decolonising james cameron's pandora

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Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History>Volume 13, Number 2, Fall 2012

Decolonising James Camerons Pandora:Imperial history and science fiction

Dominic Alessio

Richmond University, the American University in London

Kristen MeredithUniversity of Cambridge

Abstract

The science fiction filmAvatarwill be examined in light of the social-political context in which

it was written, demonstrating the directors highly charged critique of US foreign policy. Yet thispaper also argues that the depiction of the alien native species remains problematic from apostcolonial perspective. Decolonising Pandora addresses too the ways thatAvatarhas beenused for political ends by peoples throughout the world, while acting as a vehicle for a critical

examination of traditional definitions of empire and imperial history overall.

Introduction

James Camerons science fiction (SF) blockbusterAvatar(2009) is a film about futuristichuman-alien contact that takes place on a fictional moon called Pandora in the Alpha Centauristar system. It is famous for being the most expensive cinematic production ever made, its

groundbreaking 3-D technology, and the fact that it has grossed over two billion US dollars

worldwide. Yet it is of interest for more than just special effects and profit margins.Avatarhas

been also the subject of considerable media discussion regarding its anti-establishment politicalideology and its historical revisionism. This paper has four aims. Firstly,Avatarwill be

examined in light of the social-political context in which it was written, namely the American-

led invasion of Iraq at the start of the twenty-first century during the presidency of George W.Bush (20002008). The films dialogue references the requirement to fight terror with terror,shock and awe, and a hearts and minds strategy, while the plot centers on the need to gain

control of a valuable energy source (unobtainium as opposed to oil). Therefore,Avatarcomesacross as a highly charged critique of Bushs US foreign policy, especially the so-called War onTerror. As such it stands in good stead with a tradition of other anti-colonial SF texts andAmerican metropolitan critiques of empire.

Secondly, we argue that while the films plot is a blatant metaphor for the history of European-Indigenous colonial contact, the depiction of the Navi (Pandoras indigenous humanoid species)remains problematic from a postcolonial perspective. However well-intentioned Camerons
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motives may have been, the Navi are portrayed as one-dimensional, environmentalist, noblesavage caricatures that ironically only serve to reveal the continuous power of a colonialist

mindset.Avatarsubsequently exposes the extent and depth of imperial cultural resonances towhich even Cameron, the explicit anti-imperialist, falls victim. In this vein Pandoras setting,despite all of the films cutting-edge technology, largely resembles the conventional Lost Eden

utopian fantasy common to much of the literature and art of Europes nineteenth century highage of empire.

By way of conclusion we address the manner in which the film has been used for political endsby peoples throughout the world to gain international attention for their particular domestic

plights. Decolonising Pandora thus demonstrates how politics and popular culture can overlap,highlighting the sometimes unexpected resonances of such intersections. One additional

consequence of just such an intersection includes the need to rethink traditional definitions andtheories of empire. Although since the dawn of civilization there have been numerous empires all

across the globe, there are relatively few comparative and theoretical attempts to define the term.

As Herfried Mnkler points out: the question of what an empire is and how it differs from the

political order of the territorial state has remained virtually unexamined Political science hasnot provided solid definitions.1Avatarsemphasis on the relationship between empire and bigbusiness is a timely reminder of the necessity to re-examine the phenomenon and to drawattention to the fact that empires do not have to be always state led.

Avatarand science fiction

Naomi Wolf asserts that a a cultures dreamworkits films, pop music, visual arts, and evenits resonant jokes, cartoons and advertising imagesreveal the signs of this collectiveunconscious.2In other words, cultural productions are not merely rarefied aesthetic objects but

points of entry into a society or culture at a particular moment in history.

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Such is the case forliterature. In a critique of the fantasy genre, which is frequently associated with SF, Myles Balfestates that:

Fantasy texts and landscapes are not purely fantastic they are located within, and inscribed by,particular social, geographical and cultural discourses Fantasy is not about inventing otherworlds Rather, Fantasy texts, like all texts, are socially embedded.4

Not surprisingly, the same also holds true for SF: science fiction films are a particularlyvaluable tool for cultural analysisthe themes and techniques of such films in any given eramay be held as an index of the dominant political and ideological concerns of the culture.5

However, SF differs from fantasy in important ways. What distinctly makesAvatara work of

SFapart from being marketed this way and proffering a speculative vision of the futureextrapolated upon current trendsis that the film is manifestly about science and scientificpossibilityeven probability.6Travel to Alpha Centauri, our closest star system, is a genuineprospect. Theoretically, life could exist on a moon. Therefore, although the SF genre isnotoriously difficult to define, this emphasis on the possible, however extreme and improbable,

helps to distinguish it from fantasy. By comparison, the latters purview consists mainly of
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magical and supernatural elements, and by implication a near total suspension of belief. SFsemphasis, therefore, is upon the possibly real, as opposed to the really impossible. This

distinguishing feature is what the critic Darko Suvin refers to as a novum.7Nevertheless,Avatarexhibits a number of other typically SF characteristics: aliens, space ships, advanced

technology, and themes relating to estrangement, didacticism, and apocalypse.8These elements

clearly demonstrate thatAvatarbelongs to the SF genre.

