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[Christine Marran]

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