Every time Hollywood tries to depict an ‘original’ tribal species, we usually end up with several sensibilities being offended (as it is common in an age where people seem to think that opinions are tantamount to rights.) We all remember the ridiculous fiasco of Jar-Jar Binx, of course, a character who was not really as much of a racial stereotype as people claimed he was- but I suspect that that was merely an excuse used by people who were as annoyed as I was to let Lucas know that this whole New Trilogy idea wasn’t working out. It failed miserably, but at least the twerp kept his beak shut for the next two cinematic torture sessions.
Now that AVATAR has hit the movie theaters, we have the likes of Robinne Lee crying foul over racial stereotyping and ‘white savior fantasies’ in the movie, and James Cameron denying it has anything to do with race at all.
For once (and only once) in his cinematic life, Cameron is right:
What’s wrong with this movie isn’t that it is racist, but that it is philosophically bankrupt: The Na'Vi are poor (but expensively rendered) rip-offs of the Noble Savage stereotype, a throwback to the more embarrassing era of literature in which any underdeveloped civilization was seen as 'more pure' and 'innocent' and therefore superior to evil industrialized West with its ghastly materialistic values such as health, progress, comfort...
Such portrayals often gloss over inevitable realities as, for example, medical and scientific technology (how many Na'Vi children and mothers die at birth, obviously having no obstetricians? What is old for a Na'Vi, the ripe old age of forty?) in favor of painting this idyllic, bucolic and rather ridiculous "One with the earth" image of the Noble Savage.
The inevitable point of contention here is that in reality -the plane we all inhabit- the bucolic term "one with nature" usually means the abandonment of all 'evil' technology (because technology and industry are evil things to both the Noble Savage proponents and its historical descendants, the Environmentalists), which usually results in really being 'one with nature', such as being inside the stomach of a predator, or being part of a compost heap by the twilight age of thirty-five.
The other half of the equation lies in a portrayal of the Westerners that makes them out to be absolute brutish villains. Why are they evil and brutish, the Noble Savagist/Ecologist asks in false rhetoric? Why, it's because of his corrupt ways and technology!
Industrialization, according to the Virgin Earth proponents, is evil (evil enough that it has given us the longest lifespan in our history, and freed up our time so we don't have to spend nineteen hours a day toiling the soil, dying from gangrene, etc) and only after the Westerner abandons Western culture does he become Truly Noble -- such is the case with Avatar's protagonist who, when he abandons western culture and becomes like the Na'Vi, is even more superlative at being Na'Vi than the Na'Vi are!
This ideological befuddlement is not a plot flaw of “Avatar”, but rather it is the very essence of its Noble Savage root: The Noble Savage exists only to point Western Man in the direction of an ideal which they themselves cannot accomplish - only the Un-westernized westerner can. Are you still with me?
It’s not about race, race is the red herring that confuses the argument here: the whole core of The Noble Savage is to say that Man is only Man when he stops being Man (that is, he is only man when he becomes mystical, superstitious, abandons technology and the scientific method, and is reduced to the life style and expectancy of a Neanderthal.) Forget the aspect of race, the Na’Vi – and in the past the Hollywood Native Americans, the Literary Natives Of Fictitious Islands and so on and so forth- are only cardboard cutout poster children for an ideology (from Primitivism to the current Environmentalism) that wants nothing more than to see humanity reduced to its poorest state: huddled by a campfire and paralyzed by fear.
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