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James Cameron's Avatar is the feel-good movie of the decade for Biophiles and Gaians. The movie is one long, consciously realized allegory about the human love and need for nature. To accomplish the allegorical story, the film uses specific ecological and evolutionary hypotheses about the nature of life and humanity's relationship to nature. An allegory conveys non-literal meanings, teaches lessons, and communicates messages by means of symbolic figures, actions, and representation. An allegory is an extended metaphor or series of metaphors, and an artistic allegory (as contrasted with a literary allegory) uses visual (rather than verbal) symbolic representation to accomplish these tasks.

A literary metaphor asserts that two usually different things are the same ("all the world's a stage"; "With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal"); it uses a word or phrase to invoke a direct similarity between the word or phrase used and the nominally dissimilar thing described. Visual metaphors do the same: they equate two different things (an actor striding across a stage and holding his arms out to form a world; pirates loudly stomping across a stage to pursue burglary while claiming they are quiet as cats to hilarious effect). Visual metaphors in the service of allegory use visual imagery to evoke physical and emotional similarities between the images depicted on stage or screen and the nominally dissimilar objects, actions, places, and people they portray.

Avatar is continuously filled with such visual metaphors that creates its allegory, which makes it an exceedingly rich and artful movie. Movies are supposed to entertain at a minimum, but I appreciate films that rise about mere entertainment and become art, and I appreciate even more movies that use their art to communicate deeply-felt emotional and moral truths about humans and nature through cinematic allegory. The fact that Avatar is so popular demonstrates that it has accomplished this rare feat, despite the usual film-goers lack of comprehension about what they are viewing beyond the superficial fantasy, romance, and shooting, justifiably giving James Cameron some well-earned acclaim and my grateful thanks.

Despite this success, the explanation of what precisely Cameron intended his movie to accomplish has remained elusive. Movie critics and reviewers have examined Avatar from many different themes and points of view but have continued, I believe, to miss the point. The movie is not complex, but because it is an allegory, Avatar's ultimate message is not literal, and because it uses multiple visual, cinematic metaphors that are unfamiliar to mainstream movie critics and reviewers, interpreting the metaphors and allegory has proven difficult for them and and finding the film's meaning has proven elusive. Critics and reviewers must use their intelligence and interpretive abilities to discern a film's meaning. Doing this requires specific background knowledge on which to base an analysis and interpretation, and their lack of this background knowledge explains why so many have failed to understand Avatar. This essay explains what has happened and why this is the case. In a word, their ignorance of biology and religion has caused their interpretations to fail.

Biophilia

Biophilia is the human love of living nature, a term popularized by famous Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson in his book with the eponymous title Biophilia. The term was first used by Erich Fromm to describe a psychological orientation of being attracted to all that is alive and vital. Wilson defined it similarly and it was he who systematized and popularized the concept as the "biophilia hypothesis" described in his 1984 book.

To Wilson, biophilia is "the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life." He proposed the possibility that the deep affiliations humans have with nature are rooted in the heritage of our evolutionary biology. Wilson hypothesized that human preferences toward living things, while modified through experience and culture, are the product of biological evolution. Another description of the biophilia hypothesis is that "humans evolved as organisms deeply enmeshed with the intricacies of nature and we still have this affinity with nature ingrained in our genotype."

The Wikipedia article provides this example apparently taken from Wilson: Humans are generally attracted to baby mammal faces and find them appealing across species (I can verify this for kitten faces, at least). The large eyes and small features of any young mammal face are far more appealing than those of the mature adults. The biophilia hypothesis suggests that the positive emotional response that adult mammals have toward baby mammals across species helps increase the survival rates of all mammals. I am amused by this example because I would have explained the effect quite differently. I believe adult human affection for infant mammal faces is because adult humans themselves have infant mammal faces. Our head shape (with large brain) and concomitant facial features (flattened nose, high forehead, etc.) are due to the process of neoteny, the retention of immature features into adulthood during developmental evolution. Neoteny is a rapid way for a species to change phenotypically under extreme selection pressures (in the human case the selection was for larger brain size, and neoteny was the most developmentally efficient way for humans to evolve a larger head). But there are many other examples of biophilia, so it may have some veracity, but it is still a controversial idea and may not be true. A 1993 book titled The Biophilia Hypothesis edited by Stephen Kellert and E. O. Wilson presents arguments both supporting and rejecting the hypothesis.


