Avatar has been pointed out since its release, as a movie that illustrates the anthropocentrism felt by world powers today. In the movie, the military is on a foreign planet to obtain a needed resource known as “unobtainium”. A peaceful tribe called the Na’vi live on this planet. The Na’vi worship the natural resources, so much as to even have a master narrative in which a tree is a god-like figure. The military has been given orders to take the “unobtainium” by any means necessary. The native tribe does not want to give up their sacred lands to be destroyed. The Colonel of the military does not see the (narrative) self of the Na’vi. After an extended period of time trying to talk with the Na’vi shows no success a massive battle breaks out in which hundreds of Na’vi, and their environment dies.
The tree where the Na’vi live is known as “Home Tree” and sits atop the largest concentration of “unobtainium”. In one scene the military decides to destroy the “Home Tree” knowing it is the home of the native people. Before tearing down “Home Tree” they choose to “gas-out” the Na’vi to be “humane”. After they are forced out of their habitat, the Na’vi, choking, are forced to watch “Home Tree” fall to the ground. At this point the movie visuals switch from bright blues and greens, to dark greys and black illustrating the pain a viewer can see in the Na’vi’s eyes. When the shot switches to the military men, there are smiles on their faces.
There is a paradigm in Avatar in which the Military were unable to see that the Na’vi viewed the environment and “Home Tree” as valuable for more than money. Conversely, the Na’vi were unable to see the intentions of the military and that they would not be able to fight them alone.
There is a common dualism in Avatar of feminine/masculine. The military is masculine, taking down the feminine Na’vi and the Colonel of the military refers to himself as “pappa”, while referring to the soldiers under him as “ladies”.
In “Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World” Carolyn Merchant points out atomism which is how the military viewed the planet the Na’vi lived on; as having individual parts for them to pick (unobtainium) and destroy (“Home Tree”). The Military in Avatar have a Mechanistic Worldview seen in their willingness to destroy not only “Home Tree” but the entire environment just to dig up “unobtainium”, and laughing when people try to point out to them that those are living things. The Military’s decision to “gas-out” the Na’vi from “Home Tree” in order to tear it down is an example of reductionism because they is was an easy way to get them out and was “humane”. The military was not able to see the individual, in the Na’vi or even in their own ranks; everyone was the same. Carolyn Merchant states that
“the organic framework was for many centuries sufficiently integrative to override commercial development and technological innovation, the acceleration of economic change… began to undermine the organic unity of the cosmos and society.”
This quote sums up the way that the Military came to the Na’vi’s home, and at first did not destroy it. Then when the need became to great, the paradigm grew stronger and the environment was destroyed.
(http://reeldealmw.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html)
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