AVATAR – “I SEE YOU.”
Luke 4: 1-13
Rev. Gary Paterson
February 21, 2010
Eden floats like a dream in Western consciousness – a paradise of palm trees in some South Pacific Island; or perhaps Shangri-la, hidden away in the Himalayas. A myth, a wistful hope that hearkens back to memories of childhood, full of innocence and wonder; like Dylan Thomas says,
I’m never quite sure what the words mean, but they sound wonderful, all golden and green, and we’ve got to get back to the garden, full of rivers of light; young and easy and happy. Eden becomes a vision of what might be in the future; paradise lost becomes paradise regained, when life unfolds at its best, where all moves in harmony and beauty.Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughAbove the lilting house and happy as the grass was greenThe night above the dingle starry,Time let me hail and climbGolden in the heyday of his eyes.And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple town,And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leavesTrail with daisies and barleyDown the rivers of the windfall light.
Have you ever wondered what Eden might look like, if we were ever to get there? Is it nothing but roses, or is there room for all manner of creature, including snakes, and lions and bacteria … and humans? I think James Cameron wondered what it might look, and lo and behold, there was Pandora, fifth moon of the planet Polyphemus, in a far distant galaxy, Alpha Centauri. A new world, like diving underwater into the middle of vast coral reef; a meticulously constructed reality, brilliant with colour; with surprise and beauty … or terror around every leaf and corner; with a thousand shades of green, and red, and yellow, black; giant trees with seeds that twirl like dandelion jelly fish; pink fern fronds that close so quickly in upon themselves, snapping shut like parasols; floating mountains, sleek panther-dogs, purple flamingos with teeth, six-legged horses, flying banshees and hammer-headed dinosaurs. And, of course, the Na’vi – the people of Pandora; ten feet tall, with a waist so slim you haven’t seen its like since you were seventeen; blue all over, including a long tail, with broad nose and golden cat eyes; and down the back, a long braid of hair with what looks like a USB port, only with living little tentacles, with which the Na’vi are literally able to plug into their world.
As James Cameron said in an interview: Our whole goal in making this film was to take you to another world, to make your forget that you’re sitting in a movie theatre, wearing glasses; to have an out-of-body transformation experience. And you have these moments in movies from time to time, but most movies don’t work this way, where our goal is to sort of overwhelm the senses. We set over two years to design a world so rich and captivating that even if you decide not to follow the story, you should still be able to get swept up in it all.
He succeeds – brilliantly, I think. Not only is it captivating, but it flows with that Eden wonder; Pandora is a world where everything is interconnected, filled with a pulsing, spirit energy, a common life force. This isn’t just a “pagan voodoo” feeling says scientist Grace Augustine (and you catch on quickly that the name is not accidental… I mean, come on… grace… and St. Augustine). She has discovered that there is a measurable network of chemical-electric charges, that connects every root and tendril of all plants and trees, allowing them to “communicate” with each other. The Na’vi not only “see” this reality, they also know they are part of it, and indeed, are able to connect with it; they are plugged into a natural world, with the horses and banshees that they ride, with the voices of the ancestors who whisper through the pulsing branches of the Tree of Prayer, the Circle of Voices; and they are connected with each other. They know that “the spirit is given only for a day, and then it must be given back.” Death, while sad, is not the enemy, the energy keeps passing, and each living thing is part of a greater whole. Life, then death, and the energy passes. The Na’vi not only “see” this reality, they are able to plug into it, sometimes by hooking up their living port with that of, say, their riding steeds, or the flying banshees; sometimes through their own interconnections, as a healing community, circles of touch, in the Circle of Voices, as they hear the voices of the ancestors.
Holding all this energy together is Ewya –that’s what the Na’vi call God, who is experienced as the Great Mother (although to a Judeo-Christian ear, Ewya sounds eerily similar to Yahweh, the name of the God of the Bible.) On Pandora, Ewya embraces, sustains and receives the spirit of everything living; Ewya is the power that balances the energy, not taking sides, but ensuring the river of life keeps on flowing.
