Avatar is one of those movies that just kind of sits in your brain -- but not in a good way, at least not for me. There were a lot of problems with it, a lot of little niggling details that won't leave me alone, a lot of archetypes that just wren't quite realized. So I'm going to talk about them.
First off, so we're all on the same page, here's the plot in one sentence: This mining company is trying to get "unobtainium" from the surface of the moon Pandora, but the Na'vi are in the way so Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington have to use future technology to inhabit artificially created alien bodies and try to talk the cute blue aliens into leaving their home.
Now: the stuff I've been thinking about:
1. Mind Rape.
This is the one I need to get off my chest first. The Na'avi, James Cameron's blue cat-people are scientifically designed to be as visually friendly as possible, while still being different enough to be alien. They're a cross between humans, which are what we are, and cats, which are adorable. They're tall, lithe, very strong, flexible, and the women have boobs. Finally, they're blue -- which is great, it's a really home-y color, you know?
But they're also distinctly alien, in that they ride around on horses, shoot bows and arrows, and have a very close connection to the natural world they live in, unlike anything on-- yes, yes, okay James Cameron, we get it. The Na'vi are Native Fucking Americans. You made an allegory. Good job.
Except they're not Native Americans, are they? They're an idealized, revisionist depiction of them centered around they're aforementioned relationship with the natural world, one that is pretty explicitly sexual. When Jake Sully's (Sam Worthington) blue Avatar Na'vi is playing with his hair-penis, the organ through which he can connect his brain to all the other living things on the planet, the Sigourney Weaver Avatar tells him to not "play with that thing, or (he'll) go blind."
The Na'avi use their hair-penises to connect with everything--literally, every living thing-- that they encounter, from the animals they ride to the tree they live in. When their tendrils touch a horse's, for example, they're bonded, and they can then communicate.
Except it's never just communication. Once a Na'avi connects with another animal, that animal becomes it's bitch. There is literally no exception to this rule: When Jake connects to his first horse… thing, the animal's eyes go wide, it shrieks in alarm, and tries desperately to buck him off. Same thing with the flying creature he encounters: he literally has to wrestle the beast to the ground, and force his hair-penis into the creature's head in order to render it completely docile. Even the Pandora's God, "Eywa," is compelled to do what she's told when Jake sticks his penis in her tree.
I really, really wish that was a metaphor.
2. The Metaphors, They Are A-Literalizin'
As I said, the mystical and religious relationship that Native Americans (and, actually, many cultures from around the world, I just immediately think "Native American" because of how ethnocentric I am) share with their surroundings is made literally true for the Na'vi. There's a network of information on the planet, Sigourney Weaver tells us, that all living things are a part of. She even suggests that it may be electric. This is how Jack Sully can hear the songs of the Na'vi's dead ancestors when he touches his hair-penis to the Tree of Ages. Later, when arguing with the Evil Corporate Executive, she calls it "the real value" of the place.
Well, yeah -- of course, the planets a giant computer, and one that we can quite easily hook-up to if its run off electricity. But as far as the mysticality angle that Cameron's going for, I feel like this is a game break. It's no longer "mystical" (literally, "transcending human understanding") if you can read it with a fucking volt-detector.
Imagine a Lakota explaining to a child the Wakan Tanka ("Great Spirit" or, more accurately, "Great Mystery"), how it is integrated into the fabric of the material world, into the lives of all people, and how we become a piece of it when we die. Now imagine that child responds by pulling out his iPhone, and trying to pick up the Wakan Tanka on his Airport as a wireless network. You'd probably try to explain that he'd missed the point. Now imagine that person has $283 Million Dollars -- and he answers to no one.
Well, I guess you don't have to imagine. You can just go see Avatar.
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