If you are a Biophile, you already know it. What's important for our review is that James Cameron, who wrote and directed Avatar, is a Biophile. He is obviously deeply concerned about living nature and the recklessness with how humanity is quickly damaging, degrading, and destroying it. The destroyed giant tree village is a symbol for all trees cut down and their animal communities destroyed. Cameron describes Avatar as an "environmental parable."  In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Cameron said this:

[Avatar is] a broader metaphor, not so intensely politicized as some would make it, but rather that's how we treat the natural world as well. There’s a sense of entitlement — "We're here, we're big, we've got the guns, we've got the technology, we've got the brains, we therefore are entitled to every damn thing on this planet." That’s not how it works and we're going to find out the hard way if we don't wise up and start seeking a life that's in balance with the natural cycles of life on earth.

This is as clear and unambiguous a description of the writer/director's intent as it is possible to obtain, and anyone experiencing the movies should agree with the description's accuracy. I certainly do. The biophilic solution to rapid, ongoing environmental destruction is to engender a deeper love of nature among humanity so it will be less willing to exploit it so hurtfully. With usual circumstances, this would entail education and more exposure to nature (nature hikes, camping trips to national parks, etc.). Under extreme circumstances it is appropriate and ethical to take radical action to protect living organisms vital for survival that are threatened with unwarranted destruction. This is a major message of Avatar. It is a social or political message and is at the most easily seen and understood level.

Gaia

There is a deeper message, of course, and movie critics again failed to notice it. This is the message or theme that refers to Pandora and Gaia. Pandora literally means "all gifts." Most are familiar with the Pandora myth, in which Pandora opens her box and humanity's troubles come flying out. Avatar has nothing to do with the Pandora's Box myth. Instead, the moon is named Pandora because it is filled with gifts for its cat-like humanoid inhabitants, the Na'vi. The Na'vi have thin and sharp cat-like canines, long pointed ears, and tails (unfortunately more rat-like than cat-like). Their teeth indicate they are obligate carnivores, but I suppose we are supposed to think they are vegetarians or omnivores, at least, since they live close to nature.  The movie's premise is about the conflict between the Na'vi and the human interlopers from another star system for Pandora's gifts--it natural resources. The humans covet Pandora's gifts (specifically, the energy-rich mineral unobtanium) and won't let the native population get in the way of their exploitation. This is obviously unethical on several levels; for one, it violates the prime directive.

The Na'vi--a tribal society similar to Native American Indians or African natives--live a primitive life but one with an amazingly close connection to living nature that enables them to receive and appreciate its gifts. Each individual is able to directly connect to the moon's living network through a physical electrochemical connection, something like an external nerve synapse, that appears at the tip of their pigtails. This close electrochemical connection is without question the best literary invention or creation by Cameron in Avatar's screenplay. I'd rank it with Philip Pullman's invention of the external animal soul or spirit of individual persons, termed a daemon in his novel series His Dark Materials. These two literary inventions are so good because they evoke enormous emotional empathy and satisfaction in the in the susceptible and appreciative reader or viewer. A suitably susceptible reader or viewer has the appropriate intellectual preparation to understand and appreciate such a literary invention, so that leaves out 90% of the American reading and viewing public and 99% of citizens younger than 25.

In the case of Avatar, the movie invokes a second biological hypothesis, the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock. Like the biophilia hypothesis, the Gaia hypothesis is controversial and even more so. Lovelock and his followers, notably Lynn Margulis who is now generally considered a co-author of the hypothesis, term it the Gaia Theory because they believe it has passed predictive tests. It has not. Most scientists believe the Gaia hypothesis is false or worse: I and many other scientists consider it to be fringe science or pseudoscience. But Cameron legitimately uses Gaia to propel his story (which is science fiction, after all, so using Gaia is a legitimate plot device) and give the story's theme or message even greater clarity and emotional effect. I was affected even though I think Gaia is nonsense, because I could willingly suspended disbelief and allowed myself to become immersed in the drama. Besides, as an evolutionary scientist, I really would like Gaia to be true.

Gaia is an ecological hypothesis that proposes that the five distinct ecological subsystems of Earth (biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, cryosphere, and geosphere) are closely integrated to form a complex interacting system that maintains the biological, geochemical, and climatic conditions of Earth in a stable to cyclic condition that supports life. This description seems uncontroversial. Undeniably, organisms have historically altered the Earth's surface chemistry and climate. Natural biogeochemical feedback and chemical buffering mechanisms exist that maintain a kind of equilibrium that is broadly supportive of life. Organisms influence their non-living environment (water chemistry, atmospheric chemistry, surface temperature, sediment deposition, etc.) and this environment in turn influences organisms by the well-known evolutionary processes of natural selection, divergence, and extinction.

Margulis says Gaia is "not an organism, [but] an emergent property of interaction among organisms." She defined Gaia as "the series of interacting ecosystems that compose a single huge ecosystem at the Earth's surface." As long as non-homeostatic conditions, mechanistic processes, and natural systems are invoked, this description of Gaia--known as weak Gaia--is uncontroversial. Indeed, terming these ecological relationships "weak Gaia" undeservedly flatters the Gaia proponents, since these relationships were observed and described by others long before Gaia was proposed and really have nothing to do with Gaia as popularly formulated.

But strong Gaia--the actual proposal of Lovelock and Margulis--is much more than interacting planetary ecosystems. Here the complex interacting five subsystems work to maintain the biological, geochemical, and climatic conditions of Earth in a stable, homeostatic condition that favors the perpetuation of life and the path to more complex life, ultimately leading to intelligent life. Margulis believes "the surface of the planet behaves as a physiological system in certain limited ways" and Earth's surface is "best regarded as alive."
Gaia's supporters see Earth as a single gigantic organism whose biota purposefully operate for their own self-interest with the intent of creating biologically favorable conditions for themselves, manipulating their physical environment to improve their environment. They see the Earth's oceans and atmosphere not having arbitrary properties, but "a contrivance specifically constituted for a set of purposes." They believe the Earth System behaves as a single, self-regulating system with physical, chemical, biological, and human components. They believe "it is unlikely that chance alone accounts for the fact that temperature, pH and the presence of compounds of nutrient elements have been, for immense periods, just those optimal for surface life. Rather, ...energy is expended by the biota to actively maintain these optima." Even more extreme are variants of Gaia that claim the "entire Earth is a single unified organism that is consciously manipulating the climate in order to make conditions more conducive to life." (Source of quotes)

The attribution of purpose, consciousness, deliberate manipulation of homeostasis, self-regulation, and indeed vitality to Earth's surface takes the Gaia hypothesis far out of methodological naturalism and biological science. The only living organism we know that has purpose, consciousness, and self-intent are humans themselves, so Gaia is a psychological projection of humankind onto Earth--the anthropomorphizing of a planet's surface. This is pseudoscience at a minimum and probably a neurosis.
But Pandora the fictional moon is what Earth the real planet is not. The Gaia hypothesis is completely true for Pandora, something so obvious that it is amazing that all previous reviewers missed it. All living things are connected by the electrochemical sensory global network that the Na'vi can tap into. Past memories can be accessed as if the moon was a giant computer. Even better, the moon can understand prayers and grant supplications. Pandora shows it can manipulate the biological resources it needs to protect itself against danger. The Na'vi call this entity Eywa and worship it as their goddess, as well they should. They identify Eywa as their "All Mother." Gaia is the name of the ancient Greek's primordial Earth goddess. In the Norse myths, the Earth Mother was Erda, a character in Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle from whom Wotan often seeks advice. So Eywa is a good, fictional name for this entity.

Biophiles would certainly like the Gaia hypothesis to be true so that they could be certain that Earth would repair itself from human damage. Indeed, James Lovelock's 2006 book is titled The Revenge of Gaia. He egregiously argues that Gaia is seeking revenge on humanity--for their lack of respect for biodiversity, cutting of rainforests, erosion of topsoil, and large-scale pollution of air, water, and land--by making the planet uninhabitable for humans by eliminating environmental buffering and thereby increasing global warming. All this time I thought we were inflicting climate change on ourselves, but no, Gaia could have maintained a constant temperature if she wanted but she really just wants to get rid of us. In Avatar, Eywa does precisely this for Pandora--she gets rid of the humans! This is the moment I experienced a wave of satisfaction and tears came to my eyes. If Gaia could do this for Earth, our planet's biota and biodiversity might have a chance. Those pesky, destructive humans could be eliminated.
The Na'vi are a warrior culture, in which warriors are respected, so Na'vi tribes must repeatedly fight and kill other Na'vi tribes during normal, pre-human invasion times. This aspect of their culture is completely ignored in the movie. I didn't even learn the name of the tribe Jake joins (the Omaticaya) until I read it on Wikipedia. Instead, the tribes cooperate with each other in fighting the humans: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. In this respect, the Na'vi act exactly as humans do, exhibiting both out-group territoriality and  in-group cooperation. In fact, the Na'vi symbolize humanity, one of many allegorical aspects of the movie that reviewers found inexplicable, so they didn't explain it. Typically, Jake is assumed to be a human who is assimilated into the Na'vi culture, but actually Jake is someone else who is assimilated into human culture. This metaphor gives Avatar it's great spiritual and emotional impact, something that most reviewers failed to perceive and some reviewers felt but couldn't explain.

