This past Monday, Avatar surpassed Titanic's longstanding international box office record, making Avatar the highest-grossing film of all time. For a movie with such a progressive environmental (not to mention anti-imperial and anti-corporate) message to achieve this kind of universal popularity is remarkable. Any explanation as to how a mainstream Hollywood mega-blockbuster could radicalize the eco-consciousnesses of scores of people who seem to have had little previous interest in the praxis of deep ecology or neo-tribalism must go beyond the observation that the film was merely "visually interesting." One could easily deconstruct Avatar to bits, but as our planet hums its own elegy beneath our feet, and as our failed politicians come home from climate summit after summit with empty hands, is this really how we want to talk about the most influential ecological parable of our time?
I hope not. It is easy to scoff at Avatar and those like me who were so affected by it, but it would be irresponsible to dismiss the cultural force behind the disorder that I only half-jokingly made up. Avatar is striking hard at a nerve, a nerve that is desperately straining to reconnect itself with the vanishing beauty of the natural world. There is tremendous energy inside the agony of our estrangement from nature. After the 3-D goggles come off, let us harness this energy; it is the most bountiful of renewable resources, and so long we are capable of imagining that which could be, it is also the most powerful.
This article was first posted at Religion Dispatches, a Patheos Partner, and is reprinted with permission.
Ryan Croken works as a freelance writer in Chicago. His essays and book reviews have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tikkun, Z Magazine, and on truthout.org.
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