Storyline

Set roughly a century-and-a-half in the futureAvataropens with the narrative of paraplegic ex-

Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington). Jake takes the place of his deceased twin brother in theAvatar Program, an ongoing scientific exploration of the jungle-like Pandora. The moon is rich

in unobtainium, a much-needed energy source in light of Earths own dwindling resources. Themineral is being sought for sale back on Earth by Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) and the

RDA Corporation he represents. Problematically for the RDA and its private mercenary army,

unobtainium rests underneath Hometree, a gargantuan tree-like living space belonging to theNavi. The Navi are unwilling to surrender it.

Jake, in his avatar (fauxNavi) form manages to infiltrate the Omaticaya, the clan of Navi atHometree. He befriends Neytiri (Zo Saldana), a female Navi, and eventually they fall in love,signifying the shift of Jakes loyalties away from the humans. However, Selfridge and head ofsecurity Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) decide to relocate the Navi forcibly bydestroying Hometree. The film climaxes with a battle between the united Navi clans of Pandora,led by Jake in his avatar body, and the RDA forces. At exhaustive length, the battle finishes and

the Navi emerge victorious. Jake forgoes his human form completely and chooses to remain onPandora, while the humans pack up and return home to planet Earth.

Political discussions aside,Avatarwould have attracted attention for a variety of reasons,including the aforementioned extreme production costs (at a reputed 237 million US dollars it

exceeded Camerons 1997 other big budget film Titanic), the fact that it is the globes top-grossing film to date, and its lavish and technologically advanced 3-D effects (referred to asStonervision by one commentator).9Other factors accounting for the media interest include thefilms epic length (162 minutes in original release) and the directors difficult personality (crewsworking for him have referred to him as a combination of Captains Kurtz and Bligh).

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directors patriarchal tack is also of interest; his other SF films have featured strong femalecharacters, such as Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in The Terminator(1984) and Ellen Riply

(Sigourney Weaver) inAliens(1986). Intriguingly, what has not been the subject of detailed

discussion is Jakes physical infirmity. The fact that Cameron chose to finance the mostexpensive film ever made with a paraplegic as a central character suggests thatAvataris not as

typically conservative, at least in terms of characterization, as some have maintained. Despite

these concerns, however, the film has drawn the most attention due to its political message(s). As

Dave Itzkoff has pointed out: it has also found itself under fire from a growing list of interestgroups, schools of thought and entire nations.11Such critics have included the Vatican, for thefilms apparent homage to pantheism, and the philosopher Slavoj iek, for its old -fashionedstoryline.
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Avatarhas been criticized especially for its derivative narrative. Although Cameron is said to

have developed the concept of the films plot in the 1990s, the storyline has been lambasted as across between a traditional western and a hackneyed romance, albeit set in the future and on adistant world. Such attacks have ranged from it being labelled a version of Dances with Wolvesin Space to Space Porn.12David Brooks in theNew York Timesargues that an account of a

young white hero saving noble savages is an old theme witnessed in countless filmicproductions, such asA Man Called Horse(dir. Elliot Silverstein, 1970),Fern Gully: The lastrainforest(dir. Bill Kroyer, 1992), and The Last Samurai(dir. Edward Zwick, 2003).

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certainly true that elements of the storyline appear strikingly similar to a number of SF and

fantasy works. Examples include: Poul Andersons Call Me Joe(1957), about a paraplegic whoconnects with an Artificial Intelligence to explore a dangerous Jupiter; Ursula K. Le Guins TheWord For World is Forest(1976), a Vietnam era novel telling the story of a peaceful alien

species invaded by humans intent on deforesting their world; and Robert Jordans Wheel of Timeseries, with the books noble savage warriors based on a combination of Cheyenne and Zulucultures, amongst others. The visualization of blue-skinned aliens is reminiscent too of the

Andorrans from Star Trek(seeJourney to Babel, 1968); although it has been suggested that

Cameron was inspired by depictions of Hindu deities.

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All the while the inter-connected livingworld of Pandora is similar to both James Lovelocks Gaia Theory, which postulates that theEarth is a single organism, and Stanislaw Lems Solaris(1961), the story of a sentient alienplanet. The idea of floating islands and rocks, which make up some of Avatars most visuallystunning spectacles, is reminiscent also of Hayao Miyazakis Japanese animated productions,namelyLaputa: Castle in the Sky(1986).

The Anti-Imperial Message

Critics, especially those on the right of the political spectrum, have been vociferous in their

attacks on the film, both with regard to its derivation as well as its accompanying political

message. The neoconservative journalist John Podhoretz, a former speechwriter for both

Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr., called the film:

blitheringly stupid taken directly from the revisionist westerns of the 1960sthe ones inwhich the Indians become the good guys and the Americans the bad guys The conclusion doesask the audience to root for the defeat of the American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency. So

it is a deep expression of anti-Americanism...15

Likewise, the Canadian critic Robert Fulford sees the film as a commercial for the GreenParty and a florid work of anti-war propaganda.16

Those on the left of the political spectrum have noted too the overt countercultural stance of the

film. The Marxist-postcolonial academic Nagesh Rao claims that what really stands out is theunabashed critique of corporate greedand its inspiring tale of solidarity and resistance againstoccupation.17This anti-imperial message is the most remarkable element of the films otherwisepredictable narrative. Wolf noted that US actions and corporate imperialism are questioned very

publicly for the first-time ever in a Hollywood blockbusterfrom the point of view of the restof the world.18Specifically,Avatarsmessage is that twenty-first century warmongering
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America and its corporate allies are imperial powers, ones that attempt to mask their dominance

in a number of ways. Security, pre-emptive strikes, and the offering of education, healthcare,roads, light beer and blue jeans to Indigenous people, are all used to legitimize colonialconquest. Such rationales are remarkably similar to former President Bushs description of theUS invasion of Afghanistan: As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and

supplies.

