Avatar and Whiteness
by: Be Scofield on December 28th, 2009 | 14 Comments »
I have yet to see Avatar so I can’t offer a review. But as someone interested in the subtleties of how racism and oppression operate in society I found this review “When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like ‘Avatar’?” by Annalee Newitz interesting:
Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it’s about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy. Spoilers…
Whether Avatar is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it’s undeniable that the film – like alien apartheid flick District 9, released earlier this year – is emphatically a fantasy about race. Specifically, it’s a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. Avatar and scifi films like it give us the opportunity to answer the question: What do white people fantasize about when they fantasize about racial identity?
I liked JustJack’s comment on my Avatar post, responding to my question whether the movie was subversive of corporate militaristic values or not. He wrote: “I took it as wholly subversive… and a white-guilt narrative, and in no way do I take the latter as a negative. Owning-up is a process.” His whole comment is here and is really worth reading: http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2009/12/27/avatar-the-spiritual-progressive-movie-of-the-decade/comment-page-1/#comment-4252
I don’t see race as the key issue in this film myself, at all. To me it is all about the clash between a response to the world that says we can take what we want, when we want, by any means we want, and one that says we have to live respectfully with all other living beings, as one part of the interdependent whole.
Yes, historically, white people from Europe often took what they wanted, when they wanted by any means they wanted from many other peoples around the globe, and are still doing it and benefiting from it. But to tie that to their whiteness, their ethnicity, rather than to their being human beings in particular geographic and historical circumstances with particular philosophies of life and culture, is very dangerous. It’s dangerous because it would seem to suggest to nonwhite people that they would not do the same kinds of things in the same circumstances. Being oppressed does not in itself equip a people with the tools to avoid oppressing others if circumstances flow their way and they find themselves with the power to do so. The English and Dutch were oppressed or endangered people in various ways before they became world conquerors. It is the memory and fear of being oppressed that can lead people to be ruthless in pursuit of their own safety and survival once they have the edge to dominate others. Does the history of modern Israel not teach that?
Now the American empire is led by an African American, and many other nonwhite people have been deeply engaged in running it – Condi Rice, Colin Powell et al. Avatar is a movie about those people also, and they are also represented by the marine at the center of the story. The movie challenges them also to turn aside from the values of a corporate militaristic culture to embrace a biophilic one. To suggest it is about whiteness is to deny that the Obama, Rices and Powells and the entire Black and Latino middle and upper classes are fully members of the American corporate state and culture, identifying with it. Yes, they are trying to humanize it as far as they can, but then so are very many white people. Indeed there has always been a strong strain of people’s power and of caring values in the white cultures that dominated the world: one of my first leftwing American friends told me when I arrived here that three words summed up the USA — slavery, genocide and democracy — and the third should not be forgotten. There is more to “democracy” than can be easily unpacked. But the traditions of guilt and repentance in “white” culture are part of it and help account for many of the best things “white” people have done, including campaigns against slavery and child labor and all the progressive causes. The struggle for mutual respect and rights and for a caring society is one that great numbers of all ethnicities have been engaged in.
It would have been interesting to see a nonwhite person as the marine at the center of Avatar, the representative of the military industrial system who gets converted to a bio-respectful culture. The script would have been a little different. But not essentially different.
The danger of seeing everything through the prism of race, or any of our other “identity” divisions, like gender, is that we can lose the bigger perspective. It is fascinating to see how well the military corporate world has been able to accommodate itself to rights for all the various minorities, so that everyone has hope of progress towards a legal equality, without the basic values of the system being drastically changed.
Avatar contrasts that whole system to the kind of culture that we need to move to. To dismiss it as a white guilt thing is to be overly obsessed with race, and insufficiently obsessed with the need for human guilt and repentance over the long history of cultures that have practiced dominate-others-before-they-dominate-us. Most or all the major ethnic and “racial” groups have in the course of history had people at all levels of that kind of abusive power hierarchy, as oppressors and oppressed. To deny that is to deny everyone’s full humanity. It’s just another way of being racist. There have been African empires, Aztec and Incan empires, Asian empires etc. They were not as destructive as our empires today because technology had not advanced far enough for them to be so, and we can debate whether their philosophies of life would have kept all of them from using such technologies as irresponsibly as us if they had had them: it’s not clear that they would not have. Humans have spoiled their nests before, as Jared Diamond describes in “Collapse.”