But there is an even deeper level to Avatar--the deepest level of all and the most important theme that was spectacularly missed by all mainstream media and web reviewers, at least all the prominent ones I read. This is the film's spiritual level, the primary theme of the movie and one I will explain in a moment. This theme is subtle but still surprising that so many reviewers have missed it.

Jake the Samurai Dances with Aliens

Instead, most reviewers focused on the film's alleged religious or racial elements. Ross Douthat in a New York Times op-ed claimed that Avatar was a

long apologia for pantheism — a faith that equates God with nature and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world. . . . The Na’Vi are saved by the movie’s hero, a turncoat Marine, but they’re also saved by their faith in Eywa, the “All Mother,” described variously as a network of energy and the sum total of every living thing. If this narrative arc sounds familiar, that’s because pantheism has been Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now. . . . Hollywood keeps returning to these themes because millions of Americans respond favorably to them.

Douthat thought that Dances With Wolves, The Lion King, Pocahontas, and the Star Wars films all adopt this religious "metaphysic." This is quite incorrect, of course. Secularism is Hollywood's philosophy of choice, not pantheism: the willingness to make any movie about any religion that the public will pay to see. Star Wars does have pantheistic elements, but the others do not and certainly Avatar does not. The primitive Na'vi are animists--they believe in an animism, not pantheism. Animism is the religious or spiritual idea that souls or spirits exist not only in humans but also in other animals, plants, rocks, bodies of water, and other entities of the natural environment. Animism is particularly widely found in the religions of indigenous peoples. Also, Douthat has an incorrect understanding of pantheism. Pantheism is the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing immanent God and that the Universe or Nature is equivalent to God. Pantheism promotes the idea that God is better understood as an abstract principle representing natural law, existence, and the Universe rather than as a transcendent and especially anthropomorphic entity. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal god; rather, they refer to nature or the universe as God. This correct definition of pantheism is a religion quite different from the Na'vi's who distinctly personalize their god Eywa, the "All Mother," who can be invoked by prayer. This is not pantheism.
Annalee Newitz of io9.com sees Avatar as the same as Dances With Wolves and The Last Samurai, "just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy," films "where a white guy manages to get himself accepted into a closed society of people of color and eventually becomes its most awesome member." Newitz writes that Avatar is a "fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people." According to her, Avatar is also similar to Dune and District 9, movies in which "humans are the cause of alien oppression and distress. Then, a white man who was one of the oppressors switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior." She adds that a film like Avatar is ultimately about "white guilt":

These are movies about white guilt. Our main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color -- their cultures, their habitats, and their populations. The whites realize this when they begin to assimilate into the "alien" cultures and see things from a new perspective. To purge their overwhelming sense of guilt, they switch sides, become "race traitors," and fight against their old comrades.

Critic Stephanie Zacharek of Salon titled her review "Dances With Aliens." Big Hollywood critic Carl Kozlowski began his review with a synopsis of Avatar that one might confuse with Dances With Wolves:

Imagine the story of a soldier sent to fight native tribes for their land, but finds that once he actually meets and gets to know them, he respects them too much to follow through with his mission. Gradually he becomes one of the tribe, leaving his old way of life behind to embrace their nature-loving culture.

Because Avatar is basically "Dances With Wolves in Space," Kozlowski called Avatar "one of the most derivative films of all time," finding it

hard to believe that a man like Cameron, who is capable of absolute genius in creating the film’s staggering visuals and astonishing breakthroughs in 3D IMAX technology, is unable to come up with a screenplay that isn't a hamfisted mishmash of countless better films' plot elements and a heavy-handed bash on modern American foreign policy.

So Newitz and others have a point about the similarities of Avatar to earlier movies about the white Anglo male assimilation into an alien culture and his newly-found identification with and affection for its people. The movie is certainly about race--among many other and more important things. Newitz's initial analysis of race in Avatar provoked discussion in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Atlantic. Blogger SEK unhesitatingly claimed "the film is racist." Although I consider race to be of very minor importance in this movie (these are aliens on another planet, after all, visited by humans, so inevitably there must be two populations of humanoids with very different features), the racial issue obviously hit a deep emotional chord among reviewers, frankly telling us more about them than about the movie. Newitz explains, "It's a wish to lead people of color from the inside rather than from the (oppressive, white) outside." This is such a common wish that the similarity cannot be a coincidence but rather the expression of some deep emotional need.

