The AVATAR Phenomenon- Part Three; The Story Teller and Modern Myths

This is the third in a three part series about the phenomenon of the motion picture AVATAR. In Part One we looked at audience reactions and comments about the film, and how it has personally affected some viewers. Part Two talked about the mythology of Avatar, defined "myth", and presented (with video and text) some very important concepts about myths and mythology from the late Joseph Campbell


"One thing that comes out of myths is that the bottom of the abyss is the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At that darkest moment comes the light"......from The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, page 37.



We left Part Two with Joseph Campbell's thoughts about attending to one's "inner life". Campbell noted that if you don't attend to your inner self, that eventually with age you will, as he put, "be sorry".

But in order to facilitate attention to our inner selves, Campbell also told us we all need an individual and personal "sacred space". Look and listen to this bit of conversation he has with Bill Moyers from the PBS documentary Joseph Campbell; The Power of Myth recorded in the months before his death in 1987.



There is an importance to having a "sacred space" and taking care of our "inner life". When I first saw Avatar I wondered what Joseph Campbell would have thought about this amazing modern mythology. But that question lead to another one- what would Campbell think about life in the 21st century, where we are bombarded with information constantly? The computer age was dawning at the end of Campbell's life. Could he imagine the conflict technology could have with the spiritual in the new century?

I use the term "conflict" because of the technological revolution and the constant stream of information it generates- and too much of the time its nothing more than useless nonsense- our inner lives are relegated to a back burner. The "sacred space" Campbell talked about isn't allowed to exist, and creative incubation and self discovery never takes place.

PC's, blackberries, and cell phones that can do everything but delivery babies. Texting, tweeting, Facebook, and emails all day and all night. And cable news channels that feed you information, some totally useful and some totally garbage, 24/7. You can hear cellphones ringing during plays, movies, and even while religious services are in progress. Where is the time for creative incubation anymore when we live in a society that seems to us to demand we be "on" constantly?

We don't spend nearly enough time taking walks and gathering in the world around us, or simply looking at the shapes of clouds passing overhead as we did as children. How often do we take time to write, or read a novel, or play a musical instrument, paint a picture or take photographs....or even demanding of ourselves some much needed "quiet time"? And I'm as guilty as the next guy....though the exercise of writing in this blog everyday does help me stretch my mental muscles, as well as help to keep me sane.

Before you conclude that I'm anti-technology, guess again. I think what we've done with high tech communications these past two decades has been extraordinary. I love a lot of the gadgetry. And the very fact that you're reading this on Blogger, and that I'm sharing this information on Facebook and Twitter says that I do have some techno-geek tendencies.

But I think it has a time and place, and I fear that all too often some of us have allowed technology to run our lives rather than using it to serve us. Do we really need to share every moment of our lives with a world that can't get enough of us? I don't think so.

While waiting for Avatar at the theater last week a young couple sat right in front of me. No sooner did they get comfortable then the young guy started to check his messages on his phone, and started texting...and texting...and texting...all the way until the time we were prompted to put on our 3D glasses because the movie was about to start. The young man wasn't even going to allow himself the total escapism of a movie- he was being ruled by need to use his devices.

And I wonder- how did the movie resonate with him? Was it just an incredible exercise in special effects.....or did he "get it"?

Just perhaps Avatar has helped to fill that need to touch the mythological that is lacking in the lives of many of the viewers, the ones who don't have that "sacred space" Joseph Campbell talked about, and have filled the void with the outside world.

The ancients had shaman. The modern world has the artist, in particular the filmmaker, who can serve that same function. Joseph Campbell's good friend George Lucas filled the role of shaman with his classic myths, the Star Wars trilogies. And James Cameron has done the same in Avatar.

Additionally, in our multi-cultural society there is always a need for a common mythology. Maybe Avatar serves that purpose as well. The film may bring some viewers "back on the beam", as Joseph Campbell would put it- a little more introspective and in touch with themselves and the world they live in. It is with great irony that so many people were reminded of what it means to "be human" by the Na'vi, seven foot tall blue humanoids from a fictional world.

