Is Avatar Racist???

The only problem is that this is James Cameron we're talking about. He just likes making cool freaking movies. Terminator, Aliens, True Lies, T2, even Titanic was very well done. All just eye popping, entertaining movies. I think he was just looking for a compelling story, not trying to play into anything racial.

B00B wrote:

You do realize that the point of movies as well as books is for the author or creator to display an IDEA or OPINION about a subject. They mask it as entertainment only so that they can get their point across. The point of the movie in addition to generating revenue is for James Cameron to express his thoughts and vies on colonialism.

No kidding. Thanks for removing the shells from my eyes.

Puhleez! wrote:

B00B wrote:

You do realize that the point of movies as well as books is for the author or creator to display an IDEA or OPINION about a subject. They mask it as entertainment only so that they can get their point across. The point of the movie in addition to generating revenue is for James Cameron to express his thoughts and vies on colonialism.

No kidding. Thanks for removing the shells from my eyes.

Movie makers think through every political and social aspect of the movie they are making. The movie is their life for a couple of years and it matters a great deal to them the message it communicates.

Avatar is a racist movie created by people that wanted to come across as racially sensitive, but completely failed. Race and culture is extremely complex. No one person can understand or integrate into a culture in a short amount of time. It is a white person's fantasy to think that they understand what another culture is like, and Avatar is an extension of that fantasy. Think about it, Jake Sully, randomly becomes the most bad ass Na'vi in history, dominates the red dragon thing, bangs the princess, and saves the Na'vi from an army of more well equipped soldiers. That narrative does not lend any credit to the Na'vi for being capable, brave, or self-sufficient; the needed jake sully, which is pretty racist.

Can anybody name a movie about oppressed people who defended themselves quite well against threatening colonialists, without a white guy coming in and saving them all? Perhaps it was made by the oppressed people. Something that the author of the article would not consider racist?

The stories exist, they're just not made, let alone trumpeted, by the mainstream media. You have to dig deep to find them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maroon_

(people)

I wish sometimes people would just watch a movie and enjoy it for what they see, and not what it represents.

Trust me, it's a lot more enjoyable that way.

photofinishes wrote:

White people exploiting others have gotten the planet to this point. Imagine if some other race had been in charge 300-400 years ago...

White people being in charge has basically created a world population enslaved to fossil fuel. In the big picture, it kinda sucks.

3200guy wrote:

How is it racist? If anything it's disapproving of the way white people treated indigenous peoples in countries they colonized or took over.

_______________________

You people still don't get it. If you are white, EVERYTHING you do will be considered racist by at least one minority.

EVERYTHING!

3200guy wrote:

How is it racist? If anything it's disapproving of the way white people treated indigenous peoples in countries they colonized or took over.

That is the message that the film makers wanted to send, Annalee's argument (and I'm not saying it is right or wrong, but it is well argued) is about the sub-text, that the indigenous community could not manage to overcome the threat without the assistance of the hero, who is a part of the invading army: the Na'vi (naive) are helpless without the white man to organise and assist them. That is the racist message of the film.

3200guy wrote:

How is it racist? If anything it's disapproving of the way white people treated indigenous peoples in countries they colonized or took over.

That is the message that the film makers wanted to send, Annalee's argument (and I'm not saying it is right or wrong, but it is well argued) is about the sub-text, that the indigenous community could not manage to overcome the threat without the assistance of the hero, who is a part of the invading army: the Na'vi (naive) are helpless without the white man to organise and assist them. That is the racist message of the film.

only me wrote:

That is the message that the film makers wanted to send, Annalee's argument (and I'm not saying it is right or wrong, but it is well argued) is about the sub-text, that the indigenous community could not manage to overcome the threat without the assistance of the hero, who is a part of the invading army: the Na'vi (naive) are helpless without the white man to organise and assist them. That is the racist message of the film.

Or they are helpless without someone with insider information to help the overmatched defend their land. That is what made the difference in the movie, not the fact that he was white and smarter than everyone.

keep_going wrote:

Or they are helpless without someone with insider information to help the overmatched defend their land. That is what made the difference in the movie, not the fact that he was white and smarter than everyone.

