Avatar Stereotypes? Jarheads, Rebel Women & Cross-Species Love
Posted by Mike E on December 28, 2009
Chacon's mutiny -- just another "stereotypical gender role"?
By Nando Sims
I won’t reproduce Hegemonik’s whole comment on Avatar. I urge you to go read it (and his other thoughtful remarks). Among other things he writes (in a discussion focused on gender portrayals):
“Sexuality isn’t the issue here, it’s stereotyped gender roles and character arcs. And while it’s interesting to have Cameron around expanding the realm of what’s acceptable, he is doing precisely that – *expanding* the contours and not *breaking* them. And in this, he’s subtle: he has to balance out the tease with enough material to make sure that it’s all just a tease. Cameron’s tough women either go one of three ways in order to resolve the problem of presenting something “too far out” (i.e., something too queer for mainstream film):
The overall tone and thrust of these remarks has an approach to works of art that (imho) applies arbitrary standards to reach unwarranted conclusions about what is reactionary.
Are we supposed to search each work of art looking for those strands and pigtails that connect it to the symbolisms of the dominant culture? And when we inevitably find such links, is that where we leave it? Is there no rupture and contradiction bubbling up within that culture? Don’t new and radical things emerge — often using old symbols in new ways? And if not, then where does resistance and rupture spring from in culture?
For example, Hegemonik makes a distinction between expanding contours and *breaking* them. Ok. But how do we recognize this distinction that he makes?
Here is a movie (made in the middle of two vicious U.S. colonial wars) has as central characters mutinying soldiers, who join up with indignant field scientists, and participate in an uprising of persecuted indigenous people. On matters of gender: Here is a movie where women are fighters, making major decisions and playing decisive roles at key moments in the rebellioin– both as leaders and warriors. In many of its radical themes, this is a movie that could not even have been IMAGINED for most of the twentieth century — and in this time (without any visible antiwar movement) the film emerges on the landscape.
Is that a tame respect for “existing contours” to you?
On Gender Roles: Are “Stereotypes” the Issue?
On the specific issue of portrayal of women and relationships, Hegemonik writes
“Sexuality isn’t the issue here, it’s stereotyped gender roles and character arcs.”
Is that really true? That the key gender issue is “stereotypes” in character portrayals?
In an earlier comment, Hegemonik said:
“While there isn’t a token bimbo, it should be mentioned here that while Cameron doesn’t have a Hollywood assortment of stereotypes, he has molded something of his own. That is: the Neytiri character approximates Sarah Connor in T2; Sigourney Weaver’s character in Avatar is roughly the same as her Ripley in Aliens; Michelle Rodriguez’s Trudy Chacon is a near exact copy of Pvt. Vasquez (also of Aliens). Given how both of the latter characters (Vasquez and Chacon) are presented as the epitome of the butch dyke, it’s curious how they a) are given very little screentime b) chew up scenery during that little time and c) are disposed of right before the final act begins.”
Is it terrible for a major film director to make prominent (if second tier) female characters who are kickass warriors without a glimmer of “love interest”? Why? Simply because Charon was not written as the lead?
The culture often plays with important character archetypes — “typical characters” that audiences know and recognize. And such cultural markers are a way that both the audience and the artists find a common frame, within which the drama and examinations can take place. I have seen such archetypes denounces as “stereotypes” all my life — as if we can’t recognize (and even enjoy) cultural encounters through familiar types. As if that is inherently sexist and racist. And as if there isn’t an important role with offering audiences the familiar in order to take things someplace strange and shocking.
For example, is the mere presence of “stereotyped” gender roles a crime, and a defining crime at that? If a film shows a common love story, or shows a maternal character, or a psychic queen, or a hardbitten woman scientist with brass, or shows a butchy female soldier — is all that inherently wrong, backward and bourgeois? Doesn’t it depend? And if it “depends” — on what does it depend?
A stereotypical maternal meme in Eisenstein?
Here is a culture where (if anything) the dominant portrayal of women is as secondary attachments to men, as eye candy or in ways the reinforce reactionary/traditional relations and assumptions.
