Avatar lets us return to Eden
Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 6:10PMIn its short life, the movie Avatar has already become many things to many viewers: science fiction dream, action-adventure epic, visual spectacle, technological triumph, cautionary tale, and morality play.
Box office conquered, Avatar also proves the culture has shifted. Part role-playing game come true and part special effects masterpiece, its hybrid gamer-geek pedigree is as glaring as the blue skin of Na'vi race director James Cameron has brought to life. Cameron's movie --- alongside the rise of Harry Potter, the return of Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, and the obsession with online games like World of Warcraft --- shows that fantasy is no longer a shunned or exotic side dish. The genre has become the main dish.
And what is that transformation all about? I think that classic geek dream --- "if I were only not me" --- has leaked now into the general culture. Even the jocks want to be someone else. Fantasies about transcending the self ain't just for 98-pound weaklings anymore.
And there's this twist: we spend so much time in front of our computers, chained there in effect, that we are like much like the paralyzed protagonist of Avatar, Jake Sully, who finds joy and transcendence through his athletic, virtual Na'vi feline body let lose on the jungle planet Pandora, where the movie's action takes place. Sully feels so unleashed, so uninhibited, that his real life pales in comparison. In Sully's words: "Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world and in here is the dream."
More than one critic --- and James Cameron himself --- has already compared Avatar to movies like Dances With Wolves and its ilk (Lawrence of Arabia; Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now). It's a classic clash of civilizations or of cultures premise: jaded Western military man crosses to the other side, discovers something untainted and wholesome in a tribal culture, falls for the hot local gal, and thereby completes his "going native" conversion by switching sides and eventually leading the natives to fight their oppressors – his old self.
Sully's journey may be the well-worn hero's journey, but with a new chapter. His journey is not just about saving the day. It's about becoming one with nature, returning to state of Eden, tapping into a wholeness with the world as Mother Nature, God or the deity of your choice meant it to be. To be re-aquainted with our primal selves.
For who doesn't want to be better, faster, stronger (like the Six Million Dollar Man), leaping through the forest and bounding across the jungle canopy, hunting some beasts and conquering others? To be one with mystical forces of healing, the "one-ness" of the living, breathing, interconnected mass of greenness that is the earth? And to be able to do cool stuff like fly dragons and kill the nasties?
The irony here is that it took Cameron a gazillion dollars, 12 years and some very amazing, so-called "cutting-edge" gadgets--- computers, 3D cameras, digital draftsmanship --- to bring us this fantasy tale of how technology threatens the new world, Pandora; how it has wrecked humanity; and how it keeps us from being that lean, mean, agile, fighting machine-nature boy/girl.
Our true selves.
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