Avatar will win a bunch of Oscars, although not enough to suit James Cameron. The first time I saw the film I thought it was a pretty faithful remake of Ferngully, a 1992 animated film about fairies whose forest is under assault by humans, one of whom winds up living among them and ultimately rescuing them. But of course there are other influences to be found as well.
When former Marine Jake Scully drapes his sinewy blue body around his Na’vi bride, Neytiri, the heroine of James Cameron’s Oscar-nominated epic Avatar, his neural tendrils fuse with hers, in the script, but off camera, in one of the most unusual sex scenes ever produced on film. Critics and commentators have been dissecting the themes of the Hollywood mega-blockbuster, from its just-war doctrine and environmental ethics. But there’s a philosophical dimension that this otherworldly sex scene captures that most folks have overlooked: the Tantra of Avatar.
A precursor to Hinduism and Buddhism, the ancient philosophy of Tantra dates back some 6,000 years to the Dravidian culture that flourished in the Indus Valley cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in modern-day Pakistan, seeping later into the religious traditions of India, Nepal, and other parts of the region. Its tenets of goddess worship, self-discovery, and spiritual liberation resonate in Avatar, from the Neytiri’s deity-like qualities to Jake’s journey of self-identity. Avatar’s climax is actually not the Tantric sex of their consummation, but a moment that comes later, when they do something modern-day Tantric sex experts call “soul gazing,” and racier sexperts call “sex gazing.”
So there’s that.
the religion of my grandfather is Hinduism and he says that it is a great religion.”“
I can’t help but agree.