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AN ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES USING
ECOCRITICISM IN JAMES CAMERON’S FILM AVATAR
ROHMAH ROMADHON
NO. 107026001675
ENGLISH LETTERS DEPARTEMENT
LETTERS AND HUMANITIES FACULTY
STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY SYARIF HIDAYATULLAH
JAKARTA
2011
AN ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES USING
ECOCRITICISM IN JAMES CAMERON’S FILM AVATAR
A Thesis
Submitted to Letters and Humanities Faculty
In Partial Fulfillment of the requirement for
The Degree of Strata one
ROHMAH ROMADHON
NO. 107026001675
ENGLISH LETTERS DEPARTEMENT
LETTERS AND HUMANITIES FACULTY
STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY “SYARIF HIDAYATULLAH”
JAKARTA
2011
i
ABSTRACT
RohmahRomadhon, An Analysis of Environmental Issues Using Ecocriticism in
James Cameron’s Film “Avatar”.AThesis: English Letters Department. Letters and
Humanities Faculty, State Islamic University“SyarifHidayatullah” Jakarta, August 2011.
The research is aimed at finding out the environmental issues which appear on
Cameron’s film,Avatar, by analyzing the relationship among the characters. This
research applies descriptive – qualitative method. To answer the research questions,
the writer uses ecocriticism theory as the tool to analyze the collected data. This
research uses verbal data and other nonnumeric data, such as dialogue and scene
caption as the basic analysis and in finding solution of the research problems.
The film entitled Avatar describes the various relationship of nature with its
varied characters; human and non-human. Nature, in this film, conceives both as a
hospitable and hostile force depend on how characters treat it. This reveals that each
different character has also different opinion about naturethat lead into different
attitude towardit. The arrogances of human being,that consider nature as an object to
explore, bring them to be apart from the rest of nature.On the other hand, the non-
human creatures and a number of human represent as a part of nature and live in
harmony with it because they respect it.
ii
APPROVEMENT
AN ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES USING
ECOCRITICISM IN JAMES CAMERON’S FILM AVATAR
A Thesis
Submitted to Letters and Humanities Faculty
In Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for
The Degree of Strata One
RohmahRomadhon
107026001675
Approved by:
InayatulChusna, M.Hum
Advisor
ENGLISH LETTERS DEPARTEMENT
LETTERS AND HUMANITIES FACULTY
STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY “SYARIF HIDAYATULLAH”
JAKARTA
2011
iii
LEGALIZATION
Name : RohmahRomadhon
NIM : 107026001675
Title : An Analysis of Environmental Issues Using Ecocriticism in James Cameron’s Film
Avatar
The thesis entitled has been defended before the Letter and Humanities Faculty’s
Examination Committee on October 18, 2011. It has already been accepted as a partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of strata one.
Jakarta, October 18, 2011
Examination Committee
Signature Date
1. Drs. AsepSaefuddin, M.Pd (Chair Person) ______________ ___________
19640710 199303 1 006
2. ElveOktafiyani, M.Hum (Secretary) ______________ ___________
19781003 200112 2 002
3. InayatulChusna, M.Hum (Advisor) ______________ ___________
19780126 200312 2 002
4. Dr.H. Muhammad Farkhan, M.Pd (Examiner I) ______________ ___________
19650919 200003 1 002
5. Maria Ulfa, M.A, M.Hum (Examiner II) ______________ ___________
iv
DECLARATION
I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of
my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by
another person nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the
award of any other degree or diploma of the university or other institute of higher
learning, except where due acknowledgement has been made in the text.
Jakarta, August 2 2011
RohmahRomadhon
v
ACKNOWLEDMENT
In the name of Allah, the most Gracious, the most Merciful
May peace and blessing of Allah by upon all of us
All praised be to Allah, Lord of the universe and the creator of human and
tribes, who has given His love, affection, and delicious health and time in doing and
completing the thesis. Peace and bless be upon to the greatest prophet who we all
adore; Muhammad SAW and to his family, companion, and his followers.
In this occasion, the writer would like to express her sincerest gratitude to her
beloved parents, Abd. RohimMukti and AisyahHusein, who have given all support,
motivation, and praysto the writer in finishing her thesis and study.
The writer also would like tosay thank to Mrs. InayatulChusna, M.Humas her
advisor for her time, guidance, patient, kindness, and contributions in advising the
writer to complete this thesis.
The great gratitude is also dedicated to these following people:
1. Dr. Wahid Hasim, M.Ag, the Dean of Letters and Humanities faculty.
2. Drs. AsepSaefuddin, M.Pd, the Head of English Letters Department.
3. Mrs. ElveOktafiyani, M.Hum, the Secretary of English Letters
department.
4. Dr. H. M. Farkhan, M.Pd and Mrs. Maria Ulfa, MA, M.Hum, as the thesis
examiners.
vi
5. All lectures of English Letters Department who have taught and educated
her during her study at UIN SyarifHidayatullah Jakarta.
6. Her brother;Ahmad, sisters;Wafa, Khodijah, Fatimah and her little
brother, Adil, who let her had a brief appointment with his English
teacher, Miss Ade, that gave a new boast of spirit to her when it was about
to extinguish.
7. All of her classmate in English Letters Students Class of 2007,B classand
literature class, especially Tubbies (Lya, Bibah, Encha), Nisa, Aisyah,
Yaser, Any, Tania, Maya,Feni,Rimbi, Eva, Husnuland others who have
given her a hand in the process of completing this research.
8. All friends in UKM Bahasa FLAT.
9. To those that the writer cannot mention one by one either who directly or
indirectly helping her completing this paper.
Finally, the writer hopes this paper will be useful especially for the writer and
those who are interested in it. May Allah bless us.Amin.
Jakarta, August 2011
The writer
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................... i
APPROVEMENT ............................................................................................... ii
LEGALIZATION ............................................................................................... iii
DECLARATION ................................................................................................. iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .................................................................................. v
TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................... vii
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................... 1
A. Background of the Study .................................................................... 1
B. Focus of the Study .............................................................................. 6
C. Research Questions ............................................................................ 7
D. Significances of the Study .................................................................. 7
E. Research Methodology ....................................................................... 7
F. Time and Place .................................................................................. 9
CHAPTER II. ECOCRITICISM ...................................................................... 10
A. The Definition of Ecocriticism ........................................................... 10
B. The History of Ecocritical Movement ................................................ 11
C. Ecocriticism as Literary Criticism...................................................... 15
CHAPTER III.RESEARCH FINDING ............................................................ 20
A. Data Description ................................................................................. 20
viii
B. Data Analysis ..................................................................................... 28
1. The Difference Relationship between Human and Nonhuman Toward
the Environment ............................................................................ 28
1) The Relationship between Human and Environment ............ 28
a. HumanOpinionabout Nature ........................................... 29
b. Human Exploitation of Environment ............................. 35
2) The Relationship between Non-Human and Environment .... 39
a. Respecting Nature ........................................................... 40
b. Worshiping Nature ......................................................... 42
c. Dependent on Nature ...................................................... 46
d. The Deep Connection with Nature …………………….. 47
e. The Power of Nature ....................................................... 51
2. The Statement of Avatar Film ....................................................... 55
CHAPTER IV. CONCLUSIONAND SUGGESTION .................................... 60
A. Conclusions ...................................................................................... 60
B. Suggestions ....................................................................................... 62
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................... 63
APPENDIX ........................................................................................................ 65
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
During the last decade, the environment becomes the front-page news as
public tend to believe that apocalypse will be happened by unintended
environmental disaster. This is not only an inane talk but fact. High rates of
deforestation and forest degradation are common in many parts of the world, but it
was the rapid loss of tropical rain forests that particularly captured the attention of
the world’s media from the early 1980s onwards.More recently, it has been
increasingly recognized that many other ecologically important forest types, such
as temperate rain forests and tropical dry forests, are also being lost at an alarming
rate.1 It affects the world for some other issues such as global warming and
climate changing. Since then it has burgeoned and public starts to concern about
fate of the environment and takes increasing hold, initially in the West but now
worldwide.
Environmental damage is not only caused by human but by itself as well.
There are two major forces which can cause environmental damage; nature and
mankind. People believe that nature have some kind of magical power. So that
each culture have their own tales or mythological believe of nature’s power. By
the early 21th century, the universe has already been through varies natural
1Andrian C. Newton , Forest Ecology and Conservation (UK: Oxford University Press,
2007) p. vii
2
disaster in all over the world; hurricane, storm, earthquake, tsunami, indication of
mountain eruption, etc. It shows that nature have its own natural power beyond
human capability.
The environment was becoming an increasingly salient public concern and
a major topic of research in science, economics, law, and public policy and certain
humanities field as well, notably history and ethics.2 American, led by Cheryl
Goltfelty with her essays entitled The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary
Ecology (University of Georgia Press, 1996), established an institution for
environmentalist and natural perspective writers called the Association for the
Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) in 1992. ASLE has its own
house journal, called ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and
Environment), which started in 1993.3 So in America, environment was already a
burgeoning academic movement by the early 1990s. They focused on the critical
field that had previously been known as the study of nature writing.
The term of literary-environmental studies has some other terms that
environmentalists can freely choose such as environmental criticism, green studies
and ecopoetics but its best known as ecocriticism. Simply put, ecocriticism is the
study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment.4
Ecocriticism is enabling us to analyze and criticizeabout the world in which we
live, and about our (human) relationships with that world and with our fellow
2 Lawrence Buell, The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and
Literary Imagination, (USA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), p.3. 3 Peter Barry, Beginning Theory an Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, 2
nded.,
(UK: 2002), p. 161. 4 Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism, (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 3.
3
inhabitants.5 Most of all, ecocriticism seeks to evaluate texts and ideas in terms of
their coherence and usefulness as responses to environmental crisis.6
Environmental issues, in turn, have become an increasing provocation
both for academic and for artist. It is inspiring many authors and movie makers to
put the issue in their work. Film, as well as other literary genres: poetry, prose,
short story, play or drama, is seizing the happening public issues at the definite
time then formulates it with the intrinsic elements of film. Films and stories are
reliably best media to deliver messages to other people and tell that there is a
problem that needs to be paid attention like environment.
