Avatars to the Left of Me, Pandora to the Right: an Indigenous Woman Considers James Cameron’S Avatar

Avatars to the Left of Me, Pandora to the Right: An Indigenous Woman Considers James Cameron’s Avatar

Julia Good Fox

Avatar (2009) Director: James Cameron Screenwriter: James Cameron Running Time: 161 minutes

e have all seen Avatar before.

I say this because Avatar is so freighted with history and meaning. Yet it is a willful oversimplification to reduce it to mere white-savior and/or going native comparisons àla A Man Called Horse (1970), Dances with Wolves (1990), and W Pocahontas (1995). To leave the conversation at such a simplistic distillation of the film is nothing more than cynicism. Albeit an understandable cynicism on our part. But of course, do we Indigenous Peoples expect anything else from mainstream Hollywood. For a moment, however, let us step past this initial distrust of the film, making sure to stay clear of falling into the trap of “it’s only entertainment and nothing more” insistence or, rather, fallacy. In an empire, no matter what David Brooks writes in his New York Times column on Avatar, there is no such thing as “just escapism,” or just entertainment.

Only connect. James Cameron has spent his career exploring E.M. Forester’s truism—the ways that representative individuals and cultures misconnect, disconnect, shun connection, abuse connection, and, of course, connect. He has done so by creating cross-cultural intersections that occur in improbable circumstances. Cameron conceptualizes these intersections amid barriers in time (The Terminator), economic class (Titanic), physical and moral abilities (Spiderman)—and other cultural impediments as seen in Aliens and The Abyss. He continually asks whether or not supportive connections between individuals can be made across these obstructions—and he has briefly depicted the consequences or aftermath of these sometimes ephemeral relationships of affirmation.

The great Lakota philosopher, Vine Deloria, Jr., discusses the ability of the U.S. to “get” Indian but that it has yet to overcome its becoming overwhelmed with ignorance when confronting the unique specificities of our respective Tribes—those characteristics within our Tribe that differentiate us from all the other Tribes and that provide us with our humanity. (One can get all kinds of things from the U.S. Empire, but humanity is not one of them.) Aside from a shared history in surviving 2

U.S. genocide and ongoing colonization, the Tribes do share a few similarities. As Taiaiake has pointed out, one of our shared traits was—is—the ability to appreciate and recognize multidimensional relationships, a reality which we acknowledge, to use a general example, in such translated phrases as “all my relations.”

In Avatar, the audience (by way of Jake Scully) is taught the phrase “Oel ngati kameie” which translates to “I see you.” This is not a glance or a gaze, but rather an accurate and encompassing recognition, an insightful and respectful acknowledgment. I comprehend our connection, our relatedness. To reinforce the idea of this phrase, Cameron sets the Tree of Souls as the centerpiece of the film.

Only connect. All of the impressive technological and artistic achievements aside, Avatar remains another Cameron exploration of connection, of what prevents and what enables Oel ngati kameie.

In Avatar, Cameron explores the possibilities of connection between the Na′vi and the Resources Development Administration. The Na′vi live on Pandora, the RDA is from Earth, and the film opens after decades of contact between the two cultures. Predictably, the RDA covets a Pandoran resource which is a mineral called unobtanium (engineers and sci-fi fans will catch the inside reference), and have encountered Indigenous resistance to Earth’s accompanying inequitable cultural “exchange” involving imposed education, language, and relocation designed to destabilize or annihilate the Tribes. Because of the technology and science featured in the film’s plotline, one cannot help but think that Avatar is presenting Manifest Destiny as a Manifest Destiny gone Xtreme. Cameron does so through providing us with a luscious 3-D visual feast ala the painters Maxfield Parrish, Roger Dean, and a myriad of other fantasy artists.

The first round of film reviewers have charged that Avatar is overly-derivative and have each brought up the same film titles as proof, including those I mentioned earlier in this essay. To limit the critique of Avatar to the corral of these titles, however, does a disservice to the audience. The film is a compelling, and deliberately pieced-together metatext whose meaning and embedded history involves a montage of U.S.-sponsored militarization, genocide, and colonization—and the accompanying U.S. (and Hollywood) inability to connect with Indigenous Peoples and Tribal Nations. Of course the viewer will think of Pocahontas and Iraq and Viet Nam when watching Avatar. Of course we will remember Cowboys and Indians and Billy Jack and other films and histories while watching Avatar. Cameron is absolutely encouraging us to do so. He helps us along by purposely making heavy-handed cultural references (i.e., Col. Quartich’s statement that his security forces will use “shock and awe” as they unleash their Goliath forces upon the Na′vi who are protecting their sacred site, the Tree of Souls). The ability of the audience to recognize the network of connections to other films, history, and recent political and contemporary events, is one of the points of the film.