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The presentation of the United States as an empire is significant here too becausemost studies of imperial and postcolonial culture omit discussions of the USA as an imperialpower.20

Overt parallels between US involvement in conflicts at home and abroad and the humansinteraction(s) with Pandora are many. Firstly, the humans inAvatarare exclusively Americans.

Even in American SF this is not necessarily typical. The original Star Trek(19661969), forexample, featured Russian (Chekov), Scottish (Scotty) and Japanese (Sulu) central characters.Similarly, in Stargate Atlantis(20049) the human crew is comprised of Americans, Canadians,British, Eastern Europeans, Asians, and an intriguing mix of Pacific Islanders. The fact that

Americans alone are seeking unobtainium on Pandora suggests that they have remained uniquely

imperialistic among human populations. Secondly, Jake and his human allies are imprisoned bythe RDA without trial in what Wolf describes as a small Guantnamo-style cell, suggestingparallels with Americas War on Terror.21Thirdly, there are obvious links between the RDAsprivate army (Spec-Ops) and the former operations of private military firm Blackwater(subsequently Xe Services and now known as Academi) in the Middle East from 2003 onwards.

Both are mercenary troops comprised of ex-military personnel (Jake calls Spec-Ops people

hired guns, taking the money, working for the company), and both kill noncombatants. In 2007Blackwaters personnel were accused of shooting dead at least seventeen Iraqi civilians inBaghdad, similar to the Spec-Ops attack in the film that destroys Hometree. Fourthly, because of

the destruction of Hometree the Navi survivors are forced to flee. Their compulsory removalresembles the Trail of Tears that Choctaw, Cherokee, Seminole, and other Indigenous peopleshad to undertake when they were evicted from their homelands by US forces in the 1830s

because American settlers wanted these lands and the gold beneath.22Furthermore, the RDA

military base on Pandora with its defensive perimeter is reminiscent of the Green Zone

established in Baghdad during the Iraq War, as well as fortified US military bases in Vietnam.

Another highly significant analogy can be drawn between current political struggles and thefictional scenario inAvatar, with the films dialogue explicitly linking imperialism withAmerican economic motives. Parker Selfridge says: this is why were here, because this littlegrey rock [unobtainium] sells for twenty million a kilo. The association of empire with profit isnot new. It was described cogently as early as the beginning of the twentieth century by John

Hobson in On the Economic Basis of Imperialism(1902), as well as by Vladimir Lenin in The

Highest Stage of Capitalism(1916). Indeed, Hobsons assertion that the interests of the nationas a whole are subordinated to those of certain sectional interests that usurp control of thenational resources and use them for private gain, ring surprisingly similar to the accusationsmeted out against Halliburton and its commercial links with the White House during the Bush

Presidency.23

In Camerons vision the RDA, like the American government, is keen to preserve a certain self-image. Selfridge insists that military force is a weapon of last resort. However, he displays no
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York. Camerons visual analogy implies that American civilians have been the innocent victimsof such attacks also and should sympathise with such atrocities.

Finally,Avatarpresents this narrative of American imperialism against a metaphorical backdrop

of seeing. In numerous sequences throughout the film the Navi deny Jakes ability to see in

the same emic way that they can: Sky People do not see, affirms Neytiri. Yet at the endinthe very last shotas a Navi, Jake opens his eyes. He sees. By the end of the film Cameronwants the audience to see the truth also, or at least his version of it. The subtext is thatAmericans at home have only minimal understanding of the lives being lost and the devastationbeing incurred by American military ventures abroad.Avatarsubsequently brings the tragedy

direct to the folks back home (Hometree/hometruths). Therefore, the additional effect of enriched

3-D to make Pandora seem real is potentially more than just a technological development for

commercial gain. 3-D could be a political act. Camerons film suggests that the other world,the faraway one, has seemed (or been) unreal in the past, but that throughAvatars 3-Denhancements one may enter it at last. The audience consequently undergoes the same

transformation as Jake and the viewer essentially becomes an avatar too. By the films end, one

is supposed to see as Jake does. The aliens went back to their dying world, says Jake afterthe Navi victory. The audience goes back to its world too, seeing their own ecologically fragileearth and the fact that empire is alive and well.

Cameron is certainly not the first critic of empire from within his own imperial metropole. There

is a long history of internal opposition to colonialist actions, ranging from the Roman writer

Cicero to the Dominican priest Bartolom das Casas. The US, possibly because of its historicalstruggle for independence against Britain, has itself a long tradition of internal criticism of this

kind. Some anti-imperial opponents have included the greats of nineteenth century American

literature, including James Russell Lowell, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and

Mark Twain. But as Stephen Howe contends, such groups were nearly always small, dissidentminorities, and by implication, ineffectual.31It was instead the growing mass opposition to theVietnam War in the twentieth century, fuelled by developments in communication that propelled

what was the first successful anti-war movement in the history of the western world. Students,religious groups, civil rights activists, returning veterans, musicians, and eventually even

Hollywood, all contributed to pressuring the nations leaders to pull out from southeast Asia.

