Over the Christmas weekend, like so many others, I saw James Cameron’s, Avatar. I will be the first to admit the imagery was spectacular. I had already read discussions of the plot, about the anti-corporation and greed messages, and the thinly veiled representation of Native American spirituality. Thus I was not surprised when I saw the film and these points were as prominent as the three-dimensional arrows and objects protruding towards me. Yet, once I was able to think about it, I was deeply disappointed by Cameron’s representation of spirituality because there really isn’t that much in the movie, at least not spirituality as many Native Americans understand it. Instead what was really there was a religious message more familiar than most think.
As Kurt Schlichter so aptly points out, Cameron’s representation of the Na’vi is a pastiche of romanticized noble savage tropes, a group helpless to save themselves and dependent on a hero coming from the very same race that threatens them. While Cameron praises the Na’vi for their connection to nature, he portrays them as ignorant children shooting arrows at flying machines that can withstand the assault. Are the Na’vi really so stupid to keep shooting arrows at the helicopter-like crafts after seeing their initial arrows are useless? Are they really so dumb that it takes exploding missiles to get through to them that they are out gunned? According to Cameron it does. This is the problem. Since the seventeenth century western society has believed children were innocent and through this innocence, they were closer to nature. The Native American were connected to this innocence. Thus, Cameron cannot escape this infantilizing notion and therefore casts the Na’vi as a dumb but spiritually innocent race, part of the planet and in tune with all life.
But this leads to my biggest problem, the representation of Na’vi spirituality. It is the most vague and mostly unspiritual understanding of Native American beliefs. There is a big difference between saying all humanity is one because they share the same creator or were saved from sin by the blood of Christ versus we are all one because we share the same DNA and evolutionary background. Cameron’s unity falls pretty close to the latter. His unity of the “Great Spirit” is not deeply spiritual, as so many reviews discuss, it is neurobiological. Far from some Great Spirit, or Wakan Tanka, Cameron’s unity is the neurobiological matrix that connects all the plants and animals on the planet. As Sigourney Weaver’s character says, “We’re not talking about pagan voodoo but something that is real biologically: a global network of neurons.” This is far from Native American spirituality. It would be much more appropriate to point to Gaia explanations common in ecological and climate change debates rooted in biology and materialism.
This is where Cameron is just a guilty as the prior colonizers he wishes to critique. He represents the indigenous people as helpless children, much like the Europeans who came to North America, and then appropriates them for his ideological harangue. In colonizing their image, he casts them as savage infants, ignorant but close to nature, and then subsumes all of these representations and his imagining of Native American belief into a larger condemnation of the western world’s destruction of the environment.This, I argue, is where Cameron’s real allegiance relies. It is not some vague spiritualism; it is not a pining for the lost connection to the land that Native American claim or claimed. Cameron’s appropriation of Native American imagry is in the service of the environment; it is all about environmentalism.
So what is the real spirituality at the heart of Avatar? Christianity. In the movie, Examined Life, Slavoj Zizek argues that modern discourses of environmentalism are secularized versions of the fall from grace, man’s ejection from the garden of Eden and his loss of innocence. Cameron’s movie is a retelling of the Garden of Eden story where the greedy-technological humans play the role of Satan who threatens the Na’vi, a pre-fallen and innocent humanity. Yet Hollywood endings cannot be so negative, and thus a savior must arise to preserve the innocence of the pre-fallen. It cannot be one of the Na’vi because to do so would require losing innocence. Thus the messiah must be one of the corrupt who is redeemed and, not surprisingly, is reborn and becomes one with the inhabitants of the saved garden, of course after dying and being resurrected by God(dess).
