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Can Books Save the Earth?: A digital anthology of green literature

Article Summary by Jackson Y.

          In the article “Till We Have [Inter]faces: The Cybercultural Ecologies of Avatar”, author Alf Seegert argues for and against technology portraying nature. He does credit technology for portraying nature in a way that makes us all want to be there and motivates us to make Earth great again. What comes with this nature portrayal is, however, is the realization that Earth kind of sucks compared to these virtual natures and some of us see Earth as disgusting and not up to our standards. Seegert uses the movie Avatar to help him further his arguments, because the movie has been seen by many and it shows nature and humans in a way that we have never experienced before. He also pulls from a music video, Respire, to help him further his argument. This ecocriticism gives humans insight as to what we could make the Earth was well as how bad our planet is in comparison to places that we perceive as perfect.
          This article starts out telling the reader to imagine themselves as a little girl playing around in a colorless world where everything, but nothing is really as it seems. When this little girl leaves this perfect patch of nature, she returns to the real world and the place she was just in was virtually simulated. This scene comes from the music video Respire and starts out Seegerts argument well. He states that virtual reality presents us with a place that is perfect in our minds but isn’t what is actually going on in the real world. He also refers to this in his main source, Avatar, when he talks about what happens after we take off our 3D glasses and leave the theater. “When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed . . . gray. It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning [ . . . ] I live in a dying world,” (Seegert 126). This is actually a quote from someone who saw the movie recently, and they are explaining how this digital world makes our world seem like a pile of garbage that has been rotting for days. By creating this digital world, people are starting to realize that our planet isn’t all that great.
         The article continues after the examination of the music video by describing the plot of the entire movie Avatar in some detail and how it relates to us. Seegert notes that the main character, Jake, was paralyzed but was given a second chance when his people from earth made these avatar bodies based on the people that lived on the planet Pandora. Through his body, Jake is able to experience nature like never before, connecting with every living thing around him and feeling everything they’re feeling. This is also an argument of Seegert. We don’t feel the impacts of nature like the avatars do in the movie. In the movie, Seegert notes that the avatars have these linking devices on their heads that link up with everything in nature. This allows them to be one with nature and everything that negatively happens to nature, negatively impacts the avatars. We humans cannot connect to nature like this, making this virtual universe unfathomable. Virtual reality brings up these instances that would be great solutions to our hazardous actions toward nature but sadly they cannot be accomplished because we don’t have the traits the avatars do. This virtual world makes humans more unaccepting of the planet because we don’t have these things to offer.
          However, Seegert sees the virtual world as one that can motivate and encourage human beings to get out there and make nature what they want it to be. “[…] Avatar also serve as a "wake-up call" exposing viewers to just how alienated they are, and how bleak and disconnected from nature their actual lives have become […].” Here Seegert is explaining that after seeing this movie, peoples’ eyes will be opened to the real world. People will want to make the Earth more like Pandora because the movie got them so in touch with nature in this movie that they want their experience in this movie to become their everyday experience in the real world.
          This article of ecocriticism argues that not all virtually created plots of nature are bad, but are also not always good. Through the movie Avatar, Seegert explains that the director, James Cameron, shows us a world that is made-up but is so grabbing that everyone wants to live there. He goes on to say that after the movie everyone is disappointed with the Earth because they want Earth’s nature to be like that of Pandora. The nature on Pandora is unobtainable too because we don’t have the connection to our nature like the avatars do. However, through Avatar, people could be motivated to make nature great and to strive to make our planet like that of Pandora. In the end, virtual reality will bring forth profound scenes of nature that make us dissatisfied in the land we live on, but it also kicks us in the butt and tells us that we can mold our environment to model that of our favorite virtual realities.


Seegert, Alf. "Western Humanities Review." Till We Have [Inter]faces: The Cybercultural Ecologies of Avatar 64.2 (2010): 112-31. Humanities Full Text [H.W. Wilson]. Web. 24 Feb. 2016

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