영화 <아바타>와 지각의 문제에 대하여

A Study on the Movie 'Avatar' and Perception

With brand new image technology, computer graphics and watching method, the movie, ‘Avatar (2009)’ became the talk of the town even after several months after its release. From its theme to how the movie is experienced and perceived, Avatar centers on an ambiguous concept of the ‘body’, and this paper will attempt to study and discuss focusing on this aspect. In the narrative structure of Avatar, the main protagonist’s subject of desire is the personal issue of ‘leg recovery’ and this coincides with the desire of humanity in resources. Put blunt, to Jake Sully, the main protagonist, the story revolves around his journey in which, from his deficient or injured body, his soul-emotion is transferred into another where he finds his existence gratified. While the ‘body’ serves as the target of his desire which motivates Jake to act, by sacrificing this desire for a new body for the sake of the Navi people, in the end, he is reborn as avatar itself. (In other words, he acquires a new body.) This is basically what is at the heart of Avatar’s story. In addition, the philosophical perspective of the body is divided into monism and dualism. The body seen through the view that mind and body are one, as opposed to the view that mind and body are antagonistic of each other, is referred as a ‘phenomenological body’. According to E. Husserl, the body is naturally inherent and therefore non-transferable, forming the view that it is one’s own. One’s own body is not the target of the world but the target that is formed within the consciousness. Furthermore, we encounter the world with the point of contact of the body. M. Merleau-Ponty, who was influenced by Husserl, thought that the main agent holding the body is an agent of experience that is thought and perceived as an existence opened through the world. To him, the body is the main agent of perception as well as a tunnel connected to the world and that it holds significance in how we come in contact with the world through the body. Such phenomenological or post modern view related to the body can be found in the movie script and the way it is watched. Furthermore, the avatars in the movie serve as a sort of a medium for negotiating between humans and the Navi; it exists as a new medium that transcends the human bodily limits. The avatar exists as a ‘gap’ between these two races, humans and the Navi. In other words, the avatar is a ‘seat of vector’ between the two races.