Cameron has repeatedly put rather powerful women prominently in his films. They are favorites among radical people. Some of those combative women also reveal a maternal streak, some are macho, some flirt …and so on. But is all that such a fatal flaw?
For example I find it strange to say:
“[The film] Aliens ends up as a compare/contrast between Ripley and motherly instinct as an adoptive parent vs. the Queen Alien and its endless laying of eggs.”
That film ends up in THAT contrast? On what planet?
Do Only Subcultural Experiments have Value?
Hegemonik writes
“Cameron’s tough women either go one of three ways in order to resolve the problem of presenting something ‘too far out’ (i.e., something too queer for mainstream film).”
A short sentence packed with all kinds of assertions and assumptions…
Is that what Avatar most needed, a queerness on gender matters that put it outside the market and the mass audience…?
Is a film tame, compromised, unacceptable if it doesn’t load its female characters with a queerness that puts it out of access to mass audiences? Why would THAT be our key standard for what is acceptable or positive?
While I appreciate the need for cultural works that deal with queerness in progressive and provocative ways, how did THAT become a central standard for gender roles in THIS film?
Why would we say that having the return of Michelle Rodriquez is not enough? Is Trudy Chacon’s story here really a negative thing?
Take Heg’s discussion of Chacon death (warning: spoiler):
“In the instance of Aliens’s Vasquez and Avatar’s Chacon, they’re introduced, then meet their end when their presence threatens to develop into a more fleshed out character…. So what we have here are a sort of constellation of femininity: butches die before combat really begins, but feminine characters prosper so long as a mother or girlfriend character arc can be tacked on. This isn’t really all that much far removed from the action and horror movie convention of killing the black sidekick first, so that they don’t outshine the more Aryan protagonist.”
Is that true? Chacon rebels, openly breaks rank in battle, goes over to the other side, and then dies in combat in an act of mutiny. And this is a negative thing? Because she isn’t the lead character?
It’s not true that Chacon is removed “before combat really begins.” But really, it is very odd to claim that she is gotten out of the way so that more traditional (read: non queer) relations can flourish. The cross species love of two warriors growing in the course of an insurrection, Jake Sully and Neytiri? Is their love some reactionary and traditional thing simply because it is not queer? Doesn’t miscegenation count as nontraditional to communists anymore?!
Where does that leave us? What would it look like?
I’m sure there is much about Hegemonik’s method and framework that i don’t fullyunderstand. And so I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth. Really.
But I find myself wondering — what kind of a film would Hegemonik NOT find unacceptable? Once we exclude all the means and memes that Hegemonik finds unacceptable — what is left for radical artists to build with?
What would that film show, what would its characters be like, and what kind of an audience would it help reach and transform? What does a movie look like that is scrupulously free of “stereotypes” — and how would such a film play against the questions and contradictions of an audience? (And which audiences?)
Take some outstanding communist films (Like YOL or Pelle the Conquerer or Spartacus)… Really, by these standards they even bigger piles of bourgeois crap than Avatar.
Doesn’t this whole method end up saying that only experimental sub-cultural work is worthy of praise? And that anything that seems “mainstream” (i.e. eagerly seen in real theaters across the country seen by millions of real people) must be inherently compromised beyond acceptance?
I think that a major part of evaluating a cultural work is evaluating the objective impact it will have on its various audiences and its times. And (on that methodological point) I feel like the audience is missing from Hegemonik’s standards. For example, when teenage girls go see Avatar — and encounter these characters Neytiri, and Michelle Rodriguez, and the scientist played by Sigorney Weaver and so on…. does anyone really think the impact is that these girls are trained to believe that “feminine characters prosper so long as a mother or girlfriend arc can be tacked on”?
Were we watching the same movie?
What’s Wrong with Love?
Sure one of the female characters does become a love partner in the course of common struggle…. but is that so wrong?
It is true that Cameron is being quoted everywhere saying that the Na’Vi characters had to be sexually interesting for the audience — i.e. that they couldn’t be so alien that the love story felt distant or creepy (like watching alligators mate or something). He insisted that Neytiri had to be attractive to the audiences or the film would not work.
Why don’t we deal with that? What would it have meant to strip the film of themes and whiffs of sexuality? How natural would that natural world be?
