THE BLUE
The word on everyone’s lips for over a month has been
Avatar, the latest big-budget epic fantasy film from director James Cameron. The incessant buzz about the film has ranged from scathing critiques of its racial politics to euphoric acclaim for its stunning graphics.
I have been shocked by how many folks have vehemently condemned the film as racist. Don’t get me wrong – I firmly believe in calling it like it is and absolutely condemning/ rejecting/ blasting racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, etc. cultural products. But it is easy to bring one’s Race Analysis Goggles to a film like Avatar that so overtly considers themes of race and colonialism, and to leave those same goggles at home every time one enjoys a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy or action flick that is no less racist, sexist, or problematic, if not more so.
I do not aim to erase the flaws in Avatar in order to laud its worth. I flinched a fair amount during the movie, but no more than was standard for a trip to the movies (see: Sex and the City, Fast and Furious, et. al). Nonetheless, I would like to offer my own reading. I enjoyed Avatar for two reasons:
1) Zoe Saldaña – whose lead role in the film confirms that Dominican ladies make it to the future one way or another
2) The awesome ending, which provided a radical vision of power that was otherwise absent from the film
THE UGLY
While the bioluminescent forests and floating mountains of Pandora sure were pretty, there was much about the film that was just plain ugly.
For one, the plot hinged on a critique of corporate greed (the colonizers are ‘hired guns’ on a quest for the precious metal unobtanium), yet the film was supported by a
promotional partnership between 20th Century Fox and McDonald’s. So much for fighting empire and so much for consistency of ethics…
Secondly, the victory in the film is achieved through violence. People die and, ultimately, the balance of life is not preserved. As blogger,
Adrienne Maree Brown, points out in her review of the film, it is ironic and significant that during
Avatar, mainstream audiences found themselves cheering when the American military lost a preemptive, imperialist war. However, there is still war and there is still loss.
There is violence, albeit bright, stereoscopic violence, but violence nonetheless, and the American audience still gets to indulge in a romantic vision of war – the kind of destruction and death that comes with an orchestral score, yelps of victory, 3D explosions, gorgeous, heroic violence.
While the film’s critiques of violence and greed were incomplete, what I found most problematic about the film was its failure to challenge white supremacy.
Avatar is the story of a white American man named Jake Sully. He is the protagonist of the film and narrates much of the action. He discloses his thoughts to the viewer through a series of video logs that punctuate the narrative. He tells the story of Pandora and its people, just as James Cameron, another white American man, holds the pen and tells this story of colonization and resistance. The film’s mass appeal is largely due to its point of view; it is easy for viewers to like, understand, and believe someone like Jake Sully. If Jake Sully says the indigenous people, the Na’vi, are human and that their civilization should not be wiped out, then he is right and there is a great deal at stake morally in this particular conflict and instance of imperialism.
The history of Pandora is relayed to us by someone who, in our world, is part of the majority. Granted Jake is a renegade member of the majority – but aren’t they always? Isn’t the sexiest, most radical and praiseworthy white male the one who rebels against the hegemony that has placed him on the top and yet somehow miraculously remains King?
Like The Last Samurai, Dances with Wolves, and every other white supremacist fantasy about life with people of color, Avatar exalts Jake as a hero - the white dude who masters the customs and arts of a people by shedding his arrogance and dating an exotic native girl. Although Jake leaves behind the “dying world” of Earth, the nation of his birth, and his white body, he does not relinquish his privilege. In the final scene, Jake must die in order to gain new life. However, he does not fully die to himself because he has not died to his privilege. He merely asserts the same authority in a new skin.
This is the ugly of Avatar. The big, big ugly. My stomach did several flips when I saw the Na’vi bow to Jake. Blue-skinned body or not, Jake becoming the ruler of the Na’vi is a tremendous failure in the imagination of the filmmakers, who could dream up the awesome world of Pandora but could not conceive of a world in which the white man is not king.
What good is a story about the evils of colonization and the importance of struggling against oppression if the story upholds the myth of white supremacy?
THE REDEMPTIVE
Despite the film’s many problems, there were elements of the story that redeemed Avatar.
At the end of the movie, Neytiri, the badass Na'vi woman played by Zoe Saldaña, saves Jake twice. She saves his avatar body from destruction at the hands of a robot operated by a super-macho army colonel. She also saves his emaciated human body from suffocating on Pandora without an oxygen mask.
Moreover, Jake’s attempts to rally the Na’vi and save their way of life fail. During the battle scene, Jake tries to radio his friends and fellow warriors and discovers that they are all dead (human pilot Trudy Chacon, the avatar body of the scientist Norm, and the Na’vi warrior Tsu’tey are all gone). In this scene it is clear that the struggle has been lost under Jake's leadership.
The battle is not won until Eywa – the deity of the Na’vi people – enters the fray and defeats the invaders. She is the Savior. Jake may be the ruler of the Na’vi people (quite literally becoming the leader of one of the clans, the Omaticaya), but he is not a savior. I have no doubt that many viewers will indulge in this fantasy of Jake Sully as Savior, but I do not believe it is what is written in the film. To rule and to save are not the same.
Eywa, the goddess of the Na’vi, drives out the colonizers and protects Her people. As a deity that represents all of creation, she is the mass of all the memories, energies, and voices of the Na’vi and their ancestors. She is the most central element of their heritage and culture and the source of their victory and their strength. Although the indigenous belief in Eywa is ridiculed throughout the film by the corporate fat cats and marines, it is precisely this belief and this reality that triumphs over the oppressors.
Yes.
This ending alone was tough enough to redeem the film for me. The invaders leave. They lose and they leave. The people are saved by their own traditions and spiritual power, not some white guy who has seen the light and changed his ways.
In short, Avatar is worth watching. It will not change your life. Cameron’s racial politics are often clumsy and cliché, but the film still manages to offer visions of freedom and power that are refreshing and rare – for a big-budget, epic fantasy film.
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