But now, for the first time, we have to collectively rise above the dominator response to the world and embrace a partnership model, to use Riane Eisler’s terms (see the NovDec Tikkun). That’s a challenge to the whole human species. It is because the oppressive dominators during this stage of history have been disproportionally white men, that I find it entirely appropriate for the carrier of militaristic corporate values in Avatar to be a white man.
Be, you’ll just have to go and see the movie now. Sorry, no way to escape it, if you want to pursue this conversation… I’ll go again with you if you want.
Why can’t it be both? It is not an either or thing. It has an element of racism within it and it also subverts imperialism. The feminist movement took a very long time to incorporate the concerns of women of color and different economic backgrounds not to mention women around the world. bell hooks said in 1984 something like (paraphrase) “the feminist movement up to this point has been based on racism, but this in no way delegitimizes it.” Just because something has racist elements in it doesn’t mean that it should be entirely dismissed. I never suggested this.
From my background and experience in counter oppression it is worthwhile to listen to what people of color have to say about this film. White people often have a hard time pausing and hearing the lived experience of people of color. For example one friend of mine who is a person of color said, “I saw it and enjoyed all the special effects, but it is clear that racism is alive and well. Hopefully, the film can be used as a means of opening a wider dialogue about race and the way it gets packaged in Hollywood.”
Dave said:
“The danger of seeing everything through the prism of race, or any of our other “identity” divisions, like gender, is that we can lose the bigger perspective.”
—
Let’s not forget that it is a privilege to NOT see things through the prism of race. For people of color in America and elsewhere there is no choice. Whiteness is the only race allowed to be invisible. White people can talk about not seeing race because they aren’t faced with the reality of it on a daily basis. Again, I am more interested in listening to how people of color are effected by this movie. This is what it means to be an ally.
Again, I never suggested dismissing the movie. I simply want to heighten our ability to see how race operates. But I am not ok with giving something a pass when I see racism in it.
I just saw “Avatar” today, and I don’t think it is racist at all. It would have been racist if Jack Sully would have remained a bull-headed non-listening marine – forcing the Na’vi to do things his way, and dismissing their beliefs as hogwash. This is a closer counterpart to what happened in regards to the Europeans and their exploit of America and its natives.
I can understand a superficial comparison between “Avatar” and “Dances with Wolves”; but let us ignore the differences in time and place for a moment. There is one big difference with “Avatar” — Jack Sully was able to really become a Na’vi; while Kevin Costner could never be a Native American. Also I felt that it was pretty lame that Kevin Costner’s love interest was a similarly displaced white woman — whereas Jack Sully falls for a native woman. Is this a big deal? Again, let’s move beyond this particular circumstance. Let’s say that Jack Sully is a European from late 18th century Europe, and the Na’vi are Africans. Is there not a marked difference in the impact of the tale if Jack is able to somehow be transformed into an African man and marry an African woman? More so than if he remained a White man who was simply imitating the Africans and pulled in a European woman to be his wife and they can live among them happily ever after. Not that the later situation is offensive or anything. But the former situation presents a more believable scenario that the protagonist has internalized a real level of love and respect for the other culture.
Moving out of the fantasy world (because sometimes it is harder to communicate a point via make-believe scenarios), I am a Black woman who is a convert to Judaism. Does the situation I am in demonstrate somehow that something has gone awry? Is this a question of me leaving an inferior status that I was born into and trying to move to a superior status? Of course not. I am a Jew, but I am still Black. In many ways, Jack Sully is a Na’vi, but part of what he is was rooted in his human side. This doesn’t make him superior to the other Na’vi — no more than my own hybrid background makes me superior to other Jews. Both I and Jack have had a steep learning curve to face. And we wouldn’t have made it without the “natives”.
Others may disagree with me, but I see emulation as something different. While it can be respectful, more often than not is is more patronizing. For most of the movie the character Grace was like that…although she was beginning to come around. Likewise I recognize that there is something different about myself, and those who try to “act the part” of another culture (i.e. young White men who emulate Black culture). Again it is not a question of superiority or even that what they are doing is wrong. I actually find interesting. But it is a different experience; they can never become Black people, while there is a mechanism where I become a Jew.
(Also there is an article on Aish HaTorah that also talks about “Avatar”. Interesting piece as well).
This is a response to Be’s reply to me, but I am putting it below Rishona’s, which I find a more interesting response to the whole issue than mine.
Be, You didn’t dismiss the movie, but I think the reviewer you linked to did.
I fully agree with you that white people, myself certainly included, can be stunningly oblivious about racism. I agree that a movie could be both racist and anti-imperialist. I could go further and say there is a problem with all hero stories, period, because the world needs sensitive collaborators, not leader-heroes, and if we do need them in certain unavoidable circumstances they should not be portrayed by Hollywood as white, or male, or straight since that just plays up to current hierarchical values.