But the need is not white guilt. In Avatar, I discerned no human expressing guilt, including Jake. The emotions the heroes expressed were first empathy, then anger, then happiness, and finally gratitude to Eywa. Guilt is for losers, and Jake is not a loser; he's a man of character. Contrary to Newitz, the need is deeper than guilt. I think it is biophilia and Gaiaism, the wish to return to nature--a more natural state that provides a better actualization of one's humanity than modern, technological, nature-destroying society. I am aware of arguments that technology can help with the actualization of one's life and I agree with them (I am a technophile myself as well as a naturalist), but that technology would be the affirmative, supportive kind, such as Apple iPhones and laptop computers, digital cameras, Italian espresso machines, and German binoculars, not the degrading, life-destroying kind, such as explosive ordnance, attack helicopters, and giant tree-destroying machines.

Newitz continues, "Avatar imaginatively revisits the crime scene of white America’s foundational act of genocide, in which entire native tribes and civilizations were wiped out by European immigrants to the American continent." Wrong again. The destruction of the Native Americans was not genocide because it was not deliberate. Ninety percent died of European diseases. From the Indians point of view it was a catastrophe, but not a Holocaust. Movie critics SEK, Kozlowski, Zacharek interpreted the film at face value and accuse it of racism and being derivative. I agree there is a superficial similarity of Avatar to Dances With Wolves and The Last Samurai, movies in which a white, Anglo male immerses himself in a non-white native culture, begins to identify with the culture's people, eventually is accepted by them as a member, becomes a warrior leader and defender of the native culture, and ultimately leads them to victory. These analyses, however, conveniently ignore the fact that the white Anglo male actually fails to save the native culture in the two comparison movies--while the Indians and Samurai men are exterminated, the white guy survives. In fact, Avatar is fundamentally based on totally different evolutionary and ecological premises, so the similarity is indeed superficial.

Racism enters the movie when one asks, as do some negative reviewers, why a native leader couldn't perform these tasks. Why is a white, Anglo male always necessary? The movie's task is to assuage white guilt, the critics claim, suggesting that a native isn't smart, brave, or strong enough to perform the necessary task of defending the primitive culture and village. Why did the film need a Jake Sully character at all, except for the obvious reason that audience members might find it easier to connect with a human than a tall, blue-skinned Na'vi. Once again, the reviewers' premises are wrong. Jake really does have special super-Na'vi (i.e., god-like) powers. The primitive Na'vi--armed with their giant arrows--could not have defeated the human mercenaries' flying gunship armada without Jake's help. First, he had taken some human weapons (grenades) and had the knowledge to use them. Second, he knew where the armored flying gunships were vulnerable to grenades (their air intake or exhaust vents). Third, Jake is much more than just a white superhero who defends the primitive natives whose culture he has assimilated.

Jesus-Jake: the Avatar of God

Let's get right to the point. Despite the unanimous agreement of the top mainstream and web media film critics that Marine Jake Sully's role channeled Army Lt. John Dunbar and Capt. Nathan Algren, nothing could be further from the truth. The white guy/warrior/primitive culture defender resemblance is purely coincidental and superficial. Something much deeper creates the core of Jake's persona and actions. Jake is an avatar in two senses. The second sense is the one obvious to every movie viewer and reviewer, who knew that an avatar is the virtual representation of a human in virtual reality. This is the sense in which the word is most often used today in role-playing games using computer programs. In Avatar, the concept was updated by having Jake virtually represented in a physical genetically-engineered Na'vi body using highly-advanced bio-computer technologies. But an avatar has a distinct first sense that is actually the key to the movie. In an apparently unappreciated 2007 Time Magazine interview, James Cameron touched on one definition of this first sense of the word avatar. When asked what an avatar is, Cameron said

It's an incarnation of one of the Hindu gods taking a flesh form. In this film what that means is that the human technology in the future is capable of injecting a human's intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body. It's not an avatar in the sense of just existing as ones and zeroes in cyberspace. It's actually a physical body.

In fact, the word avatar has long been generalized to mean an incarnation of a spiritual being or god in human form, the descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape, or the incarnation of a god into a human body (three dictionary definitions). This is my life-long understanding of the term avatar, long before the word became used in role-playing games or environments in digital virtual realities (such as Second Life). Jake is just such a spiritual-physical avatar. In the most superficial level of the film, Jake is the technology-dependent role-playing avatar that even kids and mainstream and web movie critics understand. He is a human who appears to the Na'vi in avatar form to help him first relate to and better understand them and ultimately save them from the destructive humans.

In the deeper level of the film, however--the metaphorical allegorical level--Jake is not just a representation of a man, but the incarnation of a spiritual being in human form. Such avatars appear to humanity in human form to make it easier for him to relate to us because their goal is to save us. In fact, Jake is a god--something like Jesus, who is the ultimate avatar in our dominantly Christian culture--who takes human form to be the savior of humanity. In the film, Jake metaphorically represents a Jesus-like figure and the Na'vi metaphorically represent humanity. The traditional Jesus came to Earth to save humanity from its moral sins, but Jesus-Jake comes to Pandora to save humans from their ecological sins--their sins against their planet. Thus, Avatar is ultimately both an ecological and religious allegory, and it has to be both to achieve its great (mostly subconscious) human emotional impact.

