JUMP CUT
A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA

Hybridization and fusion

U.S. society is becoming increasingly more hybridized, as evidenced by our newly inaugurated President, Barack Obama. Obama is a hybrid of not only race—black and white—but also of religion, Muslim and Christian. Furthermore, his U.S./Kenyan heritage represents today’s “global space,” where his personal representing of race, religion and continents have combined into making him a hyperreal political and global “superstar.” It is no surprise the country was ripe for a film like Avatar.

Avatar’s human drivers represent an interplanetary mix. In Avatar’s world, biology enables hybridization at the cellular level, where human DNA is spliced with the DNA of Pandora’s indigenous, the Na’vi. Human minds reside in Na’vi bodies with both human and other physical characteristics. For instance, Avatar’s main character, Jake Sully, has an avatar that is blue, seven feet tall, with feline ears and nose. Yet, the avatar’s appearance is still that of Jake Sully, exemplifying postmodernity’s embodiment of blurred boundaries between natural/artificial, organic/nonorganic, born/made (Best & Kellner, 2001). The avatars are neither friend nor foe to humans but rather completely meld with human identity. While inhabiting the body of their avatar, human drivers are able to manipulate the world around them, free from the constraints of their earthly life. Pandora is a place where interspecies communication and relationships are possible. It is also a place where a paraplegic war-torn veteran can experience once again the sensations of his limbs and the joy of living. This more evolved and tolerant perspective seems to prepare us humans to be open to what Steven Hawkins has argued since the mid 1990s:[10] [open endnotes in new window] the possibility of contact with alien life forms. This would not seem so strange to today’s videogamers, who often collaborate in these virtual environments with bizarre animals and alien-like creatures. If we juxtapose this kind of representation to Hollywood’s green, menacing aliens depicted in films like This Island Earth (1955), it can be viewed as a metaphor for the open-mindedness of today’s youth.

“Fusing” is another interesting part of the Na’vi existence. The concept of organic matter living within a complex network of electro-chemical communication—where information, like memories, can be uploaded and downloaded—is another example of postmodern merging. Cameron has taken the connections we have with our machines to the next level. Just as we are all “wired” to the Internet, the Na’vi are wired to their world. Each Na’vi and Avatar’s hairbraid serves as a physical extension of their spirituality. At the braid’s tip, a series of tendrils, much like fiber optic cables, links them to Pandora’s universe, allowing them to fuse with animals such as horses and flying Banshee dragons as well as with vegetation such as the tree of souls. The viewer is invited to accept this post-human state as showing people in harmony with their surroundings. It calls upon viewers to question modernist environmental practices with their staunch human domination-over-nature paradigm. Our destruction of forests and overall lack of respect given to air, oceans, and land are all anathema to the Na’vi. Since the Na’vi are one with their environment, to destroy Pandora’s environment is to destroy a fundamental part of them.

Humans have become Pandora’s Terminator equivalents. They wear exo-masks and body armor; they also operate four-meter tall MK-6 ampsuits. Consistent with Marshall McLuhan’s projections,[11] these devices allow the machines to become an extension of humans, lending people extraordinary strength. Additionally, Psionic Link Units, MRI-like machines, let human drivers animate their new identity. The link units enable the comparatively fragile human form to be sustained in comfort and safety while the superior avatar form is driven.

Another way humans are hybridized on Pandora is through their use of ...	... exo-masks, vital for human survival.
In Avatar, humans become Terminator equivalents. MK-6 ampsuits enhance and extend human power.	Humans drivers are able to animate their new identities through high-tech Psionic Link Units.

The avatars’ superior physical condition is illustrated best when Sigourney Weaver’s character, Grace Augustine, the head of the avatar program, arrives back from operating her avatar. She describes her body as an “old sack of bones” and Jake “struggles with the dead weight of his legs as he hauls himself out of the unit.”

Fragmentation and virtualization

Identity in Avatar is both conflated and bifurcated. Similar to today’s identity change via multiplayer video games where players create an individualized avatar to represent their identity in the gameworld (e.g., World of Warcraft), Avatar advances this concept to imagine the future of “avatars” and visually helps the viewer experience fragmentation and virtualization.

Jake Sully’s real life and avatar life become two incommensurable realities ...	... with his avatar life providing him with more joy than his real life.

Cameron pulls the viewer into Pandora’s world much like people are pulled into gaming’s virtual reality. This is no accident. In a 2010 Ted Talk, Cameron recounts his experience exploring the deck of the sunken Titanic via a robotic vehicle. He notes:

“I'm operating it, but my mind is in the vehicle. I felt like I was physically present inside the shipwreck of Titanic. … So, it was this absolutely remarkable experience. And it really made me realize that the telepresense experience that you actually can have these robotic avatars, then your consciousness is injected into the vehicle, into this other form of existence. It was really really quite profound. And may be a little bit of a glimpse as to what might be happening some decades out as we start to have cyborg bodies for exploration or for other means in many sort of post-human futures that I can imagine” (Cameron, 2010).