That’s a valid way to see things and yet like any valid approach it has its shadow side. The shadow seems in full view to me in this review you linked to, because the reviewer does dismiss this important movie as racist. She doesn’t even entertain the idea that the hero stands for all of the true believers in military power on behalf of corporate profit, including all the nonwhite (and we can add nonstraight, nonmale) believers – whose numbers are growing as “minorities” are integrated into the corporate militaristic system and who will eventually become the majority of the higher as well as the lower ranks: certainly by the far future time in which this movie is set. The most racist element of Avatar is that white men are still portrayed as the leaders.
It would have taken very little in script changes to have the hero be nonwhite. That would have challenged those who are currently characterizing the movie as racist to think again. They could argue that a black Sully (Avatar’s hero) was an oreo, white inside, or they could accept that people of all races are susceptible to fantasies of domination and it’s not white, per se, but human, to be so susceptible.
But we still live, today, in a straight white male dominated society, so it is an entirely appropriate choice for our day that the militarist who undergoes re-education in this movie be a straight white man.
And so he becomes a hero, after going through a classic hero quest whereby he finds a higher purpose. This can be dismissed as Hollywood, but the form is older than Odysseus. I don’t think it’s bad to hold out the vision to young men – even to young white straight men – that through humbly unlearning their dominationist fantasies they could become heroes of a different kind. We need all the heroes we can get, of all colors, and all identities. Humble, collaborative ones, for sure, but still heroes.
And as Rishona says, this hero actually does physically become one of the people he is joining. And they are a highly communal people so leadership within their clan is a different concept of leadership than in our society.
I also have not seen the movie although I find the comments about it fascinating. Dave is right that militarism and imperialism transcend race. I believe Fred Hampton blamed racism on capitalism. He said that slavery came into being because it was lucrative. There were many non-white cruel militarized empires prior to the rise of Europe. In the 12th century, the Mongols overran the world. China was an indomitable force while Europeans were still convinced that the earth is flat and bathing caused the plague.
Militarism is indeed embedded in our very human fear of not having enough. There are many books and movies that were inherently racist, but that helped white people to empathize with people of color in their day. Uncle Tom’s Cabin comes to mind. Our racist fantasies about a non-racist world are sometimes a first step in the dialogue with ourselves.
a brief look at history has shown that when given the chance, people of color will be just as bad as whites, if not worse. Avatar is a about an inferiority complex on the part of the filmmakers. It’s the racist myth of the noble savage, except with plugs.
After some time away, I’m back in “civilization” and immediately went to see Avatar. I side with Dave in in the quite wonderful discussion above, that I don’t think the movie is racist. What I do think it is is “culturalist” in that there is an explicit statement that we are superior to them. Jake is reborn into a new body, and after three months training he is able to ride the Toruk, which only 5 Na’vi in history have been able to do. He is able to coordinate all the Na’vi, and to guide them to defeat the humans. He is the über-Na’vi, after three months in a foreign body on a foreign world.
This strikes me so much because of having just listened to Wade Davis’ 2009 Massey lectures ( free to hear on CBC radio, btw The Wayfinders which celebrates the wonder of genius and spirit as brought into being by culture, and explicitly disavows the implication that one culture is more advanced than another. Cultures are skilled in different ways, to Davis; to Cameron, our culture is wrong in the ways we all agree the film posits, but if we could only choose to be Na’vi, we’d be better at it than they are.
Dave touches on sexual politics; I notice that in the Na’vi the chief is always male, the Shaman is always female (we’re told this) and they are expected to marry. I have more problems with this than with the race aspect… but that’s a different post.
So after thinking about all this for a couple of weeks and hearing how many people of color whom I respect immediately found the movie racist, because the white guy (though he becomes blue) becomes the leader of the blues so quickly, I have been wondering how the story could have been redone to avoid these issues. I still think it is, or is intended to be, a movie about the clash of cultures, as Peter Marmorek writes. So I wonder if making the hero black and the human corporate and mercenary people multiracial (as they should have been, whatever color the hero was–why would the future corporate mercenary worlds be MORE white than they are today?) would have made that point adequately? Then the story simply becomes about the role that individuals from a ruthless, technologically dominant culture can play when they convert to the wiser, more cooperative and biophilic oppressed culture. Race is still involved (actually it’s different species that are involved, but we read it inevitably as race) but the focus is now on culture.