A strange Eden perhaps – most of the humans who have arrived on Pandora think it’s a living hell—if it’s not the lethal environment with no oxygen, then it’s the hordes of creatures that see every moving thing as potential supper. New recruits are warned: “You’re not in Kansas anymore. We are in Pandora; if there is a hell, this is it; everything out there wants to eat you.” But the film suggests this understanding of Pandora is a result of our blindness, our inability or unwillingness to see the interconnectedness and interdependence of all reality. If this reality is truly known, and the flow of spiritual energy is experienced, then death isn’t necessarily the enemy. There is a balance in the world, and there is such a thing as a good death. Death can bring sadness, obviously, but it is not a punishment for sin. It’s no accident that Cameron has the scientist, Grace Augustine, give voice to this: as Grace is dying near the end of the film, she suddenly opens her eyes, looks directly at Jake, and says, “Ewya – I’m with her; she’s real.”
James Cameron is a powerful preacher, and he tells this futuristic parable as a way of convincing us to see our own world differently – full of holiness, with much harking back to aboriginal spirituality. One could say that he is offering… and here’s a twenty dollar theological word for you – he’s offering a panentheistic vision; meaning that God (the “theo” part of that word) is found, in (the “en” syllable), everything (“pan”). God-in-everything. This vision is more than thinking that Nature is the be-all and end-all and if we humans just left it all alone, everything would be just fine. No, it is, rather, a sense of Spirit, of God, being at the heart of all created things, sustaining, enlivening – and simultaneously, God being more than the totality of all creation, so much more. God contains and embraces all of reality. One way of describing this might be to say that. God is like a mother, and the universe is growing within God’s womb; another… maybe the universe is a pearl under construction, and God is the oyster.
But I’m getting carried away here, so let’s go back to the film. Cameron knows how to tell a good story – he grabs a dozen archetypes, and mixes them together, creating a cheesy plot. Take Pocahontas, add Dances with Wolves, and then zap the whole story a hundred and forty years into a science-fiction future; don’t look for well-rounded characters, subtlety of motivation. No, “Avatar” is comic book fiction, a modern morality play.
On the one side, the bad guys… and boy, are they bad. There’s Parker, who represents all the nasty multinational, capitalist, resource-gouging, no-conscience corporations – who can say with a straight face, “Killing the indigenous people is bad press; but having a lousy quarterly statement is even worse.” He is on the search for --- get this, “unobtainium” – a rare and extremely valuable energy source, for which folks back on earth will pay in the millions. Unobtainium – right, we get it Cameron. Parker is backed up by the military – Col. Quaritch of the Marines is a complete caricature of military machismo, and he just loves his guns, fighter planes, and big machines. The film plays out a sci-fi version of the European arrival in the Americas, with the consequent despoliation of an earlier Eden and the destruction of indigenous cultures; it carries echoes of the war in Viet Nam, and the invasion of Iraq, where oil is the unobtainium of our times; good ol’ Colonel Quaritch revels in talking about using shock and awe tactics, and meeting terror with terror.
But the historic and current parallels are only meant to help us realize something deeper -- our blindness coupled with greed and backed up by technological violence will be our undoing. When the bulldozers and bombers attack the majestic Home Tree of Life, the home of the Na’vi people, – well, we know we’ve seen this before, but the destruction still rips at our hearts, as we watch ourselves in action… yes, ourselves. And we weep. Cameron is using Avatar as his bully pulpit, but I find myself saying, “Ah, preach it brother; preach the word!”
Then, of course, there are the good guys – primarily the Na’vi, who are almost too good to be true. Our way into understanding this goodness comes with and through Jake Sully, a paraplegic marine – an oxymoron that again suggests our human brokenness, so that when Jakes says that losing the use of his legs “blew a hole in the middle of my life” we know he’s talking about us, who, like him, are missing something in the middle of our lives.
But on Pandora Jake gets another chance—he is reborn, and launched into a hero’s quest. His consciousness is transported into a genetically modified Na’vi body, a result of fusing his human DNA with that of the Na’vi… an avatar is the result: “Welcome to your new body, Jake,” the scientists say, all the beautiful, blue ten feet of it. When Jakes makes the transfer from his human into the Na’vi body, we go with him,. He is reborn into Eden; Adam once again; feeling all the excitement of a child discovering the wonder of the world. He runs, jumps, wriggles his toes in the soil. He is free, and filled with delight and joy.
