Outward Flourishes

Broadly speaking, would it be safe to say that science fiction, as an artistic genre, is a mode of projection into the future of contemporary representations? While this has the juvenile flavour of a truism, the presence of a future time-frame is instrumental in setting apart this genre from (say) the realm of fantasy. By hurling a set of deviate realities into the future, the interpreter is automatically forced to evaluate such deviations as either progressive or regressive in relation to his perception of a contemporary state. This eminently logical assertion is absent from the pattern of deviations normally found in fantasy genres, which promote an allegorical mode of interpretation free from the strains of causality that a person of the present is compelled to unfold whenever confronted with the image and actions of an hypothetical descendant in the future.  

For example, it may suffice to look at Lord of the Rings and determine how its implicit racial tensions may relate to my own condition in the real world. But looking at Cameron’s vision of corporate colonialism in Aliens or the Butlerian Jihad in Dune, I am prompted to do something perhaps equivalent in nature but nonetheless different in procedure, and that is to conceive those realities as stems from my present condition. In other words, science fiction translates a futuristic vision based on contemporary perceptions or borders and only exists as a genre as long as this correlation remains; fantasy presents an alternate state of realities without any necessary correlation to any point in time and calls for a different set of analytical tools.  

Dispensing with the bromides, all that needs to be said is that James Cameron has attempted a synthesis of both genres in Avatar, which goes farther than any other of the filmmaker’s works in interlocking science-fiction elements within a fantasy playground. Naturally, since both film genres are privileged vehicles of social commentary, it should come as little surprise that Avatar insistently addresses themes of conflict between two civilised races of differing military power, deftly sprayed on a canvas of capitalist imperialism.  

In Pandora, a moon of planet Polyphemus, a heavily-armed human outpost seeks to dislodge the indigenous Na’vi in order to extract a ludicrously valuable mineral called unobtainium (not even going to comment on this one). For scientific and diplomatic purposes, humans have learned how to breed and embody empty Na’vi hybrids in laboratories. Such is the starting role of the protagonist Jake Sully, an ex-marine to whom is given the opportunity to step into one of these avatars and perform outer planetary espionage in exchange for an operation to his damaged spinal cord that the NHS did not cover on the grounds of a pre-existent condition (I may be reading too much into it). Eventually, a chain of incidents leads him to the Omaticaya tribe where Neytiri, the chieftain’s daughter, is charged with his sentimental education. The film culminates with Sully’s rousing galvanization of the Na’vi and the taking up of arms against the human aggressors pining for all that unobtainium.  

Much of the movie is devoted to the way the Na’avi interact with other species, humans included. And love, it seems, remains a property of human nature, as the rites of mating between Sully and Neytiri illustrate when they replicate in motion and essence our own patterns of breeding and implicitly present them as a novelty among the Na’avi. I use both these rigid words – mating and breeding – to underline the intended awkwardness in their transposition to the film’s ethos, even if they are never framed as a breach or taboo. Of course at that point in the film one would expect such tellurically attuned creatures to use their capillary rastafari-proboscides to conduct the deepest possible link between two sentient beings, but it seems such device is employed with the sole purpose of forming a bond (tseyhaku, if spelling serves me right) with other beastly creatures in a way that masks effective domination over those species.  

Love and redemption being the chief qualities mankind has to offer the Na’vi, most characters otherwise spend their time tseyakuing with anything that moves in order to get what they want. The same can be said of humans: Sully initially steps into an avatar so he can regain use of his motor functions and Sigourney Weaver takes possession of a Na’avi because it makes her feel pretty aga — I mean, because it allows her to take scientific samples of plants and bugs.  Sully’s rites of initiation are presented in the traditional “path to manhood” perspective, but they hide the fact that Jake’s acceptance as a man of the tribe depends on his contribution to the collective — a requisite which will culminate in his taming of Toruk (a huge, flying garish dinosaur)  in an effort to impress and convince the Na’avi that he can in fact aid them.  

It’s clever to suggest that this mode of interfacing with a seemingly primitive society lessee of a scarce and technologically sought-after natural resource is, in the end, both functional and self-preserving as well as capable of bridging the gap between two antagonistic forces. One civilization (the Na’avi) selectively assimilates the qualities of another (the Humans), therefore validating its own hereditary social rites as functional, self-preserving filters: Sully apports them the lessons of affection and subjugation (not exclusive to any one race, but only practiced by the Na’avi at an unconscious — and innocent — level), and in so doing leads them to safety from the mercenary aggressors. It is significant that when Sully prays to Eywa, Neyriti points out that such divine, all-encompassing entity does not heed to mortal prayer. This certainly explains why no Na’avi is ever seen directly begging for something. Sully, however, is a human specimen, and therefore has little qualms in arrogantly requesting salvation from the gods. Even the strictest Na’avi training could not efface this very human trait.  

Again, there’s a notable degree of subtlety in all of this, so that the compulsion to draw contemporary parallels with our own reality is never quite heavy-handed (we go back to my opening thoughts, since Cameron ably balances science-fiction with fantasy and selects what components of the film we choose to apreciate in evolutionary or allegorical terms). Moreover, cause for Na’vi victory appears to have been a matter of simple temporal precedence. The Na’avi simply welcomed the redeeming traits of the human envoys before the corporate Americans could make use of their foes’ potential (a fact underlined by the spurious interjection by Weaver that the whole planet was, in fact, a giant network of organic knowledge waiting to be harnessed — the implication being that the tree-hugging, trance-chanting blue aliens were only scratching the surface of it, and that humans could do so much more if only they opted for diplomacy instead of bulldozers).  

Sully’s pascalian prayer to Eywa is also significant in the way it blatantly evokes one of the most distinctive stage of a classical aristeia (and the film, with its gross nomenclatures of Pandoras and Polyphemi, doesn’t exactly seem eager to keep these references close to its chest). The checklist is almost scrupulously followed with Sully, at the outset of battle, being presented as a hero arming himself (a visual effect achieved through the juxtaposition of the marines’ metal and explosive weaponry against the Na’avi’s humble spears and bows). Afterwards he steps into the fray and turns the tide of a battle which — at best – could only have been be stalled without his bravado.  

That’s two out of five. The traditional third step sees the hero break into the enemy’s host and basically wreaking all manners of savage havoc (you will probably recall this part). And the fourth stage (setback, prayer to a god, renewed energy) is orchestrated throughout the second half of the film and deployed just at the climatic moment when everything seems lost (in the form of Eywa’s unprecedented response to Sully’s prayers). The traditional closing stage of an aristeia is the battle around the defeated foe’s corpse but here the confrontation is played around Sully’s own unconscious human body still wired to his avatar (and thus utterly helpess). The intervention of a third entity (though not a god) effectively seals the chapter.

The choice of this structure for the impressive dénouement suggests that Sully is being likened to a hero passing through the hoops of his own mortality and coming to terms with his vulnerabilities (a solid counterpoint to the crescendo of legendary feats performed during the film). In one of closing chapters, Sully completes the circle and forgoes his human mortality in order to be reborn in a more humane finitude, one which, as the Na’vi put it, posits that all energy is lent and, by nature, ephemeral. In the grand scheme of things, the confrontation with Über Quaritch becomes a struggle for Sully’s own humanity.

Ultimately, Avatar’s greatest strength is the dexterity in fusing science-fiction, fantasy elements, and an exquisite narrative structure as a means to convey some themes that are after all very predictable in their poignancy. This doesn’t mean we should dismiss it as a simple a triumph of style and form. Maybe it’s just more productive to assume that its value partly resides not in the fact that it is a well-told story, but in the fact that it is a well-known story willing to explore the substance behind that universality.