Mark Shea on Avatar

Does quickly, clearly, and well, what I was fumbling around trying to do:

Bennett...quite properly understands that for all Cameron’s ham-fistedness, there remain deeply embedded in Avatar some profoundly Catholic themes which we reject and sneer at only to our impoverishment. A character named Jake Sully (Jacob=Deceiver) who is “sullied” by sin and saddled by what St. Paul calls “this body of death” (Rom 7:24) is, through the ministrations of a character named “Grace Augustine”, reborn into a glorified new body. He is confronted with his own capacity for evil, undergoes death to his old self, learns to embrace self-sacrificial love, and becomes a member of a new family, a priest-king who comes to live in harmony with his neighbor and with a New Heaven and a New Earth.

Where have we heard these themes before? And why are they so popular?

We’ve heard them from the gospel. They are popular because they pluck strings at the deepest levels of our being. Tolkien plucked at these strings with his tree-loving heros who rely on the grace of the Valar to overcome the power of the Ring with self-sacrifice. C.S. Lewis does something similar in his Space Trilogy when his simple hrossa natives on Mars are seen being pointlessly slaughtered by the evil European materialist Weston whose plans to rape the Martian landscape are indistinguishable from the mining corporation that is raping Pandora. In all such stories is a profoundly Christian theme: burning shame for the loss of Eden and longing for the redemptive power of Christ. We need not fear that theme in stories any more than we need fear it in Genesis 3.

More on Avatar

Mark Shea has a small round up of recent reaction, along with this amazing analysis from Rod Bennet:

Like Pixar’s recent WALL*E, Avatar depicts a cautionary imagined universe which might almost have been dreamed up by Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, or Dorothy Day. These 20th century Catholic “Distributists” as they were called, prophesied a state of affairs wherein Capitalism and Communism would eventually agree to call off their long, destructive stand-off and allow a merger to take place, a cynical marriage of convenience between Big Business and Big Government for their own mutual benefit. In WALL*E it was the ubiquitous Buy N Large corporation, whose mile-long “Ultra-stores” sold “all you need and so much more” to an increasingly sheep-like population but whose W. Bush-like CEO also happened to be President of the World. Here in Avatar it’s the Resources Development Administration (or RDA), a “quasi-governmental administrative entity” which started as a mere globe-straddling monopoly but has ended up with the ability to use the nation’s armed forces the way Andrew Carnegie used Pinkerton guards, with an RDA officer on every battlefield giving direct orders to the generals. In both cases, nothing like “the free enterprise system” exists any longer: Big Business has come to rely on Big Government completely (just as Wal-Mart relies on Food Stamps, property-tax breaks, and other forms of massive corporate welfare to continue paying out its poverty-level wages) and Big Government (ever since the Soviet Union failed for lack of cash) has realized it can’t get along without Big Business. Belloc called this situation “The Servile State” but you don’t need quite his level of genius to see it coming these days, if, indeed, it hasn’t got here already. Not with Mr. Bush’s TARP program in the news, guaranteeing Federal control of the banks from now on, and Mr. Obama’s orgy of government buy-outs for former business enterprises such as General Motors all over the front pages (GM, which used to be, if you’ll recall, the largest corporation in the world—the Buy N Large of its day—and may yet be again, though under “entirely new management”). Even the redoubtable ex-Soviet mouthpiece Pravda observed these developments and pronounced them “the death of private enterprise” in America…and they were right. In truth, today’s political economy is something horribly new and different—the bastard love-child of its quarrelsome 19th century parents (Capitalism and Communism) with the many of the worst qualities of both. Avatar then, is no indictment of Capitalism, a system which, like Communism, is extinct in Cameron’s world…and in ours, too, IMHO. James Cameron may not have read the Catholic Distributists (nor have the makers of WALL*E in all likelihood, though director Andrew Stanton is, in fact, a Christian of some stripe) but for keen, observant eyes like theirs, so adept at “discerning the face of the sky,” all one has to do is “discern the signs of the times” (Mt 16:3). I, myself, wish more Christians could find a way to step out of the smothering hothouse of the left/right culture war and learn to do the same.