The original Star Trekseries helped to mark this sea-change in popular American attitudes to

Vietnam, with the episode The Omega Glory(1968) calling for two alien races long at wartheKohms and the Yangs (read Communists and Yanks)to cooperate or instead to destroy theirworld entirely.

32SF, therefore, has an overlooked but cutting-edge position in the history of anti-

imperial sentiment. As a genre it is much like magical realism, another literary space fromwhich to critique the modalities of western reason and rationality that prop up colonial

regimes.33Ericka Hoagland and Reema Sarwal advocate that SFs tendency to draw criticalattention to how imperialist history is constructed and maintained, as well as its focus on theOther, makes it close to an ideal postcolonial genus.

34

Yet there has been an academic reluctance to engage with SF.35Edward Said ignored the genreand concentrated instead on so-called high culture or examined other lowbrow literatures, suchas the Boys Own adventure genre.36It is not surprising, however, that SF, a genre focusing on
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colonisation in space, advanced mechanical and communication developments, and contact with

alien others, came into its own during the late nineteenth centurythe High Age of Europeanimperialism. H.G. Wells late nineteenth century story of a Martian invasion of Earth is indeedone of the seminal SF invasion narratives to articulate the evils of colonialism. What is surprising

is that so few people have identified this correlation, with the plot lines of colonial history and

SF looking remarkably similar. As the historian James Belich noted in relation to Australia:

Little was known of Australia apart from the partial and seasonal observations of Cook and

Banks in 1770. Add to this the sheer difference of Australian nature, with its duck-billedmammals and jumping ruminants, and it is no wonder that historians compare the settlement of

Botany Bay to the founding of a colony on Mars.37

It is consequently unsurprising that SF developed into a critical tool with which to explore

imperialism. It highlights fantasies of appropriating land, power, sex, and treasure... [as well as]nightmarish reversals of the positions of colonizer and colonized in tales of invasion and

apocalypse.38SF for critics like John Reider is in fact the obverse of the celebratory narratives

of exploration and discovery.

39

As to why Cameron chose to become such an outspoken criticof US foreign policy we can only guess.40

New Orientalisms and New Edens

Nevertheless, however much the films anti-imperialist agenda gestures to some politicaldepth, it has been suggested thatAvatarpales in comparison with other more mature SFproductions.

41According to Davidson, the film romanticizes indigenous populations, falling

into a patronizing noble savage myth that is too often the flip side of the racism it opposes.42Avatar, in spite of its overt political stance, consequently remains a colonialist work as itfailsto

challenge the traditional one-dimensional representation(s) of indigenous peoples [read Navi]common to much of the movie industry over the last century.43The Navi are depicted insteadas a primitive palimpsest of non-western Indigenous cultures epitomized by Maasai-looking

necklaces, Rastafarian dreadlocked hair, North American Indigenous peoples clothing andweapons, and Moricultural practices, including a hongi(when Jake and Neytiri are together atthe Tree of Souls). The Navis blue skin colour might be a reflection of an association betweenred-skins and North American Indigenous peoples, whilst the term Navi itself could also be aplay on the term Na(ti)V(e). Additionally, the Navi all appear to be voiced by black or Cherokeeactors.

44In essence,Avatarpresents a wide array of Orientalist stereotypes. As a result it appears

to resemble a big-budget, space-based, technologically innovative version ofPocahontas(1995),

an animated film by Disney with a similar narrative

Edward Saids Orientalism(1978) noted that western representations of the Orient typicallydescribe those regions as mythic and include stereotyped assumptions about the peoples and

places encountered there. The same is true of Camerons Pandora. As Said argued, suchOrientalised perspectives tell us more about the culture of the colonizers rather than the

colonized, revealing by proxy more about those that describe than the people in places thatare being described.45SoAvatarreveals a new Orientalism for a new century, bringing outthe inherent tension between the stigmatization of empire in Camerons film and the resonances
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of imperial culture that underlie the production itself. Thus, the film can be read as a marker of

the extreme power and depth of Orientalist stereotypes. Even more significantly, these

stereotypes are to be found in a work of popular culture (as opposed to Saids focus on elite orhigh culture), and one that ironically purports to offer a critique of empire.

Klaus Lubber notes, the white mans Indian underwent a paradigmatic change in the nineteenthcentury for some, Native Americans remained savages, but to others they became sons orchildren of nature little children of the forest.46The Navi are idealized in the manner of thelatter. Their apparently intimate connections with nature and the environment are appealing in anage when technology has lost its twentieth century gleam and is somewhat demonized.

47As

little children of the forest, the Navi are unfazed by the natural things that humans mighttypically fear, such as death, heights, or a wolf creature intent on slaughter.

48Their sexuality is

also idealized; they are long legged and the women have tiny waists and big eyes. There was astrong movement in Orientalism, comments Bryan S. Turner, that assumed a romantic view ofthe East as a land of promise, sensuality and pleasure that contrasted with the drab reality of

bourgeois aestheticism.49InAvatar,this is realized. The film portrays the image of the

colonized Other [as] penetrated by the travelerwhose passionsit rouses, it is possessed,ravished, embraced and ultimately domesticatedby the masculine colonizer50Jake Sully(the masculine traveller representing the West) penetrates Pandora (the feminine East). Themoons sexy Indigenous peoples are perpetually half-nude, as in the Orientalist paintings of theEuropean colonial era. The implication is that this kind of cultural traffic is one-way only and

that Navi do not have the intellectual ability to integrate into an advanced andtechnologically-superior human society.

