*warning, spoilers.

Sure, it fit into the theme of the hero betraying his "race" to help an oppressed people. But I don't think that it's giving the film much credit. It seemed that from the very start of the movie there were tons of social and political references that would be of interest to any left movie-goer that hasn't seen the movie yet.

Annalee didn't mention how the military force that was settled on Pandora were mercenaries. Sully said at the very start of the film that they were "contractors" who were so accustomed to army life that they wanted to continue their careers as for-hire warriors in space. Blackwater, anyone? And I'd even go as far to say that themes of environmentalism and anti-capitalism were present in the film. The Na'vi spiritualism towards the biology of their planet made the character sympathetic (call it white guilt, or whatever) towards the proposition that the development of humanity's social and economic life can not continue unless it considers it's relationship to nature. And maybe I'm just looking into the movie too much, but didn't Trudy (Michelle Rodriguez's character) resist her order as a soldier during the film? She refused to fire upon the Giving Tree of the Na'vi, saying "I didn't sign up for this."

So sure, it's unoriginal and racist in its plot, but it also contains those progressive themes and elements. I'd rather watch a film where the "hero" switches his loyalties from a energy company mercenary to the side of the "savages" than New Moon or 2012 anyway. There is, after all, a whole genre out there where the butchering of savages is still prettified and seen as necessary for survival and development (westerns). So to see more movies where the protagonist recognizes the evils of colonialism is quite refreshing. It allows the viewer to cheer on the actual good guys in history - the native and indigenous people who were being chased off their resource-rich worlds - rather than the "cowboys" and investors that were taking part in the historic displacement of a whole race of people.

I agree how, regardless of race, identifying with the oppressed and the need for liberation is primary (for us communists).

But many times, I feel that our dislike for identity politics and our desired distance from it doesn't allow a discussion of the reality of white supremacy in popular culture and in the daily lives of both white people and people of color. It's frustrating.

For example, why is it that both poc and white people socialize within their own groups for the most part? Why do so many white people get uneasy when the topic of racism is brought up in classrooms and conversations? How do you speak to the psychological hurt and damage black and latino people face in education, employment, and all the interactions and institutions which tell them they're inferior?

What's so wrong about Labor Shall Rule saying the plot is unoriginal and racist? We may disagree, but this movie isn't radically different from say, Dances with Wolves, even if there are elements communists can identify with and further.

It's great to see a film about a white soldier identifying with and siding with the native oppressed. But where are the films where oppressed people themselves, whether that be native, Black, or white, emerge from the oppressed, rather from the oppressor? I think it's a good question to ask. And it may reveal several things about the society we live in.

I have yet to see Avatar but so many things about the film are interesting. Most critics note Avatar borrows heavily on themes and characters from writer director James Cameron's earlier films including Avatar, Terminator and the Abyss. Evil corporations are often the big bad in his films while Cameron is a HUGE gun nut know to train and hang out with survivalists. As a side note Cameron and his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow have two of the biggest films of the year. The Hurt Locker has a huge oscar buzz and has been on the best lists of many critics polls while Avatar at the very least has pushed film technology, building and expanding the field of mo-cap work in the Lord of the Ring films and much weaker efforts of George Lucas's later Star Wars films. Both films are action packed yarns that fetishize weapons and warriors while critiquing them.

errr, in the second sentence I meant aliens, terminator and the abyss. sorry

Why does the protagonist almost always have to be from the side of the colonizers or imperialists in every mainstream film where the indigenous choose to resist? It seems that the way colonialism is disseminated in television and in cinema today is still based on either casual racism or on some sort of historically inaccurate idea of white paternalism (the white "hero").

It's worth studying culture, but its hard to point to what is being represented in a film like Avatar. Will the audience really sympathize with a film about tribal people fighting off a company-funded mercenary force of white (and obviously American) soldiers, or will they see this and enjoy it as another action/sci-fi movie that focuses on the life events of a single, wheelchair-riddened marine that fought in Venezuela? I don't think this was movie that was supposed to have social commentary (even if it did), I think it was a multi-million dollar action film that was produced so that it could gross millions of more dollars. It did this by sticking to a traditional genre schema of the white traitor who goes on the side of the natives. And also worth noting - what about the Eywa? In the end, it wasn't 'The People' and Sully who defeated the invading mercenaries, but a God.

its a common decision on the film makers part to introduce us Cameron's unique sci fi world with what the director views as a protagonist everyman we (the viewer) can relate to. this is a helpful tactic to use in the sci fi, action and fantasy genre where you want to get . Sully is the Luke Skywater, Peter Parker, Sarah Conner, Neo down on their lucky guy who the audience can connect to as he's introduce to the "weird world of the na'vi."

