This "anthropological analytical review" of the film Avatar, I came as a cine-anthropological term, I stopped by decanting more than a week to view the movie in 3D (glasses uncomfortable, that I had very large and twisted me. The view was distorted by me awhile back to its normal state).
floated in my head conflict Avatar viewing as a student of anthropology and the consequent prejudice that led me to the cinema.
This is not just a bricolage of ideas that came to mind while watching the movie.
Many others are lost (I have a retention very poor memory) but might become reincarnated in an Edit or infiltrated in a new post.
I give it 3 and 1 / 2 Sparks, I entertained visually. Suitable to hang out and unwind a little.
I give it 3 and 1 / 2 Sparks, I entertained visually. Suitable to hang out and unwind a little.
A zul is the color chosen for Na'avi, tribe on the planet Pandora. Described as "humanoid" by the highest ranking out of the base of military occupation.
A color "alter-friendly" in an aesthetic that ranges from a "Disney fauna" and the style of Rousseau noble savage, usually assigned to the Indians in the U.S. hegemonic productions. Vedetesca-native aesthetics: a lot of pen and accessories such as pendants and sconces, spears, bows and arrows, make distinctive and loincloth. Aesthetics, of course, hyperreal.
A former Marine in a wheelchair, a chosen, infiltrates the Na'avi thanks to a device (your avatar) created in his likeness to gain trust and access to knowledge from a previous knowledge that responds to an end: getting what the world (system) West needs to survive. A fuel called Octanio, in this case. Al Like contemporary military campaigns.
The former marine named Jake Sully, documented their impressions, thoughts and feelings as you would an observer in the field, only instead of taking notes, recording himself. Recordings, we see clearly how it affects the subjective otherness abiding interest and guidance along the way epistemological. While this occurs, the fieldworker involuntary and poorly trained boasts of being "doing science" in disbelief.
This is view of anthropology as well. Beyond the classic imagery that says "discover dinosaurs", or "dig up bones." Our discipline is concerned to show its empirical character in academic discourse, in response to an external drive does not believe him. And it gets all soft science, in contrast to undeniable universality of the hard sciences.
The Western High-tech Enterprise, enables a cosmological migration, the passage from one world to another. Operates as a catalyst between the three stages of ritual that Turner conceptualized as separation, liminal and aggregation.
The avatar is biomaterial possibility for the body as a container for a particular cosmological consciousness, passing through the passage.
The process begins with a kind of tanning bed that takes the subjectivity of a body of origin to another destination. This enters the separation process from pre-liminal stage: the body threshold cosmological transformation process, as long as the avatar takes a first contact with Pandora.
Transit clarified by Pandora: Jake Sully Jakesully happens to be named (is recognized and observed by others), then by joining the clan is rebuked for his initiative (and future partner-native acceptance, ergo: formal aggregation), it rebukes him "you are stupid, like an ignorant boy!" thus the former Marine is located in pseudo Na'avi place for the neophyte. In this instance it is being studied by the "savages." The native shaman will recognize this status to the decision that he, as an alien, has an "insanity" that must be cured by acculturation, ie by adopting Na'avi modes and attenuation of their own.
At that time it shows the translation liminal instance the initial aggregation.
Jake Sully thoughtful face of otherness: "che is good the smurf that, eh"
The passage of this medium to the final stage (aggregation) is longer in time and passes the rest of the film. Necessary battles and negotiations between the two worlds (Pandora and the Earth) to Jakesully is finally accepted and recognized as Na'avi. However, there is another technological device that allows the final transition: the contact Eywa. Full orchestra operation of a harmonious whole that encompasses dynamic identities and social drama. This is, in my view, the starting point of the film.
Native Eywa connecting to, accessing your wisdom and gifts of healing ritual. Eywa witch is played by the clan that makes local medium and transfers the benefits of nature to the rest of the tribe.