Film is unique compared to other genres of literature. It exploits the subtle
interplay of light and shadow, manipulates three-dimensional space, and focuses
on moving images that have complex rhythm. Film communicates not only
through imagery, metaphor, and symbol; visually through action and gesture;
verbally through dialogue, but also directly through concrete images and sounds.
Last, film expands or compresses time and space, traveling back and forth freely
within their wide borders.7
There are some movie makers that extracted the environmental issues into
their film, for example Wall-E and Narnia 2: Prince Caspian. Those films portray
nature into the story as a main theme. They describe nature and how it gives
impact to human and non-human in a certain time and place. In Wall-E, the
viewers can see the damaged earth in a result of carelessness of human who make
5
Matthew Dickerson and David O’Hara, Narnia and the Fields of Arbol: The
Environmental Vision of C. S. Lewis (USA: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009), p. 1. 6 Greg Garrard (2004), Op.cit., p. 4.
7 Joseph M. Boggs and Dennis W. Petrie, The Art of Watching Film, 7
thed (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2008), p. 3.
4
Earth becoming a place full of rubbish. Then human with their intelligence walk
away from the broken earth and live finite life in the space. Whereas in Narnia 2:
Prince Caspian, the viewers can see contravention between those who want to
take care of environment and those who want to exploit it for their own sake.
The other environmental film is James Cameron’sAvatar which the writer
chooses as the unit of analysis.Avatar has blasted its way to the number one all
time-box office spot and nine Oscar nomination.8
The film has additionally
received various awards, nominations and honors, including in Academy Awards
and 67th
Golden Globe Award. Later, the film, that wowed the viewers with its
special effect that spent massive budget for, is inspiring environmental activists.
The film released in 2009 instead of 1999, the planned released year, because the
necessary technology was not yet available to achieve Cameron vision of the film.
The film is set in the middle of 22nd
century, 2154 for precise. The narration is
written by the producer, James Cameron, who produced the outstanding film,
Titanicand the famousAlien sequel film.
Avatar is a film about human’s9 group, RDA Corporation, who explores a
planet in Alpha Centauri star system called Pandora to mining the precious
mineral, unobtanium. But in order to do that they have to win over the natives
heart first, which is the 9-feet tall blue thing called Na’vi. The scientists make
avatar, the hybrid native body mix from human DNA and native DNA to get
8Adam Rosenberg, Avatar: A Look at Its Box-Office Reign, accessed at August, 2011.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1629437/avatar-look-at-its-boxoffice-reign.jhtml. 9Human, (adj) belonging to or relating to people, especially as opposed to animals or
machines. Human also human ‘being, (n) a person (Longman, Advance American Dictionary: The
Dictionary for Academic Success. (USA: Pearson Longman, 2008), p. 788)
5
closer with the native. Beside the air is poisoned for human.Na’vi in this film is
counted as the non-human10
alien character in this research.
Jake Sully is the main character of the film who also leads as a narrator.
He is a deformity ex-marine who came to Pandora as avatar driver replacing his
twin brother, a killed scientist. In the first journey to the wild life of Pandora, Jake
in the avatar body gets lost at the forest. But he is rescued by female native,
Naytiri, after getting sign from her god, Eywa. Then she takes him to her clan,
Omaticaya clan, to learn their lifestyle after the chief permitted.
Jake Sully reports his activities to both Dr. Augustine, the chief of
scientist, and Colonel Quaritch, the marine’s chief for different purpose. To
Augustine, he reports how Na’vi real life and the way they live with the
environment. To Quaritch, he reports where the location of unobtanium is and
tries to drive the native out of the place diplomatically to get the minim victims.
Na’vi has a spiritual relation with the environment11
. They tend to
dependent on nature12
, especially to the sacred tree; the trees of soul, where they
believe their mother goddess, Eywa, live together with the ancestors and the soul
of dead people. Right under this tree is where unobtanium that human looks for
10
Non-humanity – a space alien, a machine, a symbolic novum – as a means of exploring
what it is like to have the label ‘different’ imposed on a person by some normalising system.
Wolmark observes: The science fiction convention of the alien attempts to present otherness in
unitary terms, so that ‘humanity’ is uncomplicatedly opposed to the ‘alien’; both Jones and Butler
focus on the way in which the opposition seeks to suppress the others of both gender and race by
subsuming them within a commonsense notion of what it is to be human. (Adam Roberts, Science
Fiction (USA: Routledge, Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002), p. 100) 11
Environment, (n) The combination of external conditions that influence the life of
individual organisms. The external environment comprises the non-living, abiotic components
(physical and chemical) and the inter-relationship with other living, biotic components. (Gareth
Jones, Alan Robertson, Jean Forbes and Graham Hollier, Collins: Dictionary of Environmental
Science (Great Britain: Harper Collins Publishers, 1990), p. 145) 12
Nature, (n) Plants/ animals etc. (biology) everything in the physical world that is not
controlled by humans, such as wild plants and animals, earth and rocks, and the weather.
(Longman: Advance American Dictionary, 2008, p. 1060)
6
lying. In the end, Jack Sully has to choose to whom he will fight and whom he
will protect.
From this film, the viewers can compare the difference of relationship
between human and the environment, and non-human alien with their
environment. Avatar film also shows vary relation between human and
environment, such as the power of nature upon human and other things, the
friendship between non-human alien and their environment, the exploitation
human did to the environment, and social moral messages about the environment
that can be taken from the film. These bring to the analysis of the statement13
of
film.
From the explanation above, the writer is interested in analyzing the
problem concerned on environmental issues and its relation with human in
Cameron’s film, Avatar, using ecocriticism.
B. Focus of the Study
The research is focused on the environmental issuesusing ecocriticismon
Cameron’s film ‘Avatar’ through analyzing the different relationship between
human and non-human alien characters with environment. Then it is analyzed the
statement that film make regarding environmental messages.
13
The statement of the film is statement that film built to teach the viewers something by
determining whether the acting and the characters have significance or meaning beyond the
context of the film itself. This is driven by the judgment of the film as an expression of an idea that
has intellectual, moral, social, or cultural importance and the ability to influence our lives for the
better.
7
C. Research Question
The questions of the research formulate by the writer are:
1. How is the relationship between human and their environment; and
between non-human alien and their environment show in Avatar film
in term of taking care to the environment of the Pandora’s Planet?
2. What kind of statement does the film make aboutenvironmental
messagefrom those relationships?
D. Significance of the Study
The writer hopes this research would enrich the variation of literary work
analysis, especially about film on Letters and Humanities faculty. The writer has
the expectation that the readers can analyze the literary works especially film,
from various aspects, without forgetting and leaving the aesthetic and emotional
values that contained.
The writer also hopes that this research can give any significance and
information to the writer and the readers, especially for those who enjoy and
appreciate film from ecological perspective. The writer hopes this research will
help the reader to understand more about environmental works, especially
Cameron’s Avatar.
E. Research Methodology
Methodology of the research is including several aspects on research such
as method of the study, objective of the study, technique of the study, instrument
of the study, and unit analysis.
8
1. Objective of the Study
The objective of the research is to know the relationship between human,
nonhumanalien and their environment show in Avatar film and to know Avatar’s
statement regarding environmental issues from that relationship.
2. Method of the Study
Referring to the objective of the research, the writer uses discourse
analysis method.The writers focuses on the issues of environment in Avatar film.
The gathered data which are the problem found in Avatar film regarding
environmental issues will be analyzed by using Ecocriticism.
3. Technique of Data Analysis
In this research, the data would be taken as technique of analyzing
environmental issues by using ecocriticism. Data and sources are gathered
through some phases; (1) the writer watches Avatar film for several times; (2) the
writer gathers data including quotations, pictures, and ideas related to the research
questions; (3) the writer analyzes data in order to know the relationship of the
human, non-human and their environment in Avatar film according to
ecocriticism; (4) the writer formulates the result of the analysis with the aim of
finding the purpose of the film to make such relations. It will be supported by
related sources.
9
4. Instrument of the Study
The researcher herself is the main instrument of the research.As the
subject, the writer is watching the film, understanding, making notes about film
quotations and scenes of the film regarding environmental issues, and analyzing
the data related of the research questions. The writer is also collecting, reading
and understanding some related data and sources.
5. Unit of Analysis
The unit of analysis of the research is Avatarfilm directed by James
Cameron and produced by 20th
Century Fox, released in 2009.
F. Time and Place
This research took place in the Library of Department of English
Literature faculty of Adab& Humanities, the Center Library of SyarifHidayatullah
State Islamic University, and other libraries that provide the resources for the
research. The writer begins this research from March, 2011.
10
CHAPTER II
THOERETICAL FRAMEWORK
ECOCRITICISM
A. The Definition of Ecocriticism
Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship of the human and the non-
human, throughout human cultural history and entailing critical analysis of the
term „human‟ itself.1 The term of this green branch of literary studies is varied. In
The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (1972) Joseph W. Meeker
introduced the term literary ecology to refer to “the study of biological themes
and relationships which appear in literary works. It is simultaneously an attempt
to discover what roles have been played by literature in the ecology of the human
species.” Meanwhile, the term ecocriticism was possibly first coined in 1978 by
William Rueckert in his essay “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in
Ecocriticism”. By ecocriticism Rueckert meant “the application of ecology and
ecological concepts to the study of literature.” He concerned specifically with the
science of ecology.2
Cheryll Glotfelty explains further on The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmark
in Literary Ecology, that in tandem oikos and kritos mean “house judge”. A long-
winded gloss on ecocritic might run as follow: “a person who judges the merits
and faults of writings that depict the effects of culture upon nature, with a view
1 Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism. (New York: Routledge, 2004), p.5.
