Avatar and American Imperialism
by zunguzungu
It’s useful to keep talking about Avatar, I think, but only obliquely; the debate between “I am outraged!” vs. “I am entertained!” is utterly counterproductive and sterile, and not only because it stages a false opposition between subjective impressions, or that the real outrage is precisely that we are entertained. That kind of problem-space produces more heat than light because the formulation seals off the film’s borders, limiting us to a formalistic analysis of a movie whose form has been already been crafted in anticipation of exactly that kind of critique. Cameron saw the charge of “racism” coming a mile away, and invites it because he’s stacked the deck in his favor. “My representations of natives are racist?” he asks “But observe how awesome and noble and heroic they are!” And, of course, he is completely right, at least by reference to the very limited terms through which we Americans are willing to understand racism to be an actual thing that exists.
When we allow the terms of our analysis to be set by the auteur, in other words, we more or less limit our readings to the set of possible interpretations that have been made available for us. And the more important point is that it is not a coincidence, for example, that no real critique of presently obtaining American militarism is possible in a movie with no real American military presence; as SEK nicely pointed out, the evil military bastard cliché in Avatar is not a representative of an imperialist state’s military apparatus but of its privatized (and externalized) mercenary wing, its Blackwater. And a pro-military critique of Blackwater is fully possible, especially for someone like Cameron, whose obsession has long been the betrayal of the good soldier by corporatism. Yet what are we to say about the good American soldier who, with the best of intentions, participates in a vicious war of imperial oppression, that just happens to make the world safe for American corporations? The American soldier who pilots drones in any of the five countries we are conducting military operations is not necessarily a bad and racist person when he or she kills innocent people for bad and racist reasons; that is, in fact, precisely the point: how is it that people who are not essentially evil end up doing evil things? Getting angry at Blackwater is fine, but it allows the much larger and more pernicious activities of state-sanctioned militarism disappear into the margins. Which is how you defend the indefensible: acknowledge the critique but change the subject on which it is directed by ushering a much more racist and bastard cliché onto center stage.
Another way to think about the bad guys in Avatar, after all, would be the security apparatus of the British East India company, or, more generally, the corporate presence that has so often preceded and made inevitable a state-authored sequel. After all, what do you think is going to happen next? The movie ends right at the moment when the native uprising against United Fruit has apparently succeeded, but right before the Yankee paratroopers bomb the living fuck out of the Na’vi in defense of national interests. When natives kill white people, for whatever reason, white governments always seem to find ways to make them pay for the offense, a fact that Avatar works hard to forget. But the surge is coming.
Which is why Sepoy’s reading, for example, is a much smarter approach to the film, because he refuses to allow Cameron to set the terms for the critique. For one thing, this is exactly right:
“Avatar mirrors the techno-capital apogee of this American empire as well the grave ambivalence at the heart of it. Avatar is our Crystal Palace and our Delhi Durbar of 1911 as well our Hastings/Burke moment…Where previous Empires (without going into whether America is or isn’t one) created magnificent physical edifices of their power and glory, we build monuments of light and shadows (3D) that provoke much of the same reactions: awe, glory, camaraderie. We are united in our appreciation of the technological wonder that created this spectacle and united in our consumption of it.”
But where he rally gets to the heart of the film is his observation that
“The war in Avatar is not between the haves and the have-nots (one with tech, the other without; one with mineral resources, the other without) but between different ideas of having and not-having. At some level, however appropriated, Avatar grants some equivalence to the notion that these two civilizations can indeed differ in their reading of what constitutes as essential for survival. But the debate over the Iraq War is not, and will not be for a while, about granting equivalence – either hypothetical or literal – to our civilizational mission (democracy and freedom) and their claim to self-rule and self-governance. In that frame, there may be a mild nod towards Iraq, but there is no critique of war in Avatar. It is pro-war all the way. Eco-tech vs. mech-tech.”
American “adventurism,” after all, has usually conceded the point that being culturally or phenotypically different is not necessarily a sufficient casus belli, but it’s rarely stopped us from finding others. See, for example, the sinking of the Maine, any steps towards nationalization of private industry or socialist rhetoric, 9-11, weapons of mass destruction, etc. Some of these things happened and some of them didn’t, but that’s not the point; the point is that when imperialist hawks want to go to war in a place like Iraq or Cuba or Grenada or Vietnam, they eventually find a reason not directly to do with cultural difference. Which is why Avatar’s defense of cultural difference and its fantasy of native harmony with nature not only don’t contradict an American-style imperialism but also allow its narrative to point unerringly toward that escalation: to the extent this movie is in any sense about the real world, it is the fact that the natives succeed in fighting off the evil corporate imperialists that will make statist military escalation inevitable. Killing white mercenaries means the regular army will be close behind to avenge and legitimize their deaths; when brown people with spears kill white people with helicopters, it usually only ends one way.