Like Cameron’s deep-sea exploration experience, Avatar takes us to another time and place where our consciousness is injected into a post-human world and identity. This is accomplished through Cameron’s revolutionary approach to making this film.

Cameron’s use of stereoscopic 3D not only helps the audience experience full immersion but also seems to be a direct pushback by Hollywood studios to recapture an audience increasingly lost to video games. In fact, a plethora of 3D films have hit the theaters since Avatar’s success. Cameron effectively transforms the theater experience from viewing a static two-dimensional space into seeming immersion in a physical space where the viewer is given depth perception so as to become part of this new world and especially to comprehend its scale. Stereoscopic 3D is not without its limitations, as movements cannot be executed too quickly, and any lateral movement of characters does not pick up the 3D. These limits do not, however, negate stereoscopic 3D’s impact on the film and the viewer.

Cameron’s technophiliac side enabled him to use hybrid filmmaking to tackle two complex challenges. First, he used what had been a niche technique, stereoscopic 3D, in a full-length fiction feature film. Second, he developed a virtual camera to shoot live-action actors within a computer-generated environment. Cameron decided not to wait any longer for technology to catch up to his vision and instead co-developed his own virtual camera.

Cameron was able to achieve a more organic feel to AVATAR by simultaneously synchronizing CGI with live action as he was filming.

The camera is essentially two cameras strapped together and linked to a computer system that can stream captured performances. When the camera was directed at the set, Cameron was able to see the CGI environment with the live-action shots as he was filming them. Without having to combine the live-action shots with this elaborate environment in post-production, he achieved a more organic feel to the film. One of the most revolutionary functions of Cameron’s virtual camera is that, being without physical limits, it enables him to adjust the scale of each shot. Thus, motions are more fluid; several complex shots would not have been possible without it. This all lent to the spectacular nature of Pandora’s environment and the audience’s connection to it (Duncan, 2010).

Hyperreality

With 500 plant varieties and creatures, Pandora is a world that is both indescribable and familiar (Turan, 2009). The forest resembles the Amazonian rainforest mixed with the ocean’s myriad life forms; plants move like animals, and colors resemble those of exotic birds. Before any significant action takes place, the viewer is invited to explore this new world; it’s analogous to the visual discovery within a new videogame. Confined to his wheelchair, the paraplegic Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington, feels a larger-than-life euphoria and liberation; identifying with him enables the viewer also to experience vicariously a post-human condition. Thus, when Jake Sully is pulled back to homebase, we feel his sense of loss, and the profound struggle between his obligations to his earthly body and his desire to be in his avatar body. His “real” life and Avatar life become two incommensurable realities.

Jake Sully’s body becomes weaker ...	... while his avatar grows stronger.

Sully’s character is also increasingly burdened by the fact that he must return to sustain his “real” body, as his virtual life is easier to maintain as well as more liberating, exciting and powerful. Cameron visually communicates this metamorphosis with Sully’s increasingly emaciated body placed in opposition to his increasingly strong avatar. The viewer, along with Sully, becomes addicted to Sully’s Pandora reality. It is an existence free from the grind of capitalist-infused individuality. Pandora mirrors the freedom many find in their virtual lives. The relationships Sully forms and the freedom he has to walk again and even more to fly and be at one with nature and the indigenous world demonstrate the ease within the fiction by which one can find a more evolved existence.

In this idyll, the Na'vi operate under principles superior to the human alien: more ecological, spiritual and just.	The Na’vi Women are central actors in Pandora’s world.
Neytiri is not only equal to Jake, she is at times more advanced in her knowledge and athleticism.	The jellyfish type spore creatures called Atokirina are used to illustrate the Na'vi's deep connection to the spiritual world.

We find in Pandora simulacra of a post-humanist future. The utopian quality of this film’s magical world has even resulted in an uncommon public reaction, post-viewing depression, as several news sources have reported. Maybe the public is especially sensitive to the contrast between the film’s hyperreality and the current reality of our depressed economy. When these viewers walk out of the theater, they are let down at returning to live in the actual world they must inhabit (Boucher, 2010).

Avatar has certainly received a fair amount of criticism. Analee Newitz (2009)[13] found the script ultimately to focus on white guilt with Jake Sully’s character falling into the same role as that of numerous other white male protagonists saving people of color such as Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, and even District 9 — with its apartheid undertone the “aliens” are a metaphor for black Africans victimized by apartheid. Furthermore Newitz concludes,

“Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege” (p. 3).

Her argument concludes with a call for whites to

“stop remaking the white guilt story, which is a sneaky way of turning every story about people of color into a story about being white (p. 4).”

Likewise Slavoj Zizek[14] criticizes Avatar’s “array of racist motifs.” He notes,

“A paraplegic outcast from earth is good enough to get the hand of a beautiful local princess, and help the natives win the decisive battle” (p. 2).

Newitz and Zizek are representative of several critics concluding Avatar is just another white fantasy film placing the white male in the hero position to lead the natives to freedom.[15] Despite these criticisms, however, Pandora overwhelmingly serves as simulacrum for a more evolved society.

