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| From the Movie Avatar, The Forest of the Planet Pandora huwDavid.wordpress.com |
In the epic film Avatar, directed by James Cameron, it is clearly brought before our eyes that our world is a place of art, beauty, life, and knowledge that we the people are slowly killing without second thought every second of the day. Our environment is here before us not to just be drained of every resource, but instead is here to be a companion, a teacher, a mother.
Summary of movie. ATTENTION: Spoiler Alert!!!
General Concepts of the Movie Avatar
Master Narrative- The humans who come to Pandora believe that man is the center of all importance. They believe they can take what isn’t theirs and make it theirs with no problem on pandora.
Anthropocentrism- is non existent with the native people of Pandora. The Na’vi do not view themselves as the central or most important element of existence. Instead, they view themselves as one with the environment or mother earth. Though the humans on Pandora think differently. They support the idea of Anthropocentrism to the fullest.
Dualism- man v. nature, violence v. peace, life v. death, male v. female, knowledge v. lack of knowledge.
The movie Avatar to sum it all up is a story of nature and how man is greedy and a killer for resources. Avatar explains how modern humans are killing the earth and is sends an important message that we the people of today need to start doing something about our careless ways or else we will be left with nothing. Throughout the whole movie tons of quotes reveal the ways of humans and how we are seen to the Na'vi people (the natives of the planet Pandora)
"learn well Jake Sooley, and we will see if your insanity, can be cured"- Neytiri's mother
This quote is a perfect example of how the Na'vi people view the humans. She states, "we will see if your insanity, can be cured" insanity meaning, humans being so clueless about our own earth as well as the environment of Pandora. The Na'vi know how horrible the humans have been to their own homes and they hope to teach "Jake Sooley" all they know. They hope to expand the idea of mother earth and becoming a student of her teachings.
"Sky people cannot learn, you do not see."
Another quote explaining the cluelessness of humans and understanding our Earth and Pandora.
Modern Thought
"This is how it's done. When people are sitting on sh*t that you want, you make them your enemy, then you justify it and take it." - General, Movie Avatar
This quote truly justifies how we modern humans think. We take from our environment and in the end become enemies because the one we are taking from is dying.
"Energy is borrowed and one day we have to give it back" -Neytiri, Movie Avatar.
If we do not respect what we are given and don't give back to our earth we will end up with nothing.
"For some men care only to know nature, others desire to command her" -Robert Boyle p 46 of Merchant reading.
Humans in the movie Avatar are the "bad guys" they are referring to the people of the Na'vi as "blue monkeys" and "roaches" clearly stating to have no respect for life around them. They come to take their land and kill all that gets in the way including the trees, plants and even the Na'vi people. The humans are on this planet because all that was given to them on their own land they took and never gave anything back, "they killed their mother". Thus, we must think about the consequences today. Today we have a Mechanistic Worldview, we view nature as “dead”, composed of inert, substitutable, discreet parts that operate like cogs in a machine. We use and abuse it. We look at our selves as individuals, we are selfish and greedy only thinking of one’s self. We do only what benefits ourselves in result we sometimes hurt others. Atomism and Reductionism, are other reasons we humans base life selfishly. We are all worked up into science “atoms” and all types of theories we lose what is important to pay attention to. We loose the idea that our earth is here for us and that we are here to learn and grow with “her”. We forget to keep her healthy. All we do is take and take without giving back. All in all, through the movie Avatar our humanistic world view is shown clear giving us the motive to change. Lets learn from this movie and stop what we are doing wrong and CHANGE. We can create a better tomorrow just change our Modern Thought. Think of earth as our "Mother" and she will take care of us.
by Schyler duVall
Resources:
http://avatarblog.typepad.com/avatar-blog/2010/05/the-best-avatar-movie-quotes.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/
Modern Thought by Merchant
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