Avatar: The Beauty Behind the Science

 

Entertainment of every medium affords us the viewers/watchers the opportunity to gauge how we absorb information. What is not talked about enough is how entertainment also allows us to see the unseen. What I mean by that is that you can play your favorite video game, watch your favorite movie, or watch your favorite tv show and see landscapes that are unlike anything ever seen before and see races of characters that have never been seen before. That is the beauty of Hollywood but also the video game landscape. Changes are all over and while some may be negative, the positive changes are so extraordinary and sometimes revolutionary, that we forget about what we do not want to see.

That being said, unfortunately, we are seeing or hearing debates either in person or on social media about changes in movies and other mediums that do not sit well with the general public. Two movies that share a similar plot and are equally divisive are the Kevin Costner film Dances with Wolves and James Cameron's Avatar franchise. Both films deal with a "white savior" coming to save the day for a group of indigenous people. While I believe that some may have a valid point making that argument, you also have to realize those films are fiction and the Na'vi race in Avatar are a figment of James Cameron's imagination. Jake Sully may be a white savior but he is bringing to light issues within the human race itself that trumps the discussion over why he could not be another race. The reason why so many people have a problem with Avatar's moral message about the dangers of colonization and the threat of not protecting the environment is the fact that instead of letting someone of the same race being colonized save the day, Avatar falls in the same box as many movies like it, the white man is constantly saving the day. I have no problem with that personally because I believe that instead of focusing on the negative side of Avatar, we should focus on colonization and the threat of environmental collapse that Greta Thunberg and so many warn us about. 

Avatar is a caricature of our current society whereas the government is doing everything it can to make minorities, African Americans included an afterthought. We give money to the government to protect the sick, the homeless, and those less fortunate, and what do they do with that money? They make their military equipment better and upgrade their resources instead of helping the environment become less polluted and the citizens die off slowly. While I do agree that Avatar is problematic in the sense that the white man is the one chosen to blend in with the indigenous people, I also believe that not only should more movies be made like Avatar from a science fiction and environmental disaster standpoint but I believe that more movies should be made that put minorities in a positive light. That is my one main critique of Avatar. The minorities besides the Na'vi people are either soldiers on the frontline or scientists in charge of the Avatar program. That is great but the movie is not about them and with the movie focused on other characters, those characters are nothing more than glorified extras. Science fiction is about seeing the unseen and discovering what is out there in worlds outside of our own. With scientists like Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, you would think there would be more science fiction movies where a character that is Asian or African American is behind us going to Mars or discovering a world like Pandora. At the end of the day, I am excited about the future of filmmaking and the possibility of science fiction films changing the landscape of how we view extraterrestrial worlds.