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Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Avatar is Ourstory

I love sci-fi movies. I grew up watching them, as well as martial arts and westerns, with my father. However, I was immediately enamored with James Cameron's Avatar.

WHY????

This movie was like the African Diaspora meets Star Wars. The phenotypical makeup of the Na'Vi, the deception of a people to gain their trust in order to take their mineral wealth and land, the emphasis of ancestor and nature veneration (among other things) were proof enough for me that this movie had a lot of underlying inferences to how African people, and other indigenous groups, were treated during western colonization, exploration, imperialism, and slavery. 


I must say this was a very bold movie, not just for its cinematic technological innovations. This film tackled a lot of socio-cultural, political, and historical issues that many movies set on this planet would dare not even mention. What message do you take from watching Avatar? There are many. One is that you cannot decieve a people without feeling their retaliation in response to that deception. Another is that sometimes love requires you to turn your back on all that you know. A final message, my favorite, is that no matter how much our science and technology advances us, there is a greater force at work. The Na'Vi called her Enywa. Although that greater force or being cannot be studied under a microscope, it is what holds the ultimate power. Like the Na'Vi, we must never forget that this ultimate power does not come from us, but from a greater source. That is the greatest part of ourstory ever told.

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