So, I saw Avatar on New Year's Eve...

[grinninfoole]

In one word: WOW.

In more words: I was moved by this movie.

I have read several critiques of the film which all pointed to a racist sub-text of one sort or another.
Tasha Robinson posted a good short review, and there are links to some of those more negative reviews of this sort in the comments. (For reviews attacking the film as 'liberal' and 'America hating', check out Big Hollywood.)

I do not contradict those opinions–even the ones at which I rolled my eyes. Avatar does share thematic (and plot, iIrc) elements with Dances With Wolves, and probably a number of other films. Seeing as the latest in what rollick  calls America's Holocaust Narrative makes sense, and this is the story of a white man who becomes one of the colored people, etc.

As a (re)viewer, though, I tend to focus on the particulars of the film itself, on how the story works within its own little world. (Yes, I know, very New Criticism. I did go to Kenyon.:) I don't deny the applicability of larger perspectives, or of experiencing the movie through the emotional lens of 'ugh, this is White Guilt Fantasy–I hate those', but this film, I think, is not an allegory, and I believe that there is more to it, both emotionally and dramatically, than a sop to White Guilt.


For me, the experience of Avatar tapped into something that feels more primal than white guilt–the desire for a perfect communion of flesh and consciousness. For one thing, the Navi are physically cooler than we are: they’re ten feet tall, stronger, tougher, and beautiful. They are all slender and fit, with gorgeously expressive golden eyes, soothing blue skin tones with appealing highlights, fun little tails, and patches of bio-luminescence (that’s right, they literally glow with beauty.) So, too, does the forest in which they live. Jake Sully, the film’s protagonist, finds himself stranded alone at night in this forest, and aware that he could be in mortal danger, he does what any marine would do: makes some weapons and gets ready to defend himself. So he sharpens a stick into a spear, and then wraps the other end in cloth and soaks them in some sort of sap, and makes them into a torch.


Using fire to defend ourselves against dangerous beasts is perhaps the oldest human trick, of course, but it just makes him a target on Pandora. He’s saved by a Navi who puts out the torch, and then Jake discovers that he isn’t plunged into darkness, but into a soft, glowing blue dreamscape. The forest is alive with light, and the plants and his flesh both glow brighter when they brush one another–even the very ground lights up as they stride over it.


This world doesn’t only look like an SF Lothlorien, it is measurably, scientifically demonstrably, alive and conscious. The Navi refer to the world-mind as Eywa, and treat it with something like worshipful reverence. (Though not actual worship, since they are interacting with a discrete, albeit vast, physical being, and not an emotional projection onto the universe in general.) The Navi have an appendage, a long bundle glowing strands (that look like fiber optic cables) that apparently connect directly to their central nervous systems. Most of the animals and plants on Pandora have similar strands, and it allows the Navi to actually, physically connect themselves emotionally and mentally to their environment. They don’t just get on the backs of their pterodactyl things and ride them, they actually share the experience of flying. Of course, this also means that when the Navi hook up for sex, they literally hook up.


And when Jake, afraid that the Navi’s efforts to defend Pandora from the marines will fail, doesn’t just pray to Eywa for guidance or intervention, he literally plugs himself into the forest and shares his concerns. And Eywa, alerted to the threat, responds by rousing all the animals of the planet to mass and attack the marines before they can bomb the sacred grove/central processing hub.


Contrast this amazing alien world with Jake’s human existence: Earth is apparently an environmentally degraded hell-hole, full of wars and pollution etc. etc. Jake himself was a marine, fighting a jungle war in South America, until he was wounded in the spine and mustered out because he’s confined to a wheel chair. The total fluke that his identical twin, who spent years studying the Navi and for him the Avatar of the title was grown, was killed in a random mugging means that a proudly ignorant jar-head finds himself on another world in a superior alien form, that also allows him to walk again.

So, really, to get this film's appeal, do we have to bring in a racist, colonial meta-narrative about expunging white guilt, co-opting native identities while preserving the colonizer’s privilege, putting white minds in black bodies, or playing Peter Pan going out to play savage with insultingly stereotyped Indians? I’m not saying that those shoes don’t fit, but, really, what nerd doesn’t understand the attraction of being able to discard the soft, awkward, clumsy, hairy, pink/brown/olive/etc. meat-sack we currently inhabit in exchange for a beautiful blue dream-self? What person who survived puberty doesn’t want to be able to really connect with other people, and indeed, their whole environment, in a non-trivial, no bullshit way (without having to use mind-altering chemicals–the Navi can expand their consciousness and drive all at the same time!)? For that matter, who hasn’t, at least once in a while, craved a moment of total communion with their entire world, in which that world evaluates your whole being, your true inner self, and finds you worthy? I certainly do. Jake Sully, the lucky cartoon bastard, gets that.


Me? I’ll have to do it the hard way.



Or, maybe this comic puts it more simply: Multiplex from last week.

Comments

[blue-crow.livejournal.com]

The more I've thought about Avatar, the more it shared parallels to Dune- and the more that made me uncomfortable about liking Dune. While Dune has a longer narrative arc and some extra political factions to contend with most of it is really the same- majority male from off-world comes in, has to depend on the natives to survive, has to fight some of them for his place in the order, falls in love with the spiritual girl (which is convenient because she's the one that will help him secure his leadership, because the spiritual girl is also the one who will become the spiritual leader when the current spiritual leader dies) and eventually becomes so much better at all the current native customs than any of the other natives who have been doing those things all their lives that he uses those customs to defeat his own people. Even Jessica was more or less Dr. Grace.

I'd never interpreted Dune as a white-guilt fantasy and now I have to.

I have a lot of mixed feelings on the whole innate potential/"really i'm special but no one sees it yet" theme. Everyone wants to have a talent that hasn't been discovered yet- I mean, that's the theme of every action movie as well as every teenage girl makeover rom-com. I just wish there was a gratifying way to do it without making everyone else look the weaker for it. There are ways to have talents that aren't "and i'm instantly better than everyone else who has been doing this their whole lives because I'm special!" That was the part that ruined Avatar for me, really, that he had to be the best to be useful. I guess he'd trained as a Marine for a long time, but the whole spiritual connection with nature that he had as well as a native in two months- it just seemed wrong to me.

The only character I really liked was the pilot chick. She had a better balance- she got to learn new skills (navigating in the earthmotes) but mostly was useful based on her moral compass and her prior learning.

[trovia.livejournal.com]

As a (re)viewer, though, I tend to focus on the particulars of the film itself, on how the story works within its own little world.

That's a case of what's called white privilege though, isn't it?

[mole-underfield.livejournal.com]

Excellent review!