Dressed Up Exoticism: Avatar

In this week's reading, “Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film,” Adilifu Nama focuses on the relationship between Blackness and it's being viewed as innately "foreign" to whiteness, and how the genre of science fiction continually confutes being Black with being as uncanny as alien life, instead of letting Black people be human in those stories in the same way their white counterparts are allowed to be. 

This reading actually made me think about a very modern development of this unfortunate trope, in regards to the latest franchise Avatar by James Cameron, as it sort of exemplifies this phenomenon in the worse way. 

Nama provides several examples of Blackness within SF media that, among other things, strip Black people of their humanity, gender, agency, etc. And this rung a bell within me–I realized this sounded very familiar to the Avatar franchise.

While the Na’vi in the movies are clearly intended to be indigenous-coded, with the way they display similarities to many real life indigenous practicies. it would not be incorrect to also read them as Afro-indigenous as well (from features such as some of the tribe having cornrows, on a surface level). And throughout these films, we see the story of essentially white men coming to their planet, to help them learn how to become civil, if not to outright steal their resources. The Na’vi are shown as animalistic (based in some ways off of literal cats for example), and prone to irrational behavior (in the eyes of the audience and the (white) main characters).

Jake in a Na'vi body

There is also a conversation to be had about the way in which Avatar specifically has it’s white characters adopt the ability to become Na’vi, not so subtly implying that Blackness, in it’s superpowered alien-ness, is something for white people to strive to have for themselves. The first movie especially is essentially the same plot as pocahontas, as the belief of the corporation in charge is that it’s essentially their right to come to their land, civilize them, and use their power “properly.” 

I thought that this was fascinating as a very recent example, what with the newest movie having released. It’s not a conversation I see pop up around these movies as often as maybe it should be, that for all the cool CGI advancements this franchise has made, and for the BIPOC “representation” Cameron has put into the mainstream, these also still liken Black and Indigenous people to these alien creatures for better or for worse.