There are some who cry out that Avatar is "anti-civilization" and "anti-God".

To those who criticize it for its depiction of humans as being "only the destroyers", there were also sympathetic humans in the story. Pandora,in Greek mythology, was a woman who opened up a box that contained the world's troubles, releasing misery on to mankind. But in this reworking of the theme, it is mankind that brings pain and misery to Pandora. The human characters are only an instrument in this metaphor of reflecting pain inward to destroy goodness and innocence.

The Vatican, for one, has frowned on Avatar for its depiction of pantheism, the deities paid homage to by the Na'vi in the film. But consider this- if intelligent life were found on other planets, wouldn't that leave the traditional answers of Judeo-Christian heritage more than just a bit shaken? Its a topic for another column, but Western religion, as we know it, would never quite be the same.

Avatar might have been one of the most spiritual films I've ever seen, not in a dogmatic sense, but its depiction of a Creator that is present in all living things. This movie was truly a mythology for the 21st century.

The next to last scene of Avatar shows the merciful Na'vi sending the defeated "Sky People" back from whence they came. They give the humans a better break than they might have gotten themselves had they been on the losing end.

The closing scene of the film summed up some of the great themes we've found in religion from the dawn of time. Jake gives up his crippled body and becomes one with his Avatar....we have death, followed by the unknown, followed by a rebirth. Not only have we seen this in world religion, but in the great modern mythologies....Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and Star Trek. Avatar is in their good company.

"At the dark moment comes the light"

Abraham Lincoln once spoke of our "better angels". And just maybe the Na'vi" were the best angels of all.

The AVATAR Phenomenon ; Part Two- A Mythology For The 21st Century

Bill Moyers- What happens when a society no longer embraces a powerful mythology?
Joseph Campbell- What we've got on our hands. If you want to find out what it means to have a society without any rituals, read THE NEW YORK TIMES......from The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell and Bill D. Moyers (1988).*****

James Cameron's film Avatar is an example of a mythology for a modern world that is hungry for it. Cameron created a world with its own unique living creatures and humanoids, its own history, its own language, its own rites of passage, its own religion and deities- its own mythology. We, the audience, our drawn up and in to this world through the use of cinematic 3D wizardry, so much so many of us- myself included- experienced a virtual reality, where computer generated creatures became real and dandelion-like seeds floating in the air seemed to be falling down so close to us that we could touch them. Consciously and subconsciously we became part of the world of the Na'vi, the blue, seven foot tall inhabitants of Pandora, who in the film became more human to us than the "Sky People"-the earth colonists, who looked just like you and me.

I saw Avatar a week after the catastrophic earthquake that all but destroyed Haiti, the same same Tuesday that that Republican Scott Brown took the Senate seat held by Edward M. Kennedy for nearly three generations, and the very day when Chris Christie was sworn in as the Governor of New Jersey. Some people who have seen the film have experienced depression after leaving the idyllic world of Pandora to return to the reality of their own lives. Its as if one were awakened from a pleasant dream to be brought "back to earth" abruptly.

I had a similar reaction after seeing the film, but it was not the blues. Rather, I felt a sense of anger regarding the situation in America, where we have two political parties who have been engaged in trench warfare for nearly 20 years. In my eyes, the Democrats were inept, the Republicans morally and spiritually hypocritical. Furthermore, the audacity and arrogance of the Wall Street crowd I found even more appalling than before, and the pontificating of the Religious Right seemed more mind numbing than ever.

It was as if during the experience of Avatar I was briefly in a better, but not perfect world, one filled with danger....but the priorities of the simple Na'vi were in the right place, and in harmony with nature, with life, and with themselves. And in looking at the reality of our own lives in the real world, I couldn't help but think....."How did we manage to blow it so badly?".




Since seeing the film I've dusted off my books by and about Joseph Campbell (1904-87), the great teacher, mythologist and author. My prevailing thought for days after seeing the film was "What would Joseph Campbell think of Avatar?

