Avatar musings
Jan. 16th, 2010 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
concertigrossiOk, so I read the the uncut script to Avatar (I'm fangirling, ok?) And I read this scene, from right after Neytiri starts showing Jake around:
MO’AT, watching Jake and Neytiri, leans over to Eytukan.
MO'AT
(subtitled)
Neytiri will test this “warrior.” Hey may
learn nothing -- but we will learn much.
EYTUKAN
You speak truth. We must understand
these Sky People if we are to drive them
out.
I wish they'd kept it. I really do. Because it shows that the Na'vi aren't passively laying back and allowing the humans to come in and take over. They're trying, dammit. As cool as they are, they're a stone-age people, and without a deep understanding of human military technology and tactics, they have no hope of prevailing. In this scene, we see that the Na'vi understand that.
(Now, a way cooler story would be the Na'vi acquiring the knowledge without the help of the turncoat warrior, but that's not James Cameron, is it.)
See, what gets me about this sort of story is that the natives are always portrayed like this: the Noble Savage, corrupted by Civilization. They are uniformly child-like, naive and innocent.
What a load of 19th century claptrap! They're none of that, goddamnit! They're people!
In Hollywood, it ALWAYS plays out like this. Gentle, peaceful natives are doing their thing. Evil Oppressor comes in, rapes, plunders, pillages and enslaves. It's simple, black-and-white, morally clear and, in my opinion, far more racist than what actually happened.
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, if you want to treat all beings equally, you have to allow that all beings are equally capable of being machiavellian bastards.
Look, the leader, who is leader because he convinced a whole bunch of not-stupid people that he should be in charge, is going to weigh anything newly encountered for its threat or profit potential. Why? Because he's the leader, and wishes to remain so! He's worried about the safety of his tribe, and worried that his rival - and every person in a position of power has a rival - will get the edge up on him. Not, "We will accept these newcomers in the spirit of universal peace and brotherhood!" but "Is this going to be a problem? If it is, how do I deal with it? If it's not, how do we work this to our advantage?"
Pizarro could never have conquered the Inca without the help of the surrounding tribes. Why did the surrounding tribes support Pizarro? Because they were sick of the Incans coming in and bossing them around! Did they choose poorly? Yes, they did. Is Pizarro any less guilty of being a cruel, imperialistic motherfucker? No, he's not. But that doesn't make the native South Americans naive pawns, either. When the Plymouth colony was close to death, the question came before Massasoit as to whether they should wipe the remaining Englishmen out. Massasoit seriously considered it. He decided to help them with the hope that his tribe would be granted favored trading status, thus bolstering the Pokanoket's position against all the other tribes in the area. Would it have been better for his tribe had he let the Plymouth colony die? Probably (hindsight is 20/20). Did the English totally screw the Wampanoag over? Certainly. But the point is this: Massasoit chose. He was an active player, not a leaf blown on the wind.
If you took a bunch of humans from all over the world and wiped their minds of their memories and all their inculcated ideas of race and gender, and plopped them down onto an island in the middle of nowhere, after a while, they will pick a chief. Pack dominance is encoded into our DNA from back before Homo Sapiens was a glint in some mutant monkey's eye. And their chief will behave as I've outlined, as leaders have throughout history: they will be smart, they will be canny, and they will be trying their best to prevail, for themselves and their children.
Trying to say otherwise is a denial of their humanity. It's treating them as amusing pets, to be studied as they entertain us, to provide material for graduate theses and cocktail party conversation, but it does not treat them as humans of equal stature.
MO’AT, watching Jake and Neytiri, leans over to Eytukan.
MO'AT
(subtitled)
Neytiri will test this “warrior.” Hey may
learn nothing -- but we will learn much.
EYTUKAN
You speak truth. We must understand
these Sky People if we are to drive them
out.
I wish they'd kept it. I really do. Because it shows that the Na'vi aren't passively laying back and allowing the humans to come in and take over. They're trying, dammit. As cool as they are, they're a stone-age people, and without a deep understanding of human military technology and tactics, they have no hope of prevailing. In this scene, we see that the Na'vi understand that.
