Avatar: Genders and Web Pages

Part I: Avatar and Gender

Avatar was meant to represent genders just as they are, but in the end, I think that so much emphasis was made into making such representations truthful that we ended up with more negative than positive representations of gender. 

The males in this film are often negatively represented as…

• self-centered (such as the corporate representative who thinks he can do anything he wants to because he is the representative and all he cares about is the mineral and the profits he could possibly make from selling the mineral)
• aggressive (such as Coronel Quaritch who thinks that anything can be solved with force and weapons and acts and speaks all tough)
• hyperactive (like Jake who disobeys rules and guidelines and does things his own way whenever he wants to)

While the females of the film are negatively represented as…

• Indecisive (the lead scientist Dr. Grace, who is not sure of whether she wants to be a scientist or a navi) 
• Lazy and complainers (like Neitiry in the scene where her mother tells her that she is the one who will teach Jake the navi “ways” and who complains about having to do so)
• Double-sided, hard to trust in, gold-digger (such as Dr. Grace who hates Jake for being a handicapped ex-marine and not a scientist, but as soon as she sees that Jake was chosen by the navi, she immediately starts to be nice to him because there is now something in for her)

But of course there were also some nice things about both genders...

Males were positively represented as…

• Followers (such as Jake when he is taught the navi ways by the female navi Neitiry)
• High self-esteem or the I can do anything attitude (Jake throughout the movie challenges ideas because he strongly believes in his potential to achieve)
• Leaders (such as Eytukan, the [navi] clan leader who always has the last words in a clan’s discussion)

Females on the other hand where positively represented as…

• Caring and protective (Neitiry was always watching out for Jake)
• spiritual (such as Mo’at the spiritual leader of the navi clan)
• Strong-willed (Neitiry was not submissive of the male navis)
• Forgivers (I am not really sure if this is a good or a bad representation, but in the end of the film, Neitiry forgives Jake from lying to the whole clan about his purpose and yet after such a big lie, she still takes him back)

Part II: Avatars as Personal Web Pages

When I first saw the film, Avatar,  several months ago, all I was thinking was  that this was such a good movie with an amazing use of technology to create a new world in which life not only dealt with societal problems, but also with the equilibrium of nature. Very often, people like me are stunned by the technology used in a film or by the actors and the storyline and we don’t usually dare to read in between the lines or to see in between the scenes. However after reading the article, Identity Construction and Self-Presentation on Personal Homepages, I clearly see that the typical avatar as represented in the film, functions just like a web page. Just as a webpage, an avatar allows you to recreate an identity, to self reflect, to free yourself from the “real world” and to connect with others.

Just like a web page, the avatar allows you to represent who you are or who you want to be. In the film Avatar, Jake has the opportunity of a new life in Pandora, whoever the avatar allows him to choose what personality he wants to show in this new world. Jake has the choice of being a cutter or a non-cutter; of being polite or disrespectful therefore Jake has the ability of choosing some of his personal traits (a second example would be Dr. Grace who has a much more feminine personality as an avatar than she does as a huma). Also, it is important to note that there are a couple of things over which he has no control, for example the avatars are made by mixing the DNA of humans with the DNA of the natives, so technically, Jake Sully does not have much choice of weather he wants to have black hair or blond hair, weather he wants to be tall or short, slim or fat, all of those “biological” choices are predetermined through the combination of the DNAs. However, the whole idea behind combining the DNAs is to look like a navi person and yet at the same time to retain a little bit of your physical identity, so in the end, an avatar looks like the navi people and at the same time looks like you. Just like a website in which a profile can reflect who you are and yet at the same time, the construction of the profile also depends on the options that the homepage provider makes available to you (Cheung 281-283).

 Another use of both, websites and avatars, is to recreate your personality and to free yourself from the world. In the film, Jake goes from being a disabled paraplegic to having full function of his body as an avatar and Jake’s disability becomes “invisible” in the Pandora world. The avatar here functions just like a website that can make “disabilities invisible so that people can’t respond” therefore emancipating the user from stigmas related to disabilities (Cheung 276). Perhaps, if the avatar were still physically disabled, the navi people wouldn’t have accepted him as part of their people. An avatar also helps you recreate your personality because it allows you to self-reflect. We know this because at the end of each Pandora journey, Jake has to do a video blog of everything he sees, does and feels. However, Jake takes his self-narrative to a whole level and instead of just thinking about his blog and what he sees and feels, he also starts reflecting on his life as a human and his life as an avatar. In the end, Jake chooses to stay in this avatar body in this Pandora world because he is much more emancipated as an avatar than he is as a human. Just like a web page that might allow a person to establish personal relationships with other users and to link, an avatar also allows the “soul” to relate to other people or organic beings, just like the avatar body allowed Dr. Grace to join the navi or allowed Jake to control and lead new species of animals. In fact both the avatar and the web pages allow you to link and relate in such ways that someone could even find true love, which ended up as the main reason why Jake decided to stay in the Pandora world ([Cheug 276]).

Works Consulted

Cheung, Charles. "Identity Construction and Self-Presentation on Personal Homepages: Emancipatory Potentials and Reality Constraints.” The Cybercultures Reader. David Bell and Barbara M Kennedy. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.