2 Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmark in Literary
Ecology, (USA: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), p. xx
11
toward celebrating nature, berating its despoilers, and reversing their harm
through political action.” The Greek oikos, household, and in modern usage refers
both to “the study of biological interrelationships and the flow of energy through
organisms and inorganic matter.”3 So the oikos is nature, a place Edward
Hoagland calls “our widest home,” and the kritos is an arbiter of taste who wants
the house kept in good order, no boots or dishes strewn about to ruin the original
décor.4
B. History of Ecocritical Movement
Ecocriticism as a concept first arose in the late 1970s, at meetings of the
WLA (the Western Literature Association, a body whose field of interest is the
literature of the American West).5 From the point of view of academics,
ecocriticism is dominated by the Association for the Study of Literature and the
Environment (ASLE), a professional association that started in America but now
has significant branches in the UK and Japan. It organises regular conferences and
publishes a journal that includes literary analysis, creative writing and articles on
environmental education and activism. Many early works of ecocriticism were
characterised by an exclusive interest in Romantic poetry, wilderness narrative
and nature writing, but in the last few years ASLE has turned towards a more
general cultural ecocriticism, with studies of popular scientific writing, film, TV,
3 Lawrence Buell, The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and
Literary Imagination, (USA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005) p. 13. 4 Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (1996), op.cit. p. 69.
5 Peter Barry, Beginning Theory an Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, 2
nd ed
(UK: 2002), p.161.
12
art, architecture and other cultural artifacts such as theme parks, zoos and
shopping malls.6
According to a prominent Ecocritic, Lawrance Buell, one can identify
several trend-lines marking an evolution from a “first wave” of ecocriticism to a
“second” or newer revisionist wave or waves increasingly evident today.7
1. First Wave Ecocriticism
For first-wave ecocriticism, “environment” effectively meant “natural
environment.” In practice if not in principle, the realms of the “natural” and the
“human” looked more disjunct than they have come to seem for more recent
environmental critics. Ecocriticism was initially understood to be synchronous
with the aims of earthcare. Its goal was to contribute to “the struggle to preserve
the „biotic community‟”8
The word environmental is usually understood to mean the surrounding
conditions that affect people and other organisms. In a broader definition,
environment is everything that affects an organism during its lifetime. In turn, all
organisms including people affect many components in their environment. From a
human perspective, environmental issues involve concerns about science, nature,
health, employment, profits, politics, ethics, and economics.9
First-wave ecocriticism give special canonical emphasis to writers who
foreground nature as a major part of their subject matter, such as the American
6 Greg Garrard (2004), p. 4.
7 Lawrence Buell (2005), p. 17.
8 Ibid. p. 21.
9 Eldon D. Enger and Bradley F. Smith, Environmental Science: A Study of
Interrelationship, 9th
ed, (USA: McGraw-Hill, 2004), p. 5.
13
transcendentalists, the British Romantics, the poetry of John Clare, the work of
Thomas Hardy and the Georgian poets of the early twentieth century.10
2. Second Waves or Newer Revisionist Waves
Second waves or newer revisionist waves of ecocriticism has closer
alliance with environmental science, especially the life sciences. The biological-
environmental-literary connection reached its first major critical expression in
1974 with the publication of Joseph W. Meeker.11
Glen A. Love in his 1999 essay
Ecocriticism and Science: Toward Consilience? points out that a line of biological
thinking has been a constant and indispensable accompaniment to the rise of
ecocriticism and the study of literature and the environment. Biologically verified
evidence of environmental destruction and it was the natural connecting point, as
the emphasized, which can claim a permanent and important relationship to
human life.12
Meanwhile, William Howarth seems rather to favor bringing humanities
and science together in the context of studying specific landscapes and regions
(Howarth 1996), to which end geology is at least as important as the life sciences
(Howarth 1999). Ursula Heise, on the other hand, has recently turned to a branch
of applied mathematics, risk theory, as a window onto literature‟s exploration of
10
Peter Barry (2002), p. 169. 11
New Literary History, Vol. 30, No. 3, Ecocriticism (The Johns Hopkin University Press,
Summer, 1999), p. 564. 12
Ibid. p. 565.
14
the kind of contemporary anxieties.13
Then, others have also taken up the
argument that ecocriticism‟s progress becoming more science-literate.
Likewise, the Carson‟s book Silent spring is a great model. Carson had to
investigate a problem in ecology, with the help of wildlife biologists and
environmental toxicologists, in order to show that DDT was present in the
environment in amounts toxic to wildlife, but Silent Spring undertook cultural not
scientific work when it strove to argue the moral case that it ought not to be. The
great achievement of the book was to turn a (scientific) problem in ecology into a
widely perceived ecological problem that was then contested politically, legally
and in the media and popular culture. Thus ecocriticism cannot contribute much to
debates about problems in ecology, but it can help to define, explore and even
resolve ecological problems in this wider sense.14
Science‟s “facts” are “neither real nor fabricated”: the microbial revolution
hinged on a certain kind of orchestrated laboratory performance, without which
science history would have taken a different path, but the discovery/invention was
not fictitious, either. Bruno Latour ingeniously proposes the neologism “factish”
(a collage of “fact” and “fetish”) to describe this understanding of the “facts” of
science: “types of action that do not fall into the comminatory choice between fact
and belief ” (Latour 1999: 295, 306).15
The discourses of science and literature,
then, must be read both with and against each other.
According to the former way of thinking, the prototypical human figure is
a solitary human and the experience in question activates a primordial link
13
Lawrence Buell (2005), p. 18. 14
Greg Garrard (2004), p. 6. 15
Lawrence Buell (2005), op.cit. p. 21.
15
between human and nonhuman. According to the latter, the prototypical human
figure is defined by social category and the “environment” is artificially
constructed. In both instances the understanding of personhood is defined for
better or for worse by environmental entanglement.16
C. Ecocriticism as Literary Criticism
Regardless of what name it goes by, most ecocritical work shares a
common motivation. The ecocritic wants to track environmental ideas and
representations whenever they appear, to see more clearly a debate which seems
to be taking place, often part-concealed, in a great many cultural spaces. Most of
all, ecocriticism seeks to evaluate texts and ideas in terms of their coherence and
usefulness as responses to environmental crisis.17
All ecological criticism shares
the fundamental premise that human culture is connected to the physical world,
affected it and affected by it.18
An ecological perspective strives to see how all
things are interdependent, even those apparently most separate. Nothing may be
discarded or buried without consequences.19
Ecocriticism takes as its subject the interconnections between nature and
culture, specifically the cultural artifacts of language and literature. As a critical
stance, it has one foot in literature and the other on land; as a theoretical
16
Ibid. p. 23. 17
Richard Kerridge and Neil Sammells, Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and
Literature, (USA: Zed Books Ltd, 1998), p. 5. 18
Ibid. p. xix. 19
Ibid, p. 7.
16
discourse, it negotiates between the human and the nonhuman. Ecocriticism
expands the notion of "the world" to include the entire ecosphere.20
The ecocritical movement‟s primary publications, the American ISLE
(International Studies in Literature and Environment) and its younger British
counterpart Green Letters, are remarkable among scholarly association journals
for their mixture of scholarly, pedagogical, creative, and environmentalist
contributions.21
ISLE is established in 1993 by Patrick Murphy to “provide a
forum for critical studies of the literary and performing arts proceeding from or
addressing environmental considerations. These would include ecological theory,
environmentalism, conceptions of nature and their depictions, the human/nature
dichotomy and related concerns.”22
Ecology, meanwhile, is concerned with an integrated, notionally holistic
view of human–natural systems, even though at any point or space these systems
– whether nominally organic or mechanical – are seen to be open and evolving.
Meanwhile a broadly ecological concern with human/nature and people/place
relations is a deep-rooted and perennial feature of the subject, implicit in some of
its Classical origins and explicit in much of its Romantic legacy. Ecological
concern has some terms and topics they usually focus on some questions about
family and community based on, identification between characters and places or a
mood and a place, life and death, and about human and environment
representation and relation such as whether people are a part of or apart from
20
Ibid. p. xix. 21
Lawrence Buell (2005), p. 6. 22
Cheryll Glofeltly and Harold Fromm (1992), p. xviii.
17
nature. All this can be expressed in terms of three major and recurrent topics in
literary and cultural history.23
1) Version of pastoral. Stereotypically, pastoral is a genre in which shepherd in
particular or country-dwellers in general are represented in an idyllically
idealized stat of simplicity and innocence, far from the complex ills and
excesses of court or city. Alternatively, country folk are presented as brutal
and backward. Typically, in many a piece it is the movement between these
states that drives the plot and informs the main issues.24
2) The city as second nature. Here alternatives tend to be framed in terms of
delights and distresses of urban living as a whole, without recourse to rural
comparisons. Above all it is the capital city, the Metropolis that is seen as an
interlocking system of worlds within worlds, an intricate network of cultures
and sub-cultures. The city is hailed from afar as a place of individual
opportunity and social mobility „the bright city lights‟. But on further
acquaintance and reflection the city often turns out to be a place of personal
loneliness and social alienation, naked acquisitiveness and financial
vulnerability.25
3) Science Fiction: Utopias and Dystopias. The genre of science fiction has been
particularly influential in offering representations of imaginary places that are
variously utopian and dystopian. „Utopia‟, from Greek ou-topos, is strictly
„noplace‟ means an imaginary ideal place. Dystopia was a term coined later to
23
Rob Pope, The English Studies Book: An Introduction to Language, Literature and
Culture, 2nd
ed (NY: Routledge, 2002), pp. 160-161. 24
Ibid. p. 162. 25
Ibid. p. 162.
18
designate an imaginary horrible place. And in fact, depending on one‟s point
of view, most utopias have potentially dystopian dimension to them.26
Cheryll Glotfeltly makes an analogous ecocriticism‟s phases similar as
Elaine Showalter‟s model of the three developmental stages of feminist criticism.
The first stage is the “images of nature”, how nature is represented in literature.
But nature is not the only focus of ecocritical studies of representation. Other
topics include the frontier, animals, cities, specific geographical regions, rivers,
mountains, deserts, Indians, technology, garbage, and the body.
