Avatar: not alone in sf in terms of its issues

[major_clanger]

There's been a lot of discussion of what many see as a problematic aspect of Avatar, but I've seen surprisingly little comment about how it follows another well-known SF film and indeed book in this particular respect.

A common complaint about Avatar is that Sully follows the Hollywood path of 'Well-meaning white man who becomes a better native than the natives'. Now in most respects I would say that Sully's progress to becoming a member of the Na'vi backs away from this: he is shown as rather slow and clumsy in most respects, even though he has what is presumably the best Na'vi body human science could clone and his own training and experience as a marine. The only thing he's particularly good at is flying.

(As an aside I think Cameron missed an opportunity to both explain this and give an interesting alternative take on Sully's character and background. Why not make Sully a marine pilot like Chacón, and explain his paraplegia as the result of a flying accident? Perhaps, even, a stupid stunt like the one that cost Douglas Bader his legs, rather than a combat injury? That would have justified his skill at flying, as well as giving extra poignancy to Sully's abilities as a Na'vi avatar. Not only would he have been able to walk as an avatar, he would be able to fly again. I've known aircrew who have been medically grounded, and it can be psychologically devastating. The reason so many pilots like this poem so much is that it so perfectly captures what it is like to fly; having that taken away is a profound loss to some.)

The real problem is with Sully mastering the Last Shadow and becoming the Toruk Rider, a feat that we are explicitly told places him amongst the greatest Na'vi ever. It's visually and dramatically impressive, but it does make it hard to defend Avatar from this charge.

But there's a classic work of SF, memorably filmed, that also follows the plot arc of:

- White man comes to planet
- Is nearly killed by the culturally-distinct local population
- But is accepted by them and assimilates their culture
- Takes a local wife
- Completes a dangerous rite of passage involving a feared local creature
- Is accepted as leader by local population through his mastery of such feats
- Leads attack on interlopers of his culture, and defeats them.

Yes, it's Dune.

Indeed, in Dune it's even more explicit. The Fremen are Arabs (they even speak Arabic) with a rigourous, almost Spartan culture. Paul Atreides is shown as at once understanding this culture, defeats other Fremen, gains Chani as a partner, and rides the Sandworms. Yes, he is the Kwisatz Haderach, but doesn't this in effect magnify his status as Special Interloper even more?

I raise this point because Dune never seems to have aroused the level of disquiet that Avatar has. This may of course be because it was written some 45 years ago, and attitudes have changed, but I do wonder if the forthcoming (but apparently delayed again) new film version will see similar criticism.

Comments

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

... and perhaps, even more bluntly, it's Tarzan, it's Lawrence of Arabia, it's a very common trope indeed in heroic fantasy of anay sort. There's even a reality TV show based on the premise -- Tribe? I see the ads, anyway.

I'm more interested in the reason why people seem to have their critical faculties so much more explicitly engaged while watching Avatar than during a regular action romp. Is it because they're already firing overtime trying to make the uncanny valley puppet people real?

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I think that's because Avatar engages so many of the tropes of hard science fiction (another way in which it is very similar to Aliens). Pandora is not only visually stunning but has (apart from the bizarrely humanoid Na'vi) wildlife that is not only alien but consistently alien. The hardware, from the starship to the power armour, is science-fictional but credible-looking. The central concept is very sf (and indeed dates back at least to Poul Anderson's 'Call Me Joe'). So a lot of sf fans are having their 'proper sf' buttons pushed when watching Avatar whilst feeling that it's not doing a good job of being Proper Science Fiction.

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

My current working theory about the bizarre humanoid nature of the Navvi is that they're an interface species to enable the vegetable intelligence of the Deathworld to communicate with aliens (humans). Hence the, um, attractiveness.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

I think it's partly because it is an 'Event', with all that entails, and because James Cameron does some amazing things -- he gives him women real characters, rather than romance arcs, in general (and thus Neytiri is an odd blend). It's also partly because it _is_ a common trope that we see it in Avatar, and because our expectations are so high with something obviously so lovingly crafted in every other way.

I put it down to one simple thing: we wish for more, for better.

And, hey, I'll happily engage with this trope in any movie I see. Don't get me started on Transformers...

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I was surprised that Cameron did not show more of the psychological effect on Sully of having legs again via the avatar.

As for your Dune comparison, here's another one for you: Pocahontas. A rewritten script plus two trailers: one the Pocahontas trailer voiceover with Avatar visuals and the other the reverse.

BTW, my Avatar review in case you're interested.

[robert-jones.livejournal.com]

he is shown as rather slow and clumsy in most respects

But this is in a body he's only just acquired, without undergoing any of the normal training, in comparison to Na'vi who are in the bodies they were born in and following presumably many years of education/practice. And he isn't just good at flying; he's effortlessly good at it. As soon as he's mastered his mount, he seems to be as accomplished as Neytiri, who has again presumably had years of practice.