I’m also interested by the point Jonathan raised in a comment to Sepoy‘s post, that since the film is a story Cameron started writing in the nineties, it forms an interesting kind of critique of both Iraq wars, to which I would add the observation that it also illustrates how easily a Clinton-era narrative can not only incorporate but positively channel a Bush-era ethos. We like to pretend that the two are fundamentally opposed, yet the counterfactual in which President Gore invades Iraq and Afghanistan (on the advice of SecDef Powell) is not only utterly plausible, it’s even likely. We don’t even have to point out how hawkish every democratic vice-presidential nominees always seem to be (and Gore was quite the hawk on Iraq, we like to forget); the scenario in which President Obama escalates in Afghanistan (on the advice of Bush SecDef Gates) is a factual. And we tend to forget Clinton-era adventurism in the face of the much more obvious example of Bush, but it’s precisely that contrast that gives positive cover to the former, as it is doing for Obama’s escalation right now. In the same sense, the Avatar narrative implies a surge in the future, but avoids having to address it by only implying it, by creating a false narrative closure after the big battle climax. But real life goes one, which is the real perniciousness of the movie, and its true vacuousness; the only answers it has are stupid ones: the natives should fight back! Gloriously! And then, magically, they will win!
Visual pleasure. Narrative cinema.
That Avatar perpetuates undesirable stereotypes and misunderstandings about indigenous people is one criticism I can get on board with. It doesn’t sink the whole movie for me, though. That the movie fails to be anti-war is also hard to argue with. But that the movie is not anti-imperialist (or insufficiently anti-imperialist?) seems a misplaced claim.
Am I the only one who experienced–and enjoyed–the movie as anti-imperialist wish fulfillment, its primitivist racialism (racialist primitivism?) notwithstanding? I know the whole thing didn’t make a lot of sense, but what’s wrong with a little romantic license? I enjoyed seeing the guys with guns lose for a change (and then saddened that this has never really happened, at least not in a sustained and sustainable fashion). The movie doesn’t set out a workable or plausible response to imperialism, but it does move us to be saddened and outraged at what’s done in imperialism’s (and America’s) name, and that in and of itself is more than we see in most adventure blockbusters. It’s certainly a sentiment I wouldn’t mind seeing more of (and it’s streets ahead of the cheap and stupid racism and militarism of, say, Transformers 2–although that’s hardly a ringing endorsement for a film).
Are you actually arguing that Cameron is “defending the indefensible” here? That he does this by taking our attention off the state and placing it onto caricatured and hateable corporate mercenaries? I just don’t see it.
I think that you and SEK are making far too much of the mercenary angle. I for one managed to make it through the movie thoroughly confused about whether these were mercenaries or current US marines on assignment (secondment) to a corporation. I doubt most audience members would pay attention to what is a relatively fine distinction. What’s important is that the the bad guys are pretty clearly the jarheads and they’re pretty clearly American (except for the oddly-Australian Sully, but we can ignore that). The lead antagonist is not the corporate executive but the marine. That in itself is fairly remarkable, and the distinction between state and corporation is not one I think should concern us too much. Isn’t the whole point that the two can be remarkably indistinguishable–not only today, but all the way back to the East India Company? Or would Avatar only work for you if the choppers had stars and stripes painted onto them?
Anyway, I appreciate reading your critiques, however much I’m irritated at having to interrogate my enjoyment of the film.
Mark, I totally agree with you. I don’t see any point in bending over backwards to expose the film’s sinister colonialism. Or its “stupid answers.” For that matter, what are the “smart” answers? And having the natives fight back may be melodramatic, but is it “stupid?” Huh, Zungu!? Teach me!
Dudes, “but I liked it, and I am a good person!” just is not an argument.
Well, that little bit of condescension clears everything up, then. Thanks, Ncecire.
(I take your condescension and raise you a snippy sarcasm! Your move!)