Why does humanity need saving and from whom? This has already been discussed in the earlier part of this essay, but let's answer it again. Humanity must be saved from its destructive self. We are degrading and destroying our environment of which we are part and on which we depend for survival, so we are being self-destructive when we cut rainforests, pollute the air, soil, and water, over-breed, exploit greater and greater amounts of finite natural resources, and destroy biodiversity with our climate-changing activities. Of course, Jake is different from traditional Jesus in that he wants to save the population not by preaching love, peace, and tolerance against wrong-doers, but by doing what American Christians ultimately do anyway: shoot the practitioners of maleficence.

Jake as a biophilic, Gaian, shoot-first savior-figure is not far-fetched. As I watched the film, to me the concept was perfectly logical, enormously thrilling, and emotionally fulfilling. The evidence for this interpretation is everywhere. First, the biophilia and Gaia elements make clear that the movie is about protecting and saving the environment. Cameron says this himself and no reviewer denies it. Second, Jake comes from the "Sky People," an obvious metaphorical reference to gods in the sky (only literalists would think that "Sky People" referred to humans). Jake essentially comes from Heaven, appears in Na'vi (metaphorically human) form, and saves the moon's inhabitants (metaphorically saving humans from their ecological sins). Third, Jesus-Jake has a vast amount of "secret knowledge" (gnosis) from the fact that he comes from a technologically superior race to the Na'vi, so they quickly make him a leader. Among his gnosis is knowledge of modern weapons and tactics that allow him to defeat the mercenaries of the Resources Development Administration and send the corporation's miners back to Earth.

Since James Cameron has hinted that the story arc of Avatar can produce two more movies, perhaps we can predict some of the future themes of the expected trilogy. In Avatar Part II, Jake has completely assimilated into his new tribe. Claiming to be descended from the sky god Jakian rather than the moon god Eywa, Jake starts his own sect, the Jakeites. Proselytization begins and the new Jakian religion spreads to other tribes. The inevitable conflict starts between the Jakeites and the traditional Eywans and soon the tribes split and take sides. Tribal battles become even more bloodthirsty since now they are fighting opposing religions, not just opposing tribes. Instead of ritual combat and formalized assaults, the conflict takes on a new intensity with deliberate ambuses and killings. Heretics are punished with torture and painful executions. Loved ones are murdered in the name of the new religion or the old one. There is lots of killing, torture, and flying around on mountain banshees and riding thanators, using the animals to kill Na'vi of opp0sing tribes. The animals are even trained, by starvation, to attack, kill, and eat helpless captive Na'vi of the opposing religion in circuses held for the amusement of the tribal populations.

In Avatar Part III, Jake and Neytiri have a son and daughter. With the religious war and persecution, the parents realize that this is no moon on which to raise children. Jake and Neytiri begin to dial back on the religious intensity, eventually becoming secular and accepting Eywa for what it is, a conscience moon and not a god at all. Giving up their animistic religion, they convince the other tribes of Na'vi to do likewise. Everyone becomes Secular Na'vists and life continues without religion and religious strife, as in Star Trek, and all live happily ever after in a peaceful, cooperative existence marked by scientific and artistic advancement. Even the mountain banshees and thanators are domesticated, hybridized into smaller and more docile varieties, and become pets for children.

Religious and Right-Wing Opposition to Avatar

Perhaps the best evidence that Jake is an ecological/spiritual Jesus-figure comes from two sources. First is the fear and jealously of the Catholic Church. The Vatican has always opposed rivals to its well-honed syncreatic religious mythology. Sure enough, the Vatican newspaper and radio station faults Avatar for "flirting with the idea that worship of nature can replace religion — a notion the pope has warned against." The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore, said the film "gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature." Similarly, Vatican Radio said it "cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium." "Nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity to worship," the radio said. Their critic's dubious conclusion: "So much stupefying, enchanting technology, but few genuine emotions."

Of course one can excuse the Vatican for being critical of Avatar. When you worship your own supernatural avatar-god and have two thousand years of your own pseudo-doctrines, you might be touchy about the competition. It is our avatar (Jesus) versus Avatar's avatar (Jake). Also, when your primary ethical imperative is to force women to have as many children as possible, over-populate the Earth, and degrade its resources, a narrative with the opposite message--love for Nature, equality for woman as spiritual leaders, and an emotionally-affirmative and highly effective animistic religion--you seriously begin to feel the pressure. If young people accept Avatar's  message rather than the Vatican's avatar's message--a likely scenario--the Church would lose their religious and financial support. Environmentalism can be, in fact, a highly intellectually- and emotionally-fulfilling religion substitute (or functional religion, worldview, personal philosophy). Yes, the Catholic Church is right to be worried.