Second stage is to recuperate the hitherto neglected genre of nature
writing, a tradition of nature-oriented nonfiction that originates in England with
Gilbert White‟s A Natural history of Selbourne (1789) and extends to America
through Henry Thoreau, Mary Austin, Rachel Carson, Terry Tempest Williams,
and many others. In an increasingly urban society, nature writing plays a vital role
in teaching us to value the natural world. Another effort to promulgate
environmentally enlightened works examines mainstream genres, indentifying
fiction and poetry writers whose work manifests ecological awareness.
The third stage, analogous work ecocriticism includes examining the
symbolic construction of species. How has literary discourse defined the human?
Such a critique questions the dualisms prevalent in Western thought, dualisms that
separate meaning from matter, sever mind from body, divide men from women,
and wrench humanity from nature. A related endeavor is being carried out under
26
Ibid. p. 163.
19
the hybrid label “ecofeminism,” a theoretical discourse whose theme is the link
between the oppression of women and the domination of nature. Another
theoretical is that known as deep ecology, which is considering the philosophy to
explore the implications that its radical critique of anthropocentrism might have
for literary study.27
Lawrence Buell in the last chapter on his book (2005) believed that
“environmental criticism at the turn of the twenty-first century will also come to
be looked back upon as a moment that did produce a cluster of challenging
intellectual work, a constellation rather than a single titanic book or figure, that
established environmentality as a permanent concern for literary and other
humanists, and through that even more than through acts of pedagogical or
activist outreach helped instill and reinforce public concern about the fate of the
earth, about humankind‟s responsibility to act on that awareness, about the shame
of environmental injustice, and about the importance of vision and imagination in
changing minds, lives, and policy as well as composing words, poems, and
books.”28
27
Ibid. p. xxiv. 28
Lawrence Buell (2005), p.133.
20
CHAPTER III
RESEARCH FINDINGS
A. Data Description
In this description of the data, the writer discusses about the kind of
relationship that human and non-human alien characters have with the
environment on Avatar film. Human are the people who come away from earth to
Pandora, there are Jake Sully, Colonel Quatritch, Dr. Augustine, Parker Selfridge,
Norm Spellman, Max Petel and Trudy. Whereas Na‟vi as indigenous creature of
Pandora is categorized as non-human alien in this research, there are the
Omaticayan tribe such as Neytiri and Tsu‟tey. Then, the extraordinary wild
animals, the deities, the plants and the landscape of Pandora are the environment
or nature. Nature is silent in our culture (and in literate societies generally) in the
sense that the status of being a speaking subject is jealously guarded as an
exclusively human prerogative.1 So, human and non-human alien characters are
the characters that can talk and think in this film while the rest of it that cannot
talk is categorized as environment.
Avatar has strong environmental issues and moral environmental values
on it. It makes strong separation between persons and places. The environment of
Pandora describes as a hostile environment, threatening nature and alienating
society. But in the same time, the Pandora‟s environment also describes as a
1 Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmark in Literary
Ecology, (USA: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), p. 15.
21
friendly and hospitable environment. Avatar raises the environment issues such as
different opinion toward nature, deforestation, exploitation toward nature,
respecting and worshiping nature, dependent on nature and the power of nature.
To make easier to analyze, the writer tabulated the data related environmental
issues in Avatar film.
The tabulated data are described in table below:
No Classification Quotation and Picture Time
I. Human relationship with Environment
1. Human
assessment of
nature.
Colonel Quaritch : You‟re not in Kansas
anymore. You are on Pandora ladies and
gentlemen. Respect that fact, every second and
every day. If there is a hell you might wanna go
there for are-and-are after a tour on Pandora. Up
there beyond that fence, every living thing that
crawls, flies or squads in the mud want to kill
you and eat your eyes for jujubes.
00:00:06
00:06: 43
00:06:07
Norm: Grace Augustine is a legend. She‟s the
head of the Avatar program. She wrote the book.
I mean literally wrote the book on Pandoran
Botany.
Max: Well that‟s, she like plants better than
people.
00:10:20
22
Parker (to Augustine): This is why we‟re here,
unobtanium. Because this little gray rock sells
for 20 million a kilo. That‟s the only reason. It‟s
what pays for the whole party. It‟s what pays for
your science.
00:13:00
Parker: Their damn village happens to be resting
on the richest Unobtanium deposit within 200
clicks in any direction. I mean. Look at all that
chatter.
Jake: You‟ll get them to move. What if they
won‟t go?
Colonel: I‟m betting that they will.
Parker: Okay. Look. killing the indigenous looks
bad but there is one thing that shareholders hate
more than bad press and that‟s a bad quality
statement. I don‟t make up the rules. So just find
me a carat. Then get them to move. Otherwise,
this is gonna have to be all stick. Okay?
Colonel: you got three months. That‟s when the
dozers get there.
00:48:05
Man: … It would be a fresh start on a new
world. And the pay is good.
Man: Very good.
00:03:00
Jake: Back on earth, these guys were army dogs,
marines. Fighting for freedom. But out here, they
are hired guns. Taking the money, working for
the company.
00:05:34
Jake: …. They can fix the spinal if you got the
money but not on dead benefit. Not in this
economy.
00:05:16
2.
Human
exploitation
toward nature
00:03:48
00:04:10
23
00:57:08
01:24:58
01:26:18
01:38:57
01:38:38
01:41:38
24
01:40:04
Jake: Probably, I‟m just talking to the tree right
now. But if you there, I need to get you hands
up. If Grace is with you, look into her memories.
See the world we come from. There‟s no green
there. They killed their mother and they gonna
do the same here.
02:03:26
II Non-Human Alien Relationship with Environment
1. Respecting
Nature
00:36:15
Jack : Hey, wait! I just wanna say thanks for
killing those things.
Neytiri : Don‟t thank! You don‟t thank for this.
This is sad. Very sad only.
Jack : Ok. I‟m sorry. Whatever I did I‟m
sorry.
Neytiri : This is your fault. They don‟t need to
die.
00:36:46
“I see you, brother and thank you. Your spirit
goes with Eywa. Your body stays behind to
become part of the people.”
01:02:18
2. Worshiping
nature Norm: Who‟s Eywa? Only their deity. Their
Goddess made up of all living things. Everything
they know.
00:49:25
25
00:31:20
Neytiri: I was about going to kill him but there
was a sign from Eywa. 00:43:13
00:31:55
Tsu‟Tey: These demons are forbidden here.
Neytiri : There is a sign. There is a matter for the
Tsahik.
Tsu‟Tey: Bring him.
00:41:18
Tsahik : My daughter you will teach him our
way to speak and walk as we do.
Neytiri : Why me? This is not fair.
Tsahik : It is decided. My daughter will teach
you our way. Learn well, Jake Sully. Then we
will see if your insanity can be cured.
00:44:55
Jack (narrator): Na‟vi says Eywa will provide
life. But with no hope, no home, there is only
one place they could go.
Dr. Augustine: I‟m with her, Jake. She is real. 01:56:12
3. Dependent on
nature
00:46:10
01:01:34
26
Jack: I try to understand this deep connection
people have to the forest. She talks about a
network of energy that flows to all living things.
She says all energy under borrowing and one day
has to give back.
01:01:34
4. The deep
connection
with nature
Neytiri: That is Tsahaylu, the bond. Feel it. Feel
her heart beat, her breath. Feel her strong legs.
You may tell her what to do inside. For now, say
where to go.
00:50:35
00:42:35
00:57:09
01:54:24
Augustine: What we think we know is there is
some kind of electro chemical communication
between the roots of the trees like the synopsis
between your own chromosomes. And each tree
has ten to the four (104) to the trees around it and
ten to the twelve (1012
) on Pandora. It‟s more
connection than human brain.
01:28:37
27
5. The power of
nature
00:35:35
Tsahik: The great mother may choose to save all
that she is in this body.
Jake: Is that possible?
Tsahik: She must pass through the eye of Eywa
and return but Jake Sully, she is very weak.
Jake: Hang on, Grace. They gonna fix you up.
01:55:08
Grace: The tree of Souls, Yvetryar Ramounom,
is their most sacred place. See the flux Vortex on
the screen?
Trudy: Yeah, that messed up my instrument.
Grace: There is something really interesting
going on there biologically.
01:11:51
02:14:30
12:16:18
02:15:08
28
B. Data Analysis
Ecocriticism is known as the study of biological themes and relationships
which appear in literary works.2 Avatar raises the environment issues such as
deforestation, exploitation toward nature, and the power of nature so that it can be
analyzed using ecocriticism. However, ecocriticism is concerned not only with the
attitude to nature expressed by the author of a text, but also with its patterns of
interrelatedness, both between the human and the nonhuman, and between the
different parts of the non-human world.3
1. The Difference Relationship Between Human and Nonhuman Alien
Toward the Environment
As mention before, this film shows different relationship toward the
environment. The writer classifies the relationship of the environment into two
different kinds of relationship: human relationship with the environment and non-
human alien relationship with the environment. The contradictory relationships
emerge from the different attitude and opinion about the environment from each
character. Here is the complete analysis.
1) The relationship between human and the environment
Human are the people who come from earth to Pandora. Unlike Na‟vi,
human consist of many different types of characteristics that represent different
cultures and knowledge. Because of the background differences, there are also
different attitudes and viewpoints toward environment among human. From a
human perspective, environmental issues involve concern about science, nature,
2 Ibid, p. xx.
3 Terry Gifford, Pastoral (New York: Routledge, the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001)
p. 5.
29
health, employment, profits, politics, ethics, and economics.4 Thus the different
point of view or perspective or knowledge brings the different understanding and
attitude that lead into disagreement among themselves.
But above all, human share the same main opinion about nature which is
that the environment is the profitable thing. Later, this opinion leads human to do
some explorations to the environment that often bring bad consequences to the
environment itself.
a. Human Opinion about Nature
Human think that the wild environment or nature is menace and hideous
place. They see nature as the enemy that should be taken over. They prepare
themselves to do invasion with the high technology brought from Earth so they
could control them. From the beginning of the film when new people are coming
to Pandora, Colonel is welcoming them with a warning about how cruel the
Pandora is.
