Avatar

[Johan Nordstrom]

Regarding the interconnected trees I think that the author John
Crowley is spot on when he traces that element back to Ursula LeGuins
story The Word for World is Forest, and comments "one of her lesser
and more platitudinous all-life-is-sacred-and-women-know-it stories,
up to and including interconnected wise trees and brutal uncaring
corporate and military types." Crowleys blog can be found at
http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/ and his entry on Avatar is dated
27 December.

Johan

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 11:16 PM, Christine Marran <marran at umn.edu> wrote:
> I agree with Aaron's reading of Avatar as producing a nature that is
> essentially the Internet rendered "natural"--a "Gaia-like deity."  Sticking
> to the question of nature in the world of Pandora, yes, there are visual
> similarities with Miyazaki's floating worlds.  But whereas Miyazaki's bodies
> in skies emphasizes floating, Avatar emphasizes a roller coaster ride
> sensibility--a very unnatural kind of feeling (although I didn't see it in
> 3-D).  The Miyazaki moment for me was the dinosaur type figures bursting
> through the trees to protect the forest, but this may be a bit of a stretch.
> Early on in the film, much discussion was had by the scientist Grace (S.
> Weaver) about how the death of the Na'vi hometree and taking of the
> unobtanium would produce all sorts of damage since all life is
> "interconnected."  There may be a sequel in production based on this point
> but my sense was that after 20 minutes of eardrum-splitting bombing of the
> tree by a radically two-dimensional character, the tree fell, the exodus was
> made, and life began again, initially with the life of a human reborn as
> Na'vi.  Though the film began with some interesting details suggesting that
> there would be a detailed world developed in the film, ultimately little is
> made about interconnectedness in nature beyond teary handholding in a circle
> and listening to the memory tree which functions as the supposed heart of a
> network of plants and animals. Visually it was extremely beautiful but my
> hope is that the sequel will expand on the "cartoonish" figuration of the
> notion of "interconnectedness" in this film where you have to actually plug
> in to your pet.
>
> Christine
>>
>> Just a quick response:
>>
>> When you look at it, the similarities with Miyazaki are there: the image
>> of the forest, the non-human world, of flying, etc. But I do wonder if this
>> film doesn't have a very different vision of nature. Miyazaki's paean to
>> natural forces is not unrelated to his insistence on sticking to some analog
>> animation techniques, but Cameron's film falls into the contradiction that
>> many cinematic celebrations of nature do: they praise the premodern,
>> pre-technological world using the most advanced technology there is. Avatar,
>> I think, tries to avoid this, but only by radically re-defining nature in a
>> way I doubt Miyazaki would approve. Many can of course see that the
>> narrative situation of Avatar is essentially that of video games, especially
>> online RPG where you, immobile at your station, get to roam the world, kill
>> people, and get the girl via your avatar. Avatar plays off the discontent
>> with modern technological reality by offering the fantasy of really
>> abandoning one's body for the game world. But the trick here is that the
>> Avatar planet, with its database of souls and memories, of creatures with
>> Firewire plugs, of trees that allow one access to the network, is
>> essentially the Internet rendered into a Gaia-like deity. In other words, I
>> think Avatar tries to have its ideological cake and eat it too by spouting a
>> critique of industrial technological capitalism (mining and machines) and
>> praising a natural, premodern society, while all the while defining that
>> society as precisely the new media technological capitalism that we have
>> today. I very much doubt Miyazaki, regardless of all his own ideological
>> ambiguities, would buy this.
>>
>> That was my initial reaction upon seeing the film (albeit at a theater in
>> Japan with a bunch of technological glitches--quite appropriate, I might
>> add!).
>>
>> Aaron Gerow
>> Associate Professor
>> Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
>> Yale University
>> 53 Wall Street, Room 316
>> PO Box 208363
>> New Haven, CT 06520-8363
>> USA
>> Phone: 1-203-432-7082
>> Fax: 1-203-432-6764
>> e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
>> site: www.aarongerow.com
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Christine L. Marran
> Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Cultural Studies
> Department of Asian Languages and Literatures
> University of Minnesota
>
>
>