Avatar: Fire and Ash adds a new villain to the Avatar universe, in a form of Varang (
Oona Chaplin, a grand-daughter of
Charlie Chaplin ), an evil Na'vi lady with a tribe of fire-hungry psychopaths, traumatized by the shier insanity of human destruction. As she says in the film, when she was little she witnessed a huge fire ( probably caused by human machines ) that destroyed a lot of the forest. There was no Eywa to save them, or provide for them, so she turned to the "dark side", so to speak. So how the writer and director
James Cameron show that she is evil? Well, she rapes people.
Avatar 2009 has a romantic scene between Jake (
Sam Worthington ) and Neytiri (
Zoe SaldaΓ±a ) where they both decide to connect to one another via the little dangling thingie on the tip of their ponytails, called Tsaheylu.
This Tsaheylu is used to control animals on the planet Pandora. A rider of a Pandonan horse would connect via Tsaheylu to the horse, making the horse "read the rider's mind", which is how the rider is controlling where the horse needs to go.
A Tsaheylu done between two Na'vi is therefor considered to be a very personal, very romantic moment, similar to sex between two members of the human race. Now, James Cameron did clarify that Tsaheylu is not used by Na'vi to make babies. And that they have different genitalia for that.
Avatar: Fire and Ash actually gets us closer into seeing that aspect. I think I remember a shot where you can see Neytiri's nipple. And there is a scene of one Na'vi woman giving a birth to a baby, and the baby is coming from between her legs. So there must be a hole there, even though James Cameron is using an
Austin Powers technique of not showing the hole in question.
In any case though, Tsaheylu between two Na'vi is still a sort of romantic, almost sexual moment. Not to make babies, per se. But it is an emotional and highly personal thing.
When we are introduced to Varang, we immediately see how she Tsaheylu-rapes people before killing them. And also she has a tendency to cut Tsaheylu off of people before killing them. Strong, fucking, stuff, mate!
So obviously, ( major spoilers ) in the end of the film, as a sort of revenge thingy, Varang is Tsaheylu-revenge-raped by a member of the Sally family. Specifically she is Tsaheylu-raped by Kiri, who is supposed to be about 14 or so, played by 76 year old
Sigourney Weaver. This, ladies and gentlemen, begs for a psycho-sexual analysis of James Cameron.
Now in the context of the film it makes a whole lot of sense. Varang is so bad-shit crazy, and her mind is filled with so much anger and hate that when she Tsaheylus to somebody, that person stands no chance against her mind. Remember Tsaheylu is a form on mind connection. When Quaritch (
Stephen Lang ) is capable to stand against her Tsaheylu-rape attack, it is kind of impressive. And also kind of makes you see that Quaritch himself probably has a lot of bugs of his own. And ( spoilers again ) it makes a lot of sense then, why Quaritch and Varang become a couple.
Just to go on a little tangent here. I know I need to finish how Kiri Tsaheylu-rapes Varang makes sense. But this Quaritch and Varang romance thing is kind of interesting in and of itself. To some extent it reminds me of the romance between
Sean Penn and
Teyana Taylor in
One Battle After Another. In that movie she points a gun at him, in the beginning of the film, only to find out that he has a strong hard-on. It kind of makes him a bit more terrifying. But kind of develops his character in a weird direction that sets off the whole rest of the plot.
If we think of Tsaheylu as a proxy-genitalia and remember that Varang Tsaheylu-raped Quaritch in a heat of a battle, you can read this scene as a similar scene. It is as if she is the kind of woman who grabs guys by their balls while fighting. But Quaritch, surprisingly, is getting turned on, by that grabbing. It is then not so surprising that he willingly goes to her to try to seduce her, and with her, her entire clan, into joining him. Which also unsurprisingly leads to some hellish sexual tension on screen, and ultimately to them becoming a couple.
Back to Kiri Tsaheylu-raping Varang, and how it makes sense. In
The Way of Water it was established that Kiri possesses a weird ability to control Pandoran life with her mind. Her Tsaheylu skills are so intense that she kind of has a superpower. Think about this in the context of Varang. Varang is Tsaheylu-raping people because she believes that she is the most fucked up. She is impressed by Quaritch, because Quaritch is at least as fucked up. But Kiri has a fucking Tsaheylu super-power. Kiri Tsaheylu-raping Varang, as a form of revenge, is the ultimate takedown. Whatever bugs Varang has in her brain have no chance withstanding the sheer might of Kiri's Tsaheylu.
But here is the problem: If Tsaheylu is a proxy-genitalia, does James Cameron say that this 14 year old girl has a bigger dick than Varang, and therefore also a bigger dick than Quaritch? And if so, what does that say about James Cameron?
Bringing
One Battle After Another brings with it an interesting analogy. In James Cameron's filmography exists a small little film you probably never heard about, starring the same actor as in
One Battle After Another. The film in question is called
Titanic. In that film, a 17 year girl played by
Kate Winslet ( who, by the way, is also in
Avatar: Fire and Ash ), jokes about men's pipis being small. Obviously she puts it in a round-about polite kind of way. She asserts that their obsession with how big Titanic is, has some Fraudian connotations to it. But if you read between the lines, it seems like both
Titanic and
Avatar: Fire and Ash tries to do a very feminist argument: claiming that women have more balls than man. James Cameron basically measures pipis between the guys and the girls. And he find more and more clever ways to do so.
Sigourney Weaver playing Kiri is also quite important. If you remember, the first time Cameron worked with Weaver was on
Aliens. A movie where a rape-monster almost rapes her, together with a little girl. Hm... Wait a second...
In my review of Cameron's first film
Piranha II, I observed some trends that would populate Cameron's later movies. There are even connections between that film and the
Avatar franchise. A lot of the
horny teenagers sub-plot in
Piranha II resembles the water section of
The Way of Water. And on the whole
Piranha II is kind of similarly horny to
Fire and Ash. In
Piranha II when two 15 year-olds are sexily making out under a pouring waterfall, there is a wardrobe malfunction on the girl, and we see her nipple. Later in
Titanic James Cameron makes a scene where we see both nipples of a 17 year old girl. In
Aliens he specifically invents a situation where a 10 year old is about to be raped by an alien rape-monster. And then in
Fire and Ash the arc is complete. A 14 year old ( played by Sigourney Weaver ) revenge-rapes an evil woman, to show her that her pipi is indeed larger.
I think that might be James Cameron's masterpiece...
Happy Hacking!!!
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