Going Blue?

These days it seems like everyone and everything is about "going green". In other words doing your part to save the environment. It has become a huge trend today, and it seems that I'm told to recycle on a daily basis. I think that this global trend is also saying something about how far women have come in our society seeing as our planet is often referred to as Mother Earth. In Carolyn Merchant's Dominion Over Nature she talks about how, "Female imagery became a tool in adapting scientific knowledge and method to a new form of human power over nature" (16). She refers back to a time very different from today when women were a minority and nature was not so precious. Merchant tells us about one of the "fathers of modern science", Francis Bacon, and how he "transformed the magical tradition by calling on the need to dominate nature not for the sole benefit of the individual magician but for the good of the entire human race" (17). This view of nature, it seems, couldn't be farther from the general view of nature today as something to be preserved. Nature's growing importance in our society parallels the leaps made by women in the last few centuries. Nature and the earth in general have become such huge talking points that our news, entertainment, music, shopping, and food are all dominated by it.

In fact, THE largest grossing movie of all time is centered around this topic. And I'm sure almost everyone has seen it: Avatar.
Yes, that movie with the blue people.


The movie finds a bunch of futuristic, and quite destructive, humans on a completely new planet. This planet is inhabited by native creatures who worship their natural world like a God. It is even given a god-like name (Eywa) and female characteristics. I found it very interesting how an entire new world was created from scratch, but where their God is a woman and goes hand in hand with nature. For all three of those to be encompassed in one was a different concept for most people watching the movie. The fact that so many people saw the movie makes me think that there is a very strong message behind it. So, do you think Avatar is a movie that is promoting "going green," or could there be a secret message hidden in it that is promoting the female gender to our modern world?