![]() Apart from the aforementioned Doc Manhattan, the trope of the blue body recurs in all kind of story involving superpowered beings. Of course popular iconography plays a major role too. Middle- and far-Eastern religions are packed with blue-skinned gods: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (to say nothing of Krishna) in the Hindu tradition are all represented as blue men, as well as the Shinto moon-god Tsuki-Yomi, the Egyptian goddess of the sky Nut, the Chinese god of justice Lei Kung, etc. The religious origin of the avatara sets the tone here. Turns out his “vision” was borrowing too from the cultural and visual canon that had shaped all the avatars before him. But, allegedly, Cameron’s movie took so long to be released precisely because he wanted to wait for the “technology to catch up with his vision”. Thus the enormous amount of smooth, cerulean silhouettes in those years imagery. Back in the 1990s CGI-generated characters were difficult to render when it came to skins and hair. Shouldn’t they be, like – green? Now, there is one explanation which points to the technological limitations that Cameron met when first he was developing the script. How come the Na’vi are blue if they inhabit a “green planet”. 10) the third one is a virtual character in an early online 3D community (by Tom Sepe in Vesna, Victoria (1998) Bodies INCorporated, ).īorrowing the avatar: psychedelia (1975) superheroes (1986) internet (1998)ģ) So why is it blue? Yeah, that is a question Cameron gets a lot. Manhattan (by Dave Gibbons in Moore, Alan (1986) Watchmen, Chapter IV, New York: DC Comics, p. 131) the second is the infamous naked superman, Dr. Een geïllustreerde geschiedenis, Amsterdam: Landshoff, p. in Rottenstein, Franz (1975) Het science fiction boek. The first one is “With psychedelia in hyperspace” (by Anon. So here are three images equal, three thousand words I spare you. But sometimes an image is worth a thousand words. I could substantiate this lineage by dropping a number of authoritative references (I sure do it in the article). Internet culture have borrowed from superhero comics. The same goes on with avatars: science-fiction writers have borrowed them from religion psychedelia have borrowed them from science-fiction superhero comics have borrowed them from psychedelia. Think Elvis appropriating rhythm’n’blues and turning it into rock’n’roll. “Cultural borrowing” is a social mechanism consisting in taking a style, a narrative or a visual canon originally developed in a certain context and transferring it into another one, thus attaining a fresh new meaning. In the article I maintain the avatar is mainly a borrowed notion. Admittedly, it sounds like James Cameron’s movie – Jake and his Na’vi alter ego through and through.Īnd I’m not accusing him or anyone of plagiarism. The main character, Octave, is a disabled young man that a mysterious doctor “who just came back from India” heals by swapping his body with a brand new one via an “electromagnetic equipment”. 1999)Ģ)Who came up with that? Apart from the Hindus, you mean? Well, French author Théophile Gautier published a novel by the same title in 1856. See for instance informational habitats: from popular applications like Messenger, to forgotten 3d communities such as Cybertown – the little bugger is all over the web.Īn avatar in the online world Cybertown (ca. In today’s popular culture it designates the presence of a human agent in a technologically-intensive environment. The Sanskrit word avatara, originally meant “embodiment of a god” and was mainly used to describe the human form Hindu god Vishnu used to assume to interact with mortal beings. An avatar is a technologically-enhanced surrogate body that a user “wears” to perform physically challenging tasks. ![]() So here I provide a summary of the main results of the article.ġ) Define “avatar”. Also, some simply can’t be bothered to go through 30 pages of socio-babbling. ![]() Now I assume some of you don’t speak French. Anyhow, in this article I gave form to a socio-visual genealogy of the avatar, as one of the main archetypes of contemporary culture. Yeah, well… maybe not that self-explanatorily, after all. Les avatars bleus, Autour de trois stratégies d’emprunt culturel au cœur de la cyberculture. It’ like a garage sale, where I give away those old records I used to cherish a lot, so that some freshman neighbour with deejaying penchants can make a mashup mp3 out of them.Ī few years ago, for example, the French journal Communications published an article of mine whose title, quite self-explanatorily, would read something like: Blue Avatars, about three strategies of cultural borrowing at the heart of computer culture.Īntonio A. And some of them still come handy to understand what the hell Cameron’s film is about. Visual genealogy: left The Lawnmower Man (1992) right Avatar (2009)Īnd a long history also means a lot of bibliographic references. ![]()
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