Jake is the exemplary Orientalist. As he pokes and prods at Pandora and records Naviidiosyncrasies into a video recorder he inadvertently emphasises their passivity in relation tothe humans (and himself). He is the observer, and they are the observed. The Orient andOrientals [are] an object of study the object will be, as is customary, passive, non-participating above all, non-active, non-autonomous, non-sovereign with regard to itself51Hebecomes more and more fascinated by their culture (his passions roused). He begins toperceive himself as one of them. He tries to convince them that he aloneknows their needs, for

example, to leave Hometree or to negotiate, because he knows their cultureso well. Along theway, he fulfils the Orientalist fantasy of an untrammelled life free from the prohibitions ofsociety back home in forms of sexual excess by sleeping with Neytiri in the middle of aforest.

52When he assumes leadership (possesses, domesticatesthe Navi significantly look

like cats, from their noses to their ears), he justifies his role in the same way that Europeanimperialists once justified colonialism: by claiming that Oriental peoples needed saving.53Sullys message is, in essence, youre lost without me. They are the children, and he willlead/parent them. It is not wholly coincidental that the term avatar itself is derived from the

Sanskrit word avatra, meaning to descend. As such, it ironically references Hindu religiousmythology wherein Vishnus avatars/incarnations descended to earth to remedy difficulties, justlike Sully, the great white god, saves the Navi.54

The overall presentation of Pandora is so seductive that many viewers have experienced post-

Avatardepression.55

In an article for CNN Entertainmentviewers were quoted as feeling

dissatisfied with Earth whilst they longed for Pandora: I really wanted to live in Pandora, which
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seemed like such a perfect place real life will never be as utopian.56Such statements reflect apopular theme in imperial ideology, namely, the idea of a lost paradise or lost Eden. DavidCannadine notes:

Insofar as they [the British] regarded their empire as one vast interconnected world, they did

not necessarily do so in disadvantaged or critical contrast to the way they perceived their ownmetropolitan society. Rather, they were at least as likely to envisage the social structure of their

empire by analogy to what they knew of home in idealization of it or (even, andincreasingly) in nostalgia for it.

57

In other words, imperial ideology presented the periphery of empire as a world lost to the

imperial power itself or an idealized version of the imperial culture prior to imperialism(ironically).Avataris not unusual in promoting this vision; the image of a lost Eden plays animportant part in many of the colonization novels [of SF] tingeing them with a particularnostalgia.58There are certain obvious elements of such an Eden on Pandora: the leafiness, theexotic looking animals, the clear and active presence of a deity, the lack of urban structures But

more importantly, Pandora as Eden appears as a promised land in which settlers might avoid thepitfalls which had plagued the Old World, inAvatarscase, Earth.59Such pitfalls could includethe vices of industrialization and class tension.60The way in which Cameron depicts theculture of the Navi is clearly influenced, if not directly, by this utopian image. Not only isPandora untouched and unindustrialized, but unlike humans (of the Old World, Earth, orimperialists in general) the Navi, amongst themselves, share a single cognitive culture orworldview from which they uniformly derive their beliefs. There are no deviants, fewtroublemakers and there are no class or power struggles. There is, instead, a natural order. OnPandora, all life is sacred, related as kin, and mutually dependent (that is, the opposite of classtension).

61Although it casts them in a romantic light,Avatarthus de-individualises the

Indigenous in traditional imperial fashion. Orientalism [is]... an ideology ofdeindividualization.62The Other is a singular, faceless entity whose members areindistinguishable from one another; this is especially apparent when the Navi startchanting/praying in unison. This contrasts with the actions of the individual Jake Sully, whoarrives at the Omaticayas moment of crisis, parts the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea, andawakens them from their defeatist stupor.

This sequence perpetuates the notion of the Other as an amorphous mass awaiting the arrival of

heroic (Western) individuals, who will then have conqueredthe Lost Eden and will be able to

claim it and engage with it in the way that European imperialists desired.Avataris theexpression of the imperial fantasy of the discovery and conquest of a Lost Eden. It portrays a

worldPandorawith the values and appearance of a utopia and renders this utopia available tooutsiders. The explicitness of this image in a film likeAvatarshows that imperial fantasies

remain popular in the twenty-first century. The appeal of a Lost Eden awaiting colonization thuspersists, and no amount of postcolonial rhetoric has managed to deconstruct it. Pandora is

accordingly more pigmentopia than utopia.63It does not proffer a postcolonial re-imagining ora transfigurative vision of hope. Even the films conventional representation of Jake andNeytiris sex scene is further evidence of this traditionally conservative/Orientalist viewpoint. Itcould have been radicalised if the coupling was between him as a human being and she as a

Navi. Instead, they both remain in alien form, far too similar to other Hollywood conventions of
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same ethnic partnering. Cameron is not alone in stereotyping Indigenous peoples in this way in

SF: when it comes to Indians, even the best science fiction writer is often caught up in thetraditional American literary dichotomy between writers like James Fenimore Cooper and hisNoble Red Man andMark Twain and his Ignoble Savage.64