Although it is important to note that at first glance the Na'vi appear to be a primitive society with a religious identity strongly resembling animism, their interpretation of spiritual signs pushes them to study Jake Sully rather than kill him. At the core of their ethics is this connection to nature that causes an otherwise closed society to respect all living things. Their attitude enables Sully to gain acceptance into the clan with cautious optimism. Jake Sully may lead the charge in helping the natives fight off the U.S. military’s colonization attempts but the natives are shown to operate under principles superior to the human aliens. The N’avi are portrayed through Cameron’s idyllic lens as more ecological, spiritual, and just.

Likewise, the Na’vi women are given voice and free to be central actors in Pandora’s world. Jake Sully’s love interest, a female Na’vi named Neytiri, serves as a knowledgeable, confident and skilled guide. The viewer follows her across vegetation that lights up with each step. We ride exotic horses, and fly through Pandora’s floating mountains with Jake and Neytiri on their own flying dragon-like Mountain Banshee. We can feel the delicate jellyfish-type spore-creatures called Atokirina as they gently land on Sully’s body and listen while Neytiri explains their significance. Neytiri is not only equal to Jake, she is at times more advanced in her ethics, athleticism, knowledge and sense of adventure. Another turn to the Postmodern can be found in the juxtaposition of war in the Terminator franchise versus Avatar.

Postmodern war

Terminator warfare falls within traditional definitions of armed conflict, where wars are still being fought with distinct boundaries between human beings and machines. (One exception to this is the introduction of a cyborg in Terminator Salvation. However, the character, Marcus, is fused with machine parts against his will to help Sky Net defeat the human resistance. In the end, Marcus ends up rejecting machine control and fights to help the humans. His tragic cyborg condition, however, does not eliminate the need for humans to physically engage in combat.) In Terminator, humans scavenge and repurpose technology to undo past technological advancements. By the second installment of the franchise, they manage to successfully send Arnold Schwarzenegger as a T-800 back to the past to protect their leader, but he still has to fight a more advanced T-1000 Terminator. It seems that for every film of the franchise, the machines consistently have the upper hand, pitting a more sophisticated Terminator against the obsolete Terminator, with the scripts rooting for the human side as they depict humans as underdogs to technology. Additionally, the Terminator’s human soldiers are still in the direct line of fire and discharge real-time weapons. In Avatar, there are elements of modernity still in place, but we begin to see a turn to the postmodern.

The human biologists of Avatar are still modern in their methods. For instance, financing is still provided by a profit-driven corporation that hires an ex-military warmonger contractor, whose crew resembles a Blackwater operation rather than a peacekeeping enterprise like the United Nations. Elements of the war economy play out in Avatar with the more humane and ethical biologists controlled through and trying to push back from the grip of corporate funding. This is illustrated by Grace Augustine’s struggle with representatives of the corporation(s) funding her research, and her eventual move to isolate her team from their control. Grace Augustine is interested in studying Pandora for the sake of humanity’s advancement and progress. The paradox in her presence on Pandora is that she inevitably opens its environment to invasion as she attempts to re-build her team’s “broken” relationship with the Na’vi.

War turns toward the postmodern in Avatar’s synchronized fragmentation. At first glance, it appears the Na’vi are primitive fighters, even using bows and arrows in a seemingly futile attempt to protect themselves against humans’ massive military capabilities. The physical battles in Avatar, however, are not just fought in hand-to-hand combat but first fought politically with the corporations trying to buy the Na’vi’s cooperation in the form of monetary gifts and services. When the battle turns physical, combat is between species and warring machines. Pandora, as a planet, bands together to fight its human nemesis. Animals initially presented as predatory join forces with the Na’vi against a common predator, humans. Soldiers materialize in the form of not just male warriors but also women, flying banshees, and other animals, with each of Pandora’s fragments connecting up together to fight as one unified whole.

The Na'vi's ecological network ...	... serves as a parable for our inter-connected identities.

Becoming a postmodern viewer

Not only are the creators of film franchises like Terminator and Avatar reflecting a shift in society, we the viewer, are called upon to evolve as well. Jameson, in his article “Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” posits that many of us have happened into this space of an object that is mutating; however, we have not all developed perceptual skills to match this shift. For Jameson, this shift hasn’t happened because our perceptual habits were formed in the older space of high modernism. Yet, the postmodern viewer is called upon to see all the screens at once in their radical and random difference. This viewer is also called upon to grasp new relations.

In many ways, the U.S. public has been thinking more dialectically as evidenced by the strong social movements sweeping through our political elections. There is a wave of rejection of traditional forms of hegemonic power and an embracing of hybridity and fragmentation. Another aspect of the postmodern shift can be found in our wired world, with the Na’vi’s ecological network serving as a parable for our interconnected identities. This is further corroborated by Avatar’s popularity and fans’ adoration. The perceptual habits of our millennial generation, those born after 1982, are being formed in an early postmodern era. We can expect to see additional shifts in attitudes toward and relations with technology, machines, and each other.

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