Avatar vs. The Matrix or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the New Reality

I just wrote a blog a few days about Avatar and some of its historical links. (You can find it here.) I also wanted to write about one other thing that occurred to about the film. In making over $1 billion worldwide, the motion picture is a massive hit and obviously its message speaks to a rather large audience. The thing that I find most interesting about the film, is that the main character is able to enhance his reality by digitally interfacing and escaping to a new physical form. (If you enjoy puns and plays on words it is interesting that Jack Sully is military corporal trapped in an injured corporal state.) The film’s first few minutes focus on Sully’s handicapped state. Although Sully can no longer walk he is a strong-minded Marine that pushes himself to overcome any obstacle. He is a mentally solid warrior trapped in a body that will no longer do what he needs it to. Although Sully pushes himself and will not accept help or pity, he is unable to perform physical tasks that others around him can. After arriving on the moon of Pandora, Sully becomes part of a program that transfers his consciousness to an alien body for a limited time. All Sully has to do is lie down and be sealed into a technological pod and the computers transfer his mind to another body. This Pandora’s box appears to contain no evil plagues but instead holds only the final gift of hope.  Sully soon finds a new culture, a love interest, and eventually a new life all because of his computer interface. By digitally transferring his thoughts, emotions, and feelings, our hero finds new friends, a new lifestyle, and becomes a different and better person. In Avatar, computer technology allows one to better interface with the world and creates a stronger and happier life. Cyberspace provides an outlet that is not limited by physical difficulties but only dependent on a person’s mind. None of Jake’s new community saw his human body until the end of the film and it didn’t matter because to them his “real” body was not his true self. Sully’s “real” self was not even his alien avatar but rather his mind. In making this point, Cameron appears to be addressing the role of cyberspace in the twenty-first century. The director’s choice of the word “avatar” for the film’s title certainly suggests a connection to the current digital realm. Cameron’s message appears to be that we can use our digital avatars to escape our physical limitations and built communities that would not be possible in the real world. Blogging, Facebook, twittering, and many other digital social applications allow use to become people that are valued more for our minds than our physical forms. The internet will provide the means to a new digital communities that will allow us to become better people. At the end of 2009, Cameron seems optimistic about cyberspace.

The film The Matrix was also an end of the decade action adventure hit. The motion picture was released in 1999, 10 years before Avatar and it also created a new standard that was copied by many movies that followed. Even though they share similarities, the two films contrast sharply regarding cyberspace and digital communities. In The Matrix, humans are trapped inside a digital community that feeds on their very life essence. People unknowingly serve machines and the digital community is an illusion that hides a real world dystopia. People have become trapped in cyberspace and have let the real world fall apart. When taken as social commentary, this would seem to be a rallying cry against online communities. In this societal understanding, building “fake” cyber-communities are a waste of time that distracts the user from pressing real world issues. Digital social networking is trap that can only cause society harm. Various people often debate these issues and will no doubt continue to do so for a long time. It is interesting that two highly successful and influential end of the decade action films take these opposite points of view. Do we no longer fear the digital realms like we once did? Have the machines taken over our minds? Or have found a better way of living? Maybe we will get another answer in 2019 when a new blockbuster action film fills the void.

Avatar: Reimagining the New World

I saw Avatar in 3D the other day and I must admit that I found the film to be much more interesting than I thought I would. James Cameron’s new motion picture is visually stunning and the computer generated special effects are a marvel both in their other worldly luminance and their believability. Unlike past “break through” effects films my eyes never doubted the “reality” of the CGI moon of Pandora. It occurs to me that I have two very distinct things to write about Avatar, so this will probably be the first of two blogs that I write about the film. In this piece I’d like to address James Cameron’s reimagining of history. I think it is interesting to see what parallels and changes Cameron sees between the historic New World and his new world of Pandora. Obviously, Avatar is an attempt to place the European “discovery” of North and South America in a twenty-first century context. The film’s twenty-second century humans are literally travelling to a new world as opposed to the figurative  New World world of 15/16th century Americas. What the film does well is remind the audience of the wonder and the danger that used to surround the New World of North and South America. Few of us realize how foreign the Americas were to the Europeans that sailed to their shores. Such an awe-inspiring and terrifying place filled with wonders and dangers beyond imagination. Geographically, biologically, and socially the New World must have indeed seemed like another planet. Consider this list of items brought to Europe from the New World; corn (maize), tomatoes, potatoes, vanilla, tobacco, cocoa, pumpkin, and blueberries just to name a few. Likewise, the Europeans brought the horse, coffee, and sugarcane with them. (Historians have dubbed this trading of items between the Americas and Europe, the Columbian Exchange.) I believe the modern person sometimes forgets, or does not realize, how other worldly the Americas were. 

One unwanted type of  Columbian Exchange item that Cameron fails to include, which is perhaps the most important, is disease. Disease defined the relationship between Native Americans and Europeans and determined the outcome of colonization attempts. Some historians estimate that smallpox and other diseases killed roughly 90% of the Native American population. These extremely high casualty rates guaranteed that Native Americans would not prevail in any conflict with Europeans. (Syphilis did make it way to Europe from the Americas but it killed relatively few Europeans and some French aristocrats even viewed the disease’s marks as a fashionable badge of honor.) Cameron’s new world natives are able to wage war with such strong numbers because relatively few of them seemed to have succumbed to disease. The director’s happy ending was not to be in the New World because of simple biological factors. It is interesting to imagine how Natives Americans would have fared if they could have cooperated, raised a huge army, and fought as one force. Although this is politically and socially naive, it also was a biological impossibility.

Another interesting theme is the role of religion in Avatar. Although the film delves deeply into the native religion, on the surface it says little about human faith. If one looks deeper though, the film does seem to address human religion. In Avatar the principle types of colonists are businessmen, military personnel, and scientists. Certainly, businessmen and servicemen were two of the primary sets of North American colonists but scientists were not frequent visitors to the New World. It’s interesting that Cameron seems to replace historical religious colonists with scientists. The film’s scientists treat the planet with an almost religious reverence and the new planet provides a deeply spiritual experience for at least one of the human scientists. Although many past science fiction films have viewed science with both fear and suspicion, Avatar seems to promote science as the new religion. (Generally, science fiction films promote religion as a solution to science gone awry. Think of Star Wars and the religious “force” versus the technological destruction of Luke and Vader’s bodies. Or the Christ figure of Neo reclaiming human souls from the machines in The Matrix.) Cameron seems content to declare religion passé and exalt science as faith. Although Cameron does show the scientists to be mostly clueless, they are not vindictive or blood thirsty like those that work for corporations or the military. The scientist are pure of heart but just unable to understand the new world’s true meaning. (For another take on this subject, I suggest Mary Doria Russell’s wonderful novel The Sparrow,  in which the Vatican sends a Jesuit mission to another planet.)

There are many other parallels between historical events and Avatar. Most noticeably the Pocahontas-like storyline between the hero and the native chief’s daughter and the twenty/ twenty-first century idea that Native Americans were harmless ecologists that were duped by the evil Europeans. (I implore you not to belief this. Native Americans were a politically and economically savvy people. Different tribes attempted to use the Europeans for their personal gain. Do not believe this Dances with Wolves view of history. For a great historical account I recommend Camilla Townsend’s Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma.) It’s interesting to watch the film and reflect on James Cameron’s intentions and how he views both the past and  the present. We can learn much about ourselves by exploring our ideas about the past and how it informs our present.  Next time I hope to write about how Avatar and The Matrix compare.