Above, Joseph Campbell speaking to Bill Moyers from a segment of the PBS series THE POWER OF MYTH

But before we go any further, we must first define "myth". We commonly think that if something is a myth, it is a lie. But the most accurate definition of a "myth" is that it is a metaphor. Campbell told Bill Moyers in The Power of Myth, a book and PBS documentary from 1988 based on conversations held between 1985-86, the following;

"Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of human life"

Take a look at the video below. It was produced during Campbell's lifetime. Here he explains "myth as a metaphor"



Avatar presented a myth that included several classic themes- "The Quest"; "The Romance"; and "Birth, Death, and Rebirth" to a modern audience that needed such a mythology. Myths can address our psychological need to find out answers to complex questions in terms that are understandable. The audience lives in a "real world" that is in economic recession, that is at war, that is threatened by terrorism, is in danger of falling victim to even more severe climate change. In the film the Na'vi were shown as a primitive but wise and spiritual people with a deep connection to nature and to all living things. They live in a harmonious coexistence with their environment with lives full of rites of passage. The chief deity of the Na'vi is a goddess called Eywa- this is consistent with hunter/gathers on earth, because women are central to creation and revered in many primitive societies as the creative force. Neytiri's mother Mo'at is the shaman for their clan, much like the "wise woman" was found central to Native American societies.

The human colonists in Avatar represent "man the destroyer", too often found in the story of the western march of Europeans and those of European ancestry in the age of exploration, and during America's push for "Manifest Destiny" and beyond. To the "Sky People" nature is a hindrance that must be conquered and exploited rather than treated with respect. The Na'vi were also an obstacle to these colonists- they were the "Others", a term author James Bradley used to refer to the non-white people of America and the Far East by "the Aryans" in his recent history The Imperial Cruise. To The Sky People the Na'vi had to be either removed, or they needed to be eradicated.

Some have criticized Cameron for the portrayal of humans as not being very human. There are humans in the film who are sympathetic and descent- most of them in the film are the scientists. But the humans who work for "The Corporation" and their military mercenaries are shown to have only monetary profit as a motivation. These are the direct descendants of those who killed off the buffalo, destroyed the culture of the plains tribes, and waged war on America's Native Peoples in the 19th century. After the plains were made "civilized" America turned its eyes on Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, China, and the Far East....and later still, to the oil producing countries of the Middle East. Again, for more information on this aspect of American history, refer to The Imperial Cruise. The author, James Bradley, also wrote Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys, both histories of World War II.

Joseph Campbell said that myths are clues to human potentiality. If we use the premise that Avatar is a modern mythology that has been financially successful and has affected its viewers on a personal level, the questions are ....."Why and how?"

I'll break a rule and answer a question with a question.

This is exchange between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell from The Power of Myth, from the beginning of their conversations (pages three and four"..........

Bill Moyers- Why myths? Why should we care about myths? What do myths have to do with my life?

Joseph Campbell......One of our problems today is that well acquainted with the literature of the spirit. We're interested in the news of the day and the problems of the hour. It used to be that a university campus was a kind of hermetically sealed off area where the news of the day did not impinge upon your attention to your inner life and the magnificent human heritage we have in our great tradition- Plato, Confucius, the Buddha, Goethe and others who speak of eternal values have to do with the centering of our lives. When you get to be older, and the concerns of the day have all been attended to, and you have to attend to the inner life- well, if you don't know where it is or what it is, you'll be sorry.

Attending to "the needs of the inner life". In a world where are attention has been diverted by a constant bombardment of information, a film is released that has a mythology that brings people back.....and makes some of the viewers a little more "centered".

Maybe that is behind the underlying reason for the success of Avatar.

...........I'll continue this discussion in PART THREE with some additional thoughts, and I'll try to sum it all up....

I'll be back soon.

The AVATAR Phenomenon ; Part One- What Some Filmgoers Are Saying

Its been a couple of days since I saw the incredible motion picture Avatar. After experiencing (rather than merely seeing) the movie, one of the first things I've done was to see what others thought of the film, and where this phenomenon is going- because it appears now that Avatar the Film has mutated into Avatar the Cultural Touchstone.

