Spiritual Ecology by Sponsel Leslie E

Author:Sponsel, Leslie E.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greenwood Publishing
Published: 2012-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Avatar, Opening Pandora’s Box, James Cameron

We still have time to fix this [ecocrisis] and we still have time to make it better, but really what is needed here is that the human race needs to wake up and look forward with the sense that we’ve got to change the way we live. … What we have to do is to transform ourselves yet again into something that has never existed on this planet before, which is a kind of techno-indigenous people. … We will use high technology and science to provide us with the energy we need, but they’ll be sustainable solutions. Nature is not our enemy, it is our sustenance and we need it, and we need nature healthy for us to be healthy and to survive long-term, and that’s the realization we have to come to and that’s the next stage in evolution that we have to reach.

James Cameron.1

Avatar, an unprecedented epic of science fiction, has become the greatest of all blockbusters movies so far, attracting a record number of viewers and fans worldwide while grossing a record 2.7 billion dollars or more, including from its spin-off books, video game, action toys, and the like.2 In many respects it is the most innovative and spectacular movie ever, as well as the most successful and expensive one so far. Many viewers shed tears, some become depressed, and a few even suicidal. What is this all about? The appeal of the movie as popular culture is surely influenced by several factors, the combination varying to some degree with different members of the audience.3 Indeed, the reactions to Avatar have been compared to a Rorschach test.4

Certainly Avatar has great entertainment value with its allegorical hero’s journey, romantic love story, and epic battle between good and evil. The main hero, Jake Sully, is a paraplegic ex-marine. He joins an expedition to an exotic planet called Pandora to help mine its rare mineral, which has a value far higher than gold and is called unobtanium. The Na’vi are the indigenous inhabitants of Pandora, 10-foot-tall blue-skinned humanoids with some feline features including their yellow eyes, ear shape, and long tail.5

Avatara is a Hindu concept regarding the terrestrial manifestation of a deity such as Vishnu in human or animal form to save the world from imminent destruction.6 In this film the scientists of the invading empire design avatars, Na’vi-human hybrid bodies that resemble Na’vi but with a human mind. Jake is assigned to become an avatar in order to gather intelligence about the Na’vi for the purposes of the mining and associated military operations. However, in the process he is attracted to their lifestyle and to the beautiful heroine named Neytiri.7 Moreover, Jake begins “going naïve” by identifying more with the Na’vi than with his fellow humans.”8 Eventually Jake rebels against his own kind as they attempt to forcefully exploit the rare and highly valued mineral wealth of Pandora through warfare. Some of his Terran (human) colleagues, including scientists, also rebel in their empathy for the innocent Na’vi, enchanted by their seemingly idyllic life and wondrous edenic environment.

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