Avatar: The film, the idea and the word
The film Avatar is a product, sold like so much of our culture is sold by appealing to common cultural understandings and the widest possible cultural demoninators. The idea of the avatar as a guide in an unfamiliar landscape is, as you rightly point out, deeply embedded in cultural comprehensions of self, and of others. Conceptualizations (and fears) of the soul as an inhabitant of the body are widely expressed in ideas about the transmigration of a soul from one body (and place) to another. Both of these notions are prominent in the movie.
Examining what is excluded from the film tells us much about common cultural comprehensions of avatar(ism). For example everyone who uses an avatar dies, except Jake. The idea that Jake is damaged from the outset, for instance, excludes the possibility that an avatar might be helpful to a (culturally) "normal" person. We fear the avatar/other that might overwhelm the normal/self, as Jake is overwhelmed by otherness. Does the otherness "cure" Jake? We'll have to wait for the sequel.
So when you say we don't "get it" I believe you are a little harsh. We (culturally) get it, its just that we generally don't reflect on it so much in critical ways in our commercial artifacts - yet. Even SL is still a "second", not a "first", life.
To find the critical examination of self, other and avatar we should look to artists like Stelarc and Patricia Piccinini and writers like Julie Clarke and Julia Kristeva. James Cameron is entirely predictable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3FmIHvYv2IBTW how do I embed video in the forum?
regards steve