(Now, a way cooler story would be the Na'vi acquiring the knowledge without the help of the turncoat warrior, but that's not James Cameron, is it.)
See, what gets me about this sort of story is that the natives are always portrayed like this: the Noble Savage, corrupted by Civilization. They are uniformly child-like, naive and innocent.
What a load of 19th century claptrap! They're none of that, goddamnit! They're people!
In Hollywood, it ALWAYS plays out like this. Gentle, peaceful natives are doing their thing. Evil Oppressor comes in, rapes, plunders, pillages and enslaves. It's simple, black-and-white, morally clear and, in my opinion, far more racist than what actually happened.
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, if you want to treat all beings equally, you have to allow that all beings are equally capable of being machiavellian bastards.
Look, the leader, who is leader because he convinced a whole bunch of not-stupid people that he should be in charge, is going to weigh anything newly encountered for its threat or profit potential. Why? Because he's the leader, and wishes to remain so! He's worried about the safety of his tribe, and worried that his rival - and every person in a position of power has a rival - will get the edge up on him. Not, "We will accept these newcomers in the spirit of universal peace and brotherhood!" but "Is this going to be a problem? If it is, how do I deal with it? If it's not, how do we work this to our advantage?"
Pizarro could never have conquered the Inca without the help of the surrounding tribes. Why did the surrounding tribes support Pizarro? Because they were sick of the Incans coming in and bossing them around! Did they choose poorly? Yes, they did. Is Pizarro any less guilty of being a cruel, imperialistic motherfucker? No, he's not. But that doesn't make the native South Americans naive pawns, either. When the Plymouth colony was close to death, the question came before Massasoit as to whether they should wipe the remaining Englishmen out. Massasoit seriously considered it. He decided to help them with the hope that his tribe would be granted favored trading status, thus bolstering the Pokanoket's position against all the other tribes in the area. Would it have been better for his tribe had he let the Plymouth colony die? Probably (hindsight is 20/20). Did the English totally screw the Wampanoag over? Certainly. But the point is this: Massasoit chose. He was an active player, not a leaf blown on the wind.
If you took a bunch of humans from all over the world and wiped their minds of their memories and all their inculcated ideas of race and gender, and plopped them down onto an island in the middle of nowhere, after a while, they will pick a chief. Pack dominance is encoded into our DNA from back before Homo Sapiens was a glint in some mutant monkey's eye. And their chief will behave as I've outlined, as leaders have throughout history: they will be smart, they will be canny, and they will be trying their best to prevail, for themselves and their children.
Trying to say otherwise is a denial of their humanity. It's treating them as amusing pets, to be studied as they entertain us, to provide material for graduate theses and cocktail party conversation, but it does not treat them as humans of equal stature.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 03:52 am (UTC)Totally agree with you about Hollywood's one track mind on this stuff.
And this:
"If you took a bunch of humans from all over the world and wiped their minds of their memories and all their inculcated ideas of race and gender, and plopped them down onto an island in the middle of nowhere, after a while, they will pick a chief. Pack dominance is encoded into our DNA from back before Homo Sapiens was a glint in some mutant monkey's eye. And their chief will behave as I've outlined, as leaders have throughout history: they will be smart, they will be canny, and they will be trying their best to prevail, for themselves and their children.
Hell yes and fuck yes. humans are. full stuff. we do this crap repeatedly that's why we talk about needing to learn from history if we are going to change the frakkin' future. *double sigh*
We also seem to delight in stripping anyone and/or any situation down to single digit variables as close to one as possible. Someone is Evil or Good. Right or Wrong. This or That. we are never one thing. We are always always always a product of all the parts of our life and our growth. And we are thing we - well most people at least - seem to hate the most - a paradox. we are good and evil at once (*though given that I have a debate in my head about the nature of evil... ) Wrong and right. weak and strong. all of the above. The real question, as I see it is, how do we face those facts, how we balance those bits that we like with the bits we dont? And how do we honor the same in other people.