Except that I did have an argument or two. In particular, that Zungu’s take on the state/mercenary split and its consequences for the politics of the movie just isn’t convincing. The bad guys technically weren’t state actors? So what–they might as well have been. And even if I’ve missed something key about how the corporation is presented, I just can’t get that worked up about a film being opposed to corporate as opposed to state skullduggery.
Does the film offer stupid answers to the problem of imperialism? Sure, but who on earth goes into a blockbuster expecting to find a policy proposal–or a revolutionary manifesto? Sepoy’s right that there is no “critique of war” here–just a gesture against aggression that evokes a pleased response on the part of anti-imperialists like me or Sepoy’s smug Berlin audience–so why go to all the trouble of pulling apart that “critique” and claiming that it’s “pernicious”? We might hope for more, but I think Zungu would have to do a good deal more work to show, as he seems to be suggesting, that in its glorification of native resistance the film builds support for policies of military escalation.
I saw it as anti-imperialist wish-fulfillment and fantasy. Not the stuff that a successful leftist anti-(war, corporate, etc) politics is made of, but nothing “pernicious.”
[...] related: Aaron expands his comments [...]
I can write nothing short, it seems, so prepare yourself for a preposterously long comment.
First off, I want to resist anything like the enjoyable vs. racism distinction which I started by foregrounding my resistance to having; Natalia’s comment might be a bit harsh, but I’ll say a softer version of the same thing: the fact that it is enjoyable, on any level, is precisely why it’s worth pulling it apart and taking as seriously as possible. And the argument that it is better than transformers is a non-starter for me; I fully endorse Sepoy’s argument that this movie is *us,* which is why I want to critique it: I want us to be better than this movie.
So, then. First of all, if you place this movie in the larger context of Cameron’s work, the mercenary/marine distinction looks a lot less incidental; it’s a leitmotif for him, as it was in the larger 80‘s big budget Hollywood milieu out of which he sprang (or sprang out of him, in a lot of ways). But the point of it is to retroactively prove that the grunts are good people who only happen to have been betrayed and misled by their higher ups, even if they do terrible things. In the 80′s, this was a Vietnam war narrative, a way of retroactively justifying what American soldiers did by placing the burden of the sin on the government, a (not coincidentally) conveniently conservative narrative, a la Rambo II (which Cameron wrote the first script of). Nowadays, it serves a different purpose: cleansing the American soldier of the sins of those who give the orders is a way of maintaining the myth that “we” are essentially good, and that we only happen to have done bad things because of a few bad seeds. Two points: A. having a conversation about racists, rather than racism, is the quickest way to resolve nothing, which is why the right always turns it into that formulation (and we should resist it for that reason; this is the jmooth doctrine). And B, it’s the very “we are an essentially virtuous people and the military man is our highest embodiment of that virtue” that makes it impossible to make an anti-war film. After the Iraq war, it is virtually impossible to argue that America can do no wrong, which is what I mean by the “indefensible.” What you do instead, if you want to defend American virtue, is find a scapegoat for that wrongness, such that “we” can be understood to still be the best goddamn nation in the world, fuck yeah because it isn’t OUR hands that are soaked in blood; it’s the hands of the bad people that misled us. But this is disingenuous; to the extent that there is a “we” that one can use in generalizing about the US, that “we” has a whole lot to answer for, and my critique of the movie is, in part, that Avatar does a lot of work to relieve us from actually doing that kind of reflection. The point isn’t that we should suffer, necessarily (as Kvond had me saying in the previous comment thread), but rather that just as we haven’t, in any serious way, acknowledged exactly what it was that “we” have done, Avatar makes it unnecessary for Jake to do that kind of thing either. It’s because we’ve gotten rid of Bush but kept the Bush doctrine that we’re going to keep making the same kinds of mistakes or committing the same kinds of war crimes; by the same token, it’s because Avatar piles all its evil onto the military commander that it avoids ever thinking about how it was that Jake Sully came to do the terrible things he did; he regrets those things the same way the official American “we” officially regrets the Iraq war: you regret what happened but you don’t understand (refuse to understand) why it happened.
