By Teresa R. Tunay
CBCP Office on Women
There’s no doubt that Avatar, director James Cameron’s spectacular opus that’s wowing critics all over, is a comment on the greed of contemporary society, but it’s amusing to see how well-known film critics are spotting “hidden messages” in the movie.
Due perhaps to the profusion of symbols in the film, Avatar lends itself to so many interpretations. Times of London’s Ben Hoyle writes that the movie “contains heavy implicit criticism of America’s conduct in the War on Terror.” Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times gives Avatar a perfect 4/4 score and says in his review that this “allegory on contemporary politics”… “has a flat-out Green and anti-war message (that is) predestined to launch a cult.” Will Heaven of the Daily Telegraph laments the film’s “racist subtext” as being “nauseatingly patronizing” because it is a white man who becomes the virtual savior of a colored people who wear “tribal jewelry” with long Rastafarian hairstyles.
It is not surprising that critics would read messages into the movie if they knew that its director James Cameron (of the Titanic fame) is himself a known environmental activist who publicly points an accusing finger at the industrial society as the chief culprit behind the purported global climate change. Cameron would say that Avatar does make overt references to certain points in American history to underline the greed of humans who shamelessly take what they want from nature and indigenous people without giving anything back in return.
What the critics seem to miss in Avatar and which CINEMA notes with almost tongue-clucking delight is its focus on the role of the feminine and the spiritual as the real savior of creation.
The message is strong though subtly articulated in the little details that the more intellectual, rational, masculine mind would overlook: respect for nature (don’t we call nature our “mother”?); the planet’s name Pandora (Mother Pandora, as in Mother Earth?); the value of waiting for and obedience to the will of the divine (passive, feminine, very Marian, in fact); the ability to see the divine in palpable phenomena (intuition, a woman’s domain); and the fact that it’s the female characters who are noble, intelligent, strong-willed, and who do the real thinking while the tempestuous, impulsive, bloodthirsty males smugly engage themselves in mindless destruction.
Princess Neytiri ( Zoe Saldana), is the personification of Woman as teacher—superior to her male pupil, of course—anointed to educate and train the earthling-avatar in the ways of the Na’vi. Without losing her femininity she displays the integrity and self-sufficiency of a strong woman, telling the man she likes, “You have a strong heart, but you are stupid and do stupid things; you’re like a baby!” She stands on her own, holds her own—a fearless female who won’t take sh*t from a wishy-washy man, and that’s why she’s beguiling despite her flat chest.
Neytiri’s mother, the queen, is the Na’vi’s version of the high priestess—she alone is entrusted the role of interpreting signs from their deity. She presides at gatherings in the hallowed ground where the Tree of Souls stands like a gigantic and luminous weeping willow tenderly guiding believers in the right path.
There’s the daring woman scientist Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) who at first seems as driven and exacting as the marines she works with but who gradually mellows as repeated interaction with the Na’vi stirs and allows her superior self to justify her efforts and redeem her towards the end. This character shows conversion, an act of grace in the Christian universe of discourse. (Mr. Cameron, does this explain her name Grace Augustine?)
The aviatrix Trudy (Michelle Rodriguez) is another valiant woman whose tough go-go-go exterior belies a maternal conscience that would not tolerate the destruction of the peace-loving and innocent Na’vi.
Even the name of the race, Na’vi, sounds too close to “navel” or “bellybutton” as it’s popularly called: that hollow in the surface of the stomach where the umbilical cord is tied after being cut at birth. We wonder whether writer-director James Cameron intended this. The navel symbolizes the connectedness of the baby to its mother. Might the name “Na’vi” also symbolize the Na’vi’s connectedness to their “mother planet” Pandora? The Na’vi respect and protect their environment; they are aware that they owe their life to it.
Come to think of it, is there anything Na’vi-made on Pandora? Skyscrapers, automobiles, shopping malls, roads, like the man-made things on Earth? It seems only their clothing and jewelry and bows and arrows are Na’vi-made—for protection from elements, aesthetics, hunting and self-defense? Everything else is natural, even the monstrous but graceful flying dragons each Na’vi adult uses for mobility which must be tamed before they can be mounted.
I did not notice Na’vi-made dwellings, for the whole planet—despite the presence of elephant-size rhinoceri with snouts like a hammerhead shark—looks like a generous, hospitable and beneficent home where communities do meet and mate outdoors. So what are they fleeing from when their land is under attack from the gung-ho earthlings? I need to see the movie again.
The Na’vi’s connectedness to nature is made manifest in their bodies, too—they have glitters on their faces, as though they sweat mercury—just like the numerous things bred and nurtured by their land: flora and fauna that mesmerize one with their glow.
The ground from which the Tree of Souls rises shines with a luminosity that seems to issue from the planet’s womb (there again, a feminine thing!). And where healing takes place (if the Divine so wills), life-giving energy comes in the form of light, creeping like veins or tentacles out of the ground and reviving the near-dead. Even the sign demonstrating the anointing of the avatar uses light-emitting creatures—insects or flowers (?) materializing from thin air and alighting like milkweed seed on the chosen one until he dazzles with a white light that burns but neither burns nor blinds. (Talk about the Burning Bush and Jesus’ Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor!) Everywhere on Pandora there is light, light, light!
So, isn’t light a quality of the enlightened? And isn’t enlightenment the desire and work of the Spirit? Avatar is more than just a political statement, a battle-cry to save the environment, or (as some other film-critics see it) a sci-fi movie with a clunky, clicheic script. More than anything else it’s a call to restore our sense of the sacred, a tribute to the primacy of the spirit, and a paean to the power of the feminine to revive the spirit to save a decaying world.
Teresa R. Tunay
CBCP Office on Women/CINEMA
