James Cameron’s Avatar succeeds in its epic storytelling by taking a number of familiar myths and stories and subverting their preordained outcome to create a familiar but new story. These myths and stories include the classic intermediaries of Gandhi, George Steven’s Shane, Prometheus, and Moses. By taking elements from each one of these stories and grafting them onto a new cyan-blue entity Cameron creates a new myth with complexities that would leave René Descartes scratching his beard. This essay will explore the story of Jake Sully, the conflicted lonely intermediary of Avatar, and how his journey parallels the stories of the four aforementioned intermediaries. An intermediary is “someone who mediates between different social groups, between man and nature, between man and God, or some other constellation of forces (Suber, 219).” Intermediaries tend to be viewed as outsiders by the communities where they intervene. This often leads to a sad and lonely existence for intermediaries since they belong everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Some of the stories that involve intermediaries end like the film Shane, with the hero riding off into the sunset wounded and alone after mediating between homesteader and cattle baron. Other stories end like Moses who leads the Israelites to the Promise Land through God’s mediation but was never allowed to enter the land. James Cameron’s Avatar follows a different approach to the idea of the lonely intermediary. When we are first introduced to Jake Sully in Avatar he is alone and appears to be trapped by both his wheelchair and his thoughts. After Jake’s introduction we are taken from Earth to Pandora through Jake’s emotionless voice-over. Once we are settled on Pandora, Cameron subverts our expositional expectations by revealing that the preceding voice-over was actually Jake creating a Sterocam video diary of his adventures for documentation purposes. This not only explains the lifeless voice-over it also gives a hint at Cameron’s intentions for his intermediary. Unlike other intermediaries, Jake is not content to be stuck in his head. He no longer wants to live the lonely experience that society has forced upon him. What he wants and what he desperately needs is a home. When Jake first lands on Pandora his fellow soldiers immediately reject him. “Seen a lotta guys leave this place in a wheelchair, never seen anybody show up in one.” When he meets Grace, the woman that will later become his mother figure, she tells him: “I don’t need you, I need your brother.” Initially the only person on Pandora that doesn’t reject Jake is Quaritch, who asks Jake to bring him intel from “the hostiles’ camp.” Quaritch’s respect toward Jake adds a layer of understanding to Jake’s betrayal of the Na’vi (read naïve). Eventually Jake does find the home he is looking for with the Na’vi. Rene Descartes in his book the “Passion of the Soul” describes the human body as a machine that is controlled by the immaterial soul at the pineal gland. This separation of mind and body is commonly referred to as mind-body dualism. In Avatar, James Cameron addresses this issue through the link unit that allows Jake’s soul to travel from his human body to his five-fingered Na’vi avatar. For Cameron the soul is separate and is able to leave the body. This is an important element in the film’s climax when Jake permanently leaves his human body to become fused with his avatar. The link unit is an important physical metaphor throughout the film for the role of the intermediary. Jake by the very essence of the tech is the ultimate intermediary. Not only is he able to act as a go-between the corporation and the Na’vi, he actually is able to physically change his body to fit in with both the natives and the corporation. As the film progresses and Jake spends more and more time in his avatar an emotional shift occurs in Jake that is highlighted by physical transformation (read: clothes and build). Instead of being a doppelganger in cargo shorts and t-shirts, he begins to wear the war paint and cloth of the tribe. This is as if he is trying to fit in with the tribe in both body and mind. Jack’s physical transformation is classic intermediary. This is evident through the examples of Gandhi, going from a suit to a robe during his protest for Indian independence, and Lieutenant Dunbar going native in Dances with Wolves. Similar to Gandhi, Jake puts his human body on a hunger strike. He does this as a silent protest to the human’s destruction and for his desire to kill his human body to permanently go native. Jake gets his wish to become a Na’vi when his soul is transferred through Pandora and into Jake through Eywa (read Yahweh); this is perhaps Cameron’s greatest subversion of the intermediary. Not only does the hero save the village, in the end he is also allowed to become a villager and finally gets what he desires most: a home in both body and village. - Luke Slendebroek grew up in Grand Rapids, Mi and is a graduate of Calvin College and Compass Academy.  He is currently prepping his UCLA thesis film entitled “We Run Westchester” and is finishing up post production on two short films “Grapple!” and “Holding Pattern”. Recently, Luke completed principle photography on a short documentary film for the Gates Foundation about an extraordinary team of inner city high school students attempting to build the first 100-mile per gallon hybrid car.