Clinching Best Drama at the recent Golden Globes award, Avatar, is THE movie to catch. Directed by James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of “Titanic”, this 3D action-adventure movie will definitely keep you on your toes throughout the entire duration.
For those who have not gotten the opportunity to watch this awesome show, here’s a synopsis for you, to get a brief idea on what it’s about.
Through this movie, I finally have a concrete idea of what the social constructionist perspective, where communication creates individualists, is about. Jake Sully, an ex-marine, was given an opportunity to ‘serve’ his country and replace his slain twin brother, Tom, on a mission to mine valued ore on the planet of Pandora. Enticed by the outcome that it’ll bring him (pragmatic approach!), Jake agreed to take on the role. Before going to Pandora as his Na’vi self, scientists, army colonel and basically everyone who worked for the mega corporation, warned him about the Na’vi, the humanoid natives of Pandora. When he actually experience living in that world for himself, Jake discovered that the humans were wrong about the Na’vi. What he expected to experience was far from what he went through. The social constructionist perspective of communication is no doubt apparent here. Jake formed his own impression of Pandora through what has been communicated to him about it, without even questioning the reliability of the sources. Only after he directly experienced the world of Pandora, he saw the vast difference in what has been communicated and what is ‘real’.
As the movie proceeds, Jake finds himself in a dilemma – to help his human race or to help his adopted race, the Na’vi. He knows that it is not right for the humans to be invading the homes of the Na’vi but if he helps the Na’vi, wouldn’t he be betraying his own kind? Influenced by logos (appeal to reason), pathos (appeal to emotions) and ethos (persuasive appeal to his character), the social constructionist in him eventually intervened and he ended him helping his adopted race.
Here, we see that Jake chose to let his believes and sets of roles/rules decide his next move, when his attempt at a pragmatic approach failed, even if it means to turn his back on his own kind. If you were to be in his shoes, would you do the same? Honestly, when I watched this movie, I truly hated the humans. Granted, they did not exactly have an accurate knowledge about Pandora as what they know is the things that have been passed on from person to person and not what they directly experience for themselves. However, when Jake recounted his experiences with the Na’vi, the humans chose to brush it off. So forgive me for hating them at that point of time.
This leads me to question the world that we live in. As the model of social constructionist states, we are surrounded by communication, which holds our world together. With that, are we really living our lives or are we merely living like we’re told to, based on symbolic codes, our cognitive customs, cultural traditions and the set of rules that guide our actions? Is our world truly unreal?
I guess we would never know for sure but I'd like to believe that we eventually form our own sanctuary in our minds through our experiences.
Feel free to comment!(:
