Intentions be damned, Avatar is racist (as is praying for and/or to "JaMarcus Manning").

Annalee Newitz writes that "[w]hether Avatar is racist is a matter of debate," but it isn't: the film is racist.  Its fundamental narrative logic is racist: it transposes the cultural politics of Westerns (in which the Native Americans are animists who belong to a more primitive race) onto an interplanetary conflict and then assuages the white guilt that accompanies acts of racial and cultural genocide by having a white man save the noble savages (who are also racists).  Unlike King Kong—which wrestled with the racial logic of the original—Avatar reproduces the racist logic of its source material.  This is not to say the film is not also a condemnation of American imperialism or disastrous environmental policies, because it's that too.  I'll address the racial politics more in a moment, but let me address the portrayal of the military (much bemoaned here) first:

It all adds up to crossing a line that I’ve never experienced in a major American film: drawing the audience to cheer the brutal deaths of Americans who are clearly symbolizing the military.

Blackwater/Xe Services LLC is not the military.  Mercenaries are not symbols of the military.  They are a perversion of the military.  James Cameron has an unabashed love for the military (Aliens, The Abyss, etc.) but that love does not extend to those who make war for profit.  It's obvious that the only authentic military man in the film is the protagonist, Jake Sully, who lost his legs in a legitimate conflict.  He turns from the soulless mercenary-logic like a good proxy for the audience, and this is where the racial politics become problematic. 

The titular "avatars" are genetically designed Na'vi bodies that can be remotely piloted by people like Sully with the intent of studying the natives.  (Think anthropological immersion at its most literal.)  The Na'vi are not merely distrustful of "the space people," they're inherently xenophobic, incapable of trusting any sentient being that doesn't look like them.  If that mistrust is justified for some other reason (like a hairy first contact), the film never mentions it, meaning (in a classic case of projection) the humans assume that the Na'vi will be xenophobic before they even meet them.

But the racial essentialism of the film creates a whopper of an unintended thematic irony.*  The planet and everything on it do not simply coexist in a harmonious balance of the New Age variety: they are hard-wired into a single neural network that makes the entire planet into a single entity and "the space people" less like a colonizing mercenary force than a disease.  The humans are to be resisted not because they are economic imperialists (though they are) and not because they glory in militaristic combat (though they do) but because they are different.  They do not belong to the planet and therefore there is no possibility for peaceful coexistence.  The only way humans can be accepted is for them to forsake their humanity and become Na'vi.  (Think literal assimilation.) 

This is not a vision of a racially harmonious social politic: it is an inversion of the logic of passing that seems acceptable only because it imagines the experience of becoming a person of color as necessarily ennobling.  The film argues that once a white person truly and deeply understands the non-white experience, he becomes an unstoppable combination of non-white primitivism and white rationalism which is exactly what happens.  In order for the audience to support the transformation of Jake Sully into Braveheart Smurf, it must accept the essentialist assumptions that make such a combination possible ... and those assumptions are racist.  In football terms, this is a variation of the black quarterback "problem."

For decades, coaches and scouts wished they could find a black body with a white brain in it.  ("If only someone could find a way to stuff Peyton Manning's brain into JaMarcus Russell's body!")  The essentialist logic at play there is obvious: black people are more athletic than white, and white people are smarter than black.  No matter how descriptive these people thought they were being, in truth they were creating the conditions they claimed to describe: black quarterbacks were increasingly valued for raw athleticism, white athletes for their pocket presence and tactical acumen.  That's an expectations game based on racist expectations ... and it works according to the same logic behind the narrative of Avatar. 

*I'm analogizing race and species here because Cameron's space fable encourages me to do so with all the subtlety of a fry pan upside my head.

Comments

[Thomas]

On the other hand, Cameron was clearly aiming at the "Scifi enthusiast, Pagan, skydiver" niche, ergo, I loved it. These and many other criticisms are valid but I still loved it.

[Gene]

Scott, do you think Avatar's racial politics look any different if we take the training subcategory of the kung fu movie as our point of comparison rather than the western? I can't defend Cameron's primitivist depiction of the Na'vi, but I wonder if Sully can be at least partially redeemed if we think of him less as a white brain in an Other's body and more as an outsider pupil who, after much training, becomes even more adept than his masters. (I'm not sure I'm persuaded by this argument myself, but The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and Drunken Master came to mind in the theater for me even as I was sighing at all the noble savagery.)