Labor Shall Rule asks:

"Why does the protagonist almost always have to be from the side of the colonizers or imperialists in every mainstream film where the indigenous choose to resist?"

Its an important question, but I think the answer is straightforward. "Mainstream" moviemaking is a business and it is a lot easier to fill theaters when your protagonist is identified with the dominant culture, which by virtue of its dominance, shapes the conciousness not just of the dominant group but of the oppressed.

I'd love to see a Viet Nam movie in which an NLF fighter is the hero and protagonist, but I understand why such a thing is unlikely to come out of Hollywood and why if it did it would probably fail at the box office.

Progressive or radical film-makers interested in reaching large audiences have to start, as it were, from where their audience is. In the US in 2009 most opponents of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still identify in pretty deep ways with the American empire. The simplest way to move an audience from that position to one of sympathy with the colonized is to start with a protagonist who basically shares the same sort of outlook and to walk through the process of a transformation in their consiousness. If you start with the colonized as the protagonist you are basically assuming that the audience is already there. And of course some are. But probably not enough for Hollywood. That can change of course and making films that do that is part of making that change, but so I would argue is making films like Avatar (which I have not yet seen) that encourage people to question their loyalties to the empire along with the protagonist.

When we criticize films politically I think its useful to ask what sort of audience the film is aimed at and how it does or doesn't address the contradictions facing that audience.

I made more extensive comments <a href="/http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/avatar-internationalism-over-identity-politics/#comment-19472" rel="nofollow">on the other thread</a>. But I'd like to go into part of the whole noble savage meme that runs all through the film.

If nothing else, the idealized noble savage doesn't just run through American imperialism, but runs at least back to the Roman Empire and empires of the slave-holding epoch. This is Julius Caesar's description of the peoples of Gaul whom he had subjugated:

<blockquote>[E]ven as to labouring cattle, in which the Gauls take the greatest pleasure, and which they procure at a great price, the Germans do not employ such as are imported, but those poor and ill-shaped animals which belong to their country; these, however, they render capable of the greatest labour by daily exercise. In cavalry actions they frequently leap from their horses and fight on foot; and train their horses to stand still in the very spot on which they leave them, to which they retreat with great activity when there is occasion; nor, according to their practice, is anything regarded as more unseemly, or more unmanly, than to use housings. <b>Accordingly, they have the courage, though they be themselves but few, to advance against any number whatever of horse mounted with housings. They on no account permit wine to be imported to them, because they consider that men degenerate in their powers of enduring fatigue, and are rendered effeminate by that commodity.</b></blockquote>

So, already the "What are we going to give them? Blue jeans and light beer?" trope was active with the Gallic conquests some two millennia earlier, and notably right at the same time as Caesar crossed the literal Rubicon and turned Rome into a full fledged empire.

In the same way, the fact that we see the Noble Savage now projected as a full-on protagonist against characters who in many ways reflect us all too well is a sign that not only are most Americans <i>fully conscious</i> of our role as super-exploiters of the remaining populations of the world, but in some ways we <i>perversely enjoy</i> seeing ourselves as villains. That is, perhaps, one of the truest signs of a decadent system having taken an irreversible plunge.

compare the device of the human siding with the aliens to the white characters in Beyond Rangoon and City of Joy...

Addendum to Hegemonik's comment: A funny thing to note is that the Noble Savage trope was so heavily used in Rome (in addition to Julius Caesar) that reading about the German tribes in Tacitus'<i>Germania</i> requires tons of filtering and scholarly debate. A lot of what earlier scholars, less critical of their sources, thought they "knew" from what seemed to be the earliest detailed study of German tribes were all part of Tacitus making a commentary on "degenerate" Romans.

Here's what I posted over at RevLeft. I was responding to someone who was criticizing the original article you posted here:

I'm going to have to agree with you that the article you originally posted does follow identity politics to an absolute, but at the same time I'm not 100% ready to reject it.

The idea that this is a story of White Guilt may not be entirely false, and I think that there is some validity in the idea that the main white character is the "savior of the natives" as a bad thing. This is how I felt about District 9 as well (and the author of the article you posted makes this same comparison).

