Two days of movie nights... "Avatar" and "Princess Mononoke"

     I watched two movies "Avatar" and "Princess Mononoke" during this Golden Week. Honestly, I prefer "Princess Mononoke" than "Avatar". Maybe this is because I am Japanese and have seen "Princess Mononoke" for several times in my life, while I have never seen "Avatar" before. Therefore, some of my comments here can be very one-sided. Well, I still need to figure out why I think in such a way and what influenced me. So any other comments on the films, agreement and/or disagreement for my comments are very welcome!


"Avatar"
     It was quite interesting to see how Jake got involved in the Na'vi society and did anthropological research on them. He first introduced himself as a person who came to their village "to learn" (well, let's not look at his original purpose of visit here).  He seem not to believe in science nor technology but only in himself. I think that got Neytiri's attention: fearless, strength and maybe also the ignorance, something different from other Sky people who are highly dependent on technology and science.
     Although it is a little saying in the very beginning of the movie, there is one phrase from Neytiri (the daughter of the leader in the village) that got my attention and does not leave my head, and this is also related to the book, "The Organic Machine."
          "Energy is only borrowed. We have to give it back." (Not perfectly quoted)
This phrase reminded me of some of words from the reading "The Organic Machine." Richard White states that "To be powerful is to be able to accomplish things, to be able to turn the energy and work of nature and humans to your own purposes." 
For a nineteen-year-old college student who only has lived in a city, this explanation is a bit odd. I have never thought that I actually use the power of nature in order to do my daily routine. I do not see all the energy put into a force of electricity to light up my room when I just click the switch within less than one second.
     What is related to the saying from Neytiri, I think a lot of people are like me nowadays. We do not feel the power of nature in our daily lives, and tend to forget that we are actually having benefit from it. Therefore, we rarely think like Na'vi...that we need to give huge amount of energy we use every second back to the nature someday.


"Princess Mononoke"
     Compared to "Avatar," I think the relations among nature, human and gods were more complicated and those had more cooperative attitude toward the other at the end. 
     Ashitaka and San were the humans that connect human society, and nature and gods. They seem to have conflicts inside of them while the story goes on: Ashitaka is cursed by a mononoke and it slowly kills his life, and San is raised by a wolf god after she is given to shishigami as a sacrifice, and hates human beings though she is a human being. 
     Conflicts between nature and technology are not so outstanding I thought, but rather blurred by these two characters. And at the end, human seem to notice how important it is to live together with nature. Of course, they do not decide to live together literally, but to live with some physical distance from each other.


     At the end of the story, the scene reminded me of 3.11 earthquake and tsunami hit many village destroying everything. One woman from the village said "生きてりゃなんとかなる。(If we are alive, we can do anything.)" Human is weak when natural disaster occurs, but it seems they are mentally and technologically very strong in the movie and in today's society too. I think, maybe this strength is the weakness of us, because we also have a great ability to forget the power of nature.