In James Cameron's Avatar – Philosophy, Ecology, Ideology and Ontology on Pandora
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The “Double Mirror” in James Cameron’s “Avatar” – Philosophy, Ecology, Ideology 23 and Ontology on Pandora Doru POP THE “DOUBLE MIRROR” IN JAMES CAMERON'S AVATAR – PHILOSOPHY, ECOLOGY, IDEOLOGY AND ONTOLOGY ON PANDORA Abstract. This article is mainly a reading of Another Pocahontas story, ideologies that make of Cameron's “Avatar”, or is there something more? based on the fact that Cameron has integrated multiple ideologies within the story frame This was one of the early critical of his 3D movie. The research starts with observations regarding the movie. Most the discussion on the problem of avatars in of the online, non-fans, skeptics and the history of culture and philosophy and critics have pointed out that this is just moves towards the description of concepts another “Pocahontas” story: A native from neurosciences, deep ecologism and woman (Indian - Omaticaya) named Marxism or Feminism that have influenced (Pocahontas - Neytiri) leads the white James Cameron's narrative. The author uses Northrop Frye’s concept of double mirror, man (John Smith – Jake Sully) into the as a symbolic interpretation form, meant to wilderness (North America - Pandora), explain the key oppositions in the movie, and during this experience he learns which are not only the relationship between the way of the people (Indian - Na’vi) human and aliens, but also those of mind and becomes their saviour (Toruk over matter, nature versus technology and Macto). One possible answer is that the power against community. All these concepts technological achievement matches the are towards followed in their convergence a constant double representation, practiced simplicity of the narrative thread and with regard both to character development while 60% of this movie is artificial and narrativity and with respect to audience reconstruction, it transports the viewer and actors, and in the changes of the dynamics deep into the fantastic flora of Pandora, of cinema production in the XXI Century. an exotic moon outside the solar system, in forests populated by fabulous animals, EKPHRASIS, 1/2009 with creatures belonging to another Integrating Methodologies world and another way of life. And still, in Visual Culture Research pp. 23-51 24 Doru POP emplotment (Barthes, 1975, 32). For it is we, as mesmerized spectators, who are suspended in an avatar-like trance. This is where the first element of the double nature, of the double mirroring in this movie is coming into place from the very start. The simplicity of the narrative helps us follow Jake Sully as he is offered the possibility to become his own avatar while we are at our turn avatars of the second degree. The key argument here is that Cameron’s movie is more than the accessible storytelling, designed for a global audience, or the descent from traditional American narrative, going back to Fenimore Cooper. This is a step forward from James Stewart’s 1950s “Broken Arrow”, or Kevin Costner’s this is a simplistic, linear storytelling, “Dancing with the Wolves”, where the covered in a too overt ideology. Upon white men abandon their own identity the arrival on the planetoid called for the sake of love. This is more than Pandora, the main character, Jake Sully, the re-telling of the story in Little Big a former marine, now paraplegic, whose Man (1970), where the massacre of the twin brother unexpectedly died and left Sioux nation becomes the vengeance of him to take his place in controlling an the Omaticaya against the (mostly) white “avatar” of a being having a mixed DNA men aggression on Pandora. Also, Avatar – belonging to this dead brother and a provides more than the landscapes in The creature belonging to the Na’vi culture Horse Whisperer (1998), revamped into a on Pandora – falls in love, transforms 3D extravaganza meant to bring into action himself, and ends up saving the entire planet. How can we escape this apparent the nostalgia for a simpler way of life. simplicity? Roland Barthes, reading It is a philosophical jump into the Zola, has solved this question. Although phenomenology of the mind, a rethinking the ideology is obvious, the tedious of the relationship between matter and nature of the author’s intent is clear and mind, possessing the ontological question sometimes aggressive, but the pleasure of life after death and the nature of soul, of reading or, in the case of Cameron’s and thus of immortality, and tackling the Avatar, the pleasure of seeing fantastic epistemological problems of mediated worlds supersedes this superficiality of reality and philosophy of alien religion. The “Double Mirror” in James Cameron’s “Avatar” – Philosophy, Ecology, Ideology 25 and Ontology on Pandora As for the term “double mirror”, it of the Na’vi is the reverse of Earth. It is