Throughout the film, Cameron instead presents several binary opposition structures: human/non-human, core/periphery, white/non-white, and most problematically, good culture (Navi)/badculture (humans). These are replicas of traditional imperialist binaries. As iek points out, Thefilm teaches us that the only choice the aborigines have is to be saved by the human beings or tobe destroyed by them.65Likewise, the only apparent response to the human invasion is a violentone, a solution that in the long term often causes more problems than it resolves, the violenceoriginally directed against the outside imperialists can easily become a violence directed

internally against domestic minorities or neighbouring tribes, ethnicities, religions, or nature.66By contrast, the deconstruction of binary structures is one of the fundamental goals of

postcolonialism. Nyoongah Mudrooroo, author of Writing From the Fringe: A study of modern

Aboriginal literature(1990), notes that abandoning the binaries, which have largely dominated

the discourse on human culture (and consequently the study of it), is necessary in a postcolonialworld.67

This echoes Homi K. Bhabha whose work on cultural hybridity highlights the

interdependence of colonising and colonised cultures.68

Avatarsuggests that the impulse toimpose binaries has hardly disappeared, that there is no place between xenophobia andxenophilia.69It might be argued that Sullys avatar form promises a way forward, a chance ofreconciliation and equality since he is half-human, half Navi. However, the insistence on armedinsurrection rather than dialogue renders this hope null and void. Indeed, criticism about themilitary conflict at the finale of the film was expressed by an Ecuadoran tribal leader, who

informed Cameron: This movie needed a better message.70

Postcolonial uncertainty surrounds Jakes human allies as well. On the one hand, the chiefscientist in charge of the Avatar program, Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), and a few

of her colleagues, are sympathetic to theNavi and critical of the RDAs agenda. They serve todispel notions that all humans are complicit in the imperial project, harking back to the theme ofanti-imperial voices from within the imperial core. These characters also try to lessen the

destructive impact of the RDAs commercial-militarist impact. As such, they evoke themissionaries who worked for the abolition of slavery. The name Grace Augustine alludes to botha state of Christian Grace (a call by God to free oneself from sin) and one of Christianitysgreatest missionaries, St. Augustine, who brought the Christian Gospel to Britain. In this case,

Grace Augustine helps Jake to convert. Nor is it coincidental that the majority of these humanallies are either women and/or representative of other minority cultures on Earth, suggesting

historical examples of mutual support amongst similar dominated groups. Yet at the same time,

Dr. Augustines work is financed by the RDA and assists the corporation to know its enemy.Thus her presence raises problematic ethical considerations about the relationship betweenacademia and the imperial project, especially the soft-power counterinsurgency operations runby anthropologists for the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan known as Human Terrain Teams

(HTT): These teams employ rapid appraisal-type ethnographic techniques to help improvedecision-making by commanders on the ground so as to avoid potential kinetic engagements.71
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Conclusion

Stieg Larsson (19542004), author of the famousMillennium Trilogycrime novels, declared thatSF exhibited some of the most politically progressive writing to be found anywhere.72Richard

Luckhurst, reviewing the British Librarys SF exhibition Out of this World: Science fiction butnot as you know it, suggested that It is better tothink science fiction is less about futurologythan a device for Othering the present. It defamiliarises the contemporary world, often forsatirical or political ends.73Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan state that authors interested inpostcolonialism and SF have been playing with the theme of colonisation for this very purpose,

namely: to critique it, pervert it, fuck with it, withirony, with anger, with humour, and also,with love and respect for the genre of science fiction that makes it possible to think about new

ways of doing things.74WhileAvatar, given its Orientalist stereotyping, might not be aspolitically progressive as Cameron had intended, the film has taken on a political life of its own.

Like Antonio Gramscis concept of hegemony, culture has thepotential to sustain the status quoas well as to evolve also into a site of struggle, as plural subjects under the sway of [this]

hegemony assert their multifarious and contradictory forms of social consciousness.

75

This isespecially true given the way in whichAvatarsstoryline and meanings have been appropriated

globally by the victims of other colonial injustices.

In India, the Dongria Kongh who number about eight thousand and who have left the trees onthe mountain [where they reside] untouched as they believe that a god inhabits the forest, haveutilized the film a way to gain public attention to their plight against the mining companyVedanta.

76At the start of 2010, Palestinian protesters in the village of Bilin near Ramallah

dressed as Navi characters to gain global attention to their opposition to Israels separationbarrier. In China bloggers have suggested that the governments near total ban onAvatarwas notonly a way to protect the Chinese film industry (the official statement) but also a reflection of the

authorities concern that the films focus on relocation might incite rebellion amongst the tens ofthousands of Chinese being forced to make way for massive hydro electric projects. In addition,

Chinese leaders might have perceived the films storyline as problematic or provocativeconsidering that nations history of contested occupation in Tibet and Xinjiang. In Canada too,the film has been used by critics of Albertas tar sands projects who have drawn directcomparisons between Shell, BP and Exxon and the RDA. Full-page adverts in North Americanpublications have talked about Canadas avaTAR Sands.77In a case of life imitating art, theAyoreo tribe in Brazil have taken to attacking a local companys bulldozers whose machines arebeing used to cut down trees in the rainforest to make way for ranchers.

78On one environmental

listserv they were reports that audiences as far apart as Brazil and Malaysia left theatresenergized and mobilized, discussing imperialism, globalization, capitalism, struggles over

natural resources, and modes of resistance.79DecolonisingPandora is itself a product of sucha discussion amongst students in an undergraduate history class on empire.