[SEK]

Gene, that would certainly make the cultural politics more palatable, but I'm not sure I could generate a defensible reading of the film as such: much of the film's occupied with "going native," and there's more to it than the simply the training, especially considering the anthropological imbalance between the two societies (which one is being studied, which one is doing the studying, etc.). There's a difference, I think, between "learning a discipline via montage" and "going native." (Again, I'm floating ideas here and am not wedded to my reading; in point of fact, I'd love to be talked out of it.)

[Ahistoricality]

First, Scott, I have to say that "Braveheart Smurf" may well be the greatest neologism of 2009, not to mention the most devastating two words in a movie review ever.

Even Kung Fu movies have politics, though within the Chinese milieu it's usually classism not racism which is being encoded or subverted by the "outsider" narratives.

Granted that Cameron's technology and ambitions are greater, but is this more racist than the standard Star Trek (OS, NG, DS9, V, etc) conceit that all members of a species share a uniform culture (even, especially, when they're at war with themselves) and that whites (aka humans) can understand, participate in, learn from and transcend them all by virtue of not being that sort of race?

[SEK]

First, Scott, I have to say that "Braveheart Smurf" may well be the greatest neologism of 2009, not to mention the most devastating two words in a movie review ever.

I try!

Granted that Cameron's technology and ambitions are greater, but is this more racist than the standard Star Trek (OS, NG, DS9, V, etc) conceit that all members of a species share a uniform culture (even, especially, when they're at war with themselves) and that whites (aka humans) can understand, participate in, learn from and transcend them all by virtue of not being that sort of race?

Yes. In fact, when the Braveheart Smurf unites all the people of the world, the only difference is whether they're mostly Na'vi-who-ride-things-with-legs and Na'vi-who-ride-things-with-wings. That said, it's unlike Trek in one crucial respect: the humans in the film don't do the learning, only the audience of it. The humans are carted off at the end contrite not because they've done wrong, but because they've lost.

[Jake]

Blackwater/Xe Services LLC is not the military. Mercenaries are not symbols of the military. They are a perversion of the military. James Cameron has an unabashed love for the military (Aliens, The Abyss, etc.) but that love does not extend to those who make war for profit.

Does this make the death of the mercenaries fine, then?

[SEK]

Does this make the death of the mercenaries fine, then?

Absolutely not, only that "a person armed to the teeth" isn't necessarily a stand-in for the American military, especially when that person works (i.e. kills) for a corporation.

[Jake]

Okay. Some people were offended by that notion that mercenaries are a perversion of the military and are thus inherently evil and so organizations like Blackwater/Xe Services LLC are inherently evil as well.

[SEK]

Let me put this another way: if you want to equate the mercenaries in Avatar with American soldiers, you can, but you're going to have to make an argument. You could employ the mercenaries' use of phrases like "shock and awe" to demonstrate that they're figures of the American military, but if you're going to do that, you have to do that, i.e. you have to make that argument. Because I'd say that the valorization of Sully, explicitly identified as an ex-Marine, plays against the notion that Cameron wants us to make that connection. But it could be argued.

[Ahistoricality]

the humans in the film don't do the learning

Except for two of them, apparently?

Does this make the death of the mercenaries fine, then?

Not speaking for Scott or Cameron here, but, why not? "Live by the sword, die by the sword" isn't a cliche for nothing. I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know if they frame it as being more morally ambiguous than "people defending their home and livelihood from rapacious corporation with hired guns" but hired guns seem like fair game to me.

[Jake]

Not necessarily an equivalence of the mercenaries in the film and the American military but real life mercenaries, which you made here by citing Blackwater and then writing they're perversions of the military. Because that is not always case, as the people hired by those organizations were former soldiers for the American military and want to make a living doing what they do and that isn't any worse as people who join the military to make a living for themselves or get an education. Unless you mean this matter on mercenaries being perversions of the military and care only to profit from war is what Cameron is pointing out and not you.

[Ahistoricality]

the people hired by those organizations were former soldiers for the American military and want to make a living doing what they do and that isn't any worse as people who join the military to make a living for themselves or get an education.

Isn't it?

[Jake]

Okay, so what has mercenary organizations like Blackwater done that makes the deaths of mercenaries in Avatar perfectly fine or worth applauding to? Simply being labeled hired guns that deserve what they got coming does disservice to what happens in real life, no?

[Karl Steel]

" Some people were offended"
You mean you?