More Avatar

More information on Avatar:

In an email to the New York Times, James Cameron explains Weaver’s character: She’s rude, she swears, she drinks, she smokes. Also, from a character perspective, we were showing that Grace doesn’t care about her human body, only her avatar body, which again is a negative comment about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning online and in video games.

So Cameron may be pulling the "Augustine loathed women/sex/the body/humanity because he taught original sin...he was a grumpy dude" claim. In which case, there is little subtlety and even less value to his choice of "Grace Augustine" for a character name. Also, on further reflection on the movie, I think the liberation theology schtick seems rather more likely.

Liberation Theology

In response to the post on Avatar, I received the following question:

...tell me more about liberation theology, I'm curious...What it IS... you know... not what it has led to... and, what do Catholics think about the Bible?

To the last: um...we're in favor?

More seriously: The Bible is the product of the incarnational nature of God's interaction with humanity. That is, God speaks through the product of human labors, language, and culture, covering an array of genres, literary devices, and interpretive layers. The human authors are true authors, but God's inspiration adds an massive depth beyond anything the human authors knew or intended.

Such a means of interpreting the Bible is evidenced by Christ with the men on the road to Emmaus, when he shows them how the Scriptures of the Jews all point to him, or by Paul, when he speaks of Christ as the new Adam and interprets the Old Testament as indicating Christ throughout, or by the Gospel writers, when they reference passages of the Jewish Scriptures in order to demonstrate the promised coming of Christ.

There is, of course, much more to be said. If you want a really good one book summary, take your pick between Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth, Mark Shea's Making Senses out of Scripture, or Scott Hahn's A Father Who Keeps His Promises.

Liberation theology is an attempt to take the philosophy/ideology of Marx and his intellectual heirs and enflesh it into Christianity. The effort demands the redefinition of a great many Christian terms, such that a liberation theologian may profess the same creed I do and yet believe something very different.

Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a model example of this labor put into practice (or "praxis"). He offers a theoretical framework for education, designed to "raise the consciousness" of the students regarding their oppressed status, or to their status as oppressors. The goal is to get the oppressors to turn upon their own "class" (i.e., betray family, friends, culture, faith, etc.--anything part of the socially constructed oppressor class) in order to aid the oppressed in their struggle for the absolute overthrow and eradication of the oppressor class, who may be enslaved or exterminated.

Since the oppressed behave violently only because of their oppression, any acts of violence or vengeance they work is the fault of the oppressor. They are free from fault--blamelessly able to work any atrocity and eradicate any foe in their relentless pursuit of revenge.

Liberation theology, then, means liberation from all restraints. Marx has no room for Christian forgiveness. Nor the supernatural, really, rendering the promise of ultimate justice undertaken by God (which then renders revenge unneccessary and frees one from the dread of justice never being done if not achieved in this life) a pipe dream, suitable only to keeping down the poor and oppressed--the "people of God".

Avatar, Cameron, and...Christianity?

