Medusa's Gaze and Vampire's Bite: The Science of Monsters (32 page)

Yet film technology is only partially responsible for allowing the monsters and humans to so completely swap places in
Avatar.
Another tactic that Cameron uses to make this reversal involves scientific methods.

A key Na’vi greeting is “I see you,” which the film explains means “I see into you” or “I understand you.” The Na’vi do not use this phrase in a scientific way, but such communication primes us to see Pandora differently. Like biologists looking below surface tissues with X-rays or geologists drilling through the Earth’s crust for mineral traces, both Jake and the audience are taken behind the curtain of the forest and shown the ecological realities of Pandora that the corporate and militaristic humans simply cannot see.

Jake comes to see the creatures as audiences have long seen Kong, with understanding and sympathy, and he realizes who the monsters really are. In many ways the effect of this understanding is similar to what drove so many ancient monsters to extinction. Just as the Nemean lion met its end when the wilds of Europe were explored and what had previously been considered a monster came to be seen as merely animal, the monsters of Pandora are transformed as Jake “sees into” them.

So Cameron manages a remarkable thing with
Avatar,
but like any scientist making a major discovery, he is standing on the shoulders of giants who have been moving in this direction for a long time. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace came up with the theory of evolution through natural selection independently and simultaneously because all the pieces of the puzzle were present for them to take this major step. Cameron was similarly primed by numerous films, many of which he directed, that were already bringing humans and monsters into close proximity. A monster/human reversal
has been a long time coming. The critical question is, why? Why, throughout history, have humans and monsters grown ever closer together and finally, in
Avatar,
entirely swapped positions?

People have always looked to the horizon and feared that which they did not understand. Initially, this horizon was the edge of the forest. Then, when forests became better explored and their dangers were realized as not actually being that serious, human attention turned toward the darkness of the sea. Then the sea became better explored, and the new horizon became the vastness of space. And now, with space getting ever better explored, a new horizon appears… in the form of the horrors humanity is about to unleash on itself.

Through the technology we have created, we now pose a greater threat to ourselves and our planet than we ever have before. During the days of the Romans, the worst humanity could manage was to wage a war of swords. True, this frequently left thousands dead, but the world and all of its resources would always recover because nobody, not even the merciless Genghis Khan, had the power to exterminate everyone. Nuclear weapons radically changed this by making it possible for us to literally bring about the end of the world. Similarly, we have the ability, through reckless inaction and greed, to wreak environmental havoc that can make our planet truly unlivable.

Trying to predict what we will and won’t do in the years ahead is as difficult as trying to determine whether the animal on the other side of a jungle thicket is a rabbit, lion, or dragon. It is from the nature of these threats and the staggering uncertainty surrounding them that we rise as monsters.

This should not, for a moment, indicate that the days of inhuman monsters are over. Nothing can alter the ways evolution has shaped the human brain, and people will always have an intrinsic fear of things that have threatened them since the days of dwelling in caves. Dark environments where we were once predated upon will continue to
generate a sense of dread, and animals like snakes will remain objects of fear. Monsters associated with these stimuli will certainly persist for decades regardless of the role that we come to play in monster stories. Similarly, forces that still threaten human lives and are difficult or impossible to control, like diseases, will continue to find their way into the media as monsters. Even so, there is no getting around the fact that the mask of the monster has fallen over time with ever greater frequency on the face of humanity.

Whether this trend will persist depends greatly upon how we act. We can stand petrified as we gaze at the monsters we have become and allow worldwide nuclear and environmental destruction. Alternatively, we have the opportunity to take action, behead the beast, and claim a future where the mask of the monster safely sits somewhere else.

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Cleverly named “viper-wolves.” Drawing upon some snake fears, are we Mr. Cameron?

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