This conversation went in a surprising direction.

Jake, how do you distinguish between when it's okay to cheer on the deaths of hired guns in movies and when it's wrong? In, say, Hard Boiled, heaps of hired guns get killed. Is this a sad thing? Is this a matter of valuing human life in general, or are we specifically not supposed to mourn, say, soldiers and bands of condottieri, whatever their cause?

[SEK]

Some people were offended by that notion that mercenaries are a perversion of the military and are thus inherently evil and so organizations like Blackwater/Xe Services LLC are inherently evil as well.

Being a perversion of X doesn't make perverted-X evil, just perverted. The honor and nobility owed to those who serve can be given, but isn't necessarily owed, and certainly isn't owed in the same way, to those who serve for money. Yes, I understand I'm splitting hairs here, as many of the people who enlist in mercenary groups are former military ... but in my experience, they're not formerly military looking to score college funds. They're looking for a six-figure pay check for a few months of dangerous work, which is what people do to make a living, I understand, but it's not quite the same as serving your country.

Unless you mean this matter on mercenaries being perversions of the military and care only to profit from war is what Cameron is pointing out and not you.

Well, Cameron's pointing this out with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer: the ex-Marine is the turncoat-cum-hero who fights the unambiguously evil mercenaries who want nothing more to kill natives in the name of raping the planet. My drawing the analogy to Blackwater makes the issue about a million times more complicated than it is in the film.

[Jake]

Jake, how do you distinguish between when it's okay to cheer on the deaths of hired guns in movies and when it's wrong? In, say, Hard Boiled, heaps of hired guns get killed. Is this a sad thing? Is this a matter of valuing human life in general, or are we specifically not supposed to mourn, say, soldiers and bands of condottieri, whatever their cause?

Well the political implications of Avatar that SEK points out here matter. He showed why the film is racist but he also showed why the film has a caricatural view of mercenaries. I didn't know if he agreed with that caricature or not and citing Blackwater made me think he did, but I guess now he was only explaining to the Big Hollywood crew this was not explicitly the American military but a private military.

[Karl Steel]

ok. you didn't quite answer my questions, but ok: still curious to know your opinion about when it's okay to defend hired guns and when not.

But I presume you meant "explicitly not the American military"? Because that's my reading of Scott's interpretation of Jake Sully. As others have pointed out, note that it's Jake "allegorical name" Sully. His name, just this side of "Jack Shit," sort of muddles the noble (ex) Marine story: of course, we can just ascribe this to Cameron's getting his anti-merc peanut butter in his lowbrow Tristes Tropiques chocolate.

[Jake]

ok. you didn't quite answer my questions, but ok: still curious to know your opinion about when it's okay to defend hired guns and when not.

I think I did in fact. Is Hard Boiled (the movie by John Woo? The comic by Frank Miller?) intentionally making an allegory about real live mercenaries the way Avatar is? In this case, it is and SEK explicitly points that out, so in this case it cheering the deaths of mercenaries would be wrongheaded.

[Jason R]

A tangential but related discussion of a different color: « HOW COME IT’S BLUE? » THE ORIGINS OF JAMES CAMERON’S AVATAR

[Chetverikov]

Being a perversion of X doesn't make perverted-X evil, just perverted. The honor and nobility owed to those who serve can be given, but isn't necessarily owed, and certainly isn't owed in the same way, to those who serve for money.

So, taking pay for a service is somehow inherently ignobling? I don't buy that at all. One of the effects here in the US of terminating the draft was that the military had to increase pay across the board. I don't think that in any way decreases the merit of service given by volunteers in the 80s or presently relative to the service given by draftees prior to that. And the same goes for people who've chosen to go work for PMCs.

In my experience, they're not formerly military looking to score college funds. They're looking for a six-figure pay check for a few months of dangerous work, which is what people do to make a living, I understand, but it's not quite the same as serving your country.

What's your experience? I'll agree that that's the motivation of the guys I met in Iraq (november 03 to november 04) who were pumping gas or driving civilian supply trucks. That is, NON-military contractors. But the operators from MPRI (training), Xe (executive protection, force protection, convoy security), and so on that I worked with absolutely were motivated by a desire to serve their country. They just wanted to make better money while they did it, and in some cases to dispense with certain aspects of military culture, which I can certainly understand. "Do what you enlisted to do, but with less mickey mouse and more pay" is a pretty good deal.

[Edited to make the italics slanty --- SEK]