The “deep spirituality” of Avatar that many praise is just shallow neo-pagan window dressing. Though James Cameron may borrow terms and imagery from Greek mythology and from pagan and Native American spirituality, the deep spiritual message in Avatar is Christian, although a secularized version. Humanity through its greed and technological knowledge has fallen from grace, lost its purity, and has destroyed the world. But all is not lost. Humanity can redeem itself, and make things right. It must restore the earth, rebalance the biosphere, and stop its evil, greedy, and corporate ways. Of course this cannot be done by a spiritual savior; it must be done by humanity, the same race who caused the problem. But fret not, it is possible, just look at Sam Worthington’s character, right? He was able to reclaim his innocence and be reborn, we can too, right? It is not an accident that the Na’vi planet is called Pandora. After she opened her box the second time she found the one good spirit amongst the evil: hope. So have hope that we can fix things, right? It would see Cameron hopes so otherwise he would not have made the movie.
Nevertheless, Avatar is quite a spectacle and will set the standard that all future 3D movies will have to meet or surpass, at least for a while. Still, I think people watching the movie will have to dig a little deeper than the surface neo-pagan or Native American references. Cameron’s story is cliché and his appropriation of themes and images haphazard and unreflective. Cameron himself is from a Protestant background but is described as “only marginally religious.” With all these indicators, what makes one think he would really be able to invest his story with “deep spirituality.” It is just not there. Instead he calls upon the deep religious tropes so common in our society and these come from the Bible. While it is hardly a Christian narrative that evangelicals will be able to get behind, the Biblical foundation is there. So please, journalists, stop representing this movie as having anything to do with Native American spirituality. It is far from it. You need to start looking closer to home because the foundational story of the Na’vi is not found with Wakan Tanka, but in Genesis.
[17 Jan 2010 Edit: For an alternate view of the movie, see this blog entry about Avatar on the Twilight Traveler's blog.]
Adapting to the Changing Landscapes of American Metaphysical Religion
[Originally posted on the Religion in American History blog on March 9, 2011]
I was recently reading the newest edition of Quest, the journal of the Theosophical Society in America. In it, Robert Ellwood, muses about the future of the society in an essay entitled, “Theosophy after the Baby Boomers.” In the essay he notes that the membership of the society has decreased from a high of 8,520 in 1927 to the current 3,546. These few members struggle to maintain the financial weight of the society’s properties and infrastructure. Ellwood posits that at some point if the organization can no longer continue in its existing form it may shift to an educational foundation using diverse media to deliver its lessons. He also points to the way the internet will be central to this future.
While Ellwood is clearly excited about the possibilities, there are many scholars who are
faced with the conundrum of how to study religion when its institutional forms are quickly diminishing as its seemingly non-institutional forms are on the rise. This and Ellwood’s essay made me think of Courtney Bender’s recent sociological study on metaphysical religion in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The New Metaphysicals (Chicago, 2010). Bender points out that those who claim to be “spiritual but not religious” are no less involved with various institutions, but instead create what she calls a “symbiotic and connected relationship” with various religious and non-religious organizations. Constructing alternative social and organizational structures, these Metaphysicals use cooperative institutions to further their practices and community building. One of the institutions in Cambridge that Bender cites is the Boston chapter of the Theosophical Society.
Yet, Bender’s study is limited to a very particular place. As one of my colleagues asked, “How do we apply Bender’s study outside the heritage of William James?” I have been thinking about this and a perfect site to attempt this application is just a twenty-minute commuter train ride outside of Boston, in Salem, Massachusetts. Most are aware of Salem’s long history, especially its infamous trials in the 1690s. Today, in connection with this witchcraft legacy, Salem is one of the largest sites of metaphysical religion. It might be called the Northeastern Mecca of Wicca and neopaganism. We can certainly build on Bender’s insights, applying them to Salem, but we would have to be attentive to significant differences. Still, in noting these differences, we open up an opportunity to use her ideas throughout America.
