Spirituality and Resistance
Ursula Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest and the Film Avatar
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v4i4.478Keywords:
Avatar, Film Studies, Environmental StudiesAbstract
Avatar shares key narrative features with Ursula Le Guin’s 1972 novel The Word for World is Forest, including a depleted earth, exploitive resource extraction on another planet, and a successful revolt by the natives. Natives live in harmony with a natural world that is considered sacred and has both animistic and Gaian properties. Both works present a radical critique of modern Western society. There also are fundamental differences: The Word for World is Forest does not portray a Terran leading the revolt or joining the indigenous society, there is no romance between a Terran and a native, and the violence by the natives is unheroic and culturally damaging. While The Word for World is Forest is a dystopian novel, Avatar is apocalyptic. Both also have utopian elements, though Avatar is more optimistic than The Word for World is Forest, with its more nuanced view of our political situation.
References
Brook, David. 2010. ‘The Messiah Complex’, New York Times, 8 January. Online: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/opinion/08brooks.html.
Cameron, James. 2007. Avatar (Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation). Online: http://www.foxscreenings.com/media/pdf/JamesCameronAVATAR.pdf.
Elder, John. 1993. Following the Brush: An American Encounter with Classical Japanese Culture (Boston: Beacon Press).
Le Guin, Ursula K. 1974. The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (New York: Harper & Row).
———. 1976 [1972]. The Word for World is Forest (New York: Berkley Medallion).
———. 1979. The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons).
Moylan, Tom. 1986. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination (New York: Methuen).
———.2003. ‘”The moment is here…and it’s important”: State, Agency, and Dystopia in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Antarctica and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Telling’, in Raffarella Baccolini and Tom Moylan (eds.), Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination (New York: Routledge): 135-53.
Newitz, Annalee. 2009. ‘When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar”?’, oi9, 18 December. Online: http://io9.com/5422666/when-willwhite-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar.
Podhoretz, John. 2009. ‘Avatarocious: Another Spectacle Hits an Iceberg and Sinks’, Weekly Standard 15.15, 28 December. Online: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/350fozta.asp.
Sargent, Lyman Tower. 1967. ‘The Three Faces of Utopianism’, Minnesota Review 7.3: 222-30.
Taylor, Bron. 2005. ‘Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front’, in B. Taylor (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (London and New York: Continuum International): 518-24.
———.2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Yee, Andy. 2010. ‘China: Bloggers’ Reviews of Avatar’, Global Voices Online, 11 January. Online: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/01/11/china-bloggersreviews-of-avatar/.