I think Annalee's point is that he didn't just 'help' them. Like Kevin Costner's character in Dances with Wolves, Sully's actions are very paternalistic.

It is basically disingenuous to say that all he did was to have insider information, he doesn't just offer advice that might help them to help themselves, he becomes their protector, their father figure. It is Sully who is the motivating force behind assembling the army, not the Na'vi leader.

Annalee's point is that Cameron is presenting a view that it isn't enough for Sully to give the information to the Na'vi and let them deal with it, he has to take over, to look after them like children (it isn't as overt as that, but the sub-text is there). It isn't a great argument, but, as I said before, it is well argued.

I do think she has a better point about the 'race experience' - can you honestly say that, despite having passed the tribal tests, Sully 'knows' what it is to be Na'vi? If his human body wasn't paraplegic, would he have wanted to take the Na'vi form permanently?

First off, why wouldn't we expect that a movie written by whites would have a white perspective? What's wrong with the movie being about white guilt?

Second, I think her reading breaks down because she asks the question of why it is that the movie couldn't have made a Navi character primary. This question has a clear answer: Cameron's audience is the folks who go to see blockbusters: the bourgeois middle class--folks who can and should identify with Jake. I think it is important to acknowledge that in times of cultural conflict, it's the people who cross the borders between cultures that are forced into leadership roles, people who use the power of the dominant culture to alter or change it. This is a necessary truth. The movie concentrates on Sully, but there are many border crossings: Grace, the Navi Queen (who speaks English), the Latina army pilot who betrays the marines, the Navi girl he falls in love with, and even crossings between animal, biological, and humanoid forms.

The challenge of the movie, insofar as it is about race, is not to pay homage white guilt, but of course to bring that emotion forward and to relate it to current events, to our relationship with technology, to our relationship with the biosphere, and to our relationship with other cultures, right now. The author of this piece makes the movie into "Dances with Wolves," but as I was watching I thought much more about Afghanistan, global warming, the military industrial complex, the way in which global politics is driven by powerful corporate interests, the way in which people are losing touch with their bodies, the tension between steel and flesh. This is a long and ongoing story of colonization--not an event that happened in the past that we ought to feel guilty about, but an event that is repeating itself and needs to be altered now.

So, I agree with the blogger that the story is about race, among many other things. But she has not made the case that it is a racist movie. In fact, she gave us no criterion for determining how or why a movie might be called racist. Or what makes a movie about race into a racist movie.

Indeed, the fact that this movie is generating a new way of discussing race and colonialism seems to me to be a sign that it is not a racist movie--as racist movies tend not to generate talk about race or tend to repeat tired patterns of discussion of race. Can a work of art be racist? It seems to me that it is only the interpretation of the work of art that can be racist, and our blogger has not done her homework on how Avatar has actually been interpreted, and how these interpretations vary according to the viewer. The fact that the movie generated feelings of white guilt in her is no argument that this is a general reaction or a necessary feature of the movie.

That said, kudos to her for creating discussion (though my sense is that it is the predictability of this reaction from certain feminist-academic quarters, the snootiness of the tone, and the negativity of the review in the face of such critical acclaim that is the cause of the success of the blog post, rather than the originality and depth of the analysis.)

oh my gawd: I wish sometimes people would just watch a movie and enjoy it for what they see, and not what it represents.

Trust me, it's a lot more enjoyable that way.

First, why are you worried about whether other people prefer to analyze and not just consume?

If you'd just said "it's more enjoyable that way" I'd agree with you to some extent. Some of my friends seem to watch films strictly as grist for their analysis (and some of these friends are smart and insightful; others, kinda dopey) and apparently miss out on the emotional immersion, involvement and identification with characters, enjoyment.

But devil's advocate point, for all of you suggesting that analysis is wrongheaded: ever heard of propaganda? That's pretty much exactly how it's most often practiced for the last century or so, no? Sneak the Trojan Horse message inside fluffy entertainment which begs to be swallowed uncritically. Used by all kinds of folks with agendas, from totalitarian regimes to Madison Avenue advertisers.

