Avatar, Race, and the Pastoral

I wrote this piece for a course called “Race and the Pastoral: Aesthetics, Landscape, Embodiment.” The course is, in short, about the pastoral. I am fascinated by “difference” and the pastoral, particularly Jewishness and the pastoral. This is a review of the film Avatar. In it, I refer to Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis and Hegel’s Philosophy of History. It is intense. It talks about the “white man” and notions of body, self, and identity. It is honest, as well — more on the side of a freewrite. Anyways, here it is.

I saw Avatar after not only reading Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, which itself is an adequate enough preview, review, and analysis of this Christmas 2009 blockbuster (already I’m detecting some bias), but I saw the film after engaging with notions of white guilt, blackness and otherness, and the pastoral. I read one review, before I saw the film, which positioned the film in the same position all alien/zombie/freaky-strange creature movies place the white man and the “other.” But Avatar was all too “real.” While District 9 (I think – I did not see it) made these “others” authentic sci-fi CGI aliens in the traditional sense, Avatar made the others wild savages who were sexually engaged with each other and nature and who resisted the big muscled Western White man. These others took human form and thought with human intellect. The music played while they were on screen, the clothing they wore, the way they spoke English, and even the supposedly “weird” color of their skin reminded me of Africa and its inhabitants. But even then, the Navi people are not really that different – they live in the forest, speak the White man’s tongue, and ultimately embrace the White man.

I saw the New Atlantis operating among among the White men and among the savage others. First, Jakesully, or “Jake Sully.” He was the half-muscled White Marine who’s initial assignment was to infiltrate the Navi people to help America capitalize upon this gorgeous pastoral place. However, he falls in love with the savages. He does not want to let them go. He becomes their savior. He frees them. He becomes their Jesus Christ. Jake Sully reminded me of Joabin the Jew from Bacon’s New Atlantis. Both characters are hated and loved, at the same time. Joabin is the dirty rat who is “different” and deviant from the Christian norm. He is circumcised and physically “deformed.” Joabin is not even really a Jew, he is a bad Christian. But at the same time, he is honored with a position and title in the highly-regarded research institution in Bensalem. So is Jake. Jake is at first an outcast in the Navi culture. The elders distrust him and the people do not acknowledge him. He is dirty. In the end, though, he “becomes” one of them, even though at heart, he still occupies a human body and was raised with human values. He only embodied their form, but was still physically different. Jake and Joabin occupy the same positions within the societies they live in.

Jake Sully is also New-Atlantan on another level, this time among the White men. He is physically different from the rest of them. He was just different enough. He was the one assigned to evacuate the different “things.” Joabin, the Jew, too. In relationship to the greater community of Jews, he is different. He is still a Jew, but is he? One could say the same about Jake – is he inhuman because he does not have the use of his legs?

Avatar can also be seen through an analysis of Hegel’s ideas about history of the world and the philosophy of history. In Hegel’s view, Africa is contained in a loop of itself – it cannot “progress” for it is perpetually imitating itself. On the other hand, Europe and America imitate each other, in a sense, which does create “progress.” The same is true with Earth and Pandora, the Navi land. It is far away and does not progress, it is contained within itself. While Earth and America are propelling themselves into the future, the people of Pandora do not even know the worth of their own land. they need the White man to “save” them.

While science-fiction movies in general position the White man above the other, Avatar made this “other” into the Black man. It explicitly approved the cultural, historical, and environmental rape and colonization of Africa by White men, while at the same time making the audience feel “good” about themselves, for the “other” was saved by the White man. The New-Atlantan and Hegelian views are only two questions and interpretations of Avatar, the film is littered with small things, like language and animation choices. While the film was disturbing on a philosophical level, it was also distressing on a practical level. Why were “earth” and the “earth” people all Marines, all American, and led by White men? Why couldn’t Pandora save itself? Was the audience really unable to relate to the Navi people, and was this why the “figure” who saves the Navi was a White man? And here is my biggest and most immediate problem with the movie: Why did they use 3D technology that not only made my head hurt but forsook the use and necessity of new and emerging technologies?

KfL.