Soapbox Post

Some weeks ago I had the chance to watch the movie Avatar, the big commercial hit of the Canadian filmmaker James Cameron (The Terminator; Aliens; The Abyss; Titanic).

Watching Avatar in IMAX 3D (that is, on a huge screen and with funny glasses), as I did, is an experience – not a very interesting or entertaining one, though (it’s just my opinion).

Avatar points to a conflict between evil and good. Evil is represented by corporations and their techno-economic potential and greed. Good is represented by the natives of the planet Pandora, the so-called Na’vi, who fight against a colonizing corporation and its military machine, determined to take advantage of Pandora.

The evil characters view nature as a commodity to be exploited, a big resource with which to make more money. The Na’vi, the good ones, are perfectly integrated in their environment. They live in communion with nature, literally connected to the soil and the living organisms that inhabit their planet, and know that going against their planet is going against themselves. Okay, it is true that they kill some animals, but they express their appreciation and bless the animals right away after slaughtering them.

One – apparent – contradiction of the black-and-white scheme that Cameron sets up in the movie is that he is advocating a more “ecological way of life,” perhaps in contrast to the “American way of life,” while he is making use of the most advanced technological filming gadgets and techniques. The native Na’vi are played by actors whose appearances have been technologically recreated. The pristine and well-balanced planet Pandora is actually a marvel of artificial, digitized, human construction. Additionally, you see all this in an innovative 3D system, a technological milestone revolutionizing the movie industry.

But this is an apparent contradiction. “Apparent” because far from being a contradiction, it is a symptom – a symptom of a society that tends to idealize and make calls to protect nature when, in fact, nature no longer exists. Nature has been assimilated – or destructed, if you prefer – by humans acting in their own self-interest. Now, even when nature seems to be something really important to us, and not only for us, nature remains as a project. And Cameron’s movie is part of that project.

When nature needs to be taken care of, it is time to proclaim: “nature is dead; long live the environment!”