Gara’s Weblog

Yes, I went to watch it. It’ one of those things one has to do- cross the line and join the enemy, in order to understand it. Enemy is a big word, though- I had nothing much against Avatar except from the fact that an obscene amount of money has been spent on it, and that people were raving far too much about it, so I kind of knew what to expect.

Visually it’s beautiful, and the amount of work behind just amazing. You sit there wearing those funny glasses and you don’t cease to be amazed at the images. But (there had to be a but, since it’s me writing ;) I was annoyed by part of the message, and I will explain why.

The plot is simple, as simple as it can be. It has all the elements of a Hollywood super production which is designed to trigger our most basic emotions, and there’s the good and the bad, in the typically manichean Hollywood way, and it has the classic love story in it, which of course is never explicitly sexual- this is Hollywood, and it’s rating is 12A, so you know, we are allowed to show violence here but absolutely no sex because that’s baaad (although the bonding with the hunting birds is a very clear reference to penetration. Or am I imagining things here?).

In any case, there are two worlds represented in the film: that of the humans, and the one inhabited by the indigenous. The first one is presented as a civilisation which has pretty much collapsed and is just eager to destroy yet another world after already having destroyed their own, and the second one is the fantastic version of a paradise, a world covered in green, rich in natural resources, in which the inhabitants live by a sense of morality in which nature is the god from which you just borrow, but you don’t take.

Up to here, it’s all absolutely fine- I have no problem in a fictional representation which presents us as the destroyers of our own natural heritage, which in fact we are, but the problem lies in the way it’s depicted: humans have abandoned all sense of spirituality, they are obsessed with science, and in order to reach their target they are ready to destroy whatever lies in their path, including lives. This is a civilisation which has evolved into this monstrosity; the other is still as rich as it can be because the indigenous maintain a set of beliefs that revolves not only around the respect for nature, but also around very primitive (the politically correct term would be “ethnic”, but I will not use it) ceremonies, a firm belief in spirits and an energy (here we have that word again…) that holds the world together and should be respected.

It really annoys me, this line of thinking which rules out the possibility for the feeling of spirituality, of awe, of deep appreciation of nature, of amazement before the world, from the minds of those who have chosen to believe only in science as the explanation for this universe (so the comic strip above), and pairs wisdom and goodness with the executing of ceremonies and the belief in the esoteric and the unknown. There is no such need, and religious skepticism and spirituality (in a very pagan way) are not contradictory.

So it’s not only the typical Hollywoodian structure and the emotion-triggering tricks which is so appealing to the audience, but also that back-to-the-origins kind of thing I’m always going on about (you must excuse my insistence- we all have our weaknesses…), that sense of communion, that gregarious “togetherness”. The hero wouldn’t be the hero if it weren’t from his desire to join “The People”, and the “The People” wouldn’t have such a world if it weren’t for that clan-like organisation (which, of course, we know is a very effective means for preservation, but that’s a different story and I won’t digress). Individuality is here let out of the equation, very clearly. And the world that is doomed is the one which has chosen the path of science and skepticism, while the world of those who have been “chosen” is the one which has preserved the primitive beliefs in the unknown all along. So of course, of course it must be appealing.