The scene I chose to analyze is the in the beginning of the movie was where Parker Selfridge and Grace discuss why Jake, a marine, was a suitable replacement for his Ph.D brother.. It is about fifteen or so minutes into the movie right after Grace exits her avatar machine.
Throughout the scene we already see the conflict presented in the film. The conflict between nature, science, and peace against corporations, money, and greed. It starts out with Grace being upset that Jake took his brother's spot. She storms off to talk to Parker Selfridge, a man in charge of the business side of the project, right after saying "he has no business sticking his nose in my department". This already shows the separation between the humans. In the scene we can support these claims when analyzing the body language between Parker and Grace. Parker is found putting golf balls into a cup. This signifies a cocky sort of "boss" like attitude about himself. As Grace enters to speak to Parker he continues to putt and Grace has to kick the cup to gain his attention exploiting the resentment towards each other. As the scene goes on he continues to avoid eye contact and seems busy with other tasks. They speak of how the relations with the indigenous have gotten worse and begin to talk about the economics of the project. He is concerned with the resource unobtanium and making large profits because it is what "pays for the whole party" and what "pays for your science". On the other hand, Grace is primarily interested in the studying of Pandora and its peoples. The two characters have different priorities and this is seen throughout the whole movie with Jake being caught between his own species or the Na'vi.
Its so interesting to realized that we think of him as a jerk boss figure with out thinking about it directly. The movies plays of our idea's of what a boss is (or anything else) and says that they don't have to say he is outright- we just realize it. It's also interesting to see that just by the way someone is standing or avoiding eye contact how they feel about something (such as what Grace was saying to Parker.)
ReplyDeleteI find the this depiction to be a complete stereotype of a cocky male boss. It seems they're always playing golf in their office, and have little concern with whatever the person in their office is discussing with them. The fact that he seems disrespectful and insensible to Grace could be because he sees himself as being more important and higher up than a woman. If this scene was merely visual, with no conversation or musical influence, the body language would be more than enough to get the message across.
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