The power of cinematic technology

James Cameron's film 'Avatar' won awards for the best picture and best director at the recently concluded Golden Globe ceremony. Most often, Golden Globe awards are a reliable predictor of Academy Awards. Cameron's 'Avatar' is the most expensive film ever made; it cost nearly 3 million dollars to produce. At the same time, it has turned into a global phenomenon, so far raking in more than two billion dollars. The film that had held the record until now was another work by James Cameron, 'Titanic', which brought in about 1.8 million dollars.

'Avatar' having made the splash it did, film scholars are talking about a new stage in the evolution of cinema and the need to fashion a new poetics of film to accommodate these new transformations precipitated by the sheer power of technology. 'Avatar' can be described as 3-D science fiction epic that mesmerizes audiences by its technological bravura. James Cameron has deployed digital technology, computer-based imagery, to create a wholly novel cinematic experience. The architecture of the filmic text is such it induces spatial and temporal dislocations in the viewer and gives him or her new sense and consciousness of embodied agency. It provokes and demands a novel orientation to the narrative unfolding on the screen.

While 'Avatar' is visually stunning, the narrative itself, it seems to me, is somewhat trite and predictable. It is, to a large extent, based on stereotypes. Cameron has sought to invest his narrative with other layers of significance such as environmental issues, the reach of colonialism and the importance of communion with nature. The strength of the film lies in its technological adventurousness and innovativeness and not on any complexities of human experience and meaning or inquiries into the human condition.

'Avatar' is set in Pandora a remote moon full of dense forests imaginatively created and mountains hanging defiantly from the sky. The story takes place in the year 2154 on this remotely located moon. Humans are busy mining Pandora's reserves of a precious metal, interestingly called Unobtanium. The moon is inhabited by a race of blue-skinned and large indigenous humanoids which resists any colonial expansions into the territory. A huge willow tree, where the Navi worship and pay homage, is the topographical center of the action. The Navi, who have a perfect union with nature, and in addition, who possess immense spiritual powers, are meant to be emblems of primitive people throughout the world. They are in perfect harmony with nature and all forms of life. It is suggested that the earth is decaying due to industrial excesses while Pandora is full of life, colour and lushness.

The contrast between the two groups cannot be starker, and Jake, the protagonist falls in love with Neytiri, a Navi warrior princess. The characters are not portrayed with much depth and the basic plot and narrative motif are reminiscent of other films such as 'Pocahontas' ad 'Dances with Wolves' - the protagonist being attracted by an exotic culture and going native is a common enough topos in cinema. However, it is the technical audacity with which this story has been turned into cinema that has dazzled global audiences, at times even creating unnecessary tensions. Chinese audiences began to interpret the film as a battle of ordinary people struggling to hold onto their land and culture against developers and the state a problem deeply relevant to China. It was also reported on CNN that China has decided to honour the film 'Avatar' by re-naming one of its mountains.

James Cameron's 'Avatar' has stirred deep passions among film scholars and critics, arising from the challenging intersections of cinema and technology. Cinema, which is just over one hundred years old, is clearly a technology-based art form. However, some argue with reason that technology has taken over cinema. One has only to watch films by James Cameron, George Lucas. Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson to understand the veracity of this statement. They contend that sophisticated readers of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Forster, Pasternak etc; had no problem in enjoying the films of Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Robet Bresson, David Lean and so on. In fact, Lean made two popular films based on the works of Forster and Pasternak respectively. However, the undue veneration of, and obeisance to, technology is being perceives as alarmingly disruptive and helping to rob cinema of its human richness and complexity, that marked the work of these film directors. The films of Yasujiro Ozu, Satyajit Ray and our own Lester James Peries, are very different from these currently popular technology-centered, and technology-driven films.

Tom Gunning, a noted film scholar, once remarked that the early phase of movies was characterized by a cinema of attractions. What he meant by that locution was that audiences were far more attracted to cinema by its machinery than the power of stories or characters. As Gunning remarked, in the early years, "cinema itself was an attraction. Early audiences went to exhibitions to see machines demonstrated." It seems to me that we have arrived at a second stage in cinema of attractions, in view of the fact that once again technology seems to have trumped density of human experience and aesthetic significance, and audiences are clearly experiencing its inescapable power and glow. As a consequence of the bold and imaginative use of computer generated images and digital technology, it is asserted that the very medium of cinema is currently being re-defined.

As opposed to this view point, there are those, especially younger audiences, who have grown up with video games and computer animations, who feel that cinema should offer a new sensory experience, and films like 'Avatar' with their heavy dependence and display of digital technology are doing just that. The new possibilities of 3-D as a narrative form and the confluence of live action and digital animation that characterize films such as 'Avatar', therefore, have a deep appeal to these audiences. They demand a new understanding of cinema and the construction of a new digital aesthetic for the appreciation of film.

In contrast to these two widely divergent view points, there is a third approach advocated by some film scholars and critics. It points out that in contemporary cinema conceptualization, pre-production, production, post-production, distribution, marketing, consumption are so saturated with technology that we need to adopt a reflectively interventionist attitude to the historically-grounded nature of cinematic technologies. It is important to bear in mind in this regard that the term technology carries a plurality of meanings, political, social, economic, cultural, that are vitally connected with questions of meanings and values.

There are a number of scholars who have written illuminatingly on this topic. Raymond Williams, some years ago, in discussing media technology underlined the need to locate it in determinative cultural and social discourses. Unfortunately, film scholars were slow to pursue his insights and admonitions vigorously. Jean-Louis Baudry, who is one of the most influential writers on this subject, has argued that any perceptive analysis of cinema should give pride of place to its technological constitution, and he insisted on the need to reverse our approach to the understanding of cinema by beginning not with the completed object but with the apparatus of production. It is only in very recent times that film scholars have begun to examine cinematic technology in these terms.