Were you wondering exactly how those ten-foot-tall blue aliens did it? Me too. And we're going to find out—when the DVD is released.
In the film, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) "mates" with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) under the magic tree. The two share deep meaningful yellow-eyed stares and then one long kiss, and in hindsight it's slightly weird that another alien species would actually "kiss" each other—an extremely Earthling thing to do—but whatever. We then cut relatively quickly to the "morning after" moments. Leaving us to wonder, how do they do it? In a group interview, Saldana explained what we were missing, and gave us some clues as to how the Na'vi people do the blue deed. Apparently the hair tail syncing system, which the Na'vi use for just about everything, is heavily involved.... I guess we'll have to wait until the DVD is released, since James Cameron himself promised to a group of reporters that the scene would be on there, but we're guessing it will be pretty tame because of the aforementioned PG-13 rating.
Okay: I thought it was odd that there wasn't a moment when Avatar's hero, Jake Sully, an earthy, cynical ex-Marine, commented on his new alien junk. Whatever was under that loincloth had to be pretty tiny—the loincloth sure was—and it's hard to imagine a Marine not commenting on his new equipment. Yeah, yeah: PG 13, a film for the whole family, not a blue movie. But if they could show Sigourney Weaver smoking like a burning forest they could show Sully checking out his new Na'vi junk.
As for Avatar's sexual politics... Jake and Neytiri fall in love—no one could see that coming, right—and get it on the woods despite the fact that Neytiri is betrothed to Tsu'Tey, the dude who is supposed to lead the tribe after Neytiri's father dies, a dude with... um... much more distinctly African features than Jake or Neytiri or any of the other Na'vi. (Cameron was able to get away with stuff in Avatar—by making the Na'vi blue?—that George Lucas wasn't able to get away with in Phantom Menace. Cameron's blue Na'vi are noble savages; Jar-Jar Binks, who was brown, is clearly Amos and Andy.) After Jake and Neytiri "take" each other, they announce to the tribe that they did the deed and they are now mated for life and... that's it. Tsu'Tey is out, Jake is in, and there's nothing can be done about it. It's unclear whether Na'vi culture requires pairs to mate for life of if there's something about Na'vi biology that does—something about those magic tails—but the Na'vi are virgins until they take a mate. (The Na'vi mate for life, but Jake can trade in his flying dragon for a flashier one later in movie.)
That school Sigourney Weaver's character was running on Pandora for the Na'vi? Was it accepting abstinence education grants from the federal government?
Yeah, yeah: it's movie, it's a fantasy. But I think it's interesting that Cameron has created this enviro fable about a world inhabited by a race of beings who, unlike his own corrupt and indicted humanity, live in perfect balance with nature. And yet in this fable Cameron presents us with a highly unnatural view of the way sex works in a world where beings live in perfect balance with nature. Everything on Pandora is in harmony with nature; the Na'vi live in synch with natural forces and rhythms. The Na'vi are pure, humanity is corrupt. But lifelong monogamy—the ideal Cameron presents us with in Avatar—is unnatural. It is a corruption, a creation of human culture, and there's nothing natural about it.
In a related development: there's a Tiger Woods sex tape out there somewhere.
