Avatar, the Movie

It is always fascinating to read critical analyses of popular films when the writer actually dislikes popular culture, which begs the question, why write about something you hate? [James Bowman writes for the journal, [The New Atlantis and his pieces are generally anti-technology and anti-pop culture. His recent article on Avatar follows the usual arguments of critics disconnected from the culture they seem bent on critiquing. Bowman describes Avatar as a flight of fantasy, dangerous because as with all fantasy films of this genre, it is both escapist and dangerously full of illusions not only about society but also about the future. Interestingly, he claims that the film doesn’t follow the Western tradition of mimesis, that is, it makes no claim to imitate reality and because of this, has no merit as art.

Bowman also says that the only difference between Avatar and other films of the same type is the use of 3D as if the medium of film and its transformation is not part of an important aesthetic shift as well as an important shift in how stories are told. Bowman even criticizes James Cameron’s development of a new language for the indigenous people of Pandora, the Na’vi whom Bowman describes as monkeys. Here is what he says: "The natives of Pandora are giant blue monkeys with sophisticated fiber optics in their tails and the natural world they inhabit is filled with floating mountains, huge dragon-birds whom the inhabitants ride like horses, hammer-headed hippos the size of houses, and other fantastical creatures too numerous to mention and impossible to exist on Earth." Of course, the ‘natives’ are constructions and of course they don’t exist. As with all artifice they are the products of Cameron’s rich imagination, but in Bowman’s world imagination is actually a dirty word.

But, enough about a bad review. To answer a question that must be creeping into your mind, why write about something I dislike? Avatar is an experiment in 3D, that is an experiment with images that have a rather wispy feel like the brilliant disappearing Cheshire cat in Tim Burton’s, Alice in Wonderland. 3D creates an intense feeling of pleasure in viewers largely because it is so ephemeral, not because it approximates reality. I have watched viewers try and grasp the images that come close to them. But, the closeness is itself a function of the glasses we are wearing, a function of the desire to be in the image, and to be a part of the experiences the images are generating.

Generating.

3D in its modern incarnation is about generative images, that is about depth, distance and a more profound sense of perspective. 3D continues the long tradition of exploring our rather human capacity and desire to enter into worlds entirely made of images. 3D extends the Renaissance exploration of line, shape and colour. That is why Avatar is so important. Sure, its story has been told many times, but crucially not in this way. The film is an exploration of a new frontier and aside from 3D, its real innovations lie in the use of motion capture technology to create not only a synthesis of the real and imaginary, but also synthetic worlds. Finally, we can be rid of the pretensions that all art must show in the most pedantic of ways some relationship to the real!! Painters rid themselves of this crisis when they explored entire canvases of one colour (Rothko), while filmmakers and film critics still think that a black screen goes against the essence of the cinema.

Of course, 3D is in its early days as a medium for exploring the power of storytelling. And, Cameron actually got much of his inspiration for Avatar from his underwater explorations of the wreck of the Titanic. Cameron is really interested in creating new languages for conventional ways of seeing and describing the world. He didn’t need to invent a new language for the Na’vi but he did. He didn’t have to shoot all those beautiful and magical scenes of Pandora, except that if you have ever swum off a reef, you would have noticed many of the same colours and shapes and why not recreate them if you can?

Bowman doesn’t talk about what the word avatar means. Yet, that is at the heart of the film. Avatars are about substitution, that is about substituting what is missing, be it a body or a mind or a story. Avatars don’t replace their progenitors. That is, unless you decide like Cameron did, that his main character had to be transformed from the two dimensional world of the screen into a Na’vi, through a death and rebirth ritual that actually happens to be at the heart of what nearly all major religions in the world proselytize about on an hourly basis.

Let me switch terminology for a moment and suggest that Avatar is actually a commentary on the illusions of religion and on the impossible dreams of immortality that have haunted humans since they began to paint on the walls of caves. Avatar is about that inner world, our inner world that we keep alive in order to stay alive. It is the reverse of the Platonic cave where those who are blind to reality need to be saved. Rather, the film explores those who have reconciled themselves to their fate and who have created a world that is a reflection of their weaknesses and strengths. In other words, the Na’vi are us when we dream and lest we forget, we spend a good proportion of our lives dreaming.