The politics ofAvatarhas ramifications, therefore, that extend further than just Cameronscritique of US foreign policy. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to say what influence thefilm has had, if any, on the American domestic political situation, and even if such an influence

can be measured accurately,Avatardoes have a political impact. As Richard Schiff who played

Toby Ziegler on the award-winning political drama The West Wing(19992006) suggested, it is
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multinational power the traditional definitions of empire need reformulating. Instead of the

accepted consensus definition, namely that an empire is a largepoliticalbody which rulesover territories outside its original borders,89a more relevant definition for the twenty-firstcentury is needed. This new working definition might be the following: empire is a

formal/informal correlation wherein any kind of individual or organization (political, religious,

or commercial) dominates a peoples political autonomy, territory, culture, and/or economics.For correspondence:[email protected];[email protected]

Notes

1. Herfried Mnkler,Empires: The logic of world domination from Ancient Rome to the United

States, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), 4.

2. Naomi Wolf, Avatar and Empire, Project Syndicate, 20 January 2010, accessed 6 April

2010,http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/wolf20/English.

3. Simon Sigley, Film Culture: Its development in New Zealand, 19291972, (PhD diss.,University of Auckland, 2003) quoted in Barbara Brookes, Which Barrier Was Broken? BrokenBarrier and New Zealand cinema in the 1950s,New Zealand Journal of History44.2 (2010):121.

4. Myles Balfe, Incredible Geographies? Orientalism and genre fantasy, Social & CulturalGeographyVol. 5 No. 1 (2004): 756.

5. David Desser, Race, Space and Class: The politics of the SF Film fromMetropolistoBlade

Runner, inRetrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scotts Blade Runner and Philip K.Dicks Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, ed. Judith B. Kerman (Madison: University ofWisconsin Press, 1997), 110.

6. J.P. Tellotte, Science Fiction Film(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 3.

7. By contrast, fantasy is a narrative wherein an extranatural power plays a fundamental role.John Clute and Peter Nicholls, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction(London: Orbit Press, 1999),484.

8. For a discussion of definitions of SF, especially Suvin, see A. Roberts, Science Fiction: The

new critical idiom(London: Routledge, 2000), 28.

9. Dana Goodyear, Man of Extremes: The return of James Cameron,New Yorker, 26 October2009, accessed 2 April 2010,http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?vid=7&hid=5&sid=a5dd7

10. Erik Hedegaard, The Impossible Reality of James Cameron,Rolling Stone, December2009, accessed 2 April 2010,http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?vid=7&hid=5&sid=a5dd7
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f89http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f89mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f1-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f2-texthttp://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/wolf20/Englishhttp://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/wolf20/Englishhttp://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/wolf20/Englishhttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f3-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f4-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f5-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f6-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f7-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f8-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f9-texthttp://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?vid=7&hid=5&sid=a5dd7http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?vid=7&hid=5&sid=a5dd7http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?vid=7&hid=5&sid=a5dd7http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f10-texthttp://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?vid=7&hid=5&sid=a5dd7http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?vid=7&hid=5&sid=a5dd7http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?vid=7&hid=5&sid=a5dd7http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?vid=7&hid=5&sid=a5dd7http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f10-texthttp://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?vid=7&hid=5&sid=a5dd7http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f9-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f8-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f7-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f6-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f5-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f4-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f3-texthttp://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/wolf20/Englishhttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f2-texthttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f1-textmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v013/13.2.alessio.html#f89


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11. Dave Itzkoff, You Saw What inAvatar? Pass those glasses, The New York Times, 20January 2010, accessed 2 July 2012,

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/movies/20avatar.html?%2339

12. Goodyear, Man of Extremes.

13. David Brooks, The Messiah Complex, The New York Times, 7 January 2010, accessed 8April 2010,

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/opinion/08brooks.html?scp=1&sq=David%20Nr

14. Antonio Casilli, Les Avatars Bleus, Autour de trois stratgies demprunt culturel au coeurde la cyberculture, Communications,77 (2005): 183209. Quoted in Emily Hodgon, JamesCameronsAvatar: A postcolonial analysis, (undergraduate paper submitted to DominicAlessio for the module Cultures of Imperial Power, at Richmond University, the American

International University in London, Spring 2010).

15. John Podhoretz, Avatarocious: Another spectacle hits an iceberg and sinks, WeeklyStandard.com, Vol. 15 No. 15 (2009), accessed 8 March 2010,http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/350fozta.asp

16. James Fulford, James Cameron has no ClothesMacleans,Vol. 123 No. 6 (2010), 5556.

17. Nagesh Rao, Avatar: Anti-Imperiaism in 3D, Green Left,22 January 2010, quoted inRjurik Davidson, Avatar: Evaluating a film in a world of its own,Australian ScreenEducation, 1 April 2010, accessed 16 September 2010,

http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201004/2059717391.html

18. Wolf, Avatar and Empire.19. George Bush in an October 2001 address to the nation, quoted by John Pilger in WhatGood Friends Left Behind, The Guardian, 20 September 2003, accessed 27 March 2010,http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/sep/20/afghanistan.weekend7/print

20. Barbara Bush,Imperialism and Postcolonialism(Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Limited,

2006), 199.

21. Wolf, Avatar and Empire.

22. Notably, the Trail of Tears exemplifies the US governments larger policy of removing andrelocating Indigenous peoples and other groups throughout the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies, including the wide establishment of Native American reservations and the internmentof Japanese and Japanese Americans during WWII, among other examples.

23. Steve Kroft, All in the Family, CBS News,21 September 2003, accessed 23 January 2006,http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/25/60minutes/printable551091.shtml
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38. John Reider, Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction (Early Classics of Science

Fiction)(Middleton, Connecticut: Wesleyan, 2008), 47.

