Avatar: Thinking like a Na'vi

The lines of avatar are drawn early in the film when Jake Sully arrives on Pandora and peers out of the shuttle and sees an industry spreading like a virus across a tropical landscape. James Cameron wanted there to be a thick defined line between the natural world of Pandora and the invading industry of earthly values. It is almost a perverse tale of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas in the early 15^th century. Numerous dualisms can be seen such as the na’vi themselves have been given. They have primitive weapons and clothing and they have been given tails and large soft eyes as to anthropomorphize them even more. They have been given characteristics to give them more of a natural alien look but it is the similarities in their looks and behavior and give more meaning to the underlying message given by the film.

Dualisms are drawn even on the intellectual level as it is the scientists are viewed as the ones with logic and compassion while it is the overwhelming military forces that are the brutes who will drive out the primitive race of the na’vi. It is the perverse anthropocentric view that also adds to the many questions of morality that the movie leaves the viewer. It is one thing to view humans as the center of importance which can be found in the majority of people, but to view an entire race of people on another planet as expendable would be considered by most people today as not only brutish but also primitive and inefficient. The way that story was written and presented was meant to give the audience that viewing the world that way is wrong because of the consequences and perspective given. It can also be seen in numerous scenes that nature will fight back against invading forces like a single organism fighting off a disease. When Jake goes missing the forest turns on him because he has not realized his place in nature’s natural system that has been already laid for him. He quickly learns his place when he is forced to adapt and survive in the natural environment of an alien world. The same thing is seen at the end when all of the creatures attack the invading military forces. This ecocentrism is forced and portrayed as a world defending itself instead of wild animals attacking.

Another dualism is in the master narratives of both cultures. Humans for the majority view the higher power as being a strong willed man. The na’vi view their supreme being as the entire world of interconnected species creating one giant system known as Eywa and she is the guiding light that they follow. God is a powerful man and Eywa is more of a loving and nurturing mother. The Na’vi also have a symbiotic relationship with a massive tree which they refer to as “Hometree” and throughout the movie is referred as a female. There is a paradigm shift as Jake Sully infiltrates deeper into the Na’vi and when people are watching the movie they humor themselves by replacing the protagonist with themselves because he is widely viewed as the “good guy”. Jake’s character is reinvented in the time he spends with the other Na’vi, “All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in the community but his ethics prompt him also to cooperate.” (page 141 Aldo Leopold: Ecocentrism: The Land Ethic) Jake earns his place among the people through many acts such as the capture of his ikran and the riding of t’urak mak tau. And through the teachings of the Na’vi he learns that he is a part of a system of interconnected organisms that covers the entire planet. This paradigm shift is meant not only to happen to the protagonist but to ourselves when we replace Jake with our own character.