First, we must understand, like Bender, that “Metaphysicals” is a wide-encompassing label for people who challenge existing boundaries between secular and religious. This flexibility allows us to see how what would previously be seen as a secular institution or means of communication could be incorporated in a larger spiritual network. Next we have to be aware of the diversity of individuals in that network. Bender focused specifically on white middle-class Metaphysicals. In Salem we would see a different set of Metaphysicals. People involved with Wicca and neopaganism are often in the working classes or are in the lower strata of the middle class, and more diverse racially. Still there are traditionally religious organizations in these networks. So while there is no Swedenborgian Church, nor a Theosophical Society, to meet at in Salem, other organizations fill in the gaps, both national and local. One of the most important is the Unitarian Church. Bender does not address Unitarianism to a great extent. One might guess that this is because the Unitarian Universalist headquarters are on Beacon Hill, near Boston Common, not near Cambridge. However, all over the nation Unitarian Churches host chapters of the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (CUUPS). We should include existing metaphysical institutions such as Unity Churches and other New Thought groups. In areas where the density of Metaphysicals interested in group formation is dense enough, they often form local institutions, renting commercial spaces or meeting in individual’s homes. Salem has numerous examples of these kinds of groups. Being aware of these kinds of institutions allow us to include the various and wide-ranging religious traditions that form the symbiotic relationships of which Bender speaks.
In addition to these religious institutions, there are commercial ones. This is where the boundaries really become porous. As mentioned above, Salem hosts numerous metaphysical bookstores. Bender mentions Seven Stars Bookshop in Cambridge and how it, along with other places like grocery stores, yoga studios, and health fairs, creates a network of commercial institutions that supply Metaphysicals with the goods and services they consume in the practice of their spirituality. In addition to these types of commercial enterprises, Salem offers us the opportunity to delve one level deeper to see the institutions that supply these independent companies. Salem is home to the
national headquarters of Azure Green, one of the largest distributors of spiritual and occult products in the world. Housed in a building that includes a multi-story glass pyramid, Azure Green supplies the majority of the material sold by independent metaphysical bookshops. Combined with New Leaf Distributing, the nation’s largest metaphysical book and media distributor located just outside of Atlanta, these two companies homogenize the goods each store has to offer the metaphysical community. Thus, while the inside of the Bodhi Tree in Los Angeles may differ from Magus Books in Minneapolis, the majority of the books and goods sold in each are identical. Nevertheless, these stores also supply meeting spaces for discussion groups, tarot card readings, or ritual practice. Thus, while they are a commercial enterprise, they routinely house individual and group spiritual practices. Even non-metaphysical bookstores often house discussion groups for Metaphysicals. The now struggling Border’s Bookstores are host to a variety of Metaphysicals who use their stores and their coffee shops as meeting spaces.
A final example worth mentioning is the internet. While not of central focus to Bender’s study, the internet is probably the most important place that Metaphysicals use to build and coordinate their communities. Here certain websites become significant “institutions” for information exchange, community discussion, and meeting coordination. While some are organized by tradition, such as WitchVox, which allows pagans worldwide to meet and exchange messages and files, others are organized by geographic location, such as Meetup, which is used for people to create affinity groups and then meet in the non-virtual world. On this website one can find local yoga, astrology, or alternative health groups.
The differences between various metaphysical traditions are collapsing just as quickly as are the distinctions between religious and secular institutions that many religion scholars study. The boundaries between New Age practice, neopaganism, and yoga, for instance, are quite porous, as are the designations between what is and what is not religious. The “spiritual but not religious,” as Bender correctly notes, still depend on various institutions to maintain their practices and communities, but they do so in unusual ways. Ellwood is correct when he writes that people “active in religious or other larger meaning-giving organizations, are happier and healthier than solitaries or those who know only casual and informal relationships.” Yet how these solidarities manifest will continue to evolve and change in unexpected ways. As our field continues to grapple with these changes, it will be interesting to see how our methods attempt to capture these networks and communities. Ellwood ends his essay about the future of the Theosophical Society noting that it is “exciting to have the privilege of living in such times of change and challenge.” I think the same can be said for our field too!