In both films: what really saves the oppressed people's was indeed the main, white, character. D9 was much worse about it in my opinion, as the heroes of that film were few and far between (no real "popular uprising" or anything) and without the help of the main character: they would have not made it so far.

This is the case, to a lesser extent, with Avatar. You correctly point out that the main character, Jake, did not become the actual leader of the natives, but he did become one of the few "chosen ones" who was able to tame the main flying creature that only a few of the natives have been able to do in all of their history. It was his skills (as coming from the oppressors with his training, etc.) that allowed him to not only be one of these said "chosen natives" but in turn to be able to go unite the other tribes, gear people up for war, etc.

Now this, of course, can be seen in two different ways: a story inspired by a history of a "White Man's Burden" philosophy, or as you stated earlier: a conscious revolutionary decision to side with the oppressed. I don't think it's quite cut and dry one or the other. I think the way Avatar progressed has elements of both. There were some problems (as I pointed out) with the way in which Jake went on to join the natives and "lead" them. But at the same time, it was also a show of solidarity, where the antagonists were clearly imperialist (and even more overtly: American imperialists with corporate backing).

But minus these problems, the film was still over all quite "progressive." The anti-Imperialist message was quite clear and in your face. And I also disagree with Newitz about the film being only about the conquest of America. I think it's just as much about the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan: The military forces are private in the film, it's not only a war over resources but a resource that has obvious similarities to oil, and the attitudes by the powers that be of the occupiers represented the popular attitudes of the pro-War camp leading up to the most recent American wars. (There was even a subtle reference to a Western attack on Venezuela earlier on in the film when the Colonel referenced the protagonists "great work in Venezuela" or something along those lines) On top of this, there was a subtle environmentalist message as well: talking about how the colonists had "ruined their world" and how the ruining of Pandora needs to be prevented.

Thus I think Avatar is much less problematic than District 9 in the way it deals with race, while I believe the argument that there were problems is valid, I think that Newitz is being a little absolutist here but does bring up some important points. Even right after I saw the film I looked at a friend and told them that I wasn't sure whether to lean towards the "that was an act of anti-Imperialist solidarity with the natives or the 'White Man's Burden' style of solidarity"

Annalee,

A wonderful analysis of the racebound thinking within AVATAR. I just posted my own take on the film <a href="/http://weskimcom.tumblr.com/post/312422990/avatar-the-high-tech-blueface-minstrel-show" rel="nofollow">here</a>.

Best,
Wes

P.S. I remember your writing from the old "Table of Malcontents" days, although I never really recovered from the transition from Lore Sjoberg to John Brownlee...

"Palestinians dressed as the Na'vi from the film Avatar stage a protest against Israel's separation barrier":
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/7222508/Palestinians-dressed-as-the-Navi-from-the-film-Avatar-stage-a-protest-against-Israels-separation-barrier.html

Here's a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chw32qG-M7E />
I think it says something that Chinese workers and Palestinians, who have experience with brutal colonialism, see <em>Avatar</em> and consider the story of popular resistance primary, and the story of an outsider white hero secondary, or even irrelevant...unlike the US left who mainly saw the white outsider, while criticizing the film for focusing so much on him.

I think there are at least two modes of engagement with culture: "active" and "passive". In active engagement, we look for points of contact, resources for transformation, in passive engagement, we consume and are mainly concerned with interpretation. I see both as necessary and related moments in the process of struggle. In active mode, we are re-fashioning different ways of thinking and acting, and in passive mode we are working through subtle dynamics and relations at different levels.

The left in the US is largely stuck in passive mode and this reflects a broad disorientation. We should reflect on the fact that a wealthy liberal Hollywood director has projected a depiction of insurgency out into the world that oppressed peoples have taken on and transmuted in their contexts, and integrated into their repertoire of struggle.

And all the US left can talk about is the white guy.

@Zerohour - Viewing this all from another angle: the American left may talk about the white guy, but the fact remains that Americans in general apparently won't dare say shit about Palestine or Palestinians unless it's in response to a stunt like this. It's comparable to the oft-discussed guerrilla theater skit involving the threat of a napalming a dog, that when the scheduled moneyshot was to occur (and outrage was at its peak), revealed that no dog was being napalmed -- just a few insignificant Vietnamese villages.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Palestinians were brilliant on the part of those involved, but it's not just comedy, it's <i>satire</i>. Not only are the participants laughing with us, they are also laughing <i>at us</i> and our ability to sit idly in multiplexes while they are fighting for water. And I think we need to take that message to heart.