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If the Oscar for Best Picture were awarded based on box office success, “Avatar” would be a shoo-in. The film, which grossed more than $2.4 billion, is one of the most commercially successful films of all time, earning more than three times the total revenue to date of the next most profitable Best Picture nominee, “Up.”
Obviously, people loved “Avatar.” The mind-blowing special effects (in 3-D, no less) made the film a visual treat. But criticism is about more than the gut impact a film has on its audience — critique cuts deeper. It should ask, “What does the movie say?” In a very real — yet very nuanced — way, “Avatar” gives audiences an opportunity to denounce Europe’s and America’s imperial past while rewriting the historical narrative to turn the oppressor into the hero.
The basic plotline goes like this: Humans have depleted Earth’s natural resources. Military forces move in on Pandora, the resource-rich home of the Na’vi, essentially a catchall stereotype of all colonized people throughout history. The film’s protagonist, Jake Sully, is a handicapped Marine whose brain is wired into a lab-created Na’vi body to infiltrate the tribe who lives above a giant deposit of “unobtanium,” the mineral earthlings are crazy to get their hands on. He’s supposed to learn the Na’vi’s way of life and facilitate the removal from their homeland. One thing leads to another, Sully switches sides, and eventually saves the Na’vi from the horrible military-imperial power who would seek to destroy them.
“Avatar” is a white guilt movie in the sense that the entire premise makes white people uncomfortable with their past. The film is a clear analogy of the ways people, mostly white people, have historically oppressed indigenous groups for economic or racist reasons.
On its face, this isn’t a bad thing. All people, white or not, should come to terms with the history of imperialism and conquest that created the world today. This is where it gets nuanced.
Although the military might of the conquerors is portrayed as the villain, and the indigenous Na’vi as the “good guys,” the movie allows white viewers to feel OK because “one of us” is the hero.
Though the Na’vi are powerful, skilled warriors, it takes Sully to tame the Toruk, unite the Na’vi tribes and defeat the enemy. By putting white Sully in a blue Na’vi body, “Avatar” tells the audience that white people can “go native” and live the life of oppressed people without ever having to actually be oppressed.
After all, Sully gets to go back to being a Marine until he decides to switch sides and by then, he’s no longer just a Na’vi — he’s a Na’vi leader. Not only that, but he gets the indigenous princess and in the end, the Na’vi embrace their former oppressor as one of their own.
“Avatar” gives American audiences the best of both worlds by allowing us to judge our imperialist history while never having to examine the impact it had on indigenous cultures, and that’s the key to understanding the effect the movie has on viewers. Should “Avatar” have told the story of European and American imperialism as it actually happened, audiences would’ve left the theater sad, outraged or some confused mental state in between.
It would be easy to say the filmmakers rewrote history to make the film more enjoyable, and that probably was the conscious motive. After all, who would have wanted to see “Gandhi” if the oppressed Indians didn’t win their independence in the end?
But that isn’t the point. By allowing audiences to become comfortable with imperialism between humans and Na’vi, the filmmakers allow audiences to become comfortable with imperialism in general.
Besides, if there’s any reason not to give “Avatar” any non-technical awards, it should be that it’s just a shallow rewrite of “Dances with Wolves,” “The Last Samurai,” “Pocahontas,” and “Fern Gully.”
Mario Moretto is news editor for The Maine Campus.