For me, then, it’s exactly the point that Avatar is a pro-war *and* anti-imperialist film; nothing says American empire like fighting a war to liberate natives from their tyrannical oppressors, after all. Saddam killed his own people, the war of 1898 was fought to liberate Cuba from Spain (but just happened to have the effect of making it an American puppet state), and the only possible engagement with Darfur is “boots on the ground.” But fighting a war to end imperialism is a strategy that rarely works out well in the long run for the people that live there, whereas it’s an excellent way to rule the world (however unofficially) from Washington. To officially rule the world and call the world your colonial territory, that’s bad; but because the American empire grew out of (and against the grain of) those European empires that unapologetically used the word “empire” to describe what they were doing, it justified its ability to do basically the same thing they did, only unofficially, as an anti-colonial empire, an empire for liberty as they say. In other words, it’s precisely because American expansionism has so consistently occurred under the aegis of liberating colonial people from their oppressive tyrants, that being “anti-imperialist” and pro-military is, in my books, worse than nothing: disclaiming empire is a great way of providing cover for American expansion. Name an American expansionist and I’ll show you someone who was vocally anti-imperialist. This isn’t quite an argument against the movie per se, but I feel like it’s necessary as an explanation for why I reject the “at least it’s anti-imperialist” defense; if I‘m being vague or unconvincing, it might be because I‘m writing a dissertation about this, and I‘ve convinced myself sufficiently to forget what needs to be forthrightly argued for those who *aren‘t* living in my head.
As for the movie itself, I might be willing to grant that pernicious is a strong word, but I also might not. After all, is it “pernicious” that a Charles Dickens novel can show you everything that’s wrong with the vicious predatory capitalism of Victorian England and then offers, as his answer, an impossible rich philanthropist arriving to throw money at the problem? At best it’s a non-answer, and in this case, I would say that a non-answer is not a neutral thing. This movie is not unlike that, to the extent that it is about the real world: it shows you the vicious racist inhumanity of empire-capitalism and then offers the least realistic answer possible, the notion that the “good” guys should just unite and fight back. But I think it’s an attractive answer precisely because it‘s so unrealistic: we all know that natives mostly always lose when they fight back, but wouldn’t it be a fun awesome world if that fantasy were true? Luckily, though, it isn’t, allowing we Americans to enjoy being kings of the world without having to take responsibility for it. After all, in reality, when Indians sack the fort, the cavalry shows up six months later and burns every single village they can find to the ground; when Cubans win a revolution with the Spanish empire in 1898, Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders show up to put white people back in charge; and when “insurgents” kill white military types, mercenary or otherwise, white governments get upset and then they get even. That’s how unofficial military engagements become official, as with the gulf of Tonkin, etc, etc.
Which is why there’s a middle term missing from Mark’s account of my argument that “in its glorification of native resistance the film builds support for policies of military escalation.” My point is that, if you are a rapacious imperialist capitalist bastard, nothing makes your job easier than violent resistance from natives with spears, especially when they win the first time (see, for example, Fort Laramie, a link I heartily, heartily endorse). Cause then you get to play the victim, the civilized pacifier fighting against the bloodthirsty primitives who started it, as you burn down their houses and villages. That’s why, at the beginning of almost every state-colonial project, you’ll find much hyped atrocities against “our” people (who, because “our” people are virtuous and good, cannot possibly have had it coming). And since “spears” will always lose to white phosphorus in the long run, a short run victory for spears is actually in the best interests of the white phosphorus people.
At the same time, while military might is unstable in its own ways, it is almost never direct violent resistance that destabilizes it; despite the Fanonian/Che myths that leftists often like to indulge in, the vast majority of stable transitions from colonial domination towards something like democracy have occurred mostly nonviolently, and the classic instances of anticolonial revolution have tended *not* to turn out well for the people who live there. I’m not trying to make a claim about whether or not violent resistance to tyranny is or isn’t *justifiable*; I’m just saying it’s a bad answer to the problem, that negotiated political solutions rather than military solutions are the only possible way to de-escalate. Which makes my major problem with Avatar — the reason why its answers are stupid — the fact that when it looks at the terrible things that are done by American expansionism, it doesn’t provides a fantasy of a solution, it provides a fantasy *instead* of a solution. Instead of thinking about how to end imperialism, it produces a fantasy world where you can make war to end war, where escalating a conflict functions to de-escalate it, letting us have out video-game love of violence while still righteously deploring its effects. But it’s incredibly dishonest to do so.
re: eco-tech/mech-tech as pro-war + anti-imperial: There’s another problem, too. The film’s conflating of Iraq with British colonies and with Native Americans allows protracted analysis of the colonial paradigm without offering much to work with in the way of substantive. That he baits racism with “nobility” and then condescends with superior knowledge of pandoran culture is superfluous when pandoran culture is one) a mish-mash of various native american stereotypes that doesn’t take into account how their rebel/warrior culture is an example of aggressive commonalities that also defies racial categorization and two) that conflating Iraqis with Native Americans is condescending to modern Iraqi society in a way that perpetuates the “clash of civilizations” myth that’s used to justify pre-emptive aggression.
