Avatar and the American Man-Child: “Don’t you want to be an Indian little boy, and put feathers in your hair?”
by zunguzungu
“I am a firm believer in children living out their lives in the mythical stage: in the period when they ask and answer themselves questions about nature…The child is a born savage…the child is born a naturalist…[To the children:] Don’t you want to be an Indian little boy, and put feathers in your hair? Wouldn’t you like to dig a hole and live in the ground, and wouldn’t you like to roam at will in the big woods? Certainly you would.”
Francis W. Parker, “The Child,” 1889 (via Kevin Armitage)
Asking if Avatar is racist is the wrong question, I think, however necessary it may be; a negative answer is impossible, but a positive is insufficient. To build on what Scott and Annalee have written, then, I think we should look closer at what it actually uses its warped racialism to say.
After all, defenders of the movie will point out that the natives are the heroes, that the main character’s journey is towards a greater understanding of the native culture and appreciation for all sorts of values that his own society, a damnably capitalist, militaristic, and scientific culture (with a different figurehead for each value), has given up, to its own profound detriment. And I think Wax Banks is right that the best ending for this movie would have been to submerge Jake into the collective and produce “an eco-disaster film in reverse, with the audience cheering for Nature to wipe out the goddamn army,” without any “heroic” focus at all. He’s right because the movie wants its politics to be an argument that “modernity” has profoundly harmed us, and that because we, like Jake, have been crippled by the times in which we live, we have to go native, go natural. But this means that while the movie is profoundly patronizing towards its natives, it infantilizes them only because it idealizes them for that very infancy, making them into children because it, too, wants to retreat from the adulthood/modernity.
This is why, for example, Jake Sully is such a spoiled brat. To note that he is the worst stereotype of the ugly American isn’t nearly enough; he’s profoundly satisfied with his ignorance and his self-absorption is so awesomely complete and all-encompassing that it seems perfectly natural when other people make huge investments in him, to the point that he makes saying “thank you” all about him. He isn’t surprised or humbled when it turns out that the entire world revolves around him – who else could it possibly revolve around? – and when he first puts on his Na’vi avatar, he thinks nothing of ignoring the advice of people that know better and doing exactly as feels like doing. A shameless and shallow asshole, the only thing that makes him even slightly uneasy is his intermittent “video log” because it forces him to confront how thoughtless he is. But while people will excuse the shallowness of his character on the basis of it being just a popcorn movie or a kid’s movie, or whatever, that shallowness isn’t a bug, it’s a feature, just as George Bush’s mask of ignorance was precisely what made him appealing to so many Americans.
Jake Sully, in other words, is a Western fantasy of spoiled childhood: pure id, he revels in the toys that the world has provided for him without understanding that someone had to make them, without ever questioning his own right to have them. I think that’s why I don’t feel contempt for him, but visceral, gut-level, and troubling disgust. I recognize his desires, because we not only have to get past them to be adults, but because they stay with us. Perhaps we still are, on some level, the sociopaths we were when we were children (that I type this while home for the holidays, in the bedroom I occupied when I was seven, only seems appropriate). Yet it’s also one of the worst aspects of the American cultural tradition that going back to childhood is somehow the fountainhead of political virtue (see, for example, Jefferson, Thomas and Roosevelt, Theodore) because it’s so rarely the childhood of curiosity, games, and sociality that the tradition extols, but rather its reverse, a very particular fantasy of careless anti-social boyishness that tends into misogyny so easily because, to again refer us to Nina Baym, it feminizes the “encroaching, constricting, destroying society” that we American boys must seek to be free of by lighting out for the territories.
Where the movie goes wrong, then, is in making the sociopathic immaturity of a spoiled Western brat into the ideal form for the child-human that it wants anti-modernity to be. After all, while even your Rousseauvians understand the noble savage as a contradiction of modernity, as a cleansing bath washing away its discontents, the Na’vi only confirm Sully’s most childish presumptions of privilege: their world turns out to be nothing but toys to play with, nothing but one long summer camp fantasy of being the fastest, bestest, most awesomest ninja-Indian ever, and then a big giant womb to hide in when it all gets to be a bit much. There are no consequences there, nothing you can do to make mommy stop loving you (though Lord how he tries!). Like toys and parents to a three-year old, it is unthinkable that they say no or exist without you, and all they can ever ask is that you play with them.
When Scott suggests that Jake Sully-in-avatar form is a version of the black quarterback “problem,” the racialist desire to find a black body with a white brain in it, I think he’s not wrong, but I think he’s also not quite right. After all, Jake Sully is never Payton Manning; and the attribute that the Na’vi identify in him is precisely not “rationality” but the fact that he has “a strong heart, no fear.” It’s not a coincidence, by the way, that stupid reckless bravery makes poor Zoë Saldaña hate him only to then hate herself for loving him, or that the empty-headedness Sigourney Weaver initially despises him for is what makes him, eventually, the thing she most wants herself to be (because, as the Na’vi say, it is hard to fill up a vessel that is already full). Which is why, while one might have expected him to use his superior knowledge of the evil capitalist company to defeat them, the closest thing he has to a battle plan (as the nihilistic kid notes) is GO FOR IT! But again, the having of no plan other than be as reckless as possible is supposed to be his virtue, a quality the movie substantiates (as Gerry points out) by retreating into pure fantasy.