He survives the danger of this new world, but only with help. A young woman meets and befriends him, a powerful helpmate – any echoes here? If Jake is an Adam is Neytiri an Eve? And of course, she just happens to be a Na’vi princess. “You are a baby,” she keeps saying, “ignorant, a child”– “you know nothing.” Jake must learn… and so must we. Though there is a real question about whether humans can ever learn to see,; can we move beyond our insanity?
Well, Jake shows it’s possible to learn new ways, and the culminating moment is his bonding with and riding of a banshee, a winged dragon. This is his ritual of initiation into Na’vi manhood, his becoming a new self. Naturally he succeeds… it’s that kind of a film, you already know that… but to watch him fly… you are there with Jake, up, down, twirling, all around; it’s magic, and you can sense in yourself an excitement; it’s every childhood dream, it’s freedom, it energy…. it’s a new consciousness, a different way of experiencing the world, full of wonder and interconnectedness. “I was made for this,” says Jake.
But then comes the turning moment – and even if this weren’t the first Sunday of Lent, I would still call it the moment of temptation, when Jake must make a decision about who side he is on – does he embrace the new vision of the Na’vi; or does he stay loyal to the old way of life, complete with Marine solidarity? With whom will you stand is the floating question. Much like the challenges that Jesus faced in his ritual of becoming a man, his testing in the wilderness. You want power and wealth?” says the devil, “well, just worship me. No? Then what about want fame and recognition? – It’s easy to get. Or a guarantees of personal safety? No problem.” For Jake the temptation is the promise of new legs; if he betrays the Na’vi; if he becomes a Judas, then Col Quaritch will have him back to earth on the first shuttle, with a guarantee of treatment to restore his legs. I guess it’s a question of how you fill the hole at the centre of your life – new legs—whatever that represents for you; or an acceptance, no, an embracing of a new vision, a new way of living life.
Well, we watch Jake’s struggle, his initial betrayals, his growing upset at what he is doing, and finally, his rejection by the Na’vi when they discover his deceptions. But in true Lenten fashion, the movie portrays Jake’s decision to choose life, to see… which includes his willingness to offer his life for Pandora, for the Na’vi. Now, here’s where Cameron grabs a few more archetypes, and calls upon Messianic thinking, so that Jake becomes the one to lead the Na’vi people into battle against evil, against the warring, greed-driven humans.
There’s some irony in this film – after establishing the Na’vi as a peace-loving people in harmony with their world, Cameron spends the last hour of the film in a massive shout-out; he glories in the battle. Yes, we know it is a just war… indeed, the Na’vi had not only had their home destroyed, but then Col. Quaritch attacked yet again. But what happened to peace and harmony? Then again, what do you do, in the face of evil?
Well, interestingly enough, Jesus chose not to go to war, not to use violence. He kept resisting, yes, but in love and integrity; and if the Romans chose to respond with crucifixion, well so be it. He wouldn’t stop what he was proclaiming, nor would he change his ways. Two messiahs… Jesus and Jake, one choosing the way of suffering love; the other, the way of fighting back.
But here’s where the film takes a twist. At first, you are caught up in the heroic fight, cheering for the Na’vi and their allies; watching Jake take down one opponent after another. But then you realize that the Na’vi are losing… badly. In fact, it’s turning into a slaughter. It’s bows and arrows and against guns and bombs – and the result is predictable. Until… until Eywa herself intervenes and suddenly all the animals join the fight… banshees, panther dogs, the hammer-headed dinosaurs. That’s what wins the day.
Not far different, really, from the Jesus story, no? For it looks like Jesus is going down in defeat… he challenges the Romans in their endless demand for 1st century unobtainium, and he is killed. But then Yahweh intervenes… with resurrection. In both stories, in a strange way, victory comes only when the Spirit is working in and through us, and even beyond us.
The film ends with Jake’s final transformation, the permanent shift of his human consciousness into his Na’vi avatar, another death and resurrection, a moment of love and hope. The final image of the movie comes when hiss Na’vi eyes snap open and completely fill the screen in all their intense golden beauty. “I see!” they proclaim; “I see Eywa, the energy flow, the interconnected spirit of all creation; I see you… and you and you and you.” May it be so for us. Namaste!