comes from Northrop Frye’s interpre- not by chance that the planet in the Alfa tation of the biblical myth of Exodus, Centauri system, around which Pandora referring to the “U” shape of the symbolic gravitates, is called Polyphemus. For in return. The “double mirror” in “Avatar” Cameron’s works the multiple links with is similar – maybe with the added multiple and different mythologies is an allegory of the binocular, stereoscopic artistic statement. The connection here projection that comes to mind because is clear and explicit: Pandora, the wife of the 3D technology – in that it has a of Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus, who constant returning to its initial reference has released suffering into the human point (Frye and MacPherson, 2004). The world, becomes now an entity that is symbolism and the mythology in Avatar founded on peace, interior balance, (as well as the ideological structures natural equilibrium and love. On the and the ontological connotations) are other hand Polyphemus, the cyclops constant returns, in a “U” shape, to very killed by Odysseus, governs a planetary much human problems. system dominated not by deceit and rational deception, as the hero from Ithaca The lost paradise of Western has put it into action, but an universe mythology and artificial reality guided by the total openness between The double mirror strikes us the very the groups and living beings there. In a moment we arrive on the alien planetoid word, Pandora is everything Earth is not, – everything about Pandora has a magical and, by consequence, the world we enter reference, for it is taken from the very by magic is a complete reversal, a mirror beginning of the Western culture. This is replica of our own world. This is again the first of the double mirrors Cameron the double mirroring we are looking for – puts into place, and it is not even a Pandora is a negative replica of our own concealed one. At the moment of the world, and in the same time the movie is “prayer” to Eywa, Jake Sully compares mirroring for us, at an individual level, a the situation on Earth, where humans dimension for escaping from reality into have “killed their mother” with that an artificial reality that is so palpable we on Pandora. Pandora (and its Mother cannot elude its attractiveness. Goddess, Eywa) is a reversed reference On the other hand, from the start of to Gaia, the Mother-Goddess of Terra, the earliest Greek civilizations to the this being even more powerful since in discovery of the Americas, there was Greek mythological representations the a constant stimulation generated by iconography of Gaia is indistinguishable the myth of the Lost Paradise. Another from that of Pandora. If within human utopian paradise, is not an innovative mythology Pandora is the reverse of Gaia, concept. But this recurrent myth, together in the Pandoran mythology the planet with the Edenic nature of the computer 26 Doru POP generated Garden in another planetary becoming acceptable. All this time, system, has multiple connotations, it Cameron is constantly mixing pictures can also be Samsara, the absolute illusory with double meaning, generating an reality in Buddhism transformed by 3D artificial reality that allows us to connect technology. So Cameron is mixing again with it. If we look in the background of two different cultural representations, Hieronymus Bosch’s Eden (the left panel and out of this double mirroring a new of the Garden of Delights) it is populated symbolic context is created. by similar colors and shapes, whereas Out of this comes what Myron Krueger, the new Adam and Eve are Jake and one of the most important theorists of Neytiri. All this time, Pandora is strongly artificial reality considers to be the aim connoted with the place Euhemerus of of such a world: connecting mind and Messene called Panchaia (παγχαΐα), body in a new intellectual experience of fantastic and remote island recounted the world. For Krueger the body needs also be Eusebius of Chaesareea, Ovid to rediscover a long forgotten dynamics and other Greek-Roman histories and from the invention of writing, and the narratives1. This is a world that never separation thus following between mind and the body (Krueger, 1991). We partake into a “composed expe- 1 “The nature of frankincense and the rience” of life, one possible because we preparing of it is like this: In size it is a small tree, and in appearance it resembles are transformed into avatars, witnessing the white Egyptian Acacia, its leaves are our own extensions in the 3D screen. In like those of the willow, as it is called, the Jake Sully’s own words this is the way the bloom it bears is in color like gold, and the double mirror functions: “Everything is frankincense which comes from it oozes backwards now. Like out there is the true forth in drops like tears. But the myrrh- world, and in here is the dream”.