Mind you I have a blazing white "oh shoot me now" uniform hiding in my closet, so that probably colors a lot of how I see the world as well.
But yes. I would LOVE to see all the beauty and glory of Avatar with all the impossible REAL complexity that is a true native peoples going up against a colonialist corporation - ideally without recourse to the WISE and Handsome turncoat.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 08:35 am (UTC)Now, a way cooler story would be the Na'vi acquiring the knowledge without the help of the turncoat warrior, but that's not James Cameron, is it.
Yeah, I would have loved to see that movie. I enjoyed Avatar but it was extremely problematic in my view, in many ways.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 10:19 am (UTC)My personal theory about the Na'vi and Pandora (which admittedly isn't fully formed quite yet) is that they weren't always a stone-age people - mostly based on the fact that they are just too cool and I have a hard time imagining a planet-wide organic internet just evolving. So, what I think is that at some point in the distant past, the ancestors of the Na'vi was a technologically sophisticated people, who had a particularly fine grasp of bio-engineering - and who then made the choice to turn their own planet into what it is today, perhaps turning their own race into something slightly different and perhaps modelled on their own equivalent of noble savages, and adjusting a number of other species on the planet to fit the world they were creating.
Admittedly, this is just a theory, and like I said, mostly based on the fact that the Na'vi are simply too cool, whatever else they might be.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 05:11 pm (UTC)In fact, maybe my biggest problem with the movie was Neytiri going from "YOU KILLED MY FATHER, I NEVER WANT YOU AROUND AGAIN" to weeping all over him when he shows up with Super Dragon. OK, maybe your religion teaches that whomever tames this bad boy is fit to lead your people militarily, but it does not follow that you have to love them or forgive them personally, etc. I understand Cameron sets this up to explain why Neytiri would kill the military commander later - but I don't think it's necessary. Once she sees Jake fighting the commander and understands that he's the opposition leader, she can reason out that he's responsible for her father's death, and attack him for her own filial vengeance, NOT to protect Jake, and the movie works just as well and makes more sense. (I did like the scene of her saving Jake's human body, but again, that could be explained as her having regained respect/love for him during the battle when she saw he was actually willing to help her people.)
My other big problem was the timeframe. Why did Jake have three months to gain Na'vi trust and learn all about them? How much could YOU realistically learn in the same circumstances in three months? Add to that that canon establishes Jake is no scientist, nor is he particularly brilliant - he's no mental slouch, but it's pointed out that the scientists have spent years mastering what they know. I could maybe understand if Jake had mastered their physical and weapons capabilities in three months, since that's what he's trained for - but language? Rituals? Detailed history?
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 04:14 pm (UTC)They still hinted at what's expressed in the original-script conversation above, in that they accepted Jake because of his warrior-ness . . I wasn't necessarily looking at it as subversive, though, I was thinking of it more as a cultural gap in terms of respective social status. Among the Omatikaya, hunters/warriors are obviously highly respected. They don't have any equivalent to 'scientist' - if anything, 'someone who seeks to learn' would probably strike them as childlike. I think they'd feel more respected by being sent a warrior emissary than by being sent a bunch of scientists.
I also don't think the 'shoot arrows at the gunships' stategy was quite as lousy/naive as it looked, at first glance, because Eytukan had already ordered Tsu'tey to attack from above on ikran - the arrows were lousy ground-to-air missiles, but they were seriously good distraction. If Tsu'tey had been a little faster, or if Jake had gotten a chance to explain how they were going to attack Hometree and they'd been prepared in advance . . that would have gone differently. Not saying the Omatikaya would necessarily have managed to preserve Hometree - because maybe they needed several precise hits to take it down, but they'd really only need one or two fairl random hits to make it so that it'd come down in a few years from rot from the injury, and they'd have to move anyway - but they could have put up a decent fight, and having to move in a few years beats the hell out of the 9/11 re-enactment they got. And speaking of, how is that NO ONE has commented on the BIG HONKIN' TOWER falling down in flames, in discussing the politics of this movie?