And this is why the fact that it’s a very particularly American fantasy is important. The dominant British/European mythos of civilization’s contact with “natives” was usually what Scott is talking about, a higher rationality confronting a primitive vitality, and the “JaMarcus Manning” fantasy of the super-ego and the id working in productive tandem will be instantly familiar to anyone who has read much of the old British imperialists holding forth on the collaboration between white discipline and native labor. That myth certainly had its adherents in the new world as well; guilded era capitalists and apologists for slavery alike saw the good society as a fruitful “partnership” between higher, rational discipline and primitive, bodily physicality. But there is also the Jeffersonian tradition of making creole primitivity into a virtue or Teddy Roosevelt wanting to become a boy again by shooting things and getting away from women. And Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis dominated the historiography of the twentieth century precisely because he argued that America’s particular virtue (and its contrast with Europe) was exactly its reversion back to primitive democracy; as frontiersmen became like Indians, he said, they got rid of all that troublesome modernity and effete emasculated over-civilization, becoming boys again by supplanting the Indians they came to resemble in doing so.
Great post, Aaron.
Here’s my requisite disagreement:
I have to take issue with the division between good-boyhood and bad-boyhood that’s implied here, and I think Baym would too. In Fiedler’s classic account, curious, gaming, social boyishness constitutes and is constituted by a femininity seen as encroaching, constricting, and adult. It’s Tom Sawyer frolicking on the island while Aunt Polly thinks he’s dead; it’s Rip van Winkle opting for bowling and beer over “petticoat government.” Women are objectionable because they ruin your boyish fun. The creativity of childhood constructed here is specifically the creativity of boyhood; counterintuitively, this makes the mother, not the fantasy-Indians that the boy joins, but rather the machinic march of modernity, the didactic rule, purveyor of terrifying order, uncreative, and above all, not fun. Good-boyhood (by which I mean creative boyhood as above, not the Alger boy/Little Lord Fauntleroy, as the “good boy” tends to mean in litcrit) and bad-boyhood are one and the same. I think this model in fact informs most of your reading.
That’s well put, a more precise version of what I was trying to say, I think; anti-sociality was precisely that getting away from feminized petticoat government, and a creativity that can only be expressed in that escape. What I meant by the “the childhood of curiosity, games, and sociality,” if only in my mind, was the fact that *real* children don’t naturally want to be indians the way Parker thinks they do. To a considerable extent boys are willing to play with dolls and girls with trucks (at least until they’re trained to want gender appropriate toys), and the point I was gesturing at was just the observation that children are not, in practice, what “children” represent in that cultural tradition (that Avatar’s desire for the child-man status is not actually a desire to be a real child, just to be a particular kind of privileged brat which pretends to be all children). So I’ll take the criticism of my implied distinction; what I would rather say is that there’s the (bad) boy-child tradition we’re getting from Fiedler and Baym and then there’s actual children, who are, in practice, a whole mess of unclassifiable, ungeneralizable stuff. Avatar likes the former, not the latter.
I mostly agree with this, although I hesitate to endorse it fully, because children, too, are shaped by their social context. There’s no degree-zero child, just like there’s no degree-zero body. Cutting the hair off of Barbie and ignoring the toy in order to play with the box are classic gestures of childhood, and are probably something like what you’re thinking of–the real creativity that’s different from resisting Mom. (Relatedly, at <a href="http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/12/23/guest-post-fun-with-the-2009-target-catalog/", a guest poster amusingly fantasizes about children’s play subverting the hetero-patriarchy, pointing up just what you’re getting at — the ambiguity of play.) But these, too, are forms of rule-breaking, of resisting the mother, albeit forms we might celebrate or endorse. Reality is always messier than the model used to represent it, but the model is powerful, too. How we construe the child is part of what the child is.
Oh, goodness. Note to self: double check tags.
Thanks, Aaron. Now I just hate the film and think it’s racist and sexist and unsophisticated and therefore worth nothing and don’t want to see it anymore. =( Just kidding. I’ll probably watch it, agree with you entirely, then feel guilty for liking it.
By the way, here’s a review that’ll make your head spin: http://www.dnaindia.com/entertainment/column_lights-cameron-action_1326818
Parse away!
[…] December 26, 2009 There’s been some discussion recently on the racist logic of the incredibly impressive film Avatar. I completely agree with the critique in Aaron’s […]
I like that your reading reveals “Avatar” as a more wishful version of Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” another film that turns a self-involved little boy into king of the jumbo-sized monster-people who populate the uncultivated dreamscape of the unconscious. I suspect that its the more modest scale of “Wild Things” that allows Jonze to short-circuit the regressive fantasy at the heart of both films: the petty traumas of childhood play are so meticulously reconstructed that they interrupt the idealization of childhood as pure enjoyment, Max’s longing for his actual mother halts her abstraction into either restrictive culture or all-providing nature (at least to the extent that Catherine Keener isn’t already a sort of abstraction, transcendentally reassuring with just enough irony to make it all believable). Cameron seems too self-hypnotized this time around not to see his regression through to the end, even though Terminator 2 suggested that he was capable of deconstructing his own fantasies to the extent of recognizing Arnold as a walking action-figure for the young John Connor.
