Josh Lanter 11/14/13 J314 Avatar Analysis Avatar (2009) was a sci-fi motion picture directed by James Cameron

that received a lot of praise and criticism after the release. The film captures many themes of society ranging from colonialism and capitalism to ecology and culture. This was the first time I have seen this movie and after watching and engaging with the film I finally realize, for myself, the magnitude of it and why it created so much buzz. Along with the different themes that symbolize the American culture, the overall production of this film was remarkable. I found myself invested with Jake Sully and the Navi people as Jake tried to infiltrate their tribe, at first for purely economical reasons of trying to exploit the indigenous people for their unobtanium, which is abundantly rich around Hometree, to becoming one with the Navi people. I enjoyed watching his journey as he progressed from a child, as Neytiri first calls him, to becoming one with the tribe, and at the same time, one with the new biological body he controls. But with every peak, there is the inevitable valley, and I found myself worrying about these valleys before they even came. This was due to my knowledge of the film without even seeing it. Through media and face-to-face interactions with my peers, I knew that this was an extremely long movie filled with underlying themes about our society. So once I seen Jake becoming one with the Navi, I knew there was going to be a downfall and I found myself becoming tense emotionally and physically as I waited for the next move to happen. I watched with movie in standard, 2D technology, but you can tell that this film was made as a 3D motion picture. I dont think it makes a huge difference emotionally and physically as you watch it, but if I was able to re-watch it in

3D, I believe it would cause the viewer to become that much more attached to the surroundings. The 3D would engulf you, the viewer, into the movie and into Pandora, causing the emotional and physical attachment to increase. As stated earlier, Avatar was filled with societal themes: colonialism, capitalism, ecology, and culture. Antonio Lopez states that this movie presents two paradigm extremes: the world system and anima mundi, (128) and these themes play into this view seamlessly. We can categorize colonialism and capitalism into the world system, because those are two elements to our society that has made American a super power for many decades now. Then we can place ecology and culture with anima mundi. Anima mundi is the connection between all living things on the planet, it is even explained as the worlds soul. Ecology and culture both play into this belief because they help connect people with the land around them and help create their own society. We have seen colonialism and capitalism throughout our history and it is no surprise that it would be one of the focal issue points that Cameron would hone in on with this film. Colonialism was evident by the alien colonial forces attempting to conquer a planet, (Lopez, 128) for the sole sake of retrieving unobtanium. This mineral that they were looking to mine also plays into our problem of capitalism, where we are will do to anything for the monetary benefit. This idea of a world system that Lopez discusses really captures what America has been about throughout history. We have gone to many countries and imposed our will to get what we are seeking after. That is exactly how our country was founded and how the north and south came together to create the union. And most recently we seen this with the Iraq war, where we sent troops over the intervene and promote democracy, when in reality we go over to set up a military base to

control another section of the world and create more revenue, or capital. Colonialism and capitalism go hand-in-hand and Cameron captures these ideological fallacies in the world. Then we get the other paradigm, or theme, that Lopez states as the anima mundi, which is represented as the Navi tribe. They capture the ecological and cultural belief that all indigenous people through history, and the world today, have. The Navi have a strong tie with the land and believe that it is sacred. They bond with all walks of life and nature itself to create a sense of one with the world that they inhabit. That is their culture, as a tribe, and they believe that they should fight for what is theirs, just like many indigenous tribes have done in history. As they bond with the trees, the animals, and the land, we see, as viewers, they theme of ecology and how much the environment actually means to people. It shows that many other cultures value the environment and the landscape in order to live life to the fullest and that we shouldnt take the environment for granted, as we normally do in a capitalist society. Earlier, Lopez states that the alien colonial forces try to conquer Pandora, which is to say that the savages in this film is the human race, rather than the indigenous people that have been made to be the true alien throughout history. And he is correct. The humans are the real aliens in this film. They go into a foreign area and destroy this sacred land because there is something there that they want. Only savages and barbarians do those types of things. This plays directly into Americas history as well, however. The humans in the movie, barging into Pandora and destroying the land represents the British when we first came to America. They came in, pushed the native people out of their land, and took over, just like the humans in Avatar attempted to do.

Pandora, as a planet, is interesting to look at. It is hard to conceptualize why Cameron names this planet Pandora. The most logical explanation would be that this planet symbolizes the Greek mythology of Pandoras Box, where all the evil of the world was placed in a jar given to Pandora. This mythology can be related to the movie because Pandora is a place that they humans are afraid of. At one point in the movie, Colonel Miles Quaritch, as he talks to Jake, says that this it is nothing like any tour hes been on. He tells Jake that he was on three tours in Nigeria and didnt have one scratch, then first day in Pandora got attacked, shows how dangerous Pandora actually is. This plays into the Pandoras Box idea, as the myth goes, if you open Pandoras Box, all hell breaks loose, and that happens in the movie. The humans, or aliens, enter Pandora to take out the Hometree and a battle ensues. They are able to take out the tree, but the Navi regroup and are able to stop them as they try to wipe out their sacred tree, the Tree of Souls. White men have never really encountered a defeat like that in history and in the movie they do. Shows that Pandora is really deadly and they should not have tried to mess with it, ties in nicely with Pandoras Box. This film focuses a lot on what we have covered in class. One of the big ones was global capital hegemony, where, as James Lull points out are the flow of ideas, data, and points of view serves the global elite to the detriment of everyone else (Lull, 59). This is represented perfectly in the theme of the world system where we try to conquer land for our financial benefit while wiping out a race. Avatar also plays into consciousness, which is ideological image systems cannot impose or confer meaning on people (Lull, 28). This is shown with Jake and how he goes from military conformant to switching his

views and becoming one with the Navi and helping them out. He does not allow the view of the majority influence what his conscious believes is right. When Lopez says, the film depicts different manifestations of technological prosthesis, (131) he is discussing the use of biomechanical bodies that they humans use in order to allow Jake to interact with the Navi while looking like them. This is interesting to look at because Jake, who is a paraplegic, is able to walk again for the first time in years while using this Avatar body. Shows the technological ability we have as a society to create technology to help the disabled continue on with life as if nothing had happened. It builds on the prosthetic body parts we use today and shows a different use of prosthetics where he is able to control a whole new body. Although this movie did an excellent job at shining light on some controversial issues we have in the world, it does turn its back on one: marketing and consumerism. Like with all large budget, motion pictures, there were many promotions done to sell collectible items to fans, from video games to action figures. This is a problem since they both cause waste in the environment. Plastic for the action figures is really bad for the environment and creating these video games cause harmful e-waste along with the mining that had to be done in order to create the PlayStations that they are played on. This contradicts the whole anima mundi theme the movie had. Also, the biodegradable 3D glasses that were given out at 3D viewings were marked symbol 7which usually means unrecyclable (129). This is another counterintuitive aspect that causes the movie to contradict itself with the ecological standpoint the movie shows. All in all the movie grabbed the attention of millions of people and opened peoples eyes to the hardships we have gone through in history and continue to go through.

Sources

Lopez, Antonio. The Media Ecosystem: What Ecology Can Teach Us about Responsible Media Practice. N.p.: EVOLVER EDITIONS, 2012. Web.

Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. Perf. Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana. 20th Century Fox, 2009.