Colonel Quaritch : You’re not in Kansas anymore. You are on Pandora
ladies and gentlemen. Respect that fact, every second and every day. If
there is a hell you might wanna go there for R-&-R after a tour on
Pandora. Up there beyond that fence, every living thing that crawls, flies
or squads in the mud want to kill you and eat your eyes for jujubes.
(00:06:16)
He says that Pandora, which is wildlife, is worse than a hell. He uses the
sentence that means people would prefer to go to the hell than to Pandora. He
even says that every living thing on Pandora; animals, plants, and the indigenous
4 Eldon D. Enger and Bradley F. Smith, Environmental Science: A Study of
Interrelationship, 9th
ed, (USA: McGraw-Hill, 2004), p. 5.
30
want to kill them. This explanation shows explicitly that Pandora, from human
assessment, is menace and hideous.
Pict.1 Colonel Quaritch with his scratch on
the face
The colonel‟s appearance with scratch wound on his face is strengthening
what he says. He is not the kind that easy to get hurt and wounded, not even after
attending several big wars such as three times on Nigeria. But in Pandora, he got
the wound at the first day he came. It shows that even Colonel, the very strong
person by the appearance, attitude, and thought, can easily get hurt because
Pandora is so much danger.
Colonel Quaritch, represents the military perspective, says that the wildlife
is dangerous. The only thing he wants to do is to dominate the environment by
force. Environment, for him, is like the old conception of nature for man. Nature
is gendered female, while women, from the men viewpoint, are territory for
adventure, wildness to be tamed, owned and controlled.5 He talks for several
times about his wish to vanishing Pandora with the power, strength, and gun
rather than to use diplomatic solution. He does not think that the environment, the
strange one, and other creatures that live on it are deserved to be preserved but his
own creature, human, and his own profit.
5 Richard Kerridge & Neil Sammells, Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and
Literature (USA: Zed Books Ltd, 1998) p.6
31
Pic.2 Jake sees big arrows on
Tank‟s wheel
The description of Pandora‟s environment as hostile and alienating
environment even more is strengthen in many ways at beginning of the film. Jake
Sully, when he first time came down to Pandora‟s land on human barrack, is
passed by the company‟s tank that it has many big blue arrows on its wheel. It
shows explicitly, whether to Jake or to the viewer, that there is warfare out there
between human and alien or the indigenous of the planet.
Moreover, from the scientific perspective, nature is something to be
learned. Nature is something that should be preserved for it can be explored and
gives so much knowledge. But they do not see nature as the equal fellow
inhabitant but as the object to explore. It is presented by Dr. Augustine character.
Norm: Grace Augustine is a legend. She’s the head of the Avatar program.
She wrote the book. I mean literally wrote the book on Pandoran Botany.
Max: Well that’s, she like plants better than people. (00:10:20)
Max, her scientist colleague, is described Dr. Augustine as plant lover that
she likes plants better than people. She respects nature on her own way, different
from the Omaticayan Na‟vi. She admires Pandora‟s environment so that she keeps
learning on it because it is amazed her.
But above all, human share the same thought that nature is a profitable
thing that means a lot for them if only they can exploit it.
32
Parker: I care what I care.
Parker (to Augustine): This is why we’re here, unobtanium. Because this
little gray rock sells for 20 million a kilo. That’s the only reason. It’s what
pays for the whole party. It’s what pays for your science. Comprendo?
Now those savages are threatening our whole operation. We are on the
brink of war, and you’re supposed to be finding a diplomatic solution. So
use what you’ve got, and get me some results. (00:13:00)
Differ with Colonol Quaritch that represents the military perspective and
Dr. Augustine that represents scientific perspective, Parker Selfridge represents
the economic perspective, that nature provides money. People should take as
much as they can from nature for their own benefit because nature is there for
human. Parker says further that it, unobtonium, is what pays for the whole
operation they do on Pandora. So, the only important thing is the unobtanium
which produces a lot of money. Because money can make people‟s dreams come
true, like the unbelievable avatar program that scientists do. This is what makes
Dr. Augustine as plants lover can do nothing about but follow along with him.
Finally, the right wing accuses environmentalists of putting nature before
people or the opposite is true. Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day,
understood that we are not protecting nature for nature‟s sake. We are protecting
nature because it enriches humanity. Nature enriches us economically. it enriches
us culturally, recreationally, aesthetically, spiritually, and historically. It connects
us to one another, to our history and our culture, and to common experiences that
give us identity as a people.6
Parker: Their damn village happens to be resting on the richest
Unobtanium deposit within 200 clicks in any direction. I mean. Look at all
6 Gaylord Nelson, Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise (USA: The University of
Wisconsin Press, 2002), p. xvi.
33
that chatter.
Jake: You’ll get them to move. What if they won’t go?
Colonel: I’m betting that they will.
Parker: Okay. Look. killing the indigenous looks bad but there is one thing
that shareholders hate more than bad press and that’s a bad quality
statement. I don’t make up the rules. So just find me a carat. Then get them
to move. Otherwise, this is gonna have to be all stick. Okay?
Colonel: you got three months. That’s when the dozers get there.
(00:48:05)
The only thing Parker cares about is money. He worries a lot if the
shareholders who invest their money will get disappointment and take their
shares. It will be a loss for him. He doesn‟t really care what way it takes to get
what he wants whether it is a diplomatic way by persuasiveness or the hard way
using violence. The viewers can feel the hatred and dismissed the native from
Parker‟s dialogue and the word choices he uses.
Environment for human, generally, is only the tools to gain money,
benefits, and might as well be used for the betterment of the human community
than die neglected. They feel that to not do so would cause economic hardship. It
was money that mentions first in this film as the reason to do this job for Jake
Sully, the main character, and take a flight away to Pandora. Beside he already
had nothing left to do after dropping out from military because of his injury.
Man: … It would be a fresh start on a new world. And the pay is good.
Man: Very good. (00:03:00)
The man from the company convinced him that it is a good and promising
job by mentioning about the good, and even the very good payment. The
repetition of the word „good‟ from payment is to emphasize the word. They
mention it twice because money is the important reason for someone to do
something. Thus Jake Sully will not refuse the job.
34
More than that, Jake, the main character, implies that human does not
doubt to take other‟s life only for money. To make it more dramatically, Jake
mentions money as “the paper on his wallet” as if it does not really precious at all
when narrate his twin murdered‟ story.
Jake: Back on earth, these guys were army dogs, marines. Fighting for
freedom. But out here, they are hired guns. Taking the money, working for
the company. (00:05:34)
Moreover Jake implies that human (marines) on Pandora are changing
their habits because their reference there is only gaining money for the company
by following the Colonel‟s or company‟s order. Jake does the same as well.
Money is the major reference for human being. It can change people and can
make people to do something that is not supposed to be done.
Jake: …. They can fix the spinal if you got the money but not on dead
benefit. Not in this economy. (00:05:16)
Furthermore, Jake gives more emphasize that economic is the main
problem at that time. Economical problem seems as the most preeminent matter
that the writer can assume it as the major cause of all the damage and the problem
comes after in this film. This is reasonable because economy affected all term of
life and subjects, including ecology. Economics informed by ecological
awareness, and an ecology that is economically viable. The two activities are
intimately and intricately interconnected. They are deeply coloured by the politics
of their particular historical moment, too.7
7 Richard Kerridge & Neil Sammells (1998), op.cit., p. 158
35
b. Human Exploitation of Environment
In most of the Western religious and philosophical tradition, the
nonhuman world is thought to exist for the sake of human beings. The
anthropocentrism sees that human beings have needs and the nonhuman world
exists to satisfy these needs.8 This believe and understanding lead human to do an
exploration and exploitation into other or nonhuman world. In Avatar, when
viewers come to see Pandora for the first time, the film shows first the place on
Pandora where human live. It presents the damage planet or forest that viewers
can assume that it is what human did to the Pandora‟s environment.
Pict.3 Pandora‟s mining Pict.4 Human station
The shot on picture 2 shows the plan is passing through the barren land
caused by mining in the middle of the green land. This is an evidence that human
affect harmfully to the environment. It changes the environment badly. In
addition, in the picture 3 there is also a barren, dry, and dusty land where human
decided to take it as their place to live. Human need land or place to build their
barracks, offices, laboratories, and airbase to advocate their civilization. But this
development affects and changes the environment mostly into bad condition.
8 Terry Gifford (2001), p. viii
36
Pict.5 The Pandora‟s forest view
As comparison, the film then shows very different scenery in the Na‟vi
place on the forest. It looks extremely unlike to the landscape where human lived.
It is still prosperous, green, and fertile.
From those pictures above the writer can see the difference of the
environment or landscape view and mood between where human live and where
non-human live. The scene which shows human place is dark, dusty and busy,
while the indigenous place or forest is green, calm and harmonious. It shows that
human brings damage to the land that changed the environment a lot in extreme
ways from the way it should.
Pict.6 Neytiri and Jake in the Tree
of Voices
Pict.7 Cutting the Tree of Voices
down
Pict.8 Jake is trying to block the
tank from driver‟s view
Pict.9 Omaticaya‟s warriors sees
cutting process
37
The film also demonstrates deforestation. It happens when RDA
corporation send out their huge tanks to cut down the holly tree, tree of voices, in
the morning right before Jake and Neytiri‟s eyes. Tree of voices is the place where
the Na‟vi believe their prayers will be heard and sometimes be answered.
Eventhough avatar is trying to block the deed, the drivers of the tanks keeps their
way to cut the tree down after getting the permission from Parker (pict.7), the
chief of the companies at Pandora.
Human tyranny to the environment that represents by their lumbering deed
makes the indigenous feel bad, sad, and angry but they could not do anything but
looking infuriately when the tanks vanishing their holly trees from far on their
horse‟s back (pict.8). This event of lumber leads the viewers into the real conflict
in the film.
Pict.10 The home tree is falling down. Pict.11 Neytiri is screaming beside her
father‟s body.
Pict.12 The staffs are looking sadly at
the monitors
Pict.13 Colonel drinks coffee.
