Avatar: A futuristic movie filled with old-fashioned ideas

I’m not really one for science fiction but after all of the hype surrounding James Cameron’s Avatar, I had to see it for myself. I have to admit the movie was visually appealing (even if the 3D glasses I was forced to wear blurred my vision rather than enhanced it) but I found the story itself unoriginal and more importantly, I found the way in which the Na’vi race was portrayed problematic.

Yeah, the Na’vi are blue but their faces are a melting pot of ethnic features and their long hair is dreadlocked. Plus, the main Na’vi characters are voiced by four black actors (Zoe Saldana being the prominent Na’vi character and love interest to the movie’s white protagonist Jake Sully). Consequently, it is not enough that the Na’vi are meant to be an extraterrestrial race – no, Cameron must further emphasize the “other” aspect of these fictional people by giving them recognizably ethnic features and by having black actors portray them.

Now, I know that Avatar is meant to be symbolic; that it is supposed to be a reflection of the imperialistic and colonial exploits of our world (Cameron admitted this himself in an NBC interview stating that the plot is centered on how greed and imperialism “tends to destroy the environment” and so on and so forth). And I think that if Cameron had done it right, I would have appreciated it. But Cameron did not do it right. He merely perpetuated tropes and themes that have negatively or condescendingly portrayed other races. For instance, before the (white and for the most part middle-aged) humans officially declare war on the Na’vi, Sully inhabits his Avatar and desperately attempts to make a diplomatic agreement between the two races. But of course, the Na’vi ignorantly ignore his advice and believe that their bow and arrows will take down the humans’ advanced machinery. And when that doesn’t work, Sully becomes one of the Na’vi people and leads them into battle because for some reason, the actual leader of the Na’vi can’t seem to do it himself. Therefore, Cameron adds to the vast amount of literature and movies that portray the need for the white man to rescue an ethnic race because they are not intelligent or strong enough to overcome extraordinary obstacles themselves.

Of course, that isn’t the only contentious detail. The way in which the Na’vi are portrayed as the “primitive other” is also problematic, for while the film tends to praise the Na’vi people for being in touch with nature, the fact remains that these fictional and yet recognizably ethnic people are inherently bestial and are meant to be the antithesis of refinement and civilization. Cameron doesn’t depict civilization as being a particularly good or moral place but he still depicts civilization as something that is Western.

It is in my opinion that Cameron’s heart was in the right place when he made this movie but it is also my opinion that the story was hackneyed, that it lacked insight, and that it was filled with Western arrogance.