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I'm surprised I didn't read more commentary about the Christian symbolism in Avatar - Garden of Eden, Tree of Life, etc. Maybe people no longer look at those sy

by Tycho 17y ago

I'm surprised I didn't read more commentary about the Christian symbolism in Avatar - Garden of Eden, Tree of Life, etc. Maybe people no longer look at those symbols as predominantly/exclusively Judeo-Christian?

rue 17y ago
Neither a tree of life nor a paradisiacal existence in the past are unique to the middle-eastern fables. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life
- Tycho 17y ago
  Yes but the interesting thing is how much cultural currency the Biblical tales may have lost (in days gone by, it was a case of 'there's Christianity/Judaism, and then there's everything else').
teilo 17y ago
You can find "Christian" symbolism in anything. For crying out loud, people found it in the Lion King, the Matrix, and even the Ten Commandments! (The last one was a joke.) For it to be "Christian" symbolism, it would have to be quite a bit more explicit than general themes like gardens and trees. Once you start turning fiction into symbolism you can make anything out of everything.
- Tycho 17y ago
  general themes like trees and gardens? in what way, and in what works, are these things themes? Christian mythology shares a lot of common ideas with other mythology, according to scholars. The Garden of Eden was a paradisiacal forest where humans lived in harmony with nature, where the Tree of Life gave them immortality, so long as they ignored the Tree of Knowledge (at peril of being cast out). In Avatar, the Na'vi live in harmony with nature in a paradisiacal forest with a Great Tree, afforded quasi-immortality by 'spiritual-uplink' to the tree, and in the complete absence of technology. Then along come the evil, technologically advanced humans who of course have been cast out of their own paradisiacal habitat (or destroyed it). It doesn't sound like the loosest connect ever to me. one of the characters is called 'Grace Augustine'

by Tycho 17y ago

rue 17y ago

Neither a tree of life nor a paradisiacal existence in the past are unique to the middle-eastern fables. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life

Tycho 17y ago
Yes but the interesting thing is how much cultural currency the Biblical tales may have lost (in days gone by, it was a case of 'there's Christianity/Judaism, and then there's everything else').

teilo 17y ago

You can find "Christian" symbolism in anything. For crying out loud, people found it in the Lion King, the Matrix, and even the Ten Commandments! (The last one was a joke.) For it to be "Christian" symbolism, it would have to be quite a bit more explicit than general themes like gardens and trees. Once you start turning fiction into symbolism you can make anything out of everything.

Tycho 17y ago
general themes like trees and gardens? in what way, and in what works, are these things themes? Christian mythology shares a lot of common ideas with other mythology, according to scholars. The Garden of Eden was a paradisiacal forest where humans lived in harmony with nature, where the Tree of Life gave them immortality, so long as they ignored the Tree of Knowledge (at peril of being cast out). In Avatar, the Na'vi live in harmony with nature in a paradisiacal forest with a Great Tree, afforded quasi-immortality by 'spiritual-uplink' to the tree, and in the complete absence of technology. Then along come the evil, technologically advanced humans who of course have been cast out of their own paradisiacal habitat (or destroyed it). It doesn't sound like the loosest connect ever to me. one of the characters is called 'Grace Augustine'