So, James Cameron went on The View and finally revealed that Avatar was intended as a thinly-veiled vehicle for anti-corporate and environmentalist propaganda, confirming the suspicions of Republicans, mercenaries, and unobtainium miners everywhere. The funny thing is, even though he obviously wanted to send a very specific message, what the movie ends up meaning depends on one’s point of view. You might call it a reflecting pool, or a Rorschach inkblot test, in which everyone sees the confirmation of his or her political ideology in the story. Environmentalists might see it as glorifying the beauty and sanctity of nature and condemning man’s destructive and myopic exploitation of it. Socialists might revel in its message that living without money or trade is a more fulfilling and humane existence and that profit breeds violence and coercion. Doves might see it as challenging the military mindset and imperialist impulses of American culture.

However, viewed through a different lens, Avatar could be seen as a glorification of traditional or conservative values. To wit: the heroes (the Na’vi) are a bunch of hunters who are deeply superstitious, xenophobic to the point that the only way to communicate with them is to pretend you are one of them, paternalist (“you may now choose any of the Na’vi women as your wife”), socially darwinistic (everyone has to learn to hunt to be socially accepted and they might get killed trying, sink-or-swim style), and apparently happy to live under an autocratic system of government. It seems like a litany of all the traits the left hates about troglodytic red-staters.

Indeed, context is everything.  Joshua Keating at the FP Passport blog notes that some non-Americans are getting completely different messages out of Avatar depending on what their particular circumstances of oppression are.  Some Russian communists see it as defending American foreign policy and hegemony, since the Na’vi so easily accept a “Pentagon-made mutant” who eventually becomes their leader.  Some Chinese viewers see it as supporting property rights — many of their homes (called “nail houses”) are being appropriated by government-backed real estate companies. Some libertarians in America, including the Cato Institute’s David Boaz, also support this view — that Avatar is essentially about eminent domain (“a space opera of the Kelo case”).

I think that Boaz is on the right track about the film being pro-market, but I think his reasoning is wrong.   The key to really understanding Avatar is to view it as a tragedy. The ending is not happy, even though it is made to seem triumphant. You see, everyone ends up worse off than they would have been if not for the prevalence of the perception that trading is repugnant.

Early on in the movie, the corporate head explains that they’d been trying to establish a trade with the Na’vi for some time, and they were even employing these expensive “avatars” in order to attempt to understand the Na’vi culture and communicate with them, but nothing worked. He explained that “we didn’t have anything they wanted.” They might not have wanted anything, but it cannot be seriously argued that they didn’t need anything. The Na’vi lived in a tribal stone age economy, dependent on the domineering and killing of animals to survive. Seeing as how Neytiri prays over the carcasses of some forest critters she reluctantly skewered (indicating an emotional and religious toll), and how difficult and dangerous the training to become a hunter is (indicating a physical and social toll), it’s pretty clear that the Na’vi would be better off if they didn’t have to hunt. The humans could have easily introduced agricultural technology that would have allowed the Na’vi to live their lives in a less violent world. And that’s just one example.  Therefore, one conclusion to draw from this is that the Na’vi simply found the idea of trading as inappropriate, immoral or repugnant, or all three. Perhaps “trading” just seemed dirty compared to slicing and dicing an Pandoran lemur, to whom you have a spiritual connection, for dinner, and cleansing your palate with a prayer, comfortable in your notion that what happened was “natural” and therefore good. But I digress.

With the introduction and acceptance of Jake Sully’s “dreamwalker”, they finally had a chance to properly explain how trading can be mutually beneficial to its participants. But instead, the “hero” spent all his time enjoying being able to run again, flirting, and revitalizing his self confidence by training with dragons and ponytails.

Had the “hero” of the film attempted to explain things to the Na’vi, things would most definitely have been different. For one, he could have helped them understand that, unlike Na’vi, humans employ specialization of labor in order to make their lives better, since not all of them are capable of being fierce warriors, and that they trade goods and services among them, that these things are valued based on a system of prices that represents how much people want or need a specific good or service, and that based on this system, unobtainium (the stuff under your tree) is extremely valuable and will benefit many people. He could have used an analogy to hunting — the Na’vi used their environment to survive, and humans do the same, but in different ways. The unobtainium was essentially not valuable to the Na’vi (unless it is to be assumed that it was the source of their “supernatural” network — though everything seemed to work fine after the tree was destroyed). Perhaps the Na’vi could have figured out a way to remove the unobtainium without having to relocate. Perhaps they would have still been opposed to th exchange, but at least their opposition would be based on a conception of their collective property rights rather than on a misunderstanding of the humans’ intentions.

But “hero” Jake Sully made the choice for the Na’vi without even considering consulting with them, and left a video message to his military commanders that served as the primary evidence that attempting to trade was futile. In the end, for the corporation, using military action was a last resort. Certainly I’m not arguing that the military invasion was justified — what happens is tragic, as I said earlier. But because there is no consideration of trade, the Na’vi tree is blown to smithereens, a bunch of them are killed, and then Sully organizes another military excursion (after the damage is already done) that led to many more lost lives. Even though the end of the movie has a satisfying feel because the “bad guys” are sent packing, the truth is that everyone is worse off — the humans’ operations are destroyed, the tree gets destroyed anyway (and we can assume no one gets to use the exposed unobtainium — a complete loss!), and the Na’vi relocate anyway. Thus, Avatar is both a parable warning against xenophobia and distrust and one promoting voluntary exchange and cultural understanding.

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