Avatar and ideology

I went to see James Cameron’s new film Avatar with my family yesterday. To call it a lot of fun seems almost unnecessary. It’d be better to offer a command than make a judgment: go check it out. I defy anyone who sees it on the big screen to deny the beauty of the locales, characters, spacecraft, and weaponry — all computer-generated, mind you — or the roller-coaster thrill of the battle scenes. It’s all directed and edited with precision and flair. As Dana Stevens wrote in her very apt Slate review ^[1], this is “a world so richly and specifically imagined that it’s thrilling just to dwell inside it.” And it culminates in a showdown that is immensely exciting and gratifying.

Part of what makes those last scenes gratifying is that the aliens — the natives of Pandora, the Na’vi — are rejecting the colonization and annexation of their land and resources by the unholy alliance of American Big Business (specifically, the “RDA Corporation”) and Big Military. To call this film the ultimate liberal revenge fantasy is, then, quite superfluous as well. It is no great insight to note, as Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern did ^[2], that

Mr. Cameron has devoted a significant chunk of his movie to a dark, didactic and altogether horrific evocation of Vietnam, complete with napalm, Agent Orange and helicopter gunships (one of which is named Valkyrie in a tip of the helmet to Apocalypse Now.)

A four-year-old could pick up on the ideological underpinnings of the film’s good guy/bad guy dichotomy: it’s a team of humanitarian scientists allied with the physically and spiritually (in short, naturally) brilliant natives VS. a greedy American corporation allied with the stupid but enormously and soullessly (in short, technologically) brilliant military. It’s all drawn in such broad strokes that I believe it actually damages the anti-imperial point-of-view — especially given how utterly disrespectful and condescending the film is toward the Na’vi. Annalee Newitz explains this much better than I can in this excellent blog entry ^[3] which analyzes the “white guilt” features of the film.

Our main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color – their cultures, their habitats, and their populations. The whites realize this when they begin to assimilate into the “alien” cultures and see things from a new perspective. To purge their overwhelming sense of guilt, they switch sides, become “race traitors,” and fight against their old comrades. But then they go beyond assimilation and become leaders of the people they once oppressed. This is the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare. It’s not just a wish to be absolved of the crimes whites have committed against people of color; it’s not just a wish to join the side of moral justice in battle. It’s a wish to lead people of color from the inside rather than from the (oppressive, white) outside.

Think of it this way. Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege. Jake never really knows what it’s like to be a Na’vi because he always has the option to switch back into human mode.

When Jake tames the Toruk in the film’s last act, it is just ridiculously improbable. And that improbability underscores the racism and stupidity of this account of imperialism. In a way, this film argues not that imperial control is wrong, just that we’ve been using it wrong all these years — Jake and his scientist buddies are needed to save the Na’vi people and lead them in a just struggle against “the corporations.” There is no principled stand against colonization here because the film portrays the natives as in need of white help. It does not argue — as those of us who have woken up do — that it is patently wrong to “help” other peoples, nations, and cultures; all have a human right to self-determination.

This concept, that just white imperial leadership is what is needed — rather than the removal of all imperial institutions — is consistent with the generally simplistic anti-corporate ideology of this film. What is highlighted here, as in other frivolous leftist advocacy pieces such as Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, is that capitalism creates wealth for the few at the expense of the many, that capitalism is inherently evil. Unfortunately, this is not true. Capitalism creates wealth for everyone. It stimulates art, technology, and science. The market is an impossibly complex system of interweaving interests that does best when it is left alone. I think the same can be said of peoples, nations, and cultures. Thus the evilest player in Avatar is the militarist government which is in bed with this company, RDA. Power corrupts. Very few companies like RDA Corporation would be able to do such terrific evil if government was kept relatively small and demilitarized.

See Avatar for the spectacle, not for the politics. Cheer on the Na’vi, because they have been oppressed; don’t let this oversimplified and condescending portrayal of colonialism inform your general beliefs. Just as lefties and righties need to reject Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh because they degrade the debate, those of us who oppose imperialism need to reject Cameron’s incoherent protest of Iraq and Vietnam. Those wars are wrong, James. But so are you.