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A Biologist’s Ecstasy: ‘Avatar’ Awakens Joy of Seeing the World Again

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This essay over at the New York Times explains ‘Avatar‘ from a Biologist’s point of view.  Carol Kaesuk Yoon  is encouraging everyone who ever loved biology to go see Avatar purely for the wonder of seeing Life.  

Please excuse me if I seem a bit breathless, but the experience I had when I first saw the film (in 2-D, no less) shocked me. I felt as if someone had filmed my favorite dreams from those best nights of sleep where I wander and play through a landscape of familiar yet strange creatures, taking a swim and noticing dinosaurs paddling by, going out for a walk and spying several entirely new species of penguins, going sledding with giant tortoises. Less than the details of the movie, it was, I realized, the same feeling of elation, of wonder at life.

Perhaps that kind of potent joy is now the only way to fire up a vision of order in life. Many biologists of my generation (I will be 47 this month) were inspired to careers in science by the now quaint Time-Life series of illustrated books on animals or by the television program “Wild Kingdom,” rugged on-screen stuff for its time (“Now my assistant Jim will attempt to sedate the cheetah”). But maybe that isn’t enough anymore.

Maybe it takes a dreamlike ecstasy to break through to a world so jaded, to reach people who have seen David Attenborough here, there and everywhere, who have clicked — bored — past the Animal Planet channel hundreds of times without ever really seeing the animals. Maybe it takes a lizard that can glow like fire and hover like a helicopter and a staring troop of iridescent blue lemurs to wake us up. Maybe “Avatar” is what we need to bring our inner taxonomist back to life, to get us to really see.

Read the whole essay here.

If you are a science fiction/Fantasy writer, you’ll want to pay attention to the world-building done here.  Rarely have I seen world building done so well at the biological level, in a movie.  The plant and animal life here make sense together.  It’s not an anything goes style—if you check out the movie purely from that biological angle, you see a world that fits together well.  

And that’s something to take notes from.  

 

Avatar: A Second Chance to Get It Right

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In my last post, I reacted to critics who were convinced there was a racist motif in play in Avatar.  But I’d like to talk about what Avatar is all about: Second Chances.

The movie is riddled with “seconds”— a twin who takes over for his brother when his brother is killed, a man who has his legs taken away from him getting a second chance at walking, Sully who has a second chance at being useful to the Na’vi, humankind getting a second chance to be at peace with a Planet.  

Cameron in his acceptance speech for the Golden Globes says as much:

“‘Avatar’ asks us to see that everything is connected, all human beings to each other, and us to the Earth. And if you have to go four and a half light years to another, made-up planet to appreciate this miracle of the world that we have right here, well, you know what, that’s the wonder of cinema right there, that’s the magic,” Cameron said.

I was moved by the essay on Sully that I read over at the Respectable Negro Tribe blog

Jake Sully is emasculated in a literal sense because of a combination of physical injury, financial inadequacy and family tragedy. Not only is Jake Sully a Marine who cannot walk or fight, but more tragically he knows that there is a cure for his injury, but cannot afford it. Further, Jake’s closest relative, his twin brother, has been killed in a meaningless act of violence that Jake could not prevent, and now Jake is now forced to step forward into a position that he does not feel he is smart enough to handle.

He gets that second shot, for his brother, for himself, and in a representative way, for humans.  When he is at the tree with the glowing strands, he asks the ancients to link up with him, look into his past.  He’s trying to warn Erya that his kind are bloodthirsty, and that they would destroy the planet if given the chance.  “We killed our Mother,” he tells the planet.  And the planet steps up to save itself.  

One wonders what our story would have been like if we would have had a more respectful way of listening to our planet.  Is Climate Change the consequences of not listening?  

This is the stronger message of Avatar.  Not who saves who, but of having a second chance to save things at all….