughter, Neytiri, to teach Jake the ways of their people. From there, Jake sees just how impressive the way that the tribe interacts with nature. They describe it as a "neural network" where all of the Pandoran organisms are interconnected. When they hunt for food, they say a few prayer-like phrases after slaying the animal. When they walk through the forest floor, their steps light up the ground. When they go home, their home sweet home is a tree. When they go to sleep, palm-tree-like fronds wrap themselves around their bodies. Pandora, although CGI-enhanced, seemed like such a magical world. I wanted to live there myself, despite how childish that might sound. It made me think if this "magical world" was possible here, on Earth, and if it is a place we really would want to live in.
Even though everything is so brightly colored, pure, and appealing on Pandora, I feel that we won't be able to reach that environment ourselves. We have reached a stage where we rely so heavily on technology and we are so wrapped up in work that nature feels like a separate entity from our daily lives. Vacations and retirement are points in time where we can connect to nature but they are merely points in the future that we yearn for. I'm not advocating for us to unearth what we have built and go back to the basics and retreat to the forest and live our lives there. It's just that after watching Avatar, I wonder if we, as an entire tribe if you will, would be happier if we saw ourselves as a piece of nature; the notion that our souls and our existence is an extension of Mother Earth. The movie conveyed that the natives on Pandora are beyond the idea of eco-friendliness. Instead, they truly appreciate and honor nature for what it provides for them. If we saw ourselves as a part of nature, some more consciousness would go behind our actions. Demolishing forests to build metropolitan landscapes and exploiting nature as money-making tactics would all seem sickening if we saw nature more as something living with us and a part of us. I was taken aback at the feeling of disgust and anger when I watched the corporation pellet bombs and bullets at the indigenous tribe on Pandora. I felt like I was watching a human being tortured. It goes back to what we read and discussed in class about incorporating nature into our lives and seeing it in a new light where work goes hand-in-hand with nature. Maybe we need a paradigm shift where we not only see nature as something we need to give back to but as something we need to learn to live with and form a stronger appreciation for that bond between all living things and nature. Maybe then we will have Pandora on earth and I wouldnt wish I was ten feet tall, green-eyed, and blue.
Though I have yet to see Avatar, I feel like from your description that Pandora seems like a modern Eden to many. I feel that over time, a brightly colored fantasy-land is what many people hope to once find, instead of something like a forest or jungle. It's most likely just the media and technology that has shaped these views, along with the realization by many that the typical Eden we once thought of is even more unattainable than a world like Pandora.
ReplyDeleteLike Isabella, I have yet to see Avatar as well, but I thought that I would mention how much your description of the native "peoples" of Pandora remind me of many descriptions of Native Americans. In a way, I feel like (from your description of the movie), while it also sends the message that men should see nature as more a part of themselves than outside of it, it also sends a stereotypical image of native peoples. I wonder if this stereotypical image relates back the one sketched out by... was it Merchant? It was in one of the readings in Uncommon Ground, at any rate, where the author described how one group of Native Americans weren't given a voice at all and the other given a collective voice.
ReplyDeleteIsabella: I feel that, although Pandora was set out to visually be an Edenic narrative of nature, it spoke about how we should respectfully utilize this eden-like place to make it so. In one part of the movie, Naytiri tells Jake Sully that killing of nature should only be necessary (unlike when she had to kill some dog-like creatures to safe Jake.) I think we should be environmentally conscious of what we do and not waste the resources we have. Perhaps thats the only way a world like Pandora can be possible.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was watching the movie, I did feel that the entertainment industry was painting this "stereotypical" image of natives. However, again, what I found intriguing was that I didnt take away the usual message of "let's not waste resources". Instead I realized that we should have a more profound appreciation for nature and the resources around us. The natives on Pandora utilized their natural resources in a way where they were conscious about their actions. Not only did they make sure resources werent wasted, but they recognized how fortunate they are to live in such an environment.
ReplyDeleteCrystal, I had the same epiphany after I watched Avatar. Instead of simply "reducing, reusing, or recycling," I feel that we needed to shift to an attitude where we "respect" nature. If we respect nature, then we are more likely to care about what happens to it and move to use it sustainably as the characters in Avatar did. I feel that the only way for this to happen is if nature takes over and wins the battle (as what happens in the movie), especially in a world of capitalism and self-serving people.
ReplyDeleteRegina: I think a lot of people thought the same thing as you. Many have paralleled this move with Pocahontas, dubbing it as the space version of Pocahontas, so it would make sense that the natives of Pandora would be seen as the natives of America (and the human intruders as American colonists).
Hooooo boy! There's so much to be said about Avatar, and this is the second or third time the movie's come up on this blog. I do think Regina is right to point to the movie's easy romanticization of native peoples, but here are some other things I find interesting about the film:
ReplyDeleteThe role of technology--at first glance, technology seems to be equated with the invasive colonizers of the planet (military robots, guns, vehicles, even Grace's scientific equipment), but the Na'vi also use a kind of "living technology" in the form of their spirit trees and their very biology (the hair braid's fusing with the trees and "horses" is reminiscent of a power cord connection, no?). Their communication system is a kind of "living network."
Gender--why must the spiritual leaders of the tribe be female, while the males are clearly the warriors? Also, single women don't make out very well in this film, from the pilot who dies to the scientist martyr.
No fear of heights? The nature of Pandora doesn't seem to be very much like the nature we have here on Earth, if only because everything is larger, higher, and at times defies the physical laws of our universe. Often we think of nature as terrestrial, or aquatic, but Pandoran nature is very much about heights, floating islands, and command of the air.
Well I don't know why but when I first watched this movie I thought it was full of remorse and regret of what the US had treated native Americans and how we undermined natives systems of beliefs. This movie is like what if we would of joined then and how better thing and in peace we would be with our surrounding. We Americans then would be working with nature, and not being part of a mass genocide because of our greed.
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