One of the first things that intrigued me about the movie Avatar was the protagonist, Jake Sully as a paraplegic. I had to dismiss the fact that the actor is not disabled, though there many paraplegic actors who would excel in the role, and concentrate on the part he played and why it matters to people with disabilities.
There are several layers of meaning portrayed in this part. First is the wounded warrior. For the first time in my memory, a person with a disability is portrayed as returning to military duty. Not simply an injured knee, or slight loss of hearing; in this case a person with paraplegia, complete paralysis of his lower body. Coming to a military industrial complex near you, and soon. Our military is finally finding the value of it’s injured soldiers, not necessarily in the battlefield but in the offices, research facilities, forensics, language sciences and etc…Who hasn’t seen the stories of amputee pilots returning to flight, with hopes of returning to duty in some fashion? The ADA comes to the military not a moment too soon, AVATAR leads the way. For decades the military has been retiring it’s wounded to a sedentary life with gainful employment a disincentive, return to work and you lose your benefits. Such a waste of talent and ability.
The next level, Sully not only returns to duty but he returns to duty in both his paralyzed body and a new super-human body. I remember reading an article in Wired written by John Hockenberry, years ago, he talked about persons with disabilities as puppeteers. That is, using our bodies as operators of a new and improved body. We would be, he proclaimed, the pioneers of technology that produces robots, bionic men or women, if you will. AVATAR puts this idea into action. Sully is not only getting a new body, but he controls his new body with the mind of his current paralyzed body. He goes from one to the other (the metaphor of an avatar one takes in the online world is also an obvious metaphor for this transition from offline to online). Immediately upon entering his AVATAR, he of course, is overwhelmed with excitement, joy and a childlike enthusiasm for the world. He has legs again, he can run, jump, and interact at eye level with the world once again. Upon returning to his paralyzed body, he feels grief and anger, the loss once again of his perfect warrior body. The transition is difficult, each time he returns with great reluctance. Eventually, his reluctance is not entirely because he returns to a broken body, but because he returns to a broken world. That’s where the third level comes into view. Sully is promised that if he betrays the near-perfect world (Pandora) he travels to while in his AVATAR, he can regain his ability to walk. This promise soon becomes empty compared to the promise of a world in Pandora. For even the ability to walk cannot make life on earth better than life on Pandora. In the beginning of the movie, Sully as narrator, proclaims that had he the funds to finance the medical intervention, he would no longer be paralyzed. Enter, modern medicine with its financial inequity, the rich get better the poor get little. What’s wrong with a society that grants a cure to those with the financial means and allows those without (most of us) to live a meager existence on the federal doll? Sully ultimately decides that life on Pandora can not only offer him a cure but a better world in which to live.
Despite it’s flaws, AVATAR delivers and on a level a bit deeper than I expected.
On a related subject Vic Chesnutt, singer, songwriter, person with a disability, took his life on Christmas Day 2009. He was overwhelmed with medical debt and faced bankruptcy, in spite of paying $800 a month for health insurance, his medical debts exceeded $70,000. He would have loathed this movie, I’m certain of it.