I spent time in a radical sub-movement (the RCP) that tried, in many ways, to screen sexuality out of human encounters — including its youth movement, party’s discussions and even the love relations of party members. At major summer projects it was sometimes announced that sexual contacts or flirting among participants was not acceptable. Is that how we want reality portrayed…. or lived?
Isn’t the issue really HOW sexuality and attraction are portrayed? In Avatar love develops through friendship, against convention, in violation of orders, is rooted in real commitments, and is tested by struggles over trust and honesty.
The constant theme of the movie is “I see you.” Eyes snap open — and they SEE the unfamiliar afresh, and are changed by what they see. Don’t Cameron’s characters pry open Pandora’s box? Is that so bad?
Does the “Mainstream Culture” All Just Suck? Or Does the Revolution Spring from Every Sphere?
Let me be simplistic for a moment (again without wanting to put words in anyone’s mouth).
I have long seen a method of left cultural critique that assumes (a priori) that it all sux, that it is all bourgeois and reactionary in intent and impact (otherwise why would Hollywood make it? Why would zillionaires fund it? Why would a ruling class allow it? etc.).
And starting from that assumption, the real question becomes merely the details: How (in particular) is this or that new piece a pile of shit.
I think (like hegemonik) that we should be quite ruthless in our critiques (and also quite welcoming in our praise, when appropriate).
But I don’t understand the whole tone of some comments — where there is not a whiff of contradiction. How can we claim to be ruthless in our evaluation if there is little mention of the positive side of this work, including the quite unusual character of Cameron’s female characters?
Final example: Is it really true that Cameron’s treatment of Chacon’s character in his film,
“…isn’t really all that much far removed from the action and horror movie convention of killing the black sidekick first, so that they don’t outshine the more Aryan protagonist.”
Again: are we even on the same planet here?
* * * * * *
[Seeing the film again I noticed that Jake Sully does come to play a leading, somewhat messianic, role in the resistance. (Not THE leader as some have claimed, but certainly a major leader.) I had not noticed that the first time watching it, and mistakenly said this was not the case. I don't think this changes the main thrust of our discussion, but did want to mention my error.]
Koba said
I thought that was the main problem in regard to gender in the film. It just seemed revealing about audience expectations (or Cameron’s assumptions about them) and standards of beauty in Hollywood that the Na’vi, Neytiri in particular, are so, in Cameron’s words, “do-able”. The Na’avi aren’t just humanoid in form, they are flawless/very attractive humanoids. The facets of Na’vi life that were the most alien, I thought were also the most compelling, particularly “bonding” and biochemical communication between species.
Why I didn’t think it was problematic that Sully “mates” with a Na’avi female, or even that it was central to his transformation, I just wished that his love for the forest and Na’vi life was more prominently explored. He went from being a mercenary jughead to suddenly seeing the interconnectedness of all life, I wish that was more fully fleshed out, it seemed like a peripheral sidenote in the film.
2 unrelated notes:
Much was made about the “noble savage” depiction and how mystical and otherworldly the Na’avi are. But if Aywa is a living, active, scientifically measurable force that the Na’avi regularly communicate with (and who uses Jake Sully as an “empty cup” vessel to channel its defense of the forest through), are they even religious at all? Probably compared to the humans on the planet, they are less religious/superstitious in their thinking. Nitpicking maybe, but thought it was worth noting.
I realize this is a political blog and the focus of analysis centers around the politics of the world of Pandora, even after reading so much – both in favor and against – about Avatar’s politics while actually watching it I was primarily struck with one thing: amazement. That this film was even possible to be created left me overwhelmed with a sense of utter awe and appreciation.
Mike E said
“I realize this is a political blog and the focus of analysis centers around the politics of the world of Pandora, even after reading so much – both in favor and against – about Avatar’s politics while actually watching it I was primarily struck with one thing: amazement. That this film was even possible to be created left me overwhelmed with a sense of utter awe and appreciation.”
amen. Saw it a second time (in IMAX this time). amazing, even without any plot.
shanin said
this comment was moved to its own self-standing post.