Avatar is a prism onto other narratives and realities, a carefully-pieced together extravaganza for an audience of film buffs, historians, Indigenous Peoples, colonizers and their descendants— fastened to Cameron’s ongoing interest in the possibilities of individuals still connect to each other’s humanity despite overwhelming hurdles—as set within his typical big production pyrotechnics. And regardless of the geopolitical location of the U.S. “making the world safer” 3 military activities, Avatar reminds us that the U.S. (as suggested by the RDA) is stuck in a moment of Manifest Destiny that it cannot get out of.

Manifest Destiny remains the de facto ideology of the United States. Sometimes it is easier to understand or to explore or to come to terms with the U.S.’s ongoing antipathy or ignorance to our Tribal Nations through use of analogies, such as Avatar.

Numerous sugar-coated justifications were used by the George W. Bush administration to invade Iraq (whose primary resource for U.S. nationals is petroleum), and they basically believed it would be an easy and short endeavor to bring Iraq to its knees by utilizing the application of a military doctrine called Shock and Awe. The U.S. was wrong.

In Avatar, Stephen Lang plays Miles Quartich who is the commander of the RDA’s security forces or hired guns. Lang’s accent, complete with the subtle verbal missteps and sheer arrogance clearly suggests a couple of Georges. Not necessarily the George W. who hid in the White House during most of his eight-year term, but rather a George Bush Custer-on-steroids figure, a man absent of curiosity who only wants to put his daydreams of leading the cavalry into action, somewhere. This modern-day George Custer is in charge of a unit of mercenaries that clearly suggests the former Blackwater USA. Avatar audiences can well imagine that Quaritch is the figure that Bush and his Team America wished they could be if only they possessed the stones.

Given the militarization of our communities, it can be argued that the United States is not a country with a military but rather a military with a country. In Avatar, this relationship is represented by the Military-Industrial-University complex. Cameron portrays this complex as an NGO called Research Development Administration (RDA), and the RDA quickly establishes to the audience the greed of its military and corporate wings. Although clearly the military has the upper-hand in this arrangement, the two interests are enmeshed with each other in order to feed each other’s addiction to violent profits or profitable violence. Both parties attempt to manipulate the university (represented by the scientists), whose own agenda is that the RDA allows them the financial resources and physical proximity to research their Pandoran interests.

In Cameron’s worldview, for individuals who want to respond to each other’s humanity then the only course of action is to defect from the complex.

The university folks seem most empathetic to the Na′vi, and these educated individuals—Dr. Grace Augustine (played by my acting hero, Sigourney Weaver), Dr. Max Patel (Dileep Rao), and Dr. Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore)—are, in their own way, independent thinkers and questioners. These traits allow them to move away from the RDA monolithic mindset in order to battle alongside the Na’vi. Interestingly, in real life, we know that siding with the Indigenous Peoples and Tribal Nations could be called anti-American, siding with terrorism, treason.

Corporate industry (represented by Parker Selfridge who is the head of the RDA’s mining project on Pandora) is unable to shift away from their profit motive even when confronted with the power of the Tree of Souls, the sacred site that provides the Na′vi with what we might generally call, for lack of a better word, their humanity. Selfridge is played by Giovanni Ribisi, who brings the right balance of thirst and cowardice to his role. (And lest any of you non-Tribal people reading this 4 think that the U.S. does not continue to attack precious areas of Tribal Lands, consider the ongoing U.S. corporate-based destruction—corporations who often have the backing of the U.S. legal courts that are designed to protect U.S. (not Tribal Nations) interests. For example, just off the top of my head, I am thinking of the San Francisco Peaks that John McCain and Bruce Babbitt long to destroy for financial profit; Longview Farm’s attack on the lands of Yankton Nation for financial profit; and the poultry industry’s damage to the water supply in Oklahoma for financial profit— and the courts refusal to allow the Cherokee Nation to join a lawsuit so as to protect the health of their people.)

Corporate cannot give up its addiction and Cameron spends little time on Selfridge. However, Avatar does present a much nuanced take on the military and does so by depicting the military branch that is most associated with unconditional service and loyalty to each other: the Marines.

Out of all the branches in the military, the jarheads enjoy a certain unique reputation both in the popular imagination and among those in the rest of the U.S. armed services. So to appreciate the magnitude of Scully’s defection as presented in Avatar, we would ask ourselves what would happen if, in real life, individuals in the U.S. Marines stationed in Iraq began to recognize that D.C. had taken advantage of their love of country. What would happen if they begin to recognize that it is the Iraqis that are the victims against U.S. aggression (instead of the other way around)? What course of action would they then undertake? In Avatar, two young marines, Scully and Trudy, each make a similar realization and begin to support the Na′vi against RDA aggression. That both make this leap is astonishing, and explains why Cameron has had to insist in at least one interview that his film is not “anti-American.”

