Blog #6: Avatar

Avatar (1) is full of stereo types that dichotomize male and female gender roles. The first obvious one is the tribal leadership positions. The leader of the clan is always the male and the spiritual leader is his wife. This implies that men are leaders or doers while women are advisers or thinkers. There are other less obvious dichotomies in the same theme. If you look within the different groups of characters in the movie we can see them. Within the military personal we have Trudy and the Colonel. The colonel blindly seeks the destruction of the "savages" for the profit of the company. Whereas Trudy thinks about her orders and only does what she feels is right. While Home Tree is being destroyed she says "Screw this, I didn't sign up for this shit" and leaves the action. The other male military characters simply follow orders. In the group of Avatar drivers there is a clear difference between Dr. Augustine and Jake Sulley. The doctor has been trying to help the natives for quite some time, her role however is limited to a diplomatic one. This is underlined during the scene where the dozers are closing in on home tree. Jake smashes the cameras delaying the progress. Shortly after, Grace tries to explain why the company shouldn't continue. While both approaches fail, Grace is given the role of advisor while Jake is given the role of doer. Even norm seems to follow what he is asked to do.

As the movie progresses Jake takes on several roles. In the beginning his identity as one of the Na'vi is like that of a child. He even says himself "My cup is empty, trust me." At this point he is simply following orders as his male stereo type dicatates. His purpose is to gain information on how the people can be coerced into moving either through bribes or force. Later on he defines himself as a hunter. He becomes, in fact, one of the greatest hunters "Toruk Makto" (Rider of last shadow) which rallies the Na'vi to defend their home.

This is an ideal parallel of how I believe Cheung would view personal homepages. In the begining, Jake's "homepage" is empty. His motivation for creating one may even be disingenuous. However, through the process of adding content (via the Na'vi instruction) Jake tries on different identities. At first he tries on that of a spy. He finds as he interacts through is that this identity doesn't suit him. Later he tries on that of a lover. He finds that this identity suits him best and he continues to expand on it taking on the identity of hero. However, at this point his avatar's identity and his identity are separate. He must make a final jump in order to resolve his non-virtual with his virtual identities. One of them must die. This is done through the help of the Na'vi global network and he leaves his non-virtual self behind leaving only his virtual self.

It is possible that this is going on today. Though the movie makes the process of losing your non-virtual self as glamourous I wonder if that would be true in real life. Certainly, today, the virtual identity by itself would be very limited in what it can experience. With current technology you can escape the non-virtual completely. You eventually have to deal with the demands of our physical bodies. But in the future, could it be possible to dump our consciousness into a virtual identity and completely discard our non-virtual self? What would be the outcome of such a possibility? It sounds great, our virtual selves can become whatever we want them to be (Is this the new fountain of youth?). But real problems would need to be addressed. Such a change would destroy our current system of values and what we think about right and wrong. Even the definition of existence and life would need to be modified. Hopefully, if (and I'm not sure I'd be happy to see it happen) this technology comes into being we will have evolved to meet these new philosophical dilemmas.

Bibliography

(1) Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. Perf. Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang. Lightstorm Entertainment, 2009. DVD.