Unexpectedly the Avatar story is cloning itself onto real life situations. More accurately, it was life on Earth that inspired the imaginary action on Pandora, so not surprisingly many are drawing upon this new planetary myth to make their plight– ironically– more real.
For example, in the above video, clever Palestinian activists done Na’vi outfits to translate their cause’ imagery into a new symbolic order. By recontextualizing their cause through a new set of signs, the reality frames of the past can be challenged by the Avatar meme. Paradoxically, by identifying themselves as indigenous, these Palestinian youth are also connecting themselves with global pop culture, a hybridized strategy that can jujitsu around the political controls normally exercised in the mainstream news media.
(Previously a similar effort was done when these same activists parodied an Israeli cell phone company ad.)
Likewise, an indigenous group in India, the Dongria Kondh, are fighting the mining operation of Vedanta Resources. The whole thing more closely parallels Avatar, which has not escaped the attention of Survival International, an NGO that helps endangered tribal groups. They sent an appeal to James Cameron for support, and have released the following video that describes the plight of the Dongria Kondh.
(For more background information on the Dongria Kondh and how to support their struggle, follow this link.)
Expect to see more blue people appearing on Earth in the very near future.
Both videos were poignant in their own ways. I wouldn’t have ever thought of Palestinians as a tribe a la Avatar, but there it is. The tribes in India seemed a bit more direct at least in terms of message, and there is little in print about tribes in India, so it was nice to see some footage. But what’s really messed up about all of it is that we still haven’t learned. For a while now (at least since colonialism) we’ve been following a similar trajectory with similar results! Amazing that certain behaviors persist…
I looked up semiosphere on wikipedia, and part of what the term doesn’t capture is the material reality that symbols then create – are there authors who go farther with this, i.e. from the realm of symbols to action? I saw that it was related to umwelt, which appropriately enough in this context can be translated as “self-centered world”
But I support that can be one of the functions or outcomes of media, intentional or not – to get us out of the umwelt into a semiosphere where new creativity or action can be explored. Perhaps the value in Avatar and other similar films is precisely that – art imitating life where different paths might be imagined in history right here and now.