39. Reider, Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction,123124.

40. Camerons Canadian background and that countrys frequent tendency to pursue adeliberately independent foreign policy vis--visits more powerful neighbour, is a possiblerationale. Camerons history of being bullied at school and a subsequent psychological desire tostand up against aggressors may also be relevant (Hedegaard, The Impossible Reality of JamesCameron, 6895.). When the Cameron family left Ontario and moved to the US, the directorsearly blue-collar background (he used to work as a truck driver) might have contributed to an

independent streak as well. Some of the strongest opposition to the Vietnam War came from theworking classes, who also happened to comprise the majority of the conscripts. Cameron may

also have had personal reasons for his anti-war position, as his younger brother John David

served as a marine in Iraq during the First Gulf War. Significantly, the US joined the First Gulf

War soon after members of Congress and the US public were deliberately misled. In order to win

US support for Kuwait, Saud Nasir al-Sabah, the daughter of Kuwaits Ambassador to the US,had misinformed the world that Iraqi soldiers during the Kuwait invasion had systematicallymurdered babies in hospital.

40Ultimately, Cameron may have chosen to make an anti-imperialist

film simply because he had tired of pro-war propaganda.

41. Davidson, Avatar

42. Davidson, Avatar.

43. Dominic Alessio. Things Are Different Now? A postcolonial analysis ofBuffy theVampire Slayer, The European Legacy6.6 (2001): 738.

44. Will Heaven, James Camerons Avatar is a Stylish Film Marred by its Racist Subtext, TheTelegraph, 22 December 2009, accessed 8 April 2010,http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100020488/james-camerons-avatar-is-a-

45. John McLeod,Beginning Postcolonialism(New York: Manchester University Press, 2000),41. Italics added.

46. Klaus Lubber,Born for the Shade: Stereotypes of Native Americans in the United Statesliterature and visual arts, 17761894(Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V., 1994), 41.

47. Technology is associated with a dominating, controlling frame of mind, that harms theenvironment and obscures certain aspects of the human experience. Charles E. Harris, Jr.,Michael S. Pritchard, Michael J. Rabins,Engineering Ethics: Concepts and cases(Belmont, CA:

Wadsworth, 2005), 95.

48. The acceptance of death [by the Navi] carries with it the negative connotations capturedin the infamous comment made by General Westmoreland in Peter Daviss 1974 anti-war
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documentaryHearts and Minds: The Oriental doesnt put the same high price on life as doesthe Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient.

49. Bryan S. Turner,Readings in Orientalism(New York: Routledge, 2000), 14.

50. McLeod,Beginning Postcolonialism,45. Italics added.

51. Anwar Abdul Malek on Edward Said, quoted in Partha Chatterjee,Nationalist Thought andthe Colonial World: A derivative discourse(Tokyo: Zed Ltd, 1986), 36. Italics added.

52. McLeod,Beginning Postcolonialism, 45.

53. McLeod,Beginning Postcolonialism, 46.

54. Kirsten Stranger, Reinventing the Inhuman: Avatars, Cylons, andHomo Sapiensincontemporary science-fiction television series,Literature Film Quarterly38 3 (2010): 196.

55. Jo Piazza, Audiences Experience Avatar Blues, CNN Entertainment Online, 11 January2010, accessed 16 February 2010,


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64. Christine Morris, Indians and Other Aliens: A Native American view of science fiction,Extrapolation20.4 (1979), 300, quoted in Judith Leggatt, Critiquing Economic andEnvironmental Colonization: Globalization and science fiction in The Moons of Palmares, inScience Fiction, Imperialism and the Third World, eds. Ericka Hoagland and Reema Sarwal

(London: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2010), 133.

65. Slavoj iek, Return of the Natives,New Statesman, 3 March 2010, 456.

66. Rabbi Michael Lerner, Obama and Avatar, Tikkun25 2 (2010), accessed 6 April 2010,http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=8&hid=6&sid=51094a3f-a502-4c34-8b93

67. Nyoongah Mudrooroo, Writing from the Fringe: A study of modern Aboriginal literature

(Melbourne: Hyland House, 1990), 209.

68. Homi K. Bhabha, Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences, in The Post ColonialStudies Reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin (London: Routledge, 1995),

206211.

69. Angelika Bammer, Xenophobia, Xenophilia, and No Place to Rest, inEncountering theOther(s): Studies in literature, history and culture, ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler, (Albany: State

University of New York, 1995), quoted in Patricia Kerslake, Science Fiction and Empire(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010), 18.

70. Michael Cieply, Avatar Director Emphasizes Environmental Message,NYtimes.com, 23February 2010, accessed 29 November 2010,

http://carpetbanger.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/avatar-director-emphasizes

71. Robert Albro, Anthropology and the Military,Anthropology Today26, 1 (2010): 22.

72. Graeme Atkinson, Stieg Larsson, Our Stieg Larsson,Searchlight(September 2010): 19.

73. Roger Luckhurst, Other-Worldly Wise, Times Higher Education, 12 May 2011, 46.

74. Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan, eds., So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial science

fiction and fantasy(Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004), 9, quoted in Judith Leggatt,Critiquing Economic and Environmental Colonization: Globalization and science fiction in TheMoons of Palmares, in Science Fiction, Imperialism and the Third World,
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