Spirituality in Avatar (Outside Reading, Elizabeth White)

 I read “A Spiritual Blockbuster: Avatar, Environmentalism, and the New Religions,” by Cynthia Erb. The article discusses the relationship between spirituality and film. Erb states that the West has shifted away from traditional religion and towards spirituality as an expression of the sacred. She believes that Avatar is an expression of a “dark green religion,” which values nature as sacred, animism, and believes in Gaia or a “Mother Earth.” The followers of this new religion are activists. Their belief that nature is sacred and worth protecting, even militantly, is so strong that it becomes spiritual in nature. In Avatar, the Na’vi are fiercely protective of their environment. They feel a literal connection with the planet and the animals and are pained when it is hurt. The human, Jake, steps into the world and has to learn this spiritual connection to nature that comes to the Na’vi innately. 

Erb writes that the film was criticized by Christian critics at the time for being pantheistic and outright pagan. Executives at Fox apparently even asked James Cameron (director of the film) to make the film less outrightly activist. Erb also argues that the film is spiritual because the new forms of religion value individuality over collectivity. This is a sentiment I also ran into while researching for my term paper. The internet allows the new generations to gain an understanding of spirituality from so many sources, that a physical, central “church” is no longer necessary for someone to gain an understanding of their spiritual beliefs. Avatar is very insistent on Jake’s individuality. He has to understand the Na’vi through experiencing it. It is not the culture he grew up in and it is not the religion he was surrounded by as a child, but he is able to understand, adopt, and defend it despite this. 


Erb, Cynthia. “A Spiritual Blockbuster: Avatar, Environmentalism, and the New Religions.” Journal of Film and Video 66, no. 3 (2014): 3–17. https://doi.org/10.5406/jfilmvideo.66.3.0003.

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