I wonder if play isn’t the unofficial deep-structure of this year’s holiday films the way that old age was for last year’s.
Beautifully put, Aaron! I just saw ‘Avatar’ last night – to a full Christmas-day crowd that half-applauded at the end, an interesting reaction I’ve noticed only in big theaters and only to self-proclaimed “big” movies – so I’m still recovering from the disappointment. “Titanic” seemed ages ahead of this movie.
I was wondering what you thought about the look of the movie – if it’s a boy’s world, it’s awfully sparkly and looks a lot like those New Age dolphin posters. What images do you think Cameron’s drawing on here? (The underwater look, I guess, but it somehow doesn’t translate well at all. Too bad he didn’t collaborate with a great visual artist the way Scott did for Alien, which paid off for Cameron too in the sequel.. The floating mountains reminded me a bit of Jacek Yerka’s floating megaliths, so I wish he had actually worked on the film. Part remind me of Myst too – especially the last level of the third game, which I never passed – but without that world’s strangeness.)
Your post reminded me of Henry Jenkins’s article on 19th century boys’ adventure novels and video games – about the way the former have become the latter but are now incorporated into the traditional female space of the home. After reading your eye-opening analysis, I realized how much the world of “Avatar” is that of the video games described by Jenkins – except that it actually combines the two gendered spaces of “adventure island” and “secret garden” (as Jenkins dubs them). (Jenkins quotes from one of the games: “As I patiently traveled along, I found that everything was enchanted! The trees, flowers and animals, the sun, sky, and stars – all had magical properties!”)
I’ll also submit that Cameron’s aware of much of this subtext and doesn’t much care to do anything with it. But maybe the ambiguity emerges as Cameron veers between creating a world that is deadly and one’s that benign, exemplified by Sully’s relationship to the pterodactyl-dragon creatures, who are deadly until conquered, when they become agents of healing.
There’s much to unpack here, and I appreciate the conversation!
Here’s a link to the Jenkins article – sorry for the shoddy citation and writing:
http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/complete.html
And sorry if my comment doesn’t directly address the argument – but I just wonder how the look of the movie relates.
I finally watched the film, and liked it a lot. A lot more, in fact, than I liked this post (though I fully admit that if a 3D Zoe Saldana narrating this post to me, I’d definitely like it a lot more than the film).
Having watched it, I get the sense that you only watched the first half of it, Aaron. I have no desire to defend anything about the film’s plot, its politics or its characterizations, but I do feel obligated to point out that your self-satisfied Jake Sully is the one in the middle of the film, not the conflicted and ultimately assimilated one at the end. So, I agree with the broad strokes of your argument, as I so often do, but not necessarily with how you make it.
Also, I you miss entirely the technological significance of the film and the way the film metaphorizes its own innovation. I don’t think this is entirely your fault; it’s symptomatic of the difficulty literary studies has with reconciling verisimilar reality effects with realist content. Your critique of the film develops out of a long tradition of realist criticism that, in fact, lays the basis for the real world significance of such critiques, and yet your critique makes no mention of the 300 lbs. gorilla in the room: the fact that Avatar succeeds more than any previous attempt at fabricating an immersive reality.
To make the same point somewhat crudely, if you’re worried that the misdeeds of a film like Avatar might have certain consequences in the real world, then shouldn’t you also be worried that Cameron has the ability to conjur an almost totally immersive reality?
Anyway, that’s my own hobby horse. Before I go, I want to get one more dig in: the only way for the film to be “patronizing” is if infancy and adulthood occupy stable value positions. I agree with Dan that your normativizing of these terms needs more nuance.
More on race and racialism in Avatar….
While the Na’vi may be blue, the people who played them are not. Consider: Neytiri Tsu’tey Eytukan Moat Horse Clan Leader It could be the case that all the other models for the Na’vi are white, but it seems clear to me that Cameron chose these actor…
Hey, look at me, I made a trackback! (I’m not sure how I did that, though. Sorry, Aaron, for the spamming.)
In response to Chris, I think that the film thematizes its technological apsects in ways that play directly into the kind of boyhood fantasies that Aaron has shown operating beneath the film’s naive racism. Jake’s monologues attach the metaphor of waking and dreaming to the transition from the human world to the alien, such that the terms reverse when Jake’s sympathies begin to shift: “Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world and in here is the dream.” The sense of license and immersion attached to the film’s dream world behaves according to more or less Freudian rules. Cameron dramatizes the lab scenes between Worthington and Weaver as something like a mother tucking in her son at night, however gruffly, while it is inevitably Stephen Lang or one of his military minions who slams down on the big red button to deliver a resounding paternal “no” when Jake’s excursions into the CGI jungle become too touchy-feely. In the second act, when Army-Dad shoots Science-Mom, the film’s finale is given an Oedipal undertone that is only intensified when Jake speaks to the alien god through the intermediary of his surrogate mother, whose memories it has absorbed. Something’s up.
