Author: Gracie Enticknap
Editor: Atufa Shabnum
Photo Courtesy: 20th Century Studios
Full of wondrous exploration and engaged questioning, science fiction is an immensely and imaginatively lucrative narrative artistry that plays with the science and technology of the real world. Creators take cognitive leaps to extrapolate and invent enriched fictional worlds and complex societies which creatively breach the current limits of our own and run at a tangent to reality through the introduction of a ‘disruptor.’ This might be vastly improved interplanetary travel, capitalisation of off-world resourcing, colonisation of other planets, or some imagined (but perhaps scarily possible) event like fatal destruction and resource-draining of the Earth. Any one of these are examples of hinges used by storytellers to make an analytical social or political point about innovation and prods at the opportunities, hopes, fears, and questions in our society. You might notice that all these ideas are present within James Cameron’s Avatar franchise, which uses ecological issues as a backbone to link recurring elements of social collapse, technological change, and environmental degradation as they cause humanity to encroach on a world of stellar beauty and balance.
At its forefront, Avatar is a visually stunning biofiction acting at the intersection of colonialist war tropes, climate fiction, and biopunk (a subgenre of sci-fi focussed on biological technologies), and is abundant with mesmerising landscapes, lush forestry, and majestic creatures. The films are set on the distant fictional moon of Pandora in the Alpha Centauri galaxy; where humanity has travelled, in the original movie, on a mission to exploitatively mine a valuable ore in desperation to solve the global energy catastrophe on Earth. The expeditive intentions read as an alien invasion movie, where we are the aliens, scavenging resources and investigating the flora and fauna to understand the mystical, intimate connectivity between the native life on Pandora. This set-up is combined with the complication of a toxic atmosphere, bringing in the hugely iconic biotechnology of the franchise – the human-Na’vi hybrid clones, or ‘avatars,’ through which people can upload their minds into surrogate bodies and move freely in the outdoors.
In the first movie, this technology sets in motion a story of corporate apathy, human violence, and immoral destruction as Jake Sully, a paraplegic ex-marine and avatar operator, is tasked with infiltrating a native clan to learn their customs and convince them to flee home to make way for demolition and resource extraction. Of course, not all goes to plan as the Na’vi are fiercely protective of their home and their land, and Jake’s moral lightswitch finally flicks to aid the Na’vi and his newfound love Neytiri. After defeat in the first film, humanity returns in full vengeance in the second instalment, this time set on colonising Pandora to relocate from their dying and uninhabitable home, terrorising the people and poaching their animals for valuable resources – loud echoes of major ecological threats on Earth.
So in a visceral world – previously untouched by corrupt capitalist minds and self-righteous, entitled humans – Cameron promotes ideas of natural beauty, protection, and lifestyles more connected to nature, and contrasts them with the brutal damage humans cause and the monstrosities we’re willing to enact by uprooting communities, draining resources and exploiting environments. His movies are a (bio)luminescent celebration of the beauty of nature, which presents extensive reflections on our planet, to urge pertinent points of climate action and persistent protection of the planet. This is a valid, if not one-dimensional commentary on global warming and resource exhaustion; but with his frontal elements of planetary escape, natural exploitation, and human antagonization, Cameron attempts to make further commentary on particular social and capitalist responses to the climate crisis…
Avatar is, at its most skeletal layer, a story of escape. The human colonies escape from a dying Earth, from ecological disaster, from an energy catastrophe, and crucially, escape from the problems of their own making that have spiralled out of control. In the context of his interspecies, environmentally motivated war movie, Cameron is condemning human activity by criticising the morality of their technological advancement as a product of their response to an ecological crisis. This response is avoidant, and fails to confront their problematic business and lifestyle back on Earth. They evade addressing the root causes of environmental deterioration and resource-draining, in favour of escapist and fantastical solutions like conquering a ‘planet B.’ Cameron warns that if we act in a similar way, we won’t be saved, and draws attention to the technological powers that influence the investment in climate action responses.
You might consider Cameron’s condemnation of avoidant technological solutions analogous to the technological fixes invested in by big powers like the fossil fuel industry. Geoengineering technologies like carbon capture, where carbon is taken from the atmosphere for storage underground, and solar radiation management, which aims to cool the planet by reducing incoming radiation, are popular with oil companies and huge tech figures who dominate in emissions. But this isn’t the eco-friendly move we should hope for, as they steal focus from environmental protection – it’s a green-wash and a risky, technologically reliant, imperfect solution. However, they’ve gained some popularity in this sector because they target the environmental consequences rather than the sources of damage, providing an easy excuse to continue their damning business as usual. It’s a final escape hatch to continue operation and in that a complete scapegoat solution, enabling denial of their huge responsibility for the ecological mess that has been made. It is this type of ignorance of the upstream changes needed that Cameron judges the morality of in his work, as it works to worsen climate change, biodiversity loss, and eventual ecological collapse.
But is such condemnation a commentary effectively made? In its sub-context, Avatar is about the harm of malicious ignorance and refusal to address the sources of environmental devastation through escape to space, but it presents a paradox. Despite being an earnest appeal to environmental conservationism, the visually mesmerising movies present a cosmic escapism that provokes a real-world dejection in some viewers who long for a world like Pandora. Rather than being motivated to engage with our world, people experience the malaise that the Earth is becoming further and further from the world of Pandora, which may be thus considered derogatorily utopian.In a sense, Avatar acknowledges the political dilemma around climate solutions but fails to resolve the issues or imagine a better way forward. So, it makes a visually beautiful point about engaging with environmental protection and acting against technological fixes that are divorced from pragmatism and protection but does not offer any theoretical resolution to the problems explored. The enchanting world of Avatar shines a gleaming spotlight on lifestyles more connected to nature that value eco-friendliness, particularly inspired by indigenous peoples, but in reality, this admiration alone is no way to overcome the industrial and capitalist powers driving climate destruction.
kinesismagazine.com 