So what can the convert from the dominant culture do that doesn’t portray them as naturally superior? I have to say that I didn’t think the story was saying that Jake was naturally superior simply because he managed to do something the Na’vi thought heroic (ride a “dragon” only five Na’vi had ridden before): I thought that it was essentially like what many women say about how they have to do twice as well as men in formerly male work roles in order to get respect. Jake was desperate, he was a warrior, he took a ludicrous last ditch risk and it worked: a classic hero tale. It’s not something I or any other member of the human race would think they could do just because they were human (or American, or corporate) and therefore “naturally” superior: far from it. It was a one-off. Still, whether intended to or not, Jake’s role as hero can feed the collective human/American/white ego if taken as doing so, or it can make nonAmerican/nonwhite people feel that it is doing so.
So how could that part of the story have been redone? It would be natural for a warrior from a dominant army to be the person who can tell the underdogs how to exploit the weak points in that army: how to use its own weapons against it for example, as Jake does in Avatar. But he could have just given that information to the Na’vi warriors, and found another way to gain their trust: by his humility perhaps, rather than his bravery. What if the young woman Neytiri had found reason to trust him and had led the charge, using information and weapons Jake had given her?
The way we write these stories, and the ways we retell them next time, is hugely important. Talking about how the story could have been rewritten to make its main points come out (which I am convinced were NOT about any kind of white or American superiority, but were about the natural superiority of the Na’vi culture) seems more helpful to me than simply labeling the movie racist.
Yes，what Dave said is true.
“Yes, historically, white people from Europe often took what they wanted, when they wanted by any means they wanted from many other peoples around the globe, and are still doing it and benefiting from it. But to tie that to their whiteness, their ethnicity, rather than to their being human beings in particular geographic and historical circumstances with particular philosophies of life and culture, is very dangerous. It’s dangerous because it would seem to suggest to nonwhite people that they would not do the same kinds of things in the same circumstances. Being oppressed does not in itself equip a people with the tools to avoid oppressing others if circumstances flow their way and they find themselves with the power to do so.”
Color has no necessary connection with evils.
This is an interesting, perhaps, for me, even a surprising debate. Frankly, I never would have thought of it as a ‘white film’ but I admit that, living in a less racially mixed society than the U.S. (I live in Turkey though I was born and raised in Australia), I lack the sensitivities about race that a lot of Americans have (and, being a white, judeo-celtic hybrid I am never forced to really confront the issue either). Being of Australian origin however, does leave me familiar with the bitter aftermath of the genocide, exploitation and de-valuing of indigenous peoples! I wouldn’t say I feel ‘white guilt’ towards the aborigines but I certainly feel the need to take responsibility for ‘tikkun’, to repair and try to heal the deep wounds my culture has inflicted (and still inflicts) on Australia’s first peoples. I do not romanticise aboriginals, or try to become one, or pretend I have any real idea of what they’ve been through but I owe them justice and they have a right to expect me to contribute when asked to and to butt out when not invited in their struggle to obtain what is theirs by right. Avatar is, I feel, not without a fair appreciation of these themes.
To be fair, I do see the point of some of the criticisms of Avatar. Certainly there are echoes of ‘dances with wolves’ and post-imperialist guilt mixed in in spades. Moreover, the technology-age inspired idea of a ‘networked planet’ felt a bit too clumsy a device for my liking. I felt it both detracted from the credibilty of the story and blended a typically hokey Western view of ‘exotic aboriginal spirituality’ with the somewhat demystificatory ‘rationalist’ approach of explaining it all away as a de facto computer network- a kind of ‘Gaia as network server’ idea. Having said that however, despite these kinds of less satisfying devices the film uses to put across its message,I was ultimately deeply moved and inspired by this film.
I hadn’t expected a lot from it I admit and perhaps being so pleasantly surprised moved me to rate it higher than it deserved but I came out feeling I’d seen, at heart, a ‘Zapatista film’, a timely reminder to look beyond the relexive platitudes of ‘civilisation’ and the pervasive ideology of conquest that has marked the rise of all post hunter-gatherer humanity, regardless of race. The white, European race may have been the most successful and brutal imperialist power the planet has ever seen (for reasons most convincingly argued by Jared Diamond in ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’) but we’re hardly the first ‘civilisation’ to indulge in conquest, exploitation, slavery and genocide. The Zulus, Mandinka, Maori, Han Chinese, Mongols and a host of other races have all participated in conquering, enslaving and ,massacring ‘lesser’ peoples at various points in history. The message therefore, is less one of race per se and more a depiction of a life and death struggle between two fundamentally opposed world views: that of the conquistador, the arrogant ‘civiliser’ who bulldozes through the earth destroying its true treasures in obsessive struggles for utilitarian, self-aggrandizing riches and the life-affirming, respectful, nurturing, ‘caretaker’ outlook of those at home in creation and who appreciate the self-sustaining system and balance set in place by powers higher than the human ego and its desires.