Meanwhile, the sense of immersion in the film’s environments are as much a function of the narrative desires that Cameron cultivates as the techniques and technologies at his disposal. It’s probably symptomatic that the tactic of choice among the nay-sayers has been to disrupt the film’s verisimilitude by comparing the jungle scenery to really embarrassing shit: Ferngully, Roger Dean’s album art, desk-lamps from Sharper Image, third-grade dolphin folders, MYST, disco clubs, and so on. Whether the film can achieve an unprecedented degree of immersion says nothing about whether we should want it and why.
On that last note, I have a pet theory-in-progress. When James Cameron invites his audience to relish the downfall of a hubristic commander who has counted on superior technology and his own unyielding force of will to overawe the natives, I think to myself, here is a man with no fear of irony. The ability to find nature within industrial spectacle, on the far end of technology, seems to be the fantasy supported by the value placed on immersion as a kind of purely pleasurable consumption. After all, the film ultimately stresses mediation as freedom and license over the sense of limitation that may be necessary for reflection.
I thought this would be less of a mess when I began typing. Friggin’ internet.
Jake Sully, in other words, is a Western fantasy of spoiled childhood: pure id, he revels in the toys that the world has provided for him without understanding that someone had to make them, without ever questioning his own right to have them.
Perhaps we still are, on some level, the sociopaths we were when we were children
You didn’t have a pleasant childhood, did you?
He’s right because the movie wants its politics to be an argument that “modernity” has profoundly harmed us, and that because we, like Jake, have been crippled by the times in which we live, we have to go native, go natural. But this means that while the movie is profoundly patronizing towards its natives, it infantilizes them only because it idealizes them for that very infancy
It’s this argument that confuses me (and you’re not the only one I’ve seen make it), that by simply being a caricature of a culture it is somehow insulting that culture even tho the caricature is of the most idealized version of that culture, and represents the heroic, winning, and just side? Are you saying that to depict another culture (even a stylized/Hollywood version of it), it must be nuanced or you’re a racist? It sounds like you’re saying that its the very idealization that makes it so appalling (which I would agree with, but only from the perspective of an overly simplified story, not from the great harm that it will cause Native Americans living today).
Monica,
That looks great; I can’t wait to read the Jenkins article! But I won’t get to it soon for the same holiday related reasons that have prevented me from commenting until now. Ah well…Just offhand, the combination of boy and female space and the sense of wonder in the outdoors reminds me, as everything does, of Teddy Roosevelt, a point I’ll elaborate more on soon. But in brief, the manliest mans man of the late 19th American C was, also, an absolute insane birdwatcher and nothing made him happier than the feathers of various birds that had just come into fashion as women’s ornaments. He loved feathery sparkly things, albeit in a different way, but still.
Seafan,
I find myself thinking of Conrad when I read your comment; Marlow and Kurtz are deep and fascinating characters while what’s racist about the novel are the things Conrad doesn’t give as much thought to (or have as much depth of historical knowledge to make use of). The fact that Kurtz is immediately made into a kind of god by the Africans doesn’t make him any less nuanced and interesting of a character, but it is a ridiculous and ahistorical assumption, based in a particular notion of what it is that “primitives” are like. Conrad didn’t want his book to be about Africa, but it still was. By the same token, the movie wants to make the narrative about the growing up of a stupid man-child, but it can’t help make its weird notion of the Na’vi primitives into its backdrop for the bildung of one petty American. And I don’t buy your reading of him as conflicted; he recognizes that he’s been a total shithead, but not in a way that has any consequences or spurs on real self-reflection (at least in my sense of the movie; I’d like to hear you defend this point).
Anyway, I think the movie likes the “american in cultural playground” much more than it really likes the story it’s ostensibly telling (of the devils party without knowing it, etc). The points where its insincerity shows through, I think, are when his plan is revealed to be: A. get a whole shitload of Indians and storm the fort, and B. get the Indians to follow me by becoming the biggest, bad-assest Indian ever, by riding the most awesomest animal in the world. In other words, the fact that he has been acting as a lying and manipulative tourist for the entire movie so far has no consequences for him, and the way he atones for his sins is by living the dream or something. Which they (ludicrously) fall into line behind, having never had a plan themselves or even an awareness that they might need one..
I’m interested by your immersive reality argument, but I can’t engage with it because I didn’t experience it. I found the movie’s technical effects not to match the hyperbole, and I’m not sure why; it may be that because of the kind of critic I am, I simply was not as willing to allow myself to be immersed. But I wasn’t.
Dan C wrote:
When James Cameron invites his audience to relish the downfall of a hubristic commander who has counted on superior technology and his own unyielding force of will to overawe the natives, I think to myself, here is a man with no fear of irony.
