Why I'm sooooo glad that Avatar did not take home best picture (or, a rant about race, pt 3)

I can’t even express how THRILLED I am that Avatar and District 9 did not win best picture. For starters, the script is not original at all. Avatar could have been easily named “Dances with Aliens,” or “Fern Navi,” or “Eywa Talkers.” The novelty is that Avatar found a different way to “otherize” a race. Avatar could have been a great movie if it weren’t masked in colonial propaganda, which was then masked in faux environmentalism. The colonial layer is the fact that a white male (ex-military, no less) still gets to be the hero ON ANOTHER PLANET WITH ALIENS. The white guy gets to “go native” and “be one of them.” He feels drawn to and encouraged to have two lives. Lame. Although Avatar may have shown energy hogs for what they are (heartless beasts without any concern for populations affected by their energy harvesting), it doesn’t seem to have sparked any fits of environmental passion. Nor does it explain what environmental justice really is.

Don’t get me wrong, I would definitely watch this movie again for the visual effects. What startles me is it’s popularity for the storyline. I have started to ask myself – why does this same movie keep getting made? It’s not novel, it’s not super intriguing. Half of the time it’s not culturally appropriate. Why is this interesting??? It’s only interesting because it’s not normal. What disturbs me is not that it’s not normal, but rather an examination of what is considered normal. It occurred to me that you don’t see movies where people of color get to “go white.” Not because it’s not as stressful or dramatic or trying or shocking as “going native,” but because that transition is considered normal. That is what is expected of us. People don’t want to hear about assimilation into dominant culture because it’s a story we’ve been forced into for hundreds of years. For a long time we even tried really hard to fit in because it was the only way to survive. That’s the disturbing irony I see in the success of Avatar.

I’m glad Avatar didn’t win best picture not only because the storyline sucked, but also because it has the potential to inaccurately alter the discussion of race relations in the media. I read an article about people suffering from the “Navi Blues” after seeing the movie. These are people who sink into depression because they long to live on a planet like Pandora – undisturbed, pristine, and wholesome. But this isn’t new or any different from places we have today that are under indigenous control. No, I think the allure sits in a different kind of “other.” We are bored of the kinds of “others” that are human. We are not interested in the conflicts between various races or cultures that actually exist today. No, we are bored of that. We want humans vs. aliens and now risk losing out on valuable discussion concerning actual race relations. I am still wondering when the same storyline will get old. Maybe movie critics can to me why the dominant narrative is still so popular. Then again, maybe it won’t and we’ll be stuck seeing the same colonized plot on different planets. Boring.