It is a very common trope; that's why it's recognisable. Oddly enough we were discussing it in relation to Dune yesterday evening, and we agreed that yes, it applies there too. I think it is simply that we are now mroe aware of these things.

I do think though that one shouldn't dismiss either Dune or Avater solely on the basis that they're racist. If we applied that to all literature, we'd have very little left.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't want to dismiss Avatar (or Dune) and I am rather frustrated by the negative reactions to it. This is a film that has the reactionary right in the US up in arms, yet to their annoyance is breaking all box office records, so it's rather ironic to see it upsetting people on the left. But I can understand why; I don't think Cameron set out to be racist - in fact I'm sure he's convinced he's very much the opposite - but he seems to have been oblivious to the cultural resonances of his story.

My personal biggest issue with Avatar is the painfully simplistic morality. Utterly, simplistically bad antagonists are dull. What motivates Quarritch and Selfridge? As another reviewer pointed out, it would have been more interesting to show a moral quandry of the unobtainium being urgently essential to Earth, perhaps as a key resource for a last-ditch geoengineering project to avoid final ecological collapse. However, I suspect Cameron avoided that because some of his audience might have sympathised with the RDA and he wasn't going to be happy unless every viewer of Avatar ends up cheering for the Na'vi as they (and Pandora) rout the humans. (Between crash, fire, arrowhead, poisonous atmosphere and carnivorous wildlife, would any of the humans in the final attack have survived? I doubt it.)

[robert-jones.livejournal.com]

I think in the great majority of cases, racism isn't the result of people setting out to be racist.

I though Quarritch was quite reasonably characterised (as a highly effective soldier whose only concern was completing his mission and protecting his men) until the end, when he kept on fighting for no conceivable military advantage.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

I do hope that my reaction to is wasn't seen as negative. I suspect it was, but ... it was meant as critique, rather than criticism. I loved Avatar enough to see it twice (which I never do) and I cried the second time. I still want to pick apart some of the tropes that films use, and explore what I deep down crave out of my wish fulfillment movies.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I was annoyed not just by the white-guy-automatically-superior-to-the-natives angle but also the man-of-action-automatically-superior-to-wussy-scientists angle as well. For example, the other scientists using avatars had been in language and avatar training for some time. Sully says he's had no training at all but the first time he's in the avatar, after only a few wobbles, he's running. The next time we see him, he's performing complicated balancing, jumping, etc. and using weapons.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

I don't have that problem with Dune because a) to my mind the Atreides society is almost as alien and barbarian to me as the Fremen, he's not One Of Us and b) I do think that the fact that he's the Messiah makes a huge difference. The worst case subtext is "He's better because he's white!" - that any fine upstanding white man would naturally rise to a position of leadership in a primitive native society. Paul is clearly unique and supernatural, so that worst case analysis is ruled out.

[miramon.livejournal.com]

But in Dune, not only hss Paul been genetically engineered to be superior, but the Fremen society has been culturally engineered by the Bene Gesserit to accept him as their leader/messiah.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse; the Fremen society is shown to be threaded with the machinations of the Bene Gesserit. Of course in the books the Bene Gesserit are themselves not treated entirely sympathetically, to put it mildly.

It may be fairer to say that in the original books the complexities of the situation and its historical context are much more fully explained, and the overall morality is much more complex. But the screen adaptations of Dune tend, I would say, to lose that.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Hmmmmm... The Victorian view of other cultures was that they existed to affirm the essential rightness and ineffable superiority of the English aristocracy's divinely-ordained estate. Frank Herbert had a far more questioning, scientific and cynical mind than your typical Victorian, but I would suggets that he applied these qualities to the origins of his hero's superiority, without diluting or subverting the fact itself.

Witness that there seems to be no atheism, cynicism or countercultural rejection of the pervasive superstition and patriarchal religious order of Fremen society, despite the author's explicit acknowledgement of an advanced native capability in chemistry, materials science, ecology and engineering.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

It's the odd and distinctive feature of all cultures in Dune; nowhere, in any of them, are there concepts such as democracy or human rights. Even the 'nice' Great Houses, such as House Atreides, are feudal dictatorships, albeit relatively enlightened ones. Duke Leto treats his subjects well out of a sense of noblesse oblige rather than any concept that they might have inherent rights.

I'm lucky enough to have a copy of Willis McNelly's Dune Encyclopedia, once a semi-authorised companion to the Dune books but, since the interminable prequels and interquels published by Herbert fils, now relegated to the status of fanon. In an entry on the ancient history of humanity, McNelly implies that Dune and its immediate sequels are set in the future of an alternate history where Classical civilisation never fell and there is no history of democracy as we know it; it's been Emperors and Nobles since time immemorial.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

An additional similarity between the two stories is that there is an element on the planet that off-planet powers want to exploit. But in Dune's case the reason for the interest in spice is explained and does add complexity to the conflict. (And also ties into the ecology of the planet in an interesting way, which is more than can be said about unobtainium at least so far. Guess we'll have two more movies for further explanation.)