Win!
Cynic04,
I’ve thought a lot about that line since I wrote it, actually; what I meant was simply the thing that’s very true about Calvin and Hobbes, the way a six year old can be both generous and loving and sociopathically self-absorbed, without either necessarily diminishing the other. It’s a combination adults don’t really have the luxury of. But it‘s simply the case that children are, in a very particular way, antisocial, having not yet been socialized..
As for the rest, the point isn’t that the specific racializations cause great harm, but that the whole structure of though tends towards making non-white people into others; instead of humans with different color skins or whatever, they become a different species. The fact that black men are supposed to be super virile, or Asians are supposed to be super smart, or American Indians are supposed to be mystical and spiritual are not, in of themselves, necessarily bad things. But the assumption that the kind of people they are is a result of their race (while white people get to simply be who they are because of who they are) is pretty pernicious.
Zun: “After all, while even your Rousseauvians understand the noble savage as a contradiction of modernity, as a cleansing bath washing away its discontents, the Na’vi only confirm Sully’s most childish presumptions of privilege: their world turns out to be nothing but toys to play with, nothing but one long summer camp fantasy of being the fastest, bestest, most awesomest ninja-Indian ever, and then a big giant womb to hide in when it all gets to be a bit much. There are no consequences there, nothing you can do to make mommy stop loving you (though Lord how he tries!). Like toys and parents to a three-year old, it is unthinkable that they say no or exist without you, and all they can ever ask is that you play with them.”
Kvond: I have to say that I heavily disagree, though I can certainly say that I understand where you get your charicature of the Sully charicature. I would want to stress that although Cameron’s film is filled with stereotypes, they are stereotypes in tension. Sully is ALSO the Coming Home, or Born on the 4th of July Vietnam war vet. Far from being simply the white american child who likes to play with stuff, he is also the paraplegic who has lost a twin brother, and experienced just what playing with stuff can give you. There are certainly scenes when he is being taught by the Na’vi where he becomes a child, but this is in contrast to the relative hopelessness with which he enters the film. He is both child and embittered. (Perhaps you did not feel this, but this is merely because Cameron’s film failed you as a viewer. It is there in the contruction of the character, and I certainly felt it.)
Now when Sully (and consider his name) goes about smacking luminescence like an amateur diver and becoming boyish, this is a state of recovery for him. He is regaining his legs which he has lost as a consequence. But we cannot say that there is no consequence in a Na’vi body. There is the consequence of his conscience, as he betrays those he loves and destroys their “homeland”. These are meant by Cameron to be real consequences of conscience.
I believe you missed the point of the movie; Starting with an annoyance of childishness displayed by Jake Sully (which also annoyed me a little) you damned the entire movie on the basis that the opposite of Sully’s childishness, “modernity” could be something we might need or want.
Modernity is by no means the end of our species’ evolution. We are not stuck with industrial age development and all its ills. Going after concentrated resources is an unsustainable modern problem, to which various different alternatives will exist.
Pandora is trying to imagine a post-modern world, where humans can connect to every other being through their bio-hair-thingies (Internet anyone?) and there is an ecobalance in the planet. The non-growing humanoid population is a bit idealized and, with a planet actually able to attack “the company” it borders on ecoterorism, Postmodernism with a big P, however the opposite of Gaia/Pandora is also idealized, that is, turned into an dark, unmistakable evil in order to offer a starker contrast IMHO. Some stuff I did not like? The “return” of savior storyline for example.. I mean, the way American scifi so often falls into religionistic, savior/Jesus/prophet fervor does not always appeal to me, but in this case, it wasn’t enough to mess things up that I did not enjoy the storytelling or the visual effects of the rest of the movie.
And I do not agree with the selfishness argument at all. JS has every incentive to go get his legs, and return to his normal life. But instead he goes back to Pandora, to a new family, new life. There is also a subtle criticism of post modern world here, that we still have not figured out how to make sense of our ultra-fast world, that someone like JS finds a connection somewhere, and that’s where he settles (he ‘does’ change tribes however, apparently he feels better about the quality of the connection in Pandora). We still have not figured out how to do that, a new social order is still behind our technological prowess.
At the end of the day, I ask myself: was it good a movie like Avatar was made? My answer is yes. Would I watch it again? Yes. That’s enough entertainment for me. Also: paralels to Iraq War is very hard to miss. That alone, was enough to pull me to movie theather as my last movie of 2009.
Kvond,
I think what you describe is what the movie wants its narrative to be, but which I find utterly unconvincing; Sully simply never listens to anyone other than himself, and it seems important that the most important conversation he has with the Na’vi is a monologue (translated for him because he hasn’t learned their language). He can join them, but only on his terms. Which is why the presence of *really* bad people in the movie (the evil marine) or legitimate pain on his part (the legs) don’t change the fact that his own bad behavior never seems to reflect badly on him (the reverse, in fact). And when you describe “the consequence of his conscience,” you make the point for me: he makes a big deal about feeling bad for what he’s done, but he not only doesn’t suffer any real consequences (it isn’t his tree that gets cut down, no matter how much he calls it “our land”), his feeling bad for what happens becomes an excuse for having behaved in an extraordinarily unethical and selfish manner. And then he gets the glory of avenging a tragedy he, more than anyone else, made possible, becoming a hero precisely because he was the villain first.