Hegemonik said
I brought up the stereotyped character arc as mostly an artistic problem – that is, Cameron’s work was in many ways groundbreaking and really plastic in the 1980′s and 1990′s. It’s now becoming a bit stale, to the point where I think it’s pretty much a given that an Avatar sequel is not going to produce anywhere near the excitement.
Going into questions of political film criticism: one of the great insights from Zizek’s documentary with the BBC The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema is that the object of the motion picture isn’t to tell us what we’re supposed to want – it tells us how we are supposed to want. What’s there on the screen is there for everyone to see but the portrayals of the characters, the choice of angle, the effects, etc. – aren’t about showing us that with more clarity, it’s to skew our way of thinking about it. It’s why Hitchcock’s ultimate fantasy was to be done with cinema altogether, and have a machine to directly access the emotions of the audience and be done with the technical tricks of the trade – he wouldn’t have needed to dress up Oedipal complexes in murder mysteries and have to bother with finding the camera angle which produces the most terror.
So dealing with what’s explicit in film is, in many ways, losing half the story. You could watch The Ten Commandments, and, from the fact that it’s a narrative about slaves escaping slavery deduce that it’s a communist film – except that the casting Charlton Heston (a goy if there ever were one) as Moses and Yul Brenner (the ethnically ambiguous Russian Jew) as Pharoah is a dead giveaway that it was a deeply rightist film.
On to another point: does mainstream culture all just suck? The problem here is precisely the yes/no, thumbs up/thumbs down and Top 10 films… school that’s come to predominate criticism of film –which has only become necessary because of extortionate ticket prices and the infection of ROI analysis onto the audience. It’s looking at film through the capitalist lens of a studio executive. Why bother? Why not treat films as individual works, and why shake them out a bit to see whether all the parts work?
Hegemonik said
Also, this was somehow missing in the original comment that started this thread (I’d written it down then lost it in a crash): part of the point of my comment on the expendability of the Chacon and Vasquez characters isn’t to insist on some PC equal play for queer relationships in cinema.
It’s that since the 1990′s (particularly, after the Queer Nation demonstrations criticizing The Silence of the Lambs), Hollywood has been in a strange position of no longer branding positive depictions of queer people as NC-17 rated material, but still adopting certain conventions in approach which (IMHO) are designed mainly as a form of soft censorship.
The most predominant of these conventions is that queer characters are rarely, if ever, allowed to have a character arc in which they are both happy (or alive) AND in a same-sex relationship by the end of the film. One of these things has to go. All same-sex love seems to be doomed. In that, the truly radical move for filmmakers to simply have a queer couple walk into the sunset.
Mike E said
I agree that there are some artistic problems. In some ways the visuals of this work are breathtaking, but the plot is rather predictable. The fact that Cameron pulled in familiar actors to play familiar roles — does speak to a bit of fatigue (or failure of imagination). And I suspect it had to do with the marketing of wanting to jumpstart buzz among the fanatical fanbase of Aliens.
And yes, we did the thought experiment of “what would the sequel be” (and, like you, thought the plot was not all that promising for extension.)
But, then again, it is a serviceable plot. It is predictable, but that fades as the whole draws you in.
I could not agree more. I am quite impatient with a literal, textual reading of a work of art — that often ignores what the art evokes and taps into (on many levels). Freud discovered the “unconscious” operating in the mind — and far too often the left in the U.S. has almost no sense of such undercurrents (in psychology or culture).
As for 10 commandments, I have never thought it was the casting that was the givaway… but rather the title. This movie was not “the escape of the slaves” but the “giving of the law.”
Yes, i suppose. But really there is also a line on the left that the whole culture sux, especially hollywood and pop culture. And we all (supposedly) enter the arena knowing that already, and all we have to uncover are the details. I does seem as if you commentary on this film was one-sidedly negative — and that even obviously positive things were turned to portray them as venal.
Yes, why not treat films as individual works. Sure, it is fine to ask “whether all the parts work.” But we are also revolutionaries, and are seeking to understand how the old mole digs underground, how the objective conditions give rise to subjective revolutoinary potential, and how conscious people (scattered throughout society) are working to undermine the legitimacy of the powerful.