I've decided to break this entry into three parts; my personal thoughts and a look at the film's mythology will follow in a separate columns to be published later.

One of the most intriguing articles I've read online about Avatar was London's Daily Mail Online. The article's title says it all; "The Avatar effect: Movie-goers feel depressed and even suicidal at not being able to visit utopian alien planet". This piece talks at length about people who were so drawn into the magical and mystical world of PANDORA that, either consciously or unconsciously, they became affected in some manner. The use of 3d imagery and IMAX (in certain theaters) brings the viewer into a situation that is much like "virtual reality"; this fantasy world and its storyline appears to be real and the viewer's subconscious recognizes this as being a "part of the action".

Avatar Movie Forum, has several long threads about how personally people were affected by the film. One thread was titled "Really Sad"- the person who initiated the thread said he/she has felt distracted and sad for days since seeing the movie.

There was another thread, "I'm glad I'm not crazy for feeling like I'm the only one".....the person who began the thread talked about sadness since seeing the movie, as if he were drawn into the story and its characters so much so he felt they were real. His wife and his sister-in-law (according to the writer) think that he's crazy. The writer had a sense of relief after he saw there were others who felt the same way. Some of the responders to the thread had an emotional attachment to the computer generated Na'vi, the simple blue hunter-gatherers who were the films protagonists. One or two felt that those affected were "old souls" being reawakened into action via reincarnation. Some felt resentment at being labeled as "loser geeks" by some media types. There is definitely a segment of the forum members who joined up because they were attracted by the support afforded by others who felt as they did.

Another thread, "A Once In a Lifetime Experience", goes back to early in January and has four pages and counting. Most respondents seemed to have partaken of that once in a lifetime experience on multiple occasions- some speak of going to see AVATAR four of five times. Just about all are in agreement that AVATAR was something unique and among the best, if not the best, motion pictures they have ever seen.

Some comments I found very intriguing were in the the thread Can anyone get it out of your head this movie makes me feel weird. This writer found more of a connection with earth than he had previous to viewing the film, and feels that seeing AVATAR was a life changing experience. Those who have responded seem to concur.

Avatar Blog is another community site with some interesting topics as well. One of the topics that caught my eye was The Cure For The Avatar Blues. The piece talks about a CNN Entertainment report of people feeling depressed after seeing the film. Writer-director James Cameron has the perfect cure for all who are suffering the Avatar Blues"

"Take a walk in the woods, reacquaint with the nature we have right here".

Ask ten different people why they think Avatar has affected people the way it has and you'll likely get ten different answers. I have a personal opinion about it, I may be wrong, I may be right. But I think the underlying reason for the Avatar phenomenon is because it addresses something we tend to neglect in our lives....a matter of our spirit. Not in a dogmatic religious sense, but Avatar quells our need to reconnect not only with nature, but with our own inner selves.

I'll talk about this more in Part Two of this piece.

Avatar- Worthy of the Hype and Much More

Yesterday I wrote that rather than sit home and watch a political debacle unfold in Massachusetts I'd go to the movies to try to escape from the news for a few hours. Actually, the time was ripe for me to see if all of the hype involving James Cameron's film Avatar was deserved. For weeks all we've heard was how amazing it was, what a benchmark the in filmmaking AVATAR is, and above all...how much money it was earning worldwide.

So I decided to check it out. I opted on the 3-D version at my local multiplex. I paid what I initially thought was an outrageous sum of $13.50 for a ticket, plus anther nine bucks for a Reese's pieces and a small coke. I sat there with the small Tuesday night audience watching the endless commercials, and then the trailers for the upcoming summer movies. At the appointed time we were told to put on our 3-D glasses.And within only a few minutes all my reservations were tossed out the window.

I was seeing something special....amazing....groundbreaking.

In a word....wondrous.

Avatar is more than a film- its an experience. The viewer is dazzled by its special effects, where they are transported 150 years into the future to Pandora, a moon of the planet Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri star system. This is world being colonized by corporations from Earth- in particular, the United States- because of its abundance of the mineral unobtanium, which is used as a fuel on Earth. Pandora is inhabited by primitive hunter-gatherer humanoids called the Na'vi. They are a tall race with bluish skin and feline features. To these people, all of nature is sacred and they value the interconnection between all living creatures and their mother deity called Eywa.