Koala,
You wrote that “JS has every incentive to go get his legs, and return to his normal life. But instead he goes back to Pandora, to a new family, new life,” but this is my point: the movie makes it clear that living as an Avatar with the Na’vi is a much better option than living “normal life.” In the real world, he has no family and he has learned how quickly his military family discard him the moment he’s no longer useful to them. On Pandora, he gets to have all kinds of awesome fun and be the Big Important Hero and also have sex with a hot lady and stuff.
As for “modernity,” my point wasn’t that modernity was great, but that the movie relies upon a fantasy of what pre-modernity is. I’ll talk more about the movie’s environmentalism in a future post, though, so I’ll hold my comments until then.
Zun: “I think what you describe is what the movie wants its narrative to be, but which I find utterly unconvincing; Sully simply never listens to anyone other than himself, and it seems important that the most important conversation he has with the Na’vi is a monologue (translated for him because he hasn’t learned their language). He can join them, but only on his terms.”
Kvond: Well, when it comes to the criteria to convincing, I’m not sure where to turn. I am convinced, you are not. As for monologues and “on his own terms” his one-way communications are not characteristic of HIM alone, the Na’vi males as well operate in this emotional monotone too, and they too do just what they want.
Zun: “Which is why the presence of *really* bad people in the movie (the evil marine) or legitimate pain on his part (the legs) don’t change the fact that his own bad behavior never seems to reflect badly on him (the reverse, in fact).”
Kvond: What kind of “reflect badly” would you like? Complete ostricization from the Na’vi and by his lover isn’t “reflecting badly”?
Zun: “And when you describe “the consequence of his conscience,” you make the point for me: he makes a big deal about feeling bad for what he’s done, but he not only doesn’t suffer any real consequences (it isn’t his tree that gets cut down, no matter how much he calls it “our land”), his feeling bad for what happens becomes an excuse for having behaved in an extraordinarily unethical and selfish manner.”
Kvond: When I say “the consequence of conscience” I do not mean “having a conscience” and feeling badly about something, but rather having experiences that lead to a change in action, the result of which is the taking of extreme risk, and a leadership role in resistance. The consequence is the change in action. Agreed that “feeling badly” isn’t the point at all. Its about the consequence of action come from the change in conscience, which indeed comes from suffering.
Zun: And then he gets the glory of avenging a tragedy he, more than anyone else, made possible, becoming a hero precisely because he was the villain first.
Kvond: It seems that you just want him to suffer, suffer, suffer, in a kind of “make the white man PAY” and this is the only authentic storyline for you. Yes, it would have been interesting to have some great white Christ in agony without resurrection, but this is a different story, and for me no less authentic. Much more is it an allegory of conscience, than a dramaticization of psychology. The flatness of its telling in fact proves to be neutral ground upon which other affective transfers are made, and stand forth.
Zun: “As for “modernity,” my point wasn’t that modernity was great, but that the movie relies upon a fantasy of what pre-modernity is.”
Kvond: Certainly there are pre-modern fantasies at play here, but the story is post-modern (a collage of modern myths, overlayed), and trans- / post- human. Technology and nature interface with extraordinary degree, and subjectivity shifts with all of our “connections”.
Kvond,
It’s not that I want him to suffer, suffer, suffer (though that’s a useful argument I’m not making that I can use to clarify what I am saying), it’s that I find it completely ridiculous that the Na’vi completely forgive him when he shows up on a big bird. An “authentic” story would reflect not only a continuing lack of distrust on the part of the Na’vi (based in the fact that his gestures of solidarity are, for good reasons, much less believable after he’s been revealed as a long term double agent); it would also be willing to show the Na’vi as people that don’t blindly and unquestioningly follow a prophecy. In the real world, demonstrable bad faith on the part of an outsider does not get wiped away by a prophecy, unless we want to believe that “primitive” people are unthinking zealots (and the fact that they forgive him so completely becomes, then, the argument that they *are* mindless zealots).
To build on your point that Sully’s one-way conversations are like the Na’vi, too, there is a long history of European imperialists conceptualizing “native” peoples as despotisms precisely so that they could act like despots as well (inventing “chiefs” where no such thing existed before, for example, and then investing those puppet chiefs with unchecked authority). This is a lot like that, I think: the movie wants to give Sully a way of becoming the hero to the Na’vi, so it constructs a mythology that invests a particular person with charismatic hero authority. But in practice, such mythologies work exactly the opposite way: they exist so that the way towards despotic authority is impossible. “Do you want to rule all the clans?” the tradition proclaim. “All you have to do is ride the giant dinosaur bird.” Which means, in the real world, that when the claimant tries to ride the giant dinosaur bird, the giant dinosaur bird eats him, and the tribe remains an acephalic society with no centralized authority, which was exactly the point in the first place. But in James CAmeron’s telling of this story, the Na’vi never thought to try to jump on it from above, a ridiculous idea that Sully has because, why?
