Finding Our 'Roots'

The scene that strikes me each time I watch the movie is the first exchange between Jake and Neytiri. Though we briefly mentioned this in class, I would like to further analyze the language used and the transition from non-verbal to verbal communication to analyze the glorification of the ‘noble savage’s’ representation of nature in a pure state. Enter the scene: Jake is stuck on Pandora. There are cackles echoing in the pitch-black night as his jagged breathing takes us through the forest. He sheds some light on the situation with a handmade torch to reveal he is truly in a nightmare. The devilish creatures making the cackling noises are terrifying and predatory. Skip some wonderfully cliché lingo and Jake is losing his fight with the Pandora hyenas. Enter Neytiri flying through the air to the rescue. She moves like a warrior-dancer across the scene and makes killing appear graceful. Skip kick-butt action and Jakes failed attempt to say thank you---“I know you probably don’t understand this, but thank you”; Neytiri’s response is a shrift smack with her bow. This is followed by her famous first words spoken in a quivering voice, “This is sad, very sad only. They did not have to die.”

This first spoken line of the Na’vi establishes the politics for the entire film. This statement alludes to the noble savage on a variety of levels. It was an obvious choice of the writers to makes this line in broken English. She is intelligent, yet her words are heavy with an accent that is reminiscent of Africa, South America, and Russia thrown into one. By stating the creatures chasing Jake did have to die argues us to look deeper. Neytiri obviously has knowledge of Pandora, even a spiritual transcendence to save the most obvious of predators. She is a symbol of the noble savage as a higher level of thought in the physical and spiritual world. The transition from nightmare to dream state occurs only after she speaks. Once she has bestowed these words of wisdom upon Jake he can see the beauty that was invisible to him before. His world literally becomes illuminated by her words.

Jake as the white man, alone in the dark signifies the ‘destruction’ of the relationship between states of technology and nature. Neytiri as the ‘illuminator’ signifies the ‘purity’ of native people. In watching this from an American subject position we are argued into sympathizing with the Na’vi. We are meant to feel our own disconnection from nature, followed by the desire to ‘return’ to a natural state. Neytiri tells us this death is sad because it was not natural, or perhaps not useful to the people, and therefore uncalled for. Her wisdom is beyond Jake’s rash actions. Just as many Americans glorify the traditions of the Native Americans without having experience in or even with the culture, the myth of a pure state of nature always triumphs over industry. The combined myth and fantasy of a twenty-first century American to ‘return’ to a ‘simple’ state of nature such as that of the Native Americans is just that. We cannot return to a state we were never in, to a state we know nothing of, one we in fact destroyed. Avatar argues it is possible to step out of our culture and find our roots. It is important to recognize the roots of ‘pure nature’ and the ‘noble savage’ represented our not ours to reclaim. Rather, as we feel ourselves being pulled into this nostalgia the movie creates we can remember that we are pining after a distorted myth of our own roots of colonization.