The world is a place where most people are greedy and only want things that will make them rich or famous, no matter at whose expense it is. Parker Selfridge is the prime example of this, he only wants to get the precious mineral that lies underneath the Na'vi, a native group on Pandora. The Na'vi are a people that don't have machines and technology, but have each other, and are happy for that. They feel they are connected through the trees and the ground, and in a way these are their ancestors. Selfridge's reductionism of the Na'vi is the basis of a tactical maneuver to eradicate their existence, if necessary, for self satisfaction. The Na'vi's Master Narrative, like the early society of humans in Merchant's literature, "Radical Ecology", was that the place they lived was sacred and it was their life source. The humans, led by Selfridge, are highly technological and care only about money. In a greedy move, Selfridge tries to move the Na'vi off the land through diplomacy instead of militaristic ways because he is afraid of the bad PR, but he is also ready to use force if necessary. The muscle behind the operation is Col. Miles Quaritch. In the film, Avatar, Selfridge exemplifies Merchant's Mechanistic Worldview of human society. The trees, the land and what was contained within the land that are so important to Na'vi are simply the valuable parts of a world sought by Selfridge for personal gain with no consideration of the destruction that would be caused by removal of these parts.
To try and get the Na'vi people off their land, Selfridge has built these "avatars" to go in and study the Na'vi and learn their ways, so it would be easier to get them to leave. One of the humans that had an avatar created specifically for him was a marine. Unfortunately, he was killed in combat right before he was going to be assigned to the avatar project. Luckily for Selfridge, the marine had a brother, Jake Sully, that would still be able to connect to the avatar since they shared some of the same genes. Jake was a former marine that was paralyzed from the waist down in combat. He was ordered to participate in the avatar project in the place of his brother, but the deal was sweetened when he was also promised that if he did it well, they would pay for the spinal surgery to fix his legs. So, Jake goes into the avatar project where he can control a shell that looks like a Na'vi person so he can "become" a Na'vi and try to convience them to leave their land.
Jake at first is loving his new body because he can run and do things again that he couldn't with his human body. He gets cocky and ends up being chased by a deadly beast. But Neytiri, a Na'vi princess, saves him and introduces him to her tribe. She shows him around and what the Na'vi people are really about. Jake starts to see life in a different way. His atomism approach to the Na'vi society is altered as he realizes they are more than just savages that function in an individualized capacity. Jake begins to understand the beauty in their world and how corrupt the humans have made it. The paradigm he once believed about the Na'vi people was shattered as he discovered they were not the savages his world portrayed them as. They weren't just a primitive people; they had souls and a meaning in life.
When Col. Quaritch sees that Jake isn't going to get the Na'vi to move, he draws from his narrative self and decides to take matters into his own hands. The Col. believes he is the dominant force of all those involved whether they be Na'vi or human. He brings in his helicopters and planes filled with missles and bullets to drive the Na'vi off their land, even if it meant killing the ones that tried to stay. His actions represent anthropocentrism, showing a total disregard for the existence of the Na'vi and their "mother land." Similarly, Merchant's reading portrays a society progressively centered on itself by abusing natural resources with no intent of replenishment. He didn't care about the individuals, he only saw savages that wouldn't submit to his will. He didn't care about the children, the elderly, the men or the women. He saw them as a group of people that were in between him and his paycheck. With the missles and bullets, he shot the tree the Na'vi lived in. The tree burst into flames and fell to the ground. The fire burned the ground and destroyed the land. All of this destruction was a result of his selfish desire to reach the minerals that laid beneath the hometree of the Na'vi people. This scene eerily symbolizes the quote below from Merchant where the humans did not hesitate to take action to destroy the Na'vi's "earth" to capture the resources it held and satisfy their selfish desires.
"The image of the earth as a living organism and nurturing mother served as a cultural constraint restricting the actions of human beings. One does not readily slay a mother dig into her entrails for gold, or mutilate her body. As long as the earth was conceptualized as alive and sensitive, it could be considered a breach of human ethical behavior to carry out destructive acts against it." (Merchant 43)
Jake tries to save the Na'vi by rallying them with other tribes and fighting along side them against Col. Quaritch and his army. Jake knows that they are using bows and arrows against machines and guns, but he believes that together the Na'vi can prevail over the terroristic humans invading their land. It comes down to Jake and Col. Quartich in a final battle where Jake is in his Na'vi avatar and the Col. is in a big fighting machine. Jake ends up killing the Col. and saving the Na'vi people. They send the humans away and bring peace back to the Na'vi's land.
There are many examples of dualism in the film Avatar: Na'vi vs. human, scientists vs. military and good vs. evil and the list goes on. Of primary focus is the dualism between scientists and military. The scientists want to study the Na'vi and learn their way of life and how they exist. The military see the Na'vi as a mission - search, find and conquer.
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