Social Justice in 3-D: AVATAR

Avatar is one of the highest grossing films of all time. Last year I saw it in brilliant 3-D on a gigantic screen and recently I got to see it again—this time on the world’s largest Imax screen in Hyderabad. If that seems superfluous and over-indulgent, then maybe there’s some educational justification for going since themes of social justice are abounding, especially as they relate to our last module on Ecology, Environment and Livelihood. If anything, Avatar deals most thematically with the story of indigenous peoples (beings, if you will) struggling against the forces of development, a story we’ve discussed thoroughly over the semester.
In Avatar we get well-drawn image of a violent trifecta—capitalism, science and military might ganging up against indigenous tribes, all this for the extraction of unobtanium a resource that has been reduced to its worth in American dollars. In the plot, we have a rather predictable, arhectypal set of supporting characters representing each force in this trifecta: the greedy, arrogant business owner; the snooty, expert scientist; and the testosterone-pumped, grizzled army general. These are obviously caracatures, but the point gets across: development at the cost of tribal and ecological degradation works through the forces that the characters represent.
Often times, development means that the connection between culture and nature, a connection that is understood by the beings on Pandora, is broken, perhaps under the weight of modern science. The connection I refer to is rather hard to miss during the film. The tribal peoples literally attach their wills with the animals they ride or fly upon. Their main deity, the life force that ultimately networks all the creatures of Pandora, is a large tree; this shows spirituality towards the land that is often equated with a cosmocentric world-view.
All theses things were discussed at length during the module, and I’m somewhat surprised to say that Avatar has done a fairly good job encompassing our Ecology, Sustainability and Livelihood module. Enemies of the environment are defeated, the planet is saved! The ending, however, does prove to be a bit disappointing. As so often happens with Hollywood films, the white, American soldier saves the day for the all the beings of Pandora, implying the planet would have been destroyed had it not been for his help.