I went into Avatar with low expectations as to plot, high expectations for the beauty of the imagery and construction of the movie itself, and no preparation for any new or interesting subtext. I came out very puzzled and rather more interested in Cameron's work than before. Midway through the movie, I suddenly started picking up indicators that there was another plotline operating sub rosa. Huge clue: the lead scientist in the avatar program on Pandora is named Dr. Grace Augustine. Let's sit and stare at that for a moment. St. Augustine of Hippo is a Doctor of the Church. One of the (many) things he's famed for theologically is taking sides in a dispute with the heretic Pelagius in a dispute over grace and nature. Pelagius argued humans could justify themselves and achieve perfection through dint of their own efforts. Augustine argued that, due to original sin, we are bound to depend on divine grace for salvation while still maintaining free will. The humans invading Pandora, seeking to achieve mastery by dint of force and imposition of their will on the garden planet, use huge mechanical cyborg-type bodies (see the head of security, Colonel Miles Quaritch). The humans seeking to understand, cooperate, and blend with the inhabitants--that is, cooperate with the planetary consciousness/higher power/"Mother" are led by Dr. Augustine and use biological "avatars". I think there's a lot more to be said here, but I'm not sure what it is yet. Another hint: Home Tree, the massive ancient tree which serves as the Lothlorien-style home for the clan at the center of the movie plot, which is large enough for the "the birds of the air [to] come and perch in its branches", is growing right over the largest deposit of "unobtainium" on the planet--that is, they live in a "house built on a rock." And another: Cameron's aliens had a massive, world at risk fight at the end in which the lead warrior of the hosts of Pandora casts "Dragon" out of the sky. He then descends to do battle with the military leader of the Sky People on the earth, who'd survived the fall. And said Sky People are seeking to destroy the planetary "Mother." Sound like this, much? My godson presented a paper at a conference on eschatology in which he developed the notion of Terminator 2 as an apocalypse. I think Cameron has been using Christian imagery for years. I've never seen Titanic or much of Cameron's other work--I'm barely acquainted even with Terminator--but now I think I'll have to go take a look. There are several options here. One is that he's just using a strong source of great imagery and potent story elements when he borrows Scripture. Another is he's Christian and working the story of salvation into all his work. Yet a third (made somewhat plausible by the plot of this movie) is that he's into Liberation Theology, and so offers Marxised symbols of Christianity--a pernicious brew. Again, I'm not sure. His critique of the human invaders is not merely an anti-military screed--there are warriors among the Na'avi--nor an anti-capitalist rant. Rather, I think he's saying something useful and important by having the human invaders fail to 'see" the alien other. The aliens, by contrast, greet one another by saying "I see you." In one sense, they acknowledge the other as being on a level more fundamental than a mere obstacle, as something more than either a resource or an impediment--the common failing of Marxism and pure capitalism. Christians are called beyond this myopic view to one in which humans have intrinsic dignity and all of creation has been given to us for stewardship rather than ruthless exploitation. We are forbidden, in other words, from living or encountering others like the invaders. In another sense, there's theology here. I and thou, straight out of Martin Buber...and referenced frequently by Joseph Ratzinger. Take for instance this snippet from a piece on Mary, the Mother of God and Mother of all the Living, the Woman whom the earth helps at the end of Revelations 12:

What is grace? This question thrusts itself upon our text. Our religious mentality has reified this concept much too much; it regards grace as a supernatural something we carry about in our soul. And since we perceive very little of it, or nothing at all, it has gradually become irrelevant to us, an empty word belonging to Christian jargon, which seems to have lost any relationship to the lived reality of our everyday life. In reality, grace is a relational term: it does not predicate something about an I, but something about a connection between I and Thou, between God and man. "Full of grace" could therefore also be translated as: "You are full of the Holy Spirit; your life is intimately connected with God." Peter Lombard, the author of what was the universal theological manual for approximately three centuries during the Middle Ages, propounded the thesis that grace and love are identical but that love "is the Holy Spirit".

There's a lot more to be said--the connection between people and planet mirroring the relationship between Christians and the Body of Christ, made possible by Mother Mary and the action of the Holy Spirit. The "incarnation" aspect of the avatar program versus the false incarnation of the human/cyborgs, like fallen angels assuming physical form to war amongst men. The motherly mediation of the planetary consciousness for the birth of the savior among the people. Anyway, I'm not sure what he's doing, but color me much more impressed than I expected to be. Postscript: Cameron makes heavy, heavy use of Plato's allegory of the cave:

Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world and in here is the dream

Also, there's a scene for the preparation of the grand assault on the natives, in which the humans are in a room with all the windows shutting, the powerpoint shining on the wall... Additional Postscript: in Stephen Greydanus's review of the movie, he mocks the "Grace Augustine" thing and makes passing reference to the "intriguing" interconnection of lifeforms thing. I think he needs to go take another, harder look at some of this. Again--Cameron may be doing a "Teilhard de Chardin," "Liberation Theology" type job with his subplot, but still there's more going on here than I've seen discussed elsewhere.