Beyond the special effects of Avatar - Anil Netto

A couple of days ago, I thought I would check out the movie Avatar after a couple of friends tipped me off about the story line.

Of course, the special effects from the directors of the Titanic movie were spectacular. But looking beyond that, I was pleasantly surprised by the powerful and rich underlying messages in the movie.

In the movie, the earth is dying as humanity has destroyed the environment. Humans are colonising another planet to extract minerals and other raw materials from a site where an alien tribe lives. But corporate greed is still alive, this time focused on exploiting the untapped resources of an alien planet, while science is being used to serve these corporate interests.

The movie has a strong anti-imperialistic message that many developing nations that have been colonised can identify with. The colonisers (the humans) try to use diplomatic means to achieve their goals, by hoodwinking the local population with promises of “development” – roads and schools – but all the time, their over-riding goal is to extract the minerals from the land where the natives (the aliens) live. They try to infiltrate the local community and win over the confidence of their leaders with agents in disguise. This message could also apply to neo-colonial situations, in which local elites have taken over the colonialists’ role in exploiting the land belonging to native communities.

To the humans, the alien natives are savages and “roaches” that have to be driven out of the forests. If ‘diplomacy’ (more like trickery and deceit) fails, then force will be used to evict the natives. It is easier to do use military force when the natives are portrayed as terrorists (“we have to fight terror with terror”) and subhuman. Thus the human corporate predators think nothing of carpet bombing or incinerating the forests (shades of Vietnam and Iraq here?) to the horror of the natives.

Apart from the anti-imperialistic tone, the film contains a powerful environmental message. The forests and its creatures are all inter-connected. The natives are heirs to an ancient wisdom that the corporate predators simply do not understand. Like in many parts of India or even Sarawak for that matter, the forests where the natives usually live are a treasure trove of rich natural resources. They are thus the targets of corporate predators who want to extract minerals (or build dams or plantations or what-have-you). The natives, however, have a strong bond with the creatures of the forest and they are in tune with their holy Spirit, which infuses creation with its breath. The chief scientist in the human team discovers that the biodiversity of the forest is almost similar to the intricate nerves of the human brain – something that the corporate types scoff at (“Come on, a tree is a tree!”). The whole of creation is inter-connected.

I won’t spoil the movie for you but it’s worth checking out, if only to see how the movie directors persuade audiences to identify with an alien native tribe (the good guys) against their human predators and to marvel at the sheer beauty and inter-connectedness of creation in this era of environmental destruction.