I'm not suggesting James Cameron = Joseph Goebbels or anything. And I have neither the cinema critical nor psychoanalytic chops to go the next step and pontificate on how films more generally do the same message-sneaking even when thoroughly unintentional... propaganda of say the director's (and actors' and writers' etc.) or society's unconscious, or whatever. But it's certainly a real thing: humans' values and thoughts and fears and aspirations and fetishes etc. have always been projected into their art. Including their blockbuster Hollywood action flicks.

...it's the people who cross the borders between cultures that are forced into leadership roles, people who use the power of the dominant culture to alter or change it. This is a necessary truth.

Good post and thanks.

In my opinion, there are two kinds of racism displayed in Avatar: "Smash and Grab Imperialism" and a more subtle, more culturally acceptable form which the author is describing. Clearly the film makers are anti-"smash and grab" and they display their distaste for our world's history in a clear, cliche, and partisan way.

Smash and Grab Imperialism is not a very relevant topic in today's world (i know, i know, Iraq, Afghanistan, Global North, ....blah blah blah). Our world is in much more danger of the second kind, where we treat other cultures like a museum. We don't want them to become modern, because we feel good going and watching them live in a cute way. Every once in a while someone will want to actually join their culture, and this person will be wonderful beyond all modern people, because he could have had modernity, but instead decided to lower himself to level of the indigenous culture, but he did it for their benefit, for their preservation. I tend to think this is equally offensive as smash and grab.

It's beyond racist. That make it as if people of color can't fight without the help of a white man. It disgusts me that people "enjoy" this garbage.

^-^ wrote:

Our world is in much more danger of the second kind, where we treat other cultures like a museum. We don't want them to become modern, because we feel good going and watching them live in a cute way. Every once in a while someone will want to actually join their culture, and this person will be wonderful beyond all modern people, because he could have had modernity, but instead decided to lower himself to level of the indigenous culture, but he did it for their benefit, for their preservation. I tend to think this is equally offensive as smash and grab.

First, I think you'd be better off connecting the smash-and-grab colonialism with the museum colonialism instead of putting them in opposition. These have always gone together, and in fact they are presented together in the movie: the scientist looking for her samples, the capitalist looking for his money. The romantic dream of the pure frontier motivating and guiding colonization. The network of scientific knowledge underwrites and makes possible techniques of barbarism. The mythology of the pure savage is the condition of the idea of cultural renewal, the American dream. So, yes, I see the criticism, but I do think that the movie consciously connects these two modes of colonialism, and is in a certain sense ahead of your analysis in this respect.

Further, it seems to me that the movie is pretty clear that Sully is not lowering himself to the level of the Navi culture only in order to benefit them. I think that it's fairly straightforwardly presented in the movie that Sully fights for the Navi for a variety of reasons, most of them having little to do with paternalistic dreams of redemption through fighting against oppression. He likes the Navi culture because its values, which he directly experiences, give him a richer life. In the end, you get the sense that Sully is fighting for access to the Avatar, for his "legs," not for the redemption or preservation of their culture. He's fighting for HIS life, which is neither fully human nor fully Avatar, but in-between, growing, relating, connecting.

The movie is Manichean in its representation of good and evil. This strikes a hollow note in today's complicated and interwoven world. And perhaps this is the source of the claims of racism. But I think that the real work of the movie is done in offering a positive vision of a world that is not cleaved into colonizing and colonized halves, into oppressors and the oppressed, into humans and animals, perpetrators and victims, etc. Maybe that work could have been done a bit better, but hey: I enjoyed the movie and it made me think a bit.

AI Sharpton wrote:

It's beyond racist. That make it as if people of color can't fight without the help of a white man. It disgusts me that people "enjoy" this garbage.

I thought the story (insofar as it was about race, which to me seemed like a side issue) was about how it will take people crossing sides, betraying their race, learning new languages, and inventing new forms of relating to each other in order to solve the conflicts that plague us.

In the eyes of most if not all black people, the Jake was dressed in black face.