The scene in the movie that most appealed to me was the one whereby Jake was praying to Eyiwa to help him fight against the humans (his own kind), and Neytiri tells him that Eyiwa did not pick sides and was for the good of all, making Jake very distraught. I think this statement alone went a long way to show the contrast in mentalities between aliens and the invaders. So even though she knew that they wanted to destroy her land her main aim was not to cause them harm but rather to just protect her people, a total contrast to the humans whose main aim was to kill the natives in the process of getting what they wanted. My first thoughts when I saw this scene was, ‘why would she not help him? If she has the power to do it, why doesn’t she?’ Jakes’ physical reaction to Neytiri’s statement signified a loss of hope which probably every viewer felt.
The message that this scene conveys, in my opinion, is the selfish nature of humans. The mentality that just because we have the power to do so we can do whatever we want, and just because we can we the are justified in our actions. This selfishness is portrayed throughout the movie, e.g. When Jake is first attacked and rescued by Neytiri, to him the animals’ death meant nothing to him and yet to Neytiri the emotions were different. The type of language used by Colonel Miles suggests his pure hatred for the alien species and yet he is the one wronging them. This goes to show that for us (humans) it’s always about what we want and not necessarily need. It’s always about social classes and superiority. We are always quick to find reasons why we are more superior to the next person, or specie. And the power we claim to have being measured against the amount of harm we can inflict. So this movie is not a fantasy but rather a representation of what we humans do, even to each other.
So the scene is rhetoric in that it shows Jake just being human, trying to use all the power he can get to gain the upper hand and be claimed a hero, to be superior.
You raise a very interesting point here. I was thinking that this scene and similar scenes convey the selfishness of specifically Americans, rather than all humans. Being the "most powerful nation in the world", essentially entitles us to anything we want, right? That's why 9/11 had so much impact on us. We've killed that many people in strike many times before, but we don't stop to think twice about it because of our power. Therefore, 9/11 was very humbling to us. Neytiri's statement was probably very humbling to Jake. Just because you have the power, does not give you the right to act upon something. We often lose sight of this through our selfish ways.
ReplyDeleteI do think that it is very true that humans do think they are entitled to things often times when maybe they really aren't... it was interesting how James Cameron really called into question how entitled we as human beings are to things. I think it was more of a warning to the future of how entitled we feel and how this feeling of entitlement will affect the future. It definitely showed the other side of things in a sense where my eyes were opened to how selfish human beings were being.
ReplyDelete