Which is why complete ostricization from the Na’vi and by his lover isn’t “reflecting badly,” for me; they forgive him in a way that’s only realistic if you assume them to be a kind of caricature of the native that I reject. His suffering proves nothing and would mean nothing; it’s the fact that they magically give back their trust that I find bizarre and repellant.
Is that clear? I’m writing this quickly, because I’ve already spent a lot more time on Avatar this morning than I meant to, but I don’t want to cut off this exchange; I don’t agree with your critique, but it is a useful way to clarify what I find problematic about the film (or change my stance in a subtle way? I’m not sure).
Well, this is the thing. The story is an allegory, so talking about “authentic” reactions is dubious. But,
Zun: An “authentic” story would reflect not only a continuing lack of distrust on the part of the Na’vi (based in the fact that his gestures of solidarity are, for good reasons, much less believable after he’s been revealed as a long term double agent
Kvond: I disagree, and forcefully. The story already tells of the symbolic power of being the top-preditor dragon rider. At least in terms of narrative, he embodies rightful authority, far beyond any “double agent” worry. Again, you want some kind of psychology realism, whereas this is an allegory, and an allegory about a different species.
Zun: “it would also be willing to show the Na’vi as people that don’t blindly and unquestioningly follow a prophecy.”
Kvond: Why would this be preferred? They are in a desperate situation, and the symbol speaks strongly. You call it “blindness” but there is no authentic reason why this is blind as a presumption. I don’t follow prophecies, but I am not a Na’vi.
Zun: “In the real world, demonstrable bad faith on the part of an outsider does not get wiped away by a prophecy, unless we want to believe that “primitive” people are unthinking zealots”
Kvond: Ah, so for you the “real world” is modern American culture. I get it. But this film is not about modern American culture, its about Pandora, and forms something of a critique of what you consider “real”.
Zun: To build on your point that Sully’s one-way conversations are like the Na’vi, too, there is a long history of European imperialists conceptualizing “native” peoples as despotisms precisely so that they could act like despots as well (inventing “chiefs” where no such thing existed before, for example, and then investing those puppet chiefs with unchecked authority).
Kvond: Perhaps, but you forfet your earlier point that this way of talking was symptomatic of Sully’s personal character. As I have written elsewhere there are any number of ethic generalities and stereotypes, many of them perhaps dangerous. But not essentially so. For me they do deserve critique and watchfulness, but they are not that to which the story is to be reduced. For me as well, they serve as reterritorialization touchstones to allow the other affect transfers of the audience. Cameron though works to multiply them in any number of directions, so as to deprive them of any firm mapping ground.
Zun: “This is a lot like that, I think: the movie wants to give Sully a way of becoming the hero to the Na’vi, so it constructs a mythology that invests a particular person with charismatic hero authority.”
Kvond: That is one way to think about it. How to get the white man to save to day. But because this movie is an allegory meant for largely “white” or at least “western” conscience, the hero storyline is that of the obligation to action of conscience, that YOU can make a difference, or even THE difference. It is a fantasy for that reason, but one that is meant to place upon the viewer the specialness of agency. To be sure there are great distortions, but this is what happens with hero tales, and not documentaries.
Zun: “But in practice, such mythologies work exactly the opposite way: they exist so that the way towards despotic authority is impossible. “Do you want to rule all the clans?” the tradition proclaim. “All you have to do is ride the giant dinosaur bird.” Which means, in the real world, that when the claimant tries to ride the giant dinosaur bird, the giant dinosaur bird eats him, and the tribe remains an acephalic society with no centralized authority, which was exactly the point in the first place.”
Kvond: I completely disagree. Look at the film Lawrence of Arabia (a relatively true story about colonialization, etc). Indeed one can “ride the giant dinosaur bird” and bring about revolution. Avatar has, in a much less sophistocated way, a lot in common with Lawrence of Arabia. Now, the giant dinosaur bird comes in many shapes and sizes. There are all kinds of very difficult, improbable, but also symbolically very powerful things to do.
Zun: But in James CAmeron’s telling of this story, the Na’vi never thought to try to jump on it from above, a ridiculous idea that Sully has because, why?
Kvond: Obviously SOME Na’vi thought to jump on it from above (or some other way), because it had been tamed before. Obviously as well, the great dragon also stands for modern male power, top of the foodchain thinking, thinking that never looks up, so to speak. There is much in the figure and act. It is not pure silliness.
Zun: “for me; they forgive him in a way that’s only realistic if you assume them to be a kind of caricature of the native that I reject.”
Kvond: Yes, they are not modern enough. Why didn’t Cameron have his film take place in New York city or Paris? Personally, in desperate times, I can see even modern folk turning to symbolic power to save (or ruin) the day. History has proven this, even of humans.