38
The deed continues the day after that. The company brings more troops
and tools to cut more important tree which is the huge home tree of Omaticaya,
the tree where the tribe lived (pict.10). Many indigenous died in this accident
including the clan leader, Eytukan who is also Neytiri‟s father (pict.11). This is
the very touching scenes. The director presents this accident on the miserable
mood supported by sad background song and Omaticaya‟s scream and sob. It also
focuses on the human sympathy-but-cannot-do-anything‟s faces which are
looking the cutting process from monitors (pict.12). It creates some
compassionate response for them.
But human do not really care about it, especially Parker and Colonel
Quaritch, because on their mind they think that they already gave them enough
time to go and already sent messengers to warn them. It explicitly shows in
pict.13 that Colonel looks nature and the indigenous down by drinking coffee
while doing cutting tree process. Before this accident happened, the company sent
Jake Sully and Dr. Augustine to warn the Na‟vi people to get off their home
because human, the sky people, were approaching on a mission to cut their home
tree down. But Na‟vi decided to fight back with their arrows. They were tied up
Jake and Dr. Augustine instead. Eventhough their messengers were failed and the
Na‟vi was still there, human keep going on their mission without doubt. They are
only focused on their mission, their job, and their ambition to take over the land.
But this crime is not stopping there, days after this, they come again to
destroy their biggest sacred tree where Na‟vi owe its existence and hope. But this
time, Na‟vi, lead by Jake Sully as Toruk Macto, comes with the new plan of
39
resistance. They were gathered all the tribes over the Pandora to help them
confronting human‟s coming attack.
Jake: Probably, I’m just talking to the tree right now. But if you there, I
need to get you hands up. If Grace is with you, look into her memories. See
the world we come from. There’s no green there. They killed their mother
and they gonna do the same here. (02:03:26)
Moreover, Jake mentions that human already destructed their own home
which is Earth and they will also do the same to Pandora‟s environment. It
explains that destruction is what human tend to do to the environment. They are
already vanished their own land and then they come to seek another land to vanish
and explore, so they come to Pandora. Furthermore, Pandora offers them a
promising profit.
2) The Relationship between Non-Human Alien and the Environment
The Na‟vi have a unique relationship with their environment. They lived
harmonically with all organisms in the forest; animals, plants, and the deities. To
analyze the relationship between non-human alien (Na‟vi) and their environment,
the writer gives more attention to how Na‟vi treats and behaves toward nature.
They respect nature and worship it. They believe that nature have power and
connection that connected all organisms in their world.
Na‟vi ways of life and relationship with nature are resemble to the one of
ancient history of religion called animism. Today it commonly refers to
perceptions that natural entities, forces, and nonhuman life-forms have one or
more of the following: a soul or vital lifeforce or spirit, personhood (an effective
40
life and personal intentions), and consciousness, often but not always including
special spiritual intelligence or powers.9
a. Respecting nature
Differ from human, the Na‟vi believe all life is sacred and should be
honored. This attitude includes paying respect to the plants and animals that
harvested or killed to provide their sustenance. When Na‟vi should kill an animal
whether it is a self defense or a hunt for eating, they not mere kill them but feel
sad and thank them for their sacrifice. The Na‟vi have a unique ritual after killing
an animal by praying for the animal they killed or hunted the peace and praying
for they own salvation. This ritual is only one from various rituals the indigenous
culture have. Rituals affirming the interconnectedness of the human and
nonhuman worlds exist in every primitive culture.10
Pict.14 Neytiri is praying beside the murdered dog
Naytiri prays beside the dying wild black dog one by one after killing
them in order to save Jake. After running off from the big monstrous wild dog
called thanator, Jake was lost in the forest. When the night came, the wild animals
surrounded him because he was noisy, according to Naytiri. So that he fought
9 Bron Taylor, Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future
(California: University of California Press, 2010), P.15 10
Ibid. p.21
41
them. Then Naytiri came for helping him by killing some of the small wild dogs
in order to repel them after getting a sign from her God about Jake. But then,
when Jake said thanks to her, she was angry instead. She was angry because she
thought that those animals were not deserved died.
Jack : Hey, wait! I just wanna say thanks for killing those things.
Neytiri : Don’t thank! You don’t thank for this. This is sad. Very sad only.
Jack : Ok. I’m sorry. Whatever I did I’m sorry.
Neytiri : This is your fault. They don’t need to die. (00:36:46)
For Na‟vi who live peacefully with nature, killing animals or any
organisms are unnecessary and disturbs the balance of life that their deity, Eywa,
is trying to protect. They understood that even animals have spirits that should be
respected.
Soon after three months living together with the Na‟vi, Jake is used to be
with the Na‟vi lifestyle and also with this ritual. So, when he is hunting an animal,
he prays for it, just like what is done by Neytiri before. By using Na‟vi native
language, Jake prays “I see you, brother and thank you. Your spirit goes with
Eywa. Your body stays behind to become part of the people.”
Pict.15 Jake is killing then praying an animal
It means that he feels sorry for killing it but he has to do that for the
sustenance of his clan, Omaticaya. In Artic Dreams Lopez writes, “. . . , the hunter
42
saw himself bound up in a sacred relationship with the larger animals he hunted.
The relationship was full of responsibilities – to the animals, to himself, and to his
family”.11
In this film, this ritual seems like Jake makes some permission to kill
him and convince him that he will not die in vain. Moreover for Neytiri, this
attitude shows that Jake was ready to the next step of the Na‟vi warrior. Because it
means that Jake is understood enough about a sense of taking responsibility for
the stewardship of the environment.
A. Dionys de Leeue, a professional biologist specializing in sport fisheries
management, gives the following definition of respect: “behavior with regard to
an interest that shows consideration for the holder of the interest and avoids
degradation of it, negative interference with it, or interruption of it”.12
Because the
Na‟vi is well understood that all life is sacred, so they take responsible and take
care for it. They also understand that the environment is what they rely on to
provide them with the sustenance they need. The Na‟vi acknowledged their need
of other creatures but did not take them greedily.
b. Worshiping Nature
The Na‟vi worship the mother goddess, Eywa, whom they believe keeps
and creates the souls of all the Na‟vi and other living creatures on Pandora.
Norm: Who’s Eywa? Only their deity. Their Goddess made up of all living
things, everything they know. (00:49:25)
11
J. Claude Evans, With Respect for Nature: Living as Part of the Natural World (USA:
State University of New York Press, 2005) p.11 12
Ibid. pp.5-6
43
The Na‟vi obey what Eywa says to them without ask or doubt. Eywa gives
them sign about what should they do and they should not do through a pink-flying
thing like jellyfish that Neytiri explained as “seeds of the sacred tree, very pure
spirit.”
Pict.16 The sign of Eywa
When Neytiri is about going to kill Jake with her poisonous arrow,
suddenly a seed is passing trough before her. That makes her postponed the deed.
For the Na‟vi, the seed presence means a sign from Eywa. It is explicitly
explained by Neytiri when she brought Jake Sully to Omaticaya‟s village for the
first time in front of the chief and all the people.
Neytiri: I was about going to kill him but there was a sign from Eywa.
(00:43:13)
Furthermore after helping Jake, the seeds are making appearance again.
Neytiri was chasing Jake away because Jake was following her and coercing her
to take him home with her. Then the seeds come and cover Jake‟s body. Soon
after the seeds went, Neytiri changes her attitude and mind then hurriedly takes
Jake to her village.
44
Pict.17 The seeds are covering Jake‟s body
This obedience attitude can also be seen from Tsu‟Tey character.
Eventhough he is rough and hate the sky people a lot until he called them
„demons‟, but when he acknowledges that it is Eywa who gives order, he do
nothing but obey.
Tsu’Tey : These demons are forbidden here.
Neytiri : There is a sign. There is a matter for the Tsahik.
Tsu’Tey : Bring him. (00:41:18)
When Neytiri and Jake are on the way to the village, Tsu‟Tey and the
people block their way and bind Jake. His gaze is so upset and disgust that he
wants to kill Jake. But then when Neytiri says that there was a sign from Eywa,
Tsu‟Tey argues no more and gives her permission to bring him and continue the
walk together to the village.
Beside Eytukan who is the clan leader, The Na‟vi also has the Eys Tsahik,
Neytiri‟s mother. Tsahik is the one who interprets what the meaning of the sign
Eywa is giving to them. She interprets the world of Eywa. She has also the
important part in the tribe as the matriarch leader and the spiritual leader. Her
words are supposed to be heard and cannot be objected, eventhough with her own
daughter. Because her words are came directly from Eywa.
45
Tsahik : My daughter you will teach him our way to speak and walk as we
do.
Neytiri : Why me? This is not fair.
Tsahik : It is decided. My daughter will teach you our way. Learn well,
Jake Sully. Then we will see if your insanity can be cured. (00:44:55)
It means that the Na‟vi is worshiping Eywa full of their heart with no
doubt. Because they believe all energy is only borrowed. Eywa is the only thing
the Na‟vi owe their existence and hope to. When there is nothing left for them,
they go and wish nowhere but to Eywa. When they have no place to go, nothing to
hope, they will run to Eywa.
Jack (narrator): Na’vi says Eywa will provide life. But with no hope, no
home, there is only one place they could go.
The Na‟vi also believe that after death, the souls of all living thing on
Pandora return to Eywa. They believe the souls of their departed ancestors rest
with Eywa on the sacred tree. This tree is their direct link to Eywa and the
ancestors. As the evidence, Na‟vi can hear their voices through the tree of voices
by linking their bond. Moreover, this is proven explicitly by Dr. Augustine when
she is going to die.
Dr. Augustine: I’m with her, Jake. She is real. (01:56:12)
At the dying condition, Augustine was taken by Jake into the tree of soul
asking for help to heal her. She said arrogantly before that this kind of talk is fairy
tale and impossible. She is a scientist and scientists only believe in something that
provable in science. But at last, she admitted this spiritual thing when she finally
meets Eywa herself.