The shaman Eywa contact the Best Western so imagine a trance, his eyes slide back exposing the white of the eyeball, gestures and mannerisms are accompanied by songs and variations in intonation. This is how all costs is imagined by Western culture, despite the Na'avi are from another planet, you can not do more abstract cosmological acceptance otherwise magically relate a particular environment.
reiterate: the Other is a construction based on an alter-friendly operation.
technology appears as a constitutive element of Western life and the native: the former is the vector access what is different and the second is the native mode of relating to its biotope, a natural technology which enables the harmonious relationship between these noble savages and the wisdom of nature that welcomes you in a state of abundance and general welfare. Nature also appears in the Western category of "wild" versus what holds the city (or "hipeurbanismo" based on planning the hand of the most advanced technology of the time) as the next step in an evolution of use and configuration of space.
In turn, technology has a dual function: the medium becomes the bodies, is the vector of a mental state to another. Something that a shaman understands more than anyone else: the need to arm certain ritual elements to a ritual journey, or state of trance.
The contact Na'avi Eywa, the Goddess Nature, using a technology developed by the same biotope and Pandora-dwelling organisms. All have the physiological capacity to connect to local biotic beings, both fauna and flora. There is a primary communication ("primitive?) Between each of the biotic, which is what makes possible that evokes the harmony that once the man was able to enjoy.
Even until shows a larger scale communitas among the various clans Na'avi, having to come together to confront a common enemy.
same is what anthropologists do: prepare for a trip. A journey that we choose to understand and think about humanity from the most diverse realities and cosmologies. It is what the biologist (from scientific discourse, so repeatedly in the service of what is considered unique science: biology. Owner of truth among all species) and marine and hero Jakesully.
Both occupy roles of anthropologists unaccounted aware. Malinowskian fulfilling the commandments, learning the native language, hunt and gather with the locals, dress like them and domesticated animals like them. Culture as they occur.
But not without making gross changes in social life, this is what the anthropologist must be careful. Intent is clearly ethnocentric Na'avi want to acculturate to a Western way "evolved and owner of truth, thus guaranteeing a future" civilize by teaching English, building roads. Conquer "the English" evangelize, deny, and then decimate them.
All this, with the help of a "native" in the image and likeness of the observer agent, an avatar that enables entry to another world and interaction with the otherness built from tenderness and what is tolerate comfortable when dealing with other strangers.
A native hyperreal, in terms of Alcida Ramos The hyperreal Indian (1992), in that the processing of their rights and social dynamics are covered from the "burocentrismo" real West as more real than they already are. This hyperreality is assigned by the construct of the Indian by the white man: black tolerable, which is more real than real because it makes their claims and claims to the white way and not the wave, riot and "savagery" caracterÃsitco native.
Or as Baudrillard:
is no longer a matter of imitation or reduplication, nor even parody. Rather it is a matter of substituting signs of the real for the real itself, that is, an operation to determine every social process by its operational double, a machine metaestaseable, programmatic and descriptive perfct. Never again to be produced (...) real (Baudrillard 1983:4)
Another distinctive construction of otherness within the mega-Hollywood film productions, has to do with forbidden sexuality, innocence own Disney style, which is hardly avoidable in the planning aesthetics of producing such films.
Unlike ethnographic accounts with which we anthropologists, and contrary to the social imaginary of what is outlined as "Indian" these people appear blue with no signs of sexuality manifests.
could infer that Na'avi terms, this could be part of a sexual taboo, the sexuality not live in any kind of speech or of fact. However, this also might think from the point of what the movie company considers as "moral" or appropriate for the core of its consumers: a class conservative neoliberal discourse seeking to justify or itemize their real intentions (Be aware of them or not.)
That move appears as something private to suit a cosmology correct to the Western moral establishment.
is created so that the viewer does not hurt the eyes. Again, the image and likeness of what is tolerable.
And if there is something true in regard to learning and another, is that both eyes, as our body as the relationship between subjectivity that is constructed from and an "outside", hurt. And with that nuisance is that we are alive and agents.
Hence prejudice, I think, is the real engine of acceptance and tolerance.
Hence prejudice, I think, is the real engine of acceptance and tolerance.
The Other always hurts because reminds us. The sameness is what hurts. There is some innocence in the way we build otherness, and from this, the self, if you know Krotz.