I should add of course, anytime you want to stop responding to my own objections, please feel free to.
Dan, I really like your analysis of the tech/immersion stuff, esp. your pet theory. Aaron, are you just giving me a dose of my own medicine and intentionally trying to be difficult when you say that you didn’t experience the immersion? Or did you just not watch the film in 3D? If you didn’t, go back and watch it with the goggles on, you cheapskate! Re: “conflicted” Jake, I was just reiterating the plot. Jake is a douche until he begins to love Neytiri and the Na’vi, and then he becomes conflicted about his mission.
I have a lot to say, re: immersion, but I’ve gotta split so I’ll save it for some other time. Suffice it to say that I think it’s important with this film to think through all the colonial/poco debates and valences that have been mentioned, but through the lens of technology’s role in those debates. I think part of what the film does (aside from place the issue of immersion at its center, e.g., the film’s title) is bring those debates up to date, and in a sense historicizes them viz. technology. It thinks through going native as a version of industrial technology’s current telos of immediacy and total immersion. In a ham-handed way, of course, but, ironically, ultimately productive in terms of giving us the tools for a more nuanced critique of the film itself and its thematics. So, for instance, Aaron, you mentioned the US military’s drone program. Don’t we have to rethink the mechanisms and imagination of colonialism when it’s conducted bodilessly, with avatars, from remote? Or is the technology completely incidental?
Dan’s post is another really good starting point for this thinking. But contrary to his confusion over whether the film’s immersion says anything about whether we should want it and why, I actually think it says a lot. Um, on that note, I gotta go. But thanks all for a really interesting discussion thus far.
Seafan: “So, for instance, Aaron, you mentioned the US military’s drone program. Don’t we have to rethink the mechanisms and imagination of colonialism when it’s conducted bodilessly, with avatars, from remote? Or is the technology completely incidental?”
Kvond: I think the question of “remote” and colonialism is even more complex here. Indeed, guys sitting in a studio in the US remotely control the skies of Afganistan through drones, but also, we remotely “feel” the violence of Iranian police squads in the street, as they try to surpress protests, through ubiquitous cellphones.
The “immersion” goes in any number of space-time foldings.
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[…] enough readings out there on the inherent biases and contradictions in Avatar. Read Aaron’s take, for one. Or Bustillos, as well. There is both merit and substance to these readings but I am much […]
I am overwhelmed, y’all! I have a dissertation to write! But a couple things I can’t let myself not respond to:
First, Kvond wrote “Look at the film Lawrence of Arabia (a relatively true story about colonialization, etc). Indeed one can “ride the giant dinosaur bird” and bring about revolution” and this nicely crystalizes where I disagree, I think; this is not really my beat, but T.E. Lawrence making the Arab revolt into a proxy war against the Ottoman empire during WWI (after which the allies colonized the entire region) does not, in my book, count as revolution. I agree that the movie has a lot in common with LoA, but LoA is so much better for all sorts of reasons, the main one being its illustration of how *ineffective* military victory can be in the long run (short term victory is dramatic, but short term, a point I’ve made in greater detail in the next post’s comment thread).
Second, re: “immersion.” I have no idea what to say; I like what y’all are doing with that, and ZZ stands at your disposal if you want to write something explaining what you mean by it, but it’s just not what I’m up to and I’m not sure how to engage. Which is to say, we can both be right but not actually be contradicting each other, I think.
If you are trying to get me to say that Avatar is a much better film than LoA, you aren’t going to get that from me. But I will say that where Avatar is LESS than LoA, in some ways is it more. It invokes LoA, and in a spectacular, trans-human, trans-modern aesthetic.
As for short or long term, let’s see what Cameron does with the sequel I hear he is planning.
you know, something you said a while ago:
“pre-modern fantasies at play here, but the story is post-modern (a collage of modern myths, overlayed), and trans- / post- human. Technology and nature interface with extraordinary degree, and subjectivity shifts with all of our “connections”.”
really, really reminds me of Edmund Carpenter’s Oh What a Blow the Phantom Gave Me, a book I find endlessly fascinating even though I find it to be wrong in all sorts of other ways, a way of saying, perhaps, that we’re arguing at exactly that kind of cross purpose (and of suggesting you check it out if you’re into it).
And, yes, I can’t wait to see the sequel. I imagine my grandchildren and I will have an excellent time viewing it in the year 2035.
Much thanks. Not familiar but should check it out.
Also, let us not forget John Carter. Tarzan to Avatar…
Zunguzungu-
I think your commentary on Avatar was spot on. Absolutely spot on. Although the movie was beautiful to behold, the storyline was absolutely unappealing to me on virtually every level. It saddens, and frightens, me that so many seem able to identify with JS. (Or any of the other characters for that matter.) It seemed to me that all of the characters were simplistic stereotypes, and even his “strong female” character was no more than the typical female in a supporting role who just happened to hunt and fight. Mother the boy, then sleep with him when he becomes a man, he betrays you and costs you everything, you forgive him. I just fail to see how this makes her a “strong female.”
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