Actually, I did know, although I may of momentarily forgotten.
From BoingBoing:
In a Twitter exchange, Anil Dash just reminded me that the word “avatar” comes from from the Sanskrit word Avatãra. The word means, more or less, “descent.” More, from a related blog post at Heritage Key:
But while the modern day meaning implies gaming and interaction, the original definition has a very different meaning. In Hinduism, avatars act as manifestations of deities. This occurs when a god has decided to come to our world by taking a human or animal form.The most well-known avatars were associated with the god Vishnu, who often appeared in our world to restore good in the world when evil threatened to corrupt it. The deity would do so by fighting off demons as a fish or a boar. At other times, Vishnu would lead armies to victory as an eventual king (Sounds a little similar to the plot of the movie Avatar?).
Bet you didn’t know: “Avatar” is a Sanskrit word – Boing Boing.
One of my lecturers the other day put forward a pretty compelling argument for “Avatar” as a retelling of Oedipus…
Jake Sully is lame, like Oedipus.
He sides with Mother (Earth) and has to turn on and kill Father (represented by culture and the invading military).
He went into it more but I can’t remember it exactly, interesting theory though.
Pretty compelling indeed. Frankly, as excited as I was to see Avatar it wasn’t for the story. In fact, I dunno if i’m even going to bother unless i can see it in 3D imax. Maybe in high definition on video so I can oooh and ahhh at the pretty cgi.
Oh yeah, and don’t forget how Avatar is really racist and permeates the hetero pathology. Did I say pathology? I meant ideology…. or maybe i meant dominant paradigm… I definately meant something.
Did you hear about the dylexic with the opedipal complex? He killed his mother and fucked his father!
I just made that up!
Although, frankly i think we may have all been better off if it had remained unmade. I don’t think ‘dylexic’ is right either…