Avatar Teen Speak

 

Teen Speak has taken an interesting turn in entertainment media of late -- or perhaps I'm just now hearing it.

At some point, adolescent male dialogue in television and film morphed into a hybrid of urban homie / surfer dude / military grunt, even in programs created in non-American, English-speaking countries or set in extraterrestrial space in some future millennia, like the just-released Avatar: The Way of Water.

It's all "xxxx, dude" or "dude, xxxx." Every close male companion is a "bro." Things are "sick," "hot," or "lame." This gives the young folks an air of undisciplined cockiness, wholly unreliable and frequent embarrassments to their families.

One of the central subplots of James Cameron's latest epic adventure is the relationship between the film's hero, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a former Marine whose consciousness has been inserted into a 10-foot-tall, blue avatar living on the planet Pandora, home of such beings.

While leading a group that is trying to turn back colonization by Earthlings, Sully and his wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), are parents to four children; the two older being boys, Neteyam and Lo'ak, Sully is raising as if they were Marine recruits. The younger wants especially desperately to win his father's praise. (Yes, a familiar plot device.)

Also a frequent visitor in the household is a human child called Spider, who was fathered and abandoned by Sully's sworn enemy, a Marine colonel named Quaritch (Stephen Lang). Sully's empathic older daughter, Tsireya, has a special attraction to Spider, even though he's shorter than she and not the same color. Interesting commentary, that.

The native Padorans like Neytiri speak a native tongue (some alien language concocted by Cameron, no doubt), and their English has a tropical islander lilt; they sound like Tahitians. This gives the threat of invasion and colonization a familiar ring.

The different speech patterns also represent generational differences, the clash between old ways and new. But at several important moments in the film, it's the children who lead, over their parents' objections and fears. Their dynamic heroism has been instilled in them by their elders and leads Sully to say with contrition to his younger son, "I see you."

It's a powerful moment.