James Cameron’s bank busting $300 million movie Avatar is more than a simple action movie. It is the rare cinematic blockbuster that also speaks powerfully to the audience about big issues society faces today.
Several hundred years in the future, Earth has become a wasteland due to humanity’s abuse of the environment. A commercial company is now extracting an extremely valuable mineral amusingly known as unobtainium from the alien world of Pandora, home to alien tribes known as the Na’vi. The corporation’s callous profit-centered mining policies cause significant damage to the lush wilderness of the planet, bringing it into conflict with the aliens who revere every tree and animal as sacred.
Beneath its state of the art film technology, gorgeous visuals and brilliantly choreographed sequences, it raises deep and powerful messages on some issues we face in the present and may face in the future.
Corporatism vs Environmentalism
Perhaps the most obvious theme in Avatar is that of environmentalism. Lush, fantastic forests dominate the world of Pandora. They capture the imagination and show viewers a glorious world full of life and fantastic things to discover. The human cooperation has little respect for this ecological wonder.. This attitude sees them devastate vast tracts of vegetation for the sake of expedience, leaving little but death and wastelands in their wake.
In this there is real meaning. Corporations exploiting natural resources have long held little regard for the environment beyond an excessively bad PR image hurting their bottom line. Gold mining companies allow poisons to seep into the ground they mine, rendering vast tracts of land incapable of supporting life and often ruining water sources. Oil companies have created vast oil slicks and damaged coastal waters through callous approaches to safety and environmental protection. Prince William Sound is still feeling the effects of the famous Exxon Valdez oil spill, Bhopal still reeling from the leaking of poison gas at the Union Carbide chemical plant.
Yet we should remember that nature is often not all that it is cracked up to be. For all its beauty and glory, nature is not a clean thing. Though the various parts of an ecological system might benefit one another overall, nothing so noble takes place on an individual level. Avatar more than shows how savage and dangerous the wild can be, but it fails to show its drudgery. The disease, the infections, the starvation, the non-existent hygiene. Humanity did not progress past its tribal roots for nothing. Nature does not provide us with what we need. It is through our will and industry that we take what we need from nature. Nature tries to do the same thing, they’re just not as good at it.
Aliens and Human Rights
In Avatar, the native Na’Vi are often referred to as ‘savages’ by the humans. They are regarded as fairly intelligent animals rather than sentient creatures whose lives are worth as much as humans. Thus, the humans have few qualms about driving them from their homes when convenient and slaughtering them when they try to defend it. While this is obviously an allegory for how western colonials treated natives in the past, it also directly raises the question of how we decide what the lives of other species are worth as well as how we should apply this judgement should we colonise an alien world.
We kill chickens, cows, deer, fish, kangaroos and countless other animals everyday with little regret. We keep them in captivity, drain them of milk and steal their honey. They are a means to an end: satisfying our tastebuds and sustaining our bodies. Surely, if we truly wanted, most of us could switch to a vegan diet, abstaining from killing our fellow not just living but thinking creatures. Yet we do not, for we do not believe them worthy of the same rights and protections afforded to us. We exterminate ‘pests’ and drive animals from their homes to access resources for the same reasons. I agree that this is acceptable conduct so long as it is done in a manner the overall environment can sustain.
Yet in much of the world also lies the sentiment that killing dolphins and whales is wrong. Eating dog meat has become rarer. Why this distinction between these species and the rest of the animal kingdom? The answer lies in what we deem as their level of intelligence. We have decided that these animals do not do us much harm and in some cases actually help us. We are impressed by their grace, power or cuteness. Thus, we extend to them extra protections and benefits not afforded to lesser species and are outraged when Japan kills dolphins like we do fish. I too, agree that dolphins and whales are close to our level of intelligence and should be treated differently.
Yet how should we make these distinctions in worthiness of respect when we encounter new species? It would be easy to respect aliens with advanced technology, visiting our planet in flying saucers. What if we encountered primitive aliens? Their scientific value aside, how would we decide if they should be treated like wild-life or a foreign civilization? How developed would they have to be for us respect their rights as native owners of the territory instead of wild life?