The apparent lack of hierarchy, violence or acquistiveness is an appealing aspect of the Na’vi culture and reminds us of humanity’s ‘Edenic nature’, what Muslims call ‘fitrah’ or the inborn tendency in all of us to lean towards submission to God and what is good, loving and nurturing rather than our learned tendencies towards fear, hatred and violence. The film calls us back to this, to embrace what is right, true and just rather than seeing ourselves as condemned to a life-or-death struggle with nature that can only possibly end with our own destruction. This is a deep film, a true cautionary tale despite its science-fiction extravagances.
I think this film is likely to resonate deeply with a lot of people and, hopefully, create deep echoes of our buried longing for justice and spirituality. I really felt it speaks to the heart of the broken-hearted, cynical modern who really needs to be ‘called back’ to what’s real and meaningful and valuable. The message, in the end is life-affirming and deeply hopeful (almost unbelievably so! The cynical side of me couldn’t help seeing the ultimate outcome of the Na’vi resistance to their impending genocide with the same inability to ’suspend disbelief’ I felt when the Ewok’s defeated the Empire in Star Wars!). In strict terms, the ending of the film may not be totally credible but the importance of it lies in wanting to believe and being inspired by the hope that resistance is not futile and another world is possible.This is a Zapatista film, a film for spiritual progressives!
From my perspective, the film skillfullly demonstrated the evils of unchecked military government power unleashed without restraint and without concern for who gets killed in the process of obtaining its goals. I did not see this as a racial theme, as for me I pictured Obama in his present capacity as an African American who is president of our country, recently deciding to expand our wars and bombing of innocent civilians as opposed to “talking and negotiating” where possible. In one way it seems preposterous to see Obama in this role, as he certainly does not look or sound like the part of the horrible military person in charge of invading the Avatars in the movie. But the reality of Obama’s war expansion decisions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are what they are, and the effects of his decisions I believe will be devastating and a continuation of what I view as the Bush/Obama use of military force to achieve goals that appear to be causing far more havoc than they are solving. Thus I did not see the movie in racial terms, but in terms of cultural mindsets, and I believe we now have a very similar cultural mindset regarding our practice of war, with a black person as president to what we had for 8 years with a white person as president. A bomb dropped on a child does the same amount of damage regardless of the sophistication and intelligence and charm of the president who orders the bomb to be dropped.
I’ve not seen the film but nonetheless feel I can respond to these comments. From what I’ve gathered the film accurately and progressively portrays humanity as bend on, in the films world, galaxic domination, with all its horrifying consequences: militarism, environmental destruction, xenophobia, colonialism, exploitation ect, ect. What I’ve also been hearing is that many people don’t find this film racist insofar as the main (white character) becomes an ally, and indeed, ends up fighting, nay, leading the colonized natives against their colonizers. This “race trading” of the main character, I am reading, absolves the film from any racist fantasies.
If I’ve read the arguments right, I would disagree. The racial superiority still exist in the narrative of the white man, even though fighting against the interests of his own race, nonetheless, having the wherewithal to lead the natives in the battle for their liberation. The white man as savor is still implicit, even if his motives are more benevolent. We should not allow benevolent motives continue to veil innocence over the implicit racial power structure inferred in the narrative.
Oh, furthermore, the color of our president matters little to the, now highly technocratic racial structure prevalent in American society. The fact is that statistically speaking President Obama is an anomaly, as most of the wealth (and accordingly the power) still belongs in the hands of people with a lighter skin tone. The problem with racism, in America, today is that it is not based on individual prejudices, as it was in times past. But rather racism of today is a kind of meta-racism, which is to say, that racism is woven into, not only are institutions and social structures but our very cultural psychology, thus its become a rather invisible, unconscious phenomena.
I would recommend two books on the subject: White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity and White Racism: A Psychohistory.
I’ve posted a (long) response to these comments and the original blog on the Tikkun Daily site at http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2010/01/18/avatar-its-not-just-about-whiteness/. It’s entitled “Avatar — It’s Not Just About Whiteness.” I’d love to hear what you have to say about it.