Political solutions are obviously preferable to military solutions becaues the political solutions were already existing before their necessity manifested itself. Making a movie about Iraq with Native American avatars is no worse than Paul Bremer arriving in Iraq and calling for a new constitution when a constitution already existed but just happened to be bastardized/destroyed by Saddam Hussein. Not only that, but the false dichotomy of pandoran/american ignores the factions within those groups. If we’re going to talk about Iraq with Pandora than what about the Sunnis/Shiites/Kurds? If we’re going to talk about imperialism, what about the structural inequalities existing within the homebase? The movie almost explicitly ignores that when its only black extra vehemently supports the general’s statement on blowing a racial crater in their memory.
This comment might read as combative, but I promise it’s not, I’ve enjoyed both of your posts a lot! Especially the last comment which is like a post in itself, where you bring third world liberation in the vein of fanon/che into the same discussion as territorial expansion schemes established to “liberate”.
I’m glad I came across your post, Adam; I enjoyed it a great deal and it made me have some thoughts that may roll out of my head onto the blog. Or not. But one thing that your commented reminded me of is that, while you are completely right about the movie’s incoherence wrt conflating plains indians and Iraqi’s, this also is necessitated by a particular kind of ideological work that it does, the transformation of a present day and ongoing conflict into one that is no longer threatening, because it happened centuries ago. As Socimages noted:
“it is a safe fantasy because the fight is over. During most of the encounter between Europeans and the indigenous populations in the Americas, stereotypes were cruel and dehumanizing. The “noble savage” stereotype that we are familiar with emerged only after the threat of American Indian resistance was long gone. We re-cast our enemy in romantic terms only after we won the war. How nice for us. It turns out our foe was a worthy one, making us look all the more impressive for being the victor. We can now pretend that we had deep respect for them all along.”
I think this is one of the other reasons why the Na’vi are so hysterically identified with nature; if they are completely a part of their world, then they can’t be a part of ours, can’t become “modern.” There’s nothing scary about ethnic difference; what’s really scary to western imperialists is the prospect of “them” becoming richer and more powerful on “our” terms. But the Na’vi are a safe fantasy of difference because they will never do that.
Honored either way! I’m glad you enjoyed it. Related (shameless plug), you might be into this District 9 post i had on my other blog. http://malteserubble.blogspot.com/2009/08/district-9-is-fucking-chop-shop-go-rent_5050.html
Socimages brings up a good point, mollification by evasive ignorance, and also makes District 9 sound daring in comparison. So, painting Iraqis (blue) as a anachronistic noble savages, despite the perpetuation of clash of civilizations mythology that entails, is another way to disconnect from the ramifications of sympathetic involvement. In the sequel (they’re planning a trilogy), they COULD, perhaps, take in the post-uprising recolonizing of Pandora, with the trail of tears and reservation relocations (which are all kinda suggested pre-rebellion with the implication that the audience may understand their real life consequences) as well as gambling dens, in which a few Na’vi become richer on earth terms but in no way powerful. If they do, it can further the noble savage stereotype with “look at what they/we’ve become” eulogizing for nature. I don’t think they will, though, at the moment there’s something about other planets and the continuing story of Jake and Neytiri. Obviously, even with all that, in which the mollification won’t be just through post-genocidal mythologizing but actually explored via physical manipulation during the overpowering street sweeping, it would be insanely problematic as the symbolism still involves an actual racial difference.
I hadn’t heard the noble savage exclusively used in the context of Native Americans before. I was under the impression that it was also included in colonial africa/anywhere to separate what the colonizer’s would delineate as the wheat from the chaff, setting a benchmark on model citizensip defined by submission. It turns out I was off. There’s the magical negro, the good arab, and various other counterstereotypes but I can’t find the specific classification of what I just described.
Also, re: “Fanonian/che myths that leftists often like to indulge in” ever see Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Third Generation?
Also also, re: Avatar, ever see Gillo Pontecorvo’s Burn?