Editorial: The Avatar Contraversy

Avatar has pissed off conservatives who feel that it is attacking their way of life, and the movie also pissed off liberals who see the specter of the 'white messiah' in the movie's protagonist Jake Sully. In this case the conservatives have the movie figured out much better than the liberals. Avatar is an attack on the 'traditional' destructive way of life that is typically associated with first world European descended white folk- normally white males. It is not, however a story about the 'white messiah' as many commentators have claimed. It is a story about redemption.

The story of Avatar could easily be told from the point of view of only the Na'vi. It would be simple to make Jake Sully's character a young untried warrior instead of a white guy in a Na'vi avatar. The story would function just fine and most of the relevant plot points would work with very little tooling.

But it would not serve its purpose then. What do I mean? The function of stories like 'Dances with Wolves' and 'Avatar' and even 'Pocahontas' are not to tell non-white people that they need white people to rescue them- at least not when the stories are told well and done right.

Done right these stories are stories told to young white people who want a place in a culture that is not a destructive all consuming demon. For young people- and old people- who do not wish to take there place in the white folk's culture of death, there needs to be an option besides that culture. They need to know that even a white person can peel off the layers of civilization and walk quietly amongst the trees and live in balance.

Going back to the movie 'Avatar'. If white people don't find a better story to be in than the one perpetuated by the villains of this story, then more white people will come, and they will carpet bomb Pandora from space before moving in to extract the minerals. Without another story, these hopeless souls who would rather not destroy the world will step into line and do just that. 'Avatar' is not attempting to accurately represent the world, but to tell those people who are still part of the culture of maximum harm, that there is another way and another story to be in.