Sam Worthington brings in a competent performance to the character of Scully. While his role is one-dimensional and a bit clumsy, Worthington does an able job in conveying why he transfers his loyalty to the Na′vi. However, the character Scully would be unable to make this transformation without the assistance and mentoring of four women: Neytiri, Mo′at, Dr. Grace Augustine, and Trudy Chacon. Each of these females decides to assist him on their own accord and with their own reasons. For example, Trudy (delightfully played by Michelle Rodriguez) is a fellow marine and so basically takes on the role of his sister. As a marine, she backs up her brother and refuses to leave him behind in the RDA’s jail where he awaits deportation.

Scully has two maternal figures. Mo′at gives him a second chance at life, dismissing the Na′vi men’s request to kill him. Later in the film, it is she who essentially provides the way for him to reemerge as a new man on Pandora. C.C.H. Pounder provides the voice for Mo′at, and though her scenes are short, Pounder leaves no doubt that it is her character who is the moral anchor of the film.

Scully’s other mother figure is Augustine. After a shaky start, Weaver, with her usual commanding wit and presence, provides the young man with necessary mentoring when he is away from the Na′vi. As she removes him from the influences of corporate and the military, she is able to guide him from immaturity into maturity while he learns Na′vi teachings and masters the physical nature of his avatar. Augustine keeps a steady hand on him while he attempts to lose himself within his romance with Neytiri and Pandora.

Neytiri is the young woman whose mother, Mo′at, has directed to guide the “dreamwalker” from insanity to sanity. Zoe Saldana provides the voice for Neytiri and brings in an impressive range to 5 her voice role. And among all these interactions between Scully and his female family, the love story between Neytiri and Scully is the most clichéd, and the one with which Indigenous Peoples are all too familiar. Cameron and other non-Tribal people may not quite fathom the steep depth of tiredness from Indigenous film viewers regarding this retreaded plot-device. Frankly, the romantic story of how these two are able to connect amid vast cultural and physical differences cannot be separated from the ongoing non-Tribal man’s fantasy that an Indigenous woman will find him more desirable than she does all other Tribal men. Non-Tribal men always want to be super Indians. We see this in Avatar as Scully transforms into more of an Indigenous man than are the real Indigenous men, including Wes Studi’s Eytucan (the father of Neytiri). And who among us have not met white or black or other people who think they know more about Indians than do the Indians?

Yet the love story of Neytiri and Scully goes beyond white people’s desire to be the object of beauty and erotic attraction for Indigenous Peoples. Colonizers also want to be forgiven for the damage they (and their ancestors) have wrought. This is most strongly suggested in the Pietà scene near the film’s end, when Neytiri holds Scully’s human form and the audience is presented with a visual of the perceived redemptive power of Native love for the non-Native.

Watching this particular scene, I could not help but recall Lewis Lapham’s statement after 9/11 when he wrote that the U.S., as with the Roman Empire, wants dominion over the world. Unlike the Roman Empire, however, the U.S. Empire wants to be liked by the world while carrying out this particular activity.

Cameron’s Avatar provides a wealth of symbolism beyond critiques of U.S. colonization and the sometimes self-conscious analysis of Hollywood’s cinematic depictions of this colonization. By now, for example, audiences know that “avatar” is a reference from Hinduism. And of course, there is the name of the futuristic Indian Country: Pandora. What the name suggests is important. When Pandora’s Box is opened, it can never be closed; no matter who opens it, we all have to live with the consequences.

One box, however, that Hollywood studios steadfastly refuse to open is the one that allows for multi-dimensional roles for Indigenous actors. Because of Hollywood’s anti-Indianism, U.S. audiences maintain low-expectations regarding plotlines available to Native actors. This is unfortunate because if the careers of untalented actors and singers can be instructive, the lesson from these lightweights is that a good marketing campaign can entice audiences into buying anything. So why not tickets to a well-made Hollywood film with Indigenous actors in major roles? Until that time, the Native film circuits are thriving with independent films such as the 2009 releases Sterlin Harjo’s Barking Water and Kevin Willmott’s The Only Good Indian.

I found Avatar—which essentially is Cameron’s first foray into the Cowboy and Indian genre—to be an emotional movie as it is difficult for me to not think of history whenever I see cinematic depictions of assaults on Indigenous Peoples. As such, one of the more satisfying moments in the film occurs in the aftermath of the battle between the Na′vi and the RDA. There is a scene where the Indigenous People are overseeing the forced departure of the RDA back to the headquarters of their heart of darkness; those in the audience whose historical memory includes such forced marches most likely also grinned at this image. This trail of the RDA walking away from Pandora was perhaps the most graphic moment in the film. In addition to associations from the past, the 6 scene summed up the future reality that if true connections are to occur, the U.S. Empire will need to bear the consequences of their actions.

But more immediately, there will come a day when an incisive director will take it upon herself to answer for all the films that Hollywood has ever made about us, about what Hollywood has tried to do to Indigenous Peoples.

(Originally published 1/21/2010)

"Avatars to the Left of Me, Pandora to the Right: An Indigenous Woman Considers James Cameron’s Avatar" by Julia Good Fox is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Original work is at http://juliagoodfox.com.