The second source is the right-wing community. Without any real understanding, religious right commenters instinctively sense the danger of the liberal religiously liberating worldview (Weltanschauung, a personal philosophy alternative to a religion) portrayed in Avatar. ABC journalist Khan reports that

Filmmaker Cameron does little to hide the political nuances in his $230 million hit, which has grossed more than $1 billion worldwide and is on its way to becoming one of the top 10 highest domestic grossing movies of all time.

From its portrayal of the corporation that wants to take over the natural resources on the planet Pandora -- a not-so-subtle allusion to the likes of Halliburton and defense contractor Blackwater -- to distinct religious, anti-war and pro-environment themes, the film's political messaging has rubbed many conservatives the wrong way.

"I wasn't infuriated by 'Avatar.' I was infuriated by the way it framed the culture-war debate... as if there are no secular people on the right," Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of the National Review, told ABC News.

Jonah Goldberg wondered what would happen if "Cameron had made a movie in which the good guys accepted Jesus Christ into their hearts." That would naturally be his fantasy. He continues in full right-wing bait and mock mode:

We live in an age in which it's the norm to speak glowingly of spirituality but derisively of traditional religion. If the Na'Vi were Roman Catholics, there would be boycotts and protests. Make the oversized Smurfs Rousseauian noble savages and everyone nods along, save for a few cranky right-wingers.

Many environmentalists are quite open about their desire to turn their cause into a religious imperative akin to the plight of the Na'Vi, hence Al Gore's uncontroversial insistence that global warming is a "spiritual challenge to all of humanity." The symbolism and rhetoric behind much of Barack Obama's campaign was overtly religious at times, as when he proclaimed that "we are the ones we've been waiting for" -- a line that could have come straight out of the mouths of Cameron's Na'Vi.

Why is Mr. Goldberg so touchy? He opposes Avatar's message because it competes with what he believes by blind faith to be true. He is afraid of the competition that Spiritual-Jake-as-Jesus represents to the Chritian Jesus, with its heart-felt message of ecological salvation for humanity and opposition to environmentally-destructive giant global--make that interstellar--corporations. Goldberg's traditional religious sympathies are obvious and, to me, highly objectionable. But then I am an informed evolutionary and ecological scientist who knows what we are up against, so naturally I object to Goldberg's beliefs.

Next up is John Nolte, Editor in Chief of Big Hollywood, a website that apparently reviews films. His venom spurts from the beginning:

Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ Is a Big, Dull, America-Hating, PC Revenge Fantasy

The result is “Avatar,” a sanctimonious thud of a movie so infested with one-dimensional characters and PC clichés that not a single plot turn – small or large – surprises. I call it the “liberal tell,” where the early and obvious politics of the film gives away the entire story before the second act begins, and “Avatar” might be the sorriest example of this yet.

Set in 2154, “Avatar” is a thinly disguised, heavy-handed and simplistic sci-fi fantasy/allegory critical of America from our founding straight through to the Iraq War.

. . . but it’s always back to the film’s dullest characters: the one-dimensional Na’vi. You would think that with 15 years and a half-billion dollars, Cameron could come up an alien species that doesn’t drip with every Indian and African sacred-cow cliché imaginable. These are creatures who worship the Great Mother Eywa, have a sacred relationship with the earth, shoot bow and arrows, ride horse-like animals, whoop it up in battle . . .

. . . the Na’vi are an awfully stupid species. . . . Cameron’s brainchild tribe is boringly perfect and insufferably noble … I wanted to wipe them out.

Never for a moment did I believe the Na’vi or the world of Pandora was something organic or real. The fairly pointless use of 3-D certainly doesn’t help, but Steven Spielberg’s sixteen year-old dinosaurs are light years ahead of “Avatar” in the reality department.

So Nolte didn't like the film, but he objected to everything, not just the liberalism, so I can accept that. He is not a discerning film critic, just provocatively negative, so he can be ignored. Indeed, his lack of insight may increase the desire among intelligent people who read him to see the movie.

Not so John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary and movie critic of The Weekly Standard, the right-wing standard weekly, an individual whom we may assume will have some insight. He also panned the movie. Why?

What they didn't tell us is that Avatar is blitheringly stupid; indeed, it's among the dumbest movies I've ever seen.