46
c. Dependent on nature
Pict.18 Omaticaya are sleeping on
home tree
Pict.19 Neytiri drinks from the
flower
The Na‟vi lives and life with and by nature. They are using every utility
the forest gives them wisely. They use the huge tree for the place to live in colony.
They sleep on the net they made on the branches (pict.18). They eat from the
animals they hunt on the forest but not greedy that they make a ritual when killing
an animal. They drink from the leaves and flowers in the forest. They make the
weapon from the wood surround. Moreover they have their own rules that prevail
on every member of the tribe even to use wood from their home tree. They always
have to listen and obey the rules of their mother goddess. Instead they never even
think about breaking Eywa‟s rules.
Their lives are supported by the environment nicely. Thus they understand
enough how dependent they are to nature so that they respect and protect them so
that their lives will continue supported. They realize they depend on planet as
much as it depends on them for survival. Environment, people, and all organisms
are dependent on one another to keep exist and viable.
Jack: I try to understand this deep connection people have to the forest.
She talks about a network of energy that flows to all living things. She says
all energy under borrowing and one day has to give back. (01:01:34)
47
The Na‟vi believe that if they cherish and care for nature and environment
then the environment will continue to provide them with the nourishment to
survive. They believe that all energy as they live is only borrowing, so someday
they have to give back.
d. The deep connection with nature
Na‟vi has a special bond that connects them with other species on their
planet. There is a unique bond, which is the nerve ending growing from their
heads, in the end of their braided hair. This bond is called tsahaylu.
Pict. 20 Tsahaylu
It is formed for mutual benefit. Its function is to connect the na‟vi and the
mind of the other creatures they want to ride. To make the bond work, Na‟vi
should first match their tsahaylu with the tsahaylu of animals they want to
connect or ride. By connecting the bond, Na‟vi are able to ride or fly on the back
of the other creatures, such as horse and ikran, the flying animal like prehistoric
birds Pterodactyl. It can give orders without words but only need to think of what
they want to do on mind. It is like they are thinking together.
Neytiri: That is Tsahaylu, the bond. Feel it. Feel her heart beat, her
breath. Feel her strong legs. You may tell her what to do inside. For now,
say where to go. (00:50:35)
48
Tsahaylu is the most important part of Na‟vi‟s body. So after Neytiri got
command from Tsahik to teach Jake their way of life, Neytiri first acknowledge
Jake to Tsahaylu and teach him how Na‟vi ride a horse. Because of the important
of the Tsahaylu, Na‟vi threat other Na‟vi by cutting off their hair, where the
Tsahaylu is.
Pict.21 Treated to cut the tsahaylu
The first time Jake Sully came into the village of Omaticaya, a warrior of
Na‟vi, upon Tsu‟tey command, guarded Jake all the way to the Village. He
gripped Jake‟s braided hair and treated to cut it with a knife to make Jake calm
and obey. He treated to cut Jake‟s Tsahaylu instead of cutting Jake‟s neck like
human being usually do. This shows that the bond is important that the Na‟vi
fright to lose them.
Pict.22 netiri matches tsahaylu to
the tree of voices
Pict.23 Omaticaya are praying on
the tree of souls
The bond can also be made with the Tree of Voices (pict.22) and the Tree
of Soul (pict.23) so that the Na’vi are able to commune with Eywa, their deity and
their ancestors. Sometimes Animism involves communication and/or even
49
communion with such intelligences or lifeforces, or beliefs that nature‟s
intelligences and forces are divine and should be worshipped and/or beseeched for
healing or other favors.13
Proving Neytiri‟s words about the voices, Jake was bonding his tsahalu to
the tree of voices at the night after the ceremony to become one of Omaticaya. He
then can hear the voices, that Na‟vi believe, are the voices of their ancestors.
Furthermore, all Na‟vi can altogether match their bond on the Tree of Soul‟s
fringes or roots. All Omaticaya, who is left after the cutting down of their home
tree, are sitting together praying to their deity by connecting their tsahaylu with
the roots of the tree of soul, Yvetryar Ramounom.
By the bond, they can feel the other creatures. They also feel like they are
becoming one with them. Thus they can understand nature more than human.
From understanding, they also can respect them. Because they are also the same
creation of their deities and they do need each other to keep the world balance. In
this complex ecosystem, the Na’vi understand that all of the flora and fauna on the
planet, including them, are connected to a central of all that encompassing
spiritual existence.
Tsahaylu shows that the Na‟vi relied on intimate connection with the other
living creatures to comprehend their world. Its connections are not only happened
between each people of Na‟vi but also between the Na‟vi and the animals, and
between the Na‟vi and their ancestors. This intimate connection with the ancestors
gives them the ability to make wiser decisions that allowed them to live
13
Bron Taylor (2010), p.15.
50
harmoniously with their surroundings. This is shown when the Na‟vi finally
decided to let Jake Sully live with them and learn about them. This decision is
influenced by the sign of Eywa, their deity and also whom their ancestors live
with, with the help of Tsahik.
The connection is also being made by each living things to another on
Pandora‟s forest. This connection is proven by Dr. Augustine from her scientific
analysis. She explains that the trees, that Na‟vi worshiping on and all the trees all
over the Pandora, have an incredible connection to one another. They link
together and communicate each other on their own way. She uses an analogical
explanation by comparing the way of communication the trees have with the
connection between the synopses between human being‟s chromosomes and
brain.
Augustine : I’m talking about something real, something measurable
in the biology of the forest.
Parker : Which is what exactly?
Augustine : What we think we know is there is some kind of electro
chemical communication between the roots of the trees like the synopsis
between your own chromosomes. And each tree has ten to the four (104) to
the trees around it and ten to the twelve (1012
) on Pandora. It’s more
connection than human brain. (01:28:37)
Brain is the most amazing thing that differ human beings with their entire
fellow inhabitant. But Dr. Augustine uses brain for comparison. Indeed, she says
that the connection between the roots of the trees on Pandora is more powerful
than human brain. It shows that the other living things can communicate with each
other through special way that even human cannot compete with. It also shows
how powerful the power of nature that human being look down on to.
51
e. The power of nature
In many mythical cultures, nature usually describes having a powerful
force. The writer also finds this believed power in the film. After helping Jake
Sully expelling the dogs, Neytiri threw out the made torch into water to put it off.
Jake was using the torch to help him saw his way on the forest in the dark night.
The forest was on the absolute dark that Jake hardly to see the way. But as soon as
his torch was off, Jake was shocked because all of sudden, all flora and fauna on
Pandora‟s forest were glowing colorfully. They have their own ray to enlighten
the forest at night.
Pict.24 Jake is using the made
torch
Pict.25 The forest is enlighten itself
Jake that represents the arrogance of human being made the light himself.
Yet this attitude leads him into trouble and being apart from nature. But then
when his arrogance, which represents by the torch, was off, the environment is
going to be hospitable with him and serving him light. It represents that nature has
its power to choose whom to help. And the environment has also the power to
enlighten other creatures and organisms if only they want to respect them.
52
Pict.26 On trying to heal Grace Pict.27 Omaticaya‟s healing ritual.
Na‟vi believe that nature they worship on have a special power for healing
the wounded person. Indeed this believes affected Jake, who has already lived
with them three months in order to learn their way of life. When Dr. Grace got
shot by colonel Quaritch on the stomach, Jake Sully takes Grace to Na‟vi on the
tree of soul to ask for help. At first, Jake and Augustine are doubt the idea but
they have no choice except to try it. Then after the ceremony or ritual,
Augustine‟s confession convinces Jake that Eywa is true.
The ceremony is required all member of Omaticaya‟s tribe. They all
gathered in one place, the most holy place for them, the tree of souls. Then they
made the neat rows and matched their bonds to the roots of the tree then holding
on each other‟s hand. Together they pray to Eywa on Tsahik‟s lead. They repeated
Tsahik words, sentence by sentence. They pray on their language: “Hear us
please, all mother. Eywa help me. Take this spirit into you and breathe her back
to us. Let her walk among us as one of the people.”
Tsahik : The great mother may choose to save all that she is in this body.
Jake : Is that possible?
Tsahik : She must pass through the eye of Eywa and return but Jake Sully,
she is very weak.
Jake : Hang on, Grace. They gonna fix you up. (01:55:08)
53
This implies that in order to get help from nature, a person should first
fight for own self. In this case, if Grace wants to get help from Eywa, she should
first have to try passing through the eye of Eywa and then return. This condition
has to be fulfilled unless Eywa cannot help.
Grace : The tree of Souls, Yvetryar Ramounom, is their most sacred
place. See the flux Vortex on the screen?
Trudy : Yeah, that messed up my instrument.
Grace : There is something really interesting going on there biologically.
(01:11:51)
Moreover, Pandora has its own power that human intelligence cannot
defeat. Some areas on Pandora cannot be tracked by human‟s technology. These
areas are mostly the place where Na‟vi believes as sacred, such as in the
Hallelujah Mountain which is the floating mountain and in the tree of souls. Those
areas are called the flux vortex. The flux vortex confounds the instrument of a
plan so that the pilot can only depend on their own ability to see manually where
to go. It also disturbs the radar and missile tracking so it could not be worked in
the area of the flux vortex.
The force of nature can also be shown when Jake Sully and his team are
about going to give up and lost in the last war. Jake Sully is losing some of their
important members on the war such as Tsu‟tey, who is in charge on the chief of
Omaticaya replacing Eytukan, and Trudy, the only marine pilot supporting
protection resistance of nature.
54
Pict.28 the wild animals are trying
to help
Pict.29 the wild ikran are coming in
massive
Pict.30 the wild animals are coming
to attact
Pict.31 Neytiri on Thanator‟s back
The na‟vi is about to lose from human troops until the wild creatures of
nature are coming to help all of sudden, showing its power. All wild animals
which even Na‟vi cannot tame of before, such as thanator and the wild ikran, are
coming, gather together, and offer for help to fight against human.
The nature‟ power is also implicitly shown by the end of the movie.
Human go back to their barren planet, Earth, empty-handed after losing on the
final battle against the primitive indigenous. Only few who choose to stay on
Pandora that is they who take a side to the environment. This show that human
with their intelligence and civilization are not strong enough compare with nature.
