Replaying racism

I recently was drawn (backwards, kicking & screaming) into a debate about the movie "Avatar." My response to the film when it came out is here. It has been a few months (ok, several) and this year has been incredibly busy to boot, that I found myself struggling to recall the specific prompts that had made me respond the way I did, and why I consider the film racist. I was also holding back my tongue while speaking to members of my soon-to-be husband's extended family, not wanting to fight with them. My interlocutor told me he didn't see why the movie was racist, and that he left the film with a message of peace and better understanding between peoples.

The next day while watching tv I saw "Scandalize My Name," a film about the ways that McCarthyism wrought havoc on the black community and was often used as a justification for not supporting civil rights for all. Because communism supported rights for all, many civil rights advocates were dismissed as communists. One of the commentators said, "Racism is most dangerous when it is invisible."



That was it. That was exactly what I had been groping for in my argument over "Avatar." The film cloaks its racism so insidiously, allowing the "natives" to win but portraying them in degrading ways, always nature lovers, without science or technology, wearing simple clothing associated with barbarism or caveman style (loincloths, anyone?) and lacking the means to function in the modern world. They inevitably are ruled or dominated by someone from a more "sophisticated" world, a white militarized capitalist world, who infiltrates their community, learns their ways, and then leads them to victory (which they could not achieve on their own). Most insultingly, at the end of the film, the main character ATTAINS indigeneity, rendering it a commodity that can be won by the white man. The "secret ways", the indigenous identity, can be explored, discovered, and its secrets opened to a person who can become indigenous. All of these tired tropes and stereotypes abound in "Avatar," but they are carefully hidden and concealed so most walk out of the theater without realizing that yes, yet again, native peoples are being represented as backwards, timeless, nature lovers, unmodern, etc...and these tropes internalized by new, younger audiences who will then regurgitate them. This is unacceptable. Racism is dangerous, but fatal and insidious when it is invisible. That is truly frightening. We as audiences cannot be afraid to peal back the layers of the image to unfold the meaning within, and speak out against it.


I find it troubling that children and adults alike are watching this film and internalizing these stereotypes. Writing more blog posts is unlikely to change the world...but I must use my voice however I can to speak out against this continued exploitation and representation.