Grossing well over two billion dollars worldwide, James Cameron’s Avatar passed his 1997 film, Titanic, as the highest-grossing movie of all time in 2009. The film’s success has been attributed to its 3D viewing option, advanced computer-generated imagery (CGI), and the global recession wherein people used movies as a cheap form of escapism and entertainment (“A Year for the Record Books,” 2010). Millions of people viewed this film, so its portrayal of indigenous populations and their relationship with colonizers reached and embedded themselves, consciously or not, into the global population. Avatar provides a progressive framework for working against indigenous media stereotyping, but the movie does contribute to the pool of media that perpetuates the white savior trope, ultimately leaving the viewer with an unaltered, or worsened, opinion of indigenous groups.
The Plot of Avatar
Set in a more technologically advanced future of humanity, Avatar focuses on how militant and scientific humans interact with and exploit a planet, dubbed Pandora, that lies far from Earth. Humanity has developed prodigious machinery and defensive bases on the planet to mine for unobtanium, an expensive natural resource, while also protecting themselves from the unknown and “hostile” jungle terrain and native inhabitants. This same jungle, however, houses vastly unique plant, animal, and humanoid species that attract scientists and researchers from Earth. Avatar focuses on a branch of the Pandora academic scene that mixes the DNA of humans and the indigenous species, called the Na’vi, to form lab-grown bodies, called “avatars”, that identically resemble the Na’vi, but can be remotely operated by a human user and mind.
While there has been research occurring on Pandora for some time, the movie centers around Jake Sully, an ex-marine who is paralyzed from the waist down, and his arrival and transition into the Avatar Program. Jake’s twin brother had been the intended new member of the program, but his unexpected death left behind an expensive avatar body with specific DNA. As a twin, Jake would be able to connect to his late brother’s avatar, and he agrees to take his brother’s place on Pandora in the hopes of earning enough money to afford surgery to gain back the use of his legs. His lack of training and unfamiliarity with the planet catch up to him quickly as he provokes Pandoran creatures that chase and strand him in the forest after his first day outside of the military base. A Na’vi woman, Neytiri, finds him, and after receiving a sign from Eywa, the Na’vi deity, she agrees to take him back to her hometree and her people.
The sign from Eywa encourages the clan to try to teach Jake their ways, to the surprise and jealousy of the other members of the Avatar Program. As an ex-marine, a colonel approaches Jake and asks him to get to know the, as he puts it, “savages” so that he can convince them to leave their land before bulldozers destroy it for the unobtanium that lies underneath it.
Through the days, Jake slowly starts to pick up on the ways of the Na’vi by training to be a warrior with Neytiri, the daughter of the chief, Eytukan, and the clan’s spiritual leader, Mo’at. He develops an understanding of the emotional connections they have with the forest, its inhabitants, and their ancestors, and he begins to challenge the planned destruction of the terrain and the Na’vi.
The White Savior Complex in Avatar
In film, the white savior complex consists of a white character rescuing or improving the lives of marginalized groups. Julio Cammarota (2011), a sociocultural studies professor at the University of Arizona, argues that the concept of the white individual “saving” marginalized groups is due to a “corporate culture” attitude in the United States that manifests itself in movie plotlines that promote the dominant western power, white men, and that, consequently, keeps minority groups on a lower pedestal.
In Avatar, Jake Sully fills the role of the white savior. The Na’vi people have been at odds with the humans for many years, but they aren’t able to rally together and defeat the military until a grieving ex-marine is deemed “the chosen one” by the Na’vi deity. Jake Sully, a “demon in a false body” (Cameron, 2009, 01:30:45), manages to tame the most feared banshee on the planet and assemble thousands of Na’vi across several tribes against the humans, even though he has only been involved with Na’vi culture for a few months.
Despite the underlying white savior complex of the film, Avatar does convey a less stereotyped representation of indigenous populations through its depth into the Na’vi culture.
A Positive Representation of Indigenous Cultures
A preferred reading of the white savior storyline, in Avatar or any other film, might include praise for highlighting the life experiences of minority groups, albeit through the eyes of a white individual. Avatar does focus on portraying the story of the Na’vi, and, as such, the film works against a couple of typical indigenous stereotypes.
Since the beginning of radio and television media in the United States, indigenