Reflections on Avatar

As James Cameron gets ready to release his new film, Avatar: The Way of Water, I thought I would watch the original film film again to refresh myself on the context. When I first watched it, I was amazed at the visuals but didn’t like the story too much. I mean I understood the theme — that of invaders decimating the natives — but found it a bit dry. But, watching it the second time around, I found in Avatar a completely different narrative: a battle between the impersonal and the personal aspects of consciousness.

At some point in the film, Jake Sully expresses an inability to tell which reality was more real. The more time he spent in his Avatar body, learning the ways of the Na’vi, falling in love with Ney’tiri, physically bonding with the Pandoran animals, the more real it felt. But every night, he was pulled back into his crippled body, into the human world. At the same time, he had the distinct impression he was neither here nor there. He was actually at the isthmus between the unconscious and the conscious worlds, both fighting for their meal.

One the one hand, there is the conscious suffering on behalf of the Na’vi, who wail and moan over the destruction of their home. They see themselves as nothing but extensions of mother nature, always in connection with her life-bearing force. When they see destruction around them, it is their pain more than anything else. On the other hand, a quite impersonal, unconscious force is seen in the Pandoran colonists. They are the demons that appear when you least want them to, and stab you repeatedly in…