They, who want to take over nature, are defeated by nature instead.
Pic. 32 Na‟vi guard human back home
55
In the end of the film, Avatar presents the obvious fail result of human
invention on Pandora by driving them out from there. After defeated by nature
and the indigenous in the final war, the survival human are forced by the Na‟vi to
get out from Pandora and back to their own land on Earth. But few of them, like
Jake, Norm and Max or they who take a side on nature in the war, keep staying on
Pandora. These strengthen the statement that nature has its own power to select
and choose who can stay and live peacefully together and who should go.
2. Avatar’s statement regarding environmental issues from the represent
relationships
The best films are built around a statement that teaches the viewers
something. This kind of approach often called the humanistic approach. In this
kind of evaluation, we must determine whether the acting and the characters have
significance or meaning beyond the context of the film itself – moral,
philosophical, or social significance that helps us gain a clearer understanding of
some aspect of life, human nature, or the human condition. This is driven by the
judgment of the film as an expression of an idea that has intellectual, moral,
social, or cultural importance and the ability to influence our lives for the better.14
In an increasingly urban society, nature writing plays a vital role in
teaching us to value the natural world.15
Meanwhile Avatar can be included as one
of the nature writing text because it has strong environmental messages. So the
14
Joseph M. Bogss and Dennis W. Petrie, The Art of Watching Films 7th
ed, (New York:
McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2008), p. 114. 15
Cheryll Glofeltly and Harold Fromm (1992), p. xxiv.
56
viewers assume that Avatar‟s goal is to contribute to the struggle to preserve the
biotic community by injecting the moral value in the film.
Classic narrative cinema, no matter what genre, must have closure, that is,
the narrative must come to a completion (whether a happy ending or not). Any
ambiguity within the plot must be resolved. Whatever form the closure takes,
almost without exception it will offer or enunciate a message that is central to
dominant ideology: ... What is interesting, however, is which ideological message
supersedes all others.16
As explained before, Avatar shows in the end of the film
that nature and the people of Pandora Planet successfully routing the baddies,
human from Earth, then send them back home that express an ideological message
that nature is unpredictably powerful. But above all, we should have preserved
nature for our own sake. We are not going to become the kinds of beings that we
are supposed to become. When we destroy nature, we diminish ourselves and
impoverish our children.17
In the most science fiction film with ecological awareness, otherness or
nonhuman creatures tend to be made the seemingly clear moral message that put
them into the bad one or evil which want to destroy human world, such as any
alien movies or robot technology which want control and take over human world.
This structure tends to send an almost subliminal suggestion that those who are
like us are good, while those who are unlike us are evil.18
But Avatar is tipping
over the structure by representing some different characters. Nonhuman alien
16
Susan Hayward, Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts, 2nd
ed., (USA: Routledge, Taylor
& Francis e-Library, 2001), p. 65. 17
J. Claude Evans (2005), p.11. 18
M. Keith Booker, Alternate Americas: Science Fiction Film and American Culture
(USA: Praeger Publishers, 2006), p. 117.
57
creatures and human beings are represented equal in this film to responsible for
the stewardship of the planet. Indeed Avatar shows the collide characteristic of
each characters that most of human beings are presented to be the villain that
devastating the habitat and nonhuman alien creatures and nature are presented to
be the victim.
After analyzing the relationship between human and the environment, the
writer divided human characters in this film into two classifications; the people
who abandon nature only for their own benefit and the people who take care of
nature. The people who neglected nature are Parker Selfridge and Colonel
Quaritch along with their staff. Then the people who caring for nature, in the end,
are those who betray RDA Corporation‟s rule in order to save Pandora‟s
environment such as Jake Sully, the main character, the scientist: Dr. Augustine,
Norm Spellman and Max Patel, and the marine pilot: Trudy.
These differences happen because each character has a different proximity
to the indigenous and the environment. So they make conflicting interpretation
and different responsibilities. Parker and Colonel Quaritch only see environment
as the tool to gain money because they never bother themselves to immerse into
the environment. On the other hand, Jake Sully, the scientists and Trudy, who are
classified as caring for environment, make direct interaction with the
environment. Thus this interaction affects them and makes them more care about
the environment compare with those who do not make the direct interaction.
Throughout the film, Jake Sully immerses himself in the Na‟vi culture in
order to learn from them about their way of life and gain their trust. Jake Sully is
58
the movie‟s lead character that happens to be the connector between human and
Na‟vi. He gets up close and personal with the environment and the indigenous. He
lives with them for about three months. He learns how they live. He seeks out
how the relationship is between the Na‟vi and the environment.
As the time goes by, he begins to truly understand about the Na‟vi people
and the forest. Then he is coming to love them in the process. From that
understanding, he gains respect and admiration for that which he did not
previously know personally. So it is obvious when he ultimately end up switching
sides to help the Na‟vi save their land from exploitation instead of his own
species, human. Because respect has to do with the way we as a species fit into the
broader world in which we are inextricably interwoven.
Lopez in his 1991 essay, Renegotiating the Contracts, says, “If we could
establish an atmosphere of respect in our relationships, simple awe for the
complexities of animals‟ lives, I think we would feel revived as a species”. And
this respect and awe are a crucial part of what it means to live a truly successful
life – successful in human terms which are not dissociated from the world of
which we are a part.19
Thus, the Avatar want to encourage the viewers to come
along to get close and acknowledge the world we are living in to get better
understanding of it.
Avatar also shows the deep interconnectedness between Na‟vi and their
riding animals and their sacred trees. This shows that the oneness that Na‟vi have
with their environment leaded them to a peaceful life. This sense of togetherness
19
J. Claude Evans (2005), pp. 15-16.
59
gives the spiritual message to viewer that to be the one with land and other, one
should first understand another. By creating an emotional reaction, the director of
the movie, James Cameron, wants viewers to internalize a sense of respect and a
sense of taking responsibility for the stewardship of the earth.
From those relationships, the writer sees that they who respect nature are
they who get close with nature. And to be in a good relationship with it, we need
process. Thus, people should first get knowledge about it. Then the understanding
will lead into respect. This respect, in turn, will make human to be better equipped
to protect the planet. So this film suggests the viewers to visit or go out to
experience nature in order to know better about nature. Because all of us are
deeply entangled in a system that produces a mix of good and bad outcomes, and
we are partly responsible for both.
60
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
A. Conclusion
After analyzing the film, the writer concludes that there are some
differentiations between human and nonhuman alien through their relationship with
the environment. This difference attitude and appreciation toward the environment
have led them to enmity. The film presents the conspicuous hostility, from the
beginning, among human as the invaders who came away from earth and nonhuman
alien as the inhabitants who want to keep up their land. Human and nonhuman
represent contradictory characteristic one another.
Human feel superior toward nature and that makes them arrogant and feels
like they own the environment. Human only look at nature as the profitable object if
only they can work on it and turn the environment into something better. They think
the environment, especially the wild one, is menace and hideous place so they should
take it over in order to control it. This mindset makes human feel hideous to the
environment and, in turn, makes themselves be apart from it.
On the other hand, nonhuman alien, the Na’vi people which are the
indigenous population of the Pandora’s planet, are immersing in totally different
relationship of the environment, compare with human. They live harmonically with
the environment surround along with all living thing in there; animals, plants, and
61
deities. They are respecting nature as they understand enough about the important of
the environment and other fellow inhabitants. They are worshiping nature as they
believe that nature has its power and force that can bring beneficence as well as
destruction for them. They understand that their existence is equal to any living
habitat in their surroundings that they are a part from it.
From those different relationships, the writer sees that the characters who
caring with the environment are they who respect nature and want to get close with it,
such as Na’vi and some of human characters. The Na’vi are obviously take a side on
the environment because they living together on and with it. Some of human
characters are also gaining their respect and love to the environment in process. They
are Jake Sully, Grace Augustine, Norm Spellman, Max, and Trudy. They had the
direct experience with the environment for 3 or more months before finally find their
love to the environment. In contrast, the villain human characters in the film are they
who do not have any feeling of love with the environment; Colonel Quaritch and
Selfridge. But then in the end, they defeated by nature. Quatrich died and Selfridge
with his staff and survival troops are forced by Na’vi to get back to Earth, their home.
In brief, ecocriticism theory seeks to evaluate texts as response to
environmental issues. Avatar as one of the environmental text or nature writing text
can be analyzed using ecocriticism. It shows that human as the most intelegent
creature on Earth need to respect and take care nature or environment because
environment is there to fulfill our needs and our fellow inhinbitants needs. It also
gives us many benefits. So that, human need to protect it.
62
B. Suggestion
Based on the conclusion above, there are two suggestions given by the writer
to other researchers in order to do a better research in the future.
1. There are some environmental issues and conflicts in the film of Avatar that
come from the lack of understanding of the importance of the nature and
environment. Thus, to avoid or minimize environmental conflict and
degradation of earth, human henceforward are supposed to learn from this
film and also this thesis that nature and environment are important for human
being.
2. If readers want to analyze further about nature writing or ecological texts
using ecocriticism or environmental studies, the writer suggests to readers to
find any texts – films, novels, short stories, or poems – which assumed to
have environmental issues on it. The analyses can also use film theories such
as cinematography and narratology in order to get better understanding of the
film. The analyses must first understand both the theories and the texts.
The writer hopes this thesis gives contribution to the student of English
Letters who wants to analyze about the same topic. Hopefully this research motivates
other to analyze using ecocriticism in literary works or film.
63
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Internet Source:
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1629437/avatar-look-at-its-boxoffice-
reign.jhtml.
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APPENDIX
Cover Avatar film
![Ecocriticism, Geophilosophy and the [Truth] of Ecology · Ecocriticism, Geophilosophy and the [Truth] ... (Robert Frost) A pebble is ... ecocriticism, paying particular attention](https://img.pdfslide.net/doc/110x75/5acc40c07f8b9a27628c4aaf/ecocriticism-geophilosophy-and-the-truth-of-ecology-geophilosophy-and-the-truth.jpg)