Predictably there is a collision course between the Earth colonists, called the "Sky People", and the Na'vi. The Avatars are a biological mutation taken from the DNA of the humans and the Na'vi. They are controlled by genetically matched human "operators" in a controlled environment. Jake Sully, a wheelchair bound ex Marine goes to Pandora to control the avatar meant for his deceased twin brother. Jake's avatar goes out on a mission with those of scientists Grace Augustine and Norm Spellman. The Jake avatar becomes separated from the other two. He enters an amazing world of wolflike beasts, lemur-ish creatures, armored giants that resemble rhinos on steroids, and plant life that is...literally...out of this world. Jake meets Neytiri, the princess of a group of Na'vi. He is introduced into the world of the Na'vi and their beliefs. He grows to love Neytiri and her clan, but soon finds himself in conflict with his new life and that of his own real race; the human colonists aim to remove the Na'vi, either by resettling them, or failing that, to kill them.

More on the cast and plot can be found at the avatar Official Website, and Wikipedia does a fair job giving more information and background. I was originally going to add a theatrical trailer to this post, but even those on YouTube are in a wide screen format and would be chopped off in the blog's margins. To see an extended HD trailer for the film click here.

The Na'vi and the Na'vi avatrs were portrayed using performance capture by actors Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana, Wes Studi, and CCH Pounder among others. One of the ironies for the viewer was that these computer generated images become more human than most of the human characters in the film. We root for these primitives in their struggle against the earth colonists, led by the evil Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the head of security and possibly the most villainous screen presence since Darth Vadar or Hannibal Lector.

About an hour into the film I realized my jaw had dropped, probably from the start of the picture; also, the bag of Reese's Pieces I was clutching in my right hand had long since melted, and the Coke in the holder on my left was flat because the ice had melted in it. I was into the film so much that I felt like I was drawn into this miraculous, otherworldly 3D universe. The characters were compelling, the theme familiar- there is the obvious comparison to Kevin Costner's DANCES WITH WOLVES. It is a story of the noble primitives who are more in tune with- and have a greater appreciation for- the sanctity of life than those who have come to "civilize them".

James Cameron's film came with a created mythology, customs, rites, and language for the Na'vi. In this way the film was similar to STAR WARS, STAR TREK, and THE LORD OF THE RINGS epics of fantasy. The blue Na'vi are said to be a homage to Hindu deities.

In my spare time I've been reading The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley. In the book Bradley explores American foreign policy in the Far East at the turn of the 20th Century. A little known chapter of our history involves American occupation of the Philippines in the early 1900's, right after the United States seized them from Spain in the Spanish-American War. An insurrection occurred, and as many as 20,000 Philippine freedom fighters were killed, as well as up to 300,000 civilians. They were the victims of US troops, some of whom executed all males in a village over the age of ten to insure they wouldn't raise arms against American forces. I couldn't help but think about the book as I was watching AVATAR- it was as if James Cameron turned into a modern Nostradamus, looking into his pool of water and seeing a possible tragedy in a world far away in the distant future.

And I also thought about the late Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist who's best known work was THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES. Late in his life Campbell became a close friend of George Lucas, and Campbell often used STAR WARS as an example of modern mythology presenting classic themes for a contemporary  audience. Campbell would have been astonished by this epic film; he often said that the artist- in this case the filmmaker- is the modern equivalent of the primitive shaman, the interpreter of mythology. "Mythology" is not a false belief, but a universal truth told in the guise of a story.

In AVATAR, James Cameron has taken his place in a modern pantheon of contemporary mythologists- this is an epic tale that will only grow in stature in time.

It is also ironic that so much technology was used to tell a story about the beauty and interconnection of all living things. And when presented with the choice of going on my computer to write this entry or taking a long walk on a mild day in January I chose the former.

But I will go outside and take a few deep, cleansing breaths when I finish.