Hegemonik said
But that’s not a line that originated from the Left – that’s a line from Beavis and Butt-head and, perhaps, Comic Book Guy. And I would actually say that it’s actually what a good lot of folks think about pop-culture, even as they consume it. How often do you hear people refer to their favorite television show as a “guilty favorite?” How often do people just view movies as just a black room in which their mind is to be emptied?
In many ways, this is the pose of being simultaneously dissatisfied with the way things are, and yet being powerless. IMHO, the best thing educated Leftists could do is to simply be able to help articulate what, precisely, sucks, and perhaps think about ways of intervening into the deadlock of art and in politics.
And we all (supposedly) enter the arena knowing that already, and all we have to uncover are the details. I does seem as if you commentary on this film was one-sidedly negative — and that even obviously positive things were turned to portray them as venal.
I don’t think that this is about being venal per se (though Avatar is venal, breaking very little new ground in real substance). Perhaps this has become more adversarial because of the fairly enthusastic endorsements of the film. In all, I would say is that the bigger picture is that Hollywood always moves in a two-steps forward one-step back fashion – and that we should be clear that the one-step back is as intrinsic to its development as the two steps forward.
Ron Chism said
Does the entire earth share the American social/racial perspective? Answer: No. So, in a sense, the mere fact that this discussion is taking place is, in itself, “racist” (so to speak).
It’s “racist” in the sense that the FIRST assumption is that the movie is written on the backdrop of the DOMINANCE of white males. Why is this assumption made, hum? It’s made because MOST Americans (sorry) are sick. They can’t think of anything but THEMSELVES and THEIR sick perspectives.
Listen up: The hero, Sully, is NOT a white male, in his fundamental identity. In his fundamental identity, he is a HUMAN BEING who has a HEART, and whose heart became MOVED by the pain of OTHER human beings.
And then, he BECAME a Na’avi, in the end, which means, in effect, that he SUBMERGED HIMSELF INTO HUMANITY, thus DROPPING his identity as “white,” or as WHATEVER. He joined humanity, and dropped his whiteness. I do not think that Cameron had this as a theme, but it certainly could have been.
My goodness, let the man be HUMAN! That’s it! It’s simple.
The broad themes of this movie are being distorted and covered up [perhaps PURPOSELY, who knows] by this discussion of racism. And here are those themes (as Cameron himself outlined):
1. Love
2. Human brotherhood
3. Respect for other cultures
4. Respect for other religious and spiritual traditions
5. Respect for LIFE, in opposition to war.
That’s what the movie is about, NOTHING ELSE. I am black, though most prefer to use the term “African-American.” Not my choice of term to use.
And I’ve been somewhat surprised that even some black folks are charging Cameron with “racism.” And white liberals [who, MOST times I love, but SOMETIMES I wished they'd shut the f_ _ k up!] are COMPLAINING that some BROTHERS AND SISTERS GOT JOBS!!!
I mean, DAMN!! White liberals are COMPLAINING that all the actors who played the Na’avi natives were non-white. Yeah, and I bet that white liberals [in THIS case] would shut the hell up, so that they can CONTINUE to make some money for future movies!!
We need white liberals [I suppose!], but NOT when their “help” results in sending us to the unemployment lines!! Non-white actors and actresses NEED JOBS TOO!! So, I would THINK that white liberals would have APPLAUDED the fact that a bunch of non-white folks got the opportunity to MAKE SOME DOUGH in a major movie that had a BOSS theme!
And to my black brothers and sisters that are complaining about the movie, well…I just don’t know WHAT to say. But, I’ll ask you a question. When you were a shorty, and you watched The Lone Ranger, WHY did you like him? Was it because he was white, and you were “brainwashed” into loving white males as your heroes?
Or was it because,
1. The Lone Ranger could shoot.
2. The Lone Ranger could kick MUCH ass.
3. The Lone Ranger’s hat NEVER fell off his head, even AS he was rolling down a mountain with the “bad guy.”
Well, on my block, we liked The Lone Ranger for the above 3 reasons. Yeah, it would have been nice to see some black cowboy heroes. But, for US (at least on MY block), what we saw was…HERO (not WHITE hero).
Last, just enjoy the dam_ _d movie!!
Peace,
Ron
Ron Chism said