Like the Keebler elves, the Blue People all live in a big tree together and they go to church at another big tree, under which (we learn) lives Mother Earth, only since it isn't earth, she isn't called Mother Earth, but the Great Mother or something like that.

Oy, the suffering that ensues, all for some lousy unobtainium! Oy, the destruction! You can hear writer-director James Cameron weeping over his special-effects computer as the bad humans he created commit this terrible atrocity against the Blue People who don't exist. As for me, I was reminded of Oscar Wilde's immortal crack about Charles Dickens's tears as he killed off the child heroine of his Old Curiosity Shop: "It would take a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."

The thing is, one would be giving James Cameron too much credit to take Avatar-with its mindless worship of a nature-loving tribe and the tribe's adorable pagan rituals, its hatred of the military and American institutions, and the notion that to be human is just way uncool-at all seriously as a political document.

Aside from the anti-American, anti-human politics, the movie is nearly three hours long, and it doesn't have a single joke in it.

Does the technical mastery on display in Avatar outweigh the unbelievably banal and idiotic plot, the excruciating dialogue, the utter lack of any quality resembling a sense of humor? And will all these qualities silence the discomfort coming from that significant segment of the American population that, we know from the box-office receipts for Iraq war movies this decade, doesn't like it when an American soldier is the bad guy?

Okay, I was wrong. Podhoretz is no better than Nolte. Equally full of venom and bile and devoid of insight--what can you do with reactionary movie critics like this? Rather than responsibly analyze the movie, he just hates it because it has a liberal, environmental, human life-affirming bias rather than a reactionary, exploitative, corporation-affirming bias. The negative reactions Avatar has received from some critics have been shameful. Podhoretz can't even correctly predict the box-office receipts, proposing that a "significant segment of the American population" will not like the movie and probably stay away. As I finish this essay on 2010 February 6, Avatar has so far grossed $612,693,000 on the 50th day of its release. It is on its way to becoming the highest grossing film in history.

Conclusion

Mainstream media and Web reviews by cinema critics and bloggers (there must be at least a hundred by now, but I've only read about twenty) to my knowledge did not name or discuss any of the above biological, religious, and philosophical messages or themes which I consider to be the very essence of Avatar. You merely have to go to this New York Times follow-up review to witness the arguments among cinema critics over the meaning of the film, but in my opinion these reviewers all missed the point. These reviews generally dismissed Avatar's environmental message, saying it was politicized, too obvious, crude, and derivative. The film is about politics, not religion, even racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-American!

Instead, the mainstream media reviews emphasized the marvelous use of 3D and the CGI (computer graphic imagery). Yes, the 3D was restrained, appropriate, and worked extremely well. This was the first time I encountered modern theater 3D and I was very impressed. I don't have stereo vision, but I could nevertheless perceive the 3D effect and I enjoyed it immensely, since it did help immerse me in the planetary drama, an effect Cameron aimed for. The CGI was the best, most advanced performance-capture technology yet used in a motion picture. Unlike previous movies, the Na'vi faces move and emote exactly like human faces, thus creating a much higher degree of visual verisimilitude.

Stephanie Zacharek's highly critical review in Salon disparaged Cameron for promoting the technology and saying we're not supposed to notice it. "In Avatar, the technology is everything," she insists, and because of it, the actors know that "in Cameron's grand vision, they're beside the point, obsolete." But she is so wrong. The technology only serves to tell the story as realistically as possible, and a viewer should naturally ignore the technology to engage the story, just as one would willingly suspend disbelief that the story is true. In science fiction movies, the film must present and the viewer accept the existence of advanced technology on screen--bioengineered genetic hybrid avatars, avatar projection machines, inter-stellar space travel by a society whose planet's natural resources are exhausted and biodiversity is decimated (how can it afford to supply and power an interstellar expedition to obtain unobtanium?)--and the same should be the case for the real technology used to create and project the movie. In Avatar, the technology is very secondary although necessary to create the film as desired. Indeed, to my mind, the most impressive visual thing about Avatar was not the 3D or CGI, but the imaginative creation of an entire planet's flora and fauna, complete with an abundance of bioluminescent organisms. If you also thought this biodiversity was wonderful, then you know how biophiles think about Earth's biodiversity. Pandora's biosphere and the screen's depiction of the planet have nothing to do with technology but everything to do with human appreciation of natural beauty and art.

If you’re an author or Ph.D. candidate who had the foresight to propose a book on the philosophy of “Avatar” before the film was even released in theaters, the past week (and the blogosphere) has been very, very good to you.

If my essay review is footnoted in a dozen future Master theses and PhD dissertations in the next decade about the literary, scientific, and religious elements of Avatar, then I will be content.