The movie Avatar as a postcolonial study 

The movie Avatar as a postcolonial study

Avatar is a 2009 science fiction movie and it can be studied from postcolonial perspective. Avatar movie shows how humans who are supposed to be more powerful than the native people are trying to colonize the Navi people. The movie Avatar as a postcolonial study is profoundly holding the subjective form of colonization. The native who are colonized or have been colonized are still being dominated and manipulated through neo-colonization and neo-capitalisation.

The movie Avatar as a Postcolonial study 

Oscar awarded movie

Avatar movie plot overview

In 2154, the natural resources of the Earth have been depleted. The Resources Development Administration (RDA) mines the valuable mineral unobtanium on Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system. The Na'vi people, 10-foot-tall, blue-skinned, sapient humanoids inhabit in Pandora whose atmosphere is gaseous. They live in happy harmony with nature. To explore Pandora, genetically matched human scientists use Na'vi-human hybrids called "avatars". Jake Sully who is a paraplegic marine is sent to Pandora to replace his deceased identical twin, who had signed up to be an operator. Avatar Program head Dr. Grace considers jake Sully incapable but accepts him as a bodyguard.

While escorting the avatars of Grace and Dr. Norm Spellman, Jake's avatar is attacked by Pandoran wildlife and he flees into the forest, where he is rescued by female Na'vi Neytiri, the heroine of the movie. Witnessing an auspicious sign, she takes him to her clan. Neytiri's mother Mo'at, the spiritual leader of the clan, orders her daughter to initiate Jake into their society. Colonel Miles Quaritch, head of RDA's security force, promises Jake that the company will restore the use of his legs if he provides information about the Na'vi and their gathering place, the giant Hometree, under which is a rich deposit of unobtanium. Learning of this, Grace transfers herself, Jake, and Norm to an outpost. Jake and Neytiri fall in love as Jake is initiated into the tribe. He and Neytiri choose each other as mates. When Jake attempts to disable a bulldozer which is threatening a sacred Na'vi site, Administrator Parker Selfridge orders Hometree destroyed. Despite Grace's argument that destroying Hometree could damage Pandora's biological neural network, Selfridge gives Jake and Grace one hour to convince the Na'vi to evacuate.

Jake confesses that he was a spy and the Na'vi take him and Grace captive. Quaritch's men destroy Hometree, killing many including Neytiri's father, the clan chief. Mo'at frees Jake and Grace, but they are detached from their avatars and imprisoned by Quaritch's forces. Pilot Trudy Chacón, disgusted by Quaritch's brutality, airlifts Jake, Grace, and Norm to Grace's outpost. Grace is shot during the escape. Jake regains the Na'vi's trust by connecting his mind to that of Toruk, a dragon-like creature feared and revered by the Na'vi. At the sacred Tree of Souls, Jake pleads with Mo'at to heal Grace. The clan attempts to transfer Grace into her avatar with the aid of the Tree of Souls but she dies. Supported by new chief Tsu'tey, Jake unites the clan, telling them to gather all the clans to battle the RDA. Quaritch organizes a strike against the Tree of Souls to demoralize the Na'vi. Jake prays to Na'vi deity Eywa via a neural connection with the Tree of Souls. Tsu'tey and Trudy are among the battle's heavy casualties.

The Na'vi are rescued when Pandoran wildlife unexpectedly join the attack and overwhelm the humans, which Neytiri interprets as Eywa answering Jake's prayer. Quaritch, wearing an AMP suit, escapes his crashed aircraft and breaks open the avatar link unit containing Jake's human body, exposing it to Pandora's poisonous atmosphere. As Quaritch prepares to slit Jake's avatar's throat, he is killed by Neytiri who saves Jake from suffocation, seeing his human form for the first time. With the exceptions of Jake, Norm, and a select few others, all humans are expelled from Pandora. Jake is permanently transferred into his avatar with the aid of the Tree of Souls.

Jake sully's Avatar and Navi woman Neytiri

Avatar can be studied as a postcolonial text

Avatar is a 2009 Oscar awarded Hollywood science fiction film. It took tremendous success because of its various dimensions from the perspective of postcolonialism and posthumanism. The term 'Avatar' has two connotations. In Bengali, the word avatar means a figure that is God's decent on earth as incarnation and the another meaning is that a creature that is completely different in characteristic traits, strange behaviour from rest of the society. The meanings of the word 'Avatar' reflect the re-examination on the postcolonial theory and its application to analyse the film in the era of Globalisation and multicultural politics. The essence of the film focuses on the identity Navi people who remain close to the native land and they are forced to be evicted from their land identity. The film hero Jake Sulley, a paraplegic marine takes the form of Avatar to be befriended with the Navi people. The critical lenses of postcolonial theory focuses on understanding how the mechanism of subject-production hs changed the geo-political present compared to the colonial past. The outsiders who come here learn from the natives (their lifestyle, culture, behaviour, customs, their way of living and so on). This colonial resistance is shown in the film. The clones are sent to the Navi people to teach them to be civilized. They are taught that humans are strong and civilized. The ethnic recognition or native recognition emphasizes the Navi people's way of living and culture. The third world postcolonialism is restructured and grouped in European enlightenment epistemology. This hollywood movie holds the epitome of the postcolonial essence. The postcolonial and the post humanistic elements are mingled in a new postmodern version where human dominated themes are emphasized. Excessive greed of humans on material by remaining disconnected to nature is pointed out in a broad sense.