Up In The Air with Avatar

"Being in the air is the last refuge for those that wish to be alone." Jason Reitman) There are profound connections between Avatar and Up in the Air. Both movies come at a time that can best be described as dystopic. From Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries mired in war to the deepest and most serious recession since the 1930's, to the ongoing crisis of climate change, the first decade of the 21st Century has been characterized by waves of loss, violence and instability.

What then allows any individual to compose their identity and to maintain their sense of self as the air around the planet gets thinner and thinner? How does the imagination work within a dystopia?

Up in the Air explores the tropes of loneliness and travel -- the in-between of airports and hotels, those places that are not places but nevertheless retain many of the trappings of home without the same responsibilities and challenges. There are consequences to being on the road 300 days of the year and among them is the construction of an artificial universe to live in like the metal tubes we describe as airplanes. One of the other consequences is that frequent travelers have to build imaginary lives that are fundamentally disconnected from intimacy and genuine conversation.

Ironically, Avatar imagines a world that is for a time dragged into the dystopia of 21st century life and where at the end of the day, a new vision is constructed. Avatar's use of 3D will be the subject of another article soon, but suffice to say that the worlds James Cameron constructs through motion capture and animation are among the most beautiful that the cinema has ever seen.

Hidden behind both films is a plaintiff plea for love and genuine relationships. Avatar explores this through tales of transmigrating spirits and animistic notions that transform animals and nature itself into a vast Gaia-like system of communications and interaction. The N'avi are a synthesis of Cameron's rather superficial understanding of Aboriginal peoples, although their language is a fascinating blend created by Paul Frommer from the University of Southern California.

The flesh of avatars in the film are not virtual but as the main character, Jake Sully discovers, the N'avi are the true inheritors of the planet they live on, a exotic version of early Earth called Pandora. In Greek mythology Pandora is actually derived from 'nav' and was the first woman. The Pandora myth asks the question why there is evil in the world which is a central thematic of Avatar.

Up in the Air asks the same question but from the perspective of a rapacious corporation which sends its employees out to fire people for other companies or as the main character, Ryan Bingham says to save weak managers from the tasks for which they were hired. The film also asks why there is evil in the world and suggests that any escape, even the one that sees you flying all year doesn't lead to salvation.

Both films explore the loss of meaning, morality and principles in worlds both real and unreal. Avatar provides the simplest solution, migrate from a humanoid body and spirit to a N'avi to discover not only who you are but how to live in the world. **Up in the Air** suggests that love will solve the dystopic only to discover that casual relationships never lead to truth and friendship.

These are 21st century morality tales. Avatar is a semi-religious film of conversion not so much to truth but to the true God, who is now a mother. Up in the Air teaches Ryan that life is never complete when it is entirely an imaginary construction.

It is however, the reanimation of the human body in Avatar that is the most interesting reflection of the challenges of overcoming the impact of this first decade of the 21st century. Jake Sully is able to transcend his wheelchair and become another being, now connected to a tribe. He is able to return to a period of life when innocence and naivete enable and empower — when the wonders of living can be experienced without the mediations of history and loss. This of course is also the promise of 3D technology, to reanimate images such that they reach into the spectator's body, so we can share those moments as if we have transcended the limitations of our corporeal selves.

James Cameron's digital utopia, full of exotic colours, people, plants and animals suggests that escape is possible in much the same way as Ryan Bingham imagines a world without the constraints that are its very essence. 3D technology promises to allow us to transcend our conventional notions of space and time but it cannot bring the earth back to its pristine form nor reverse engineer evolution or history. At the same time, Avatar represent a shift in the way in which images are created, in the ways in which we watch them and also in the potential to think differently about our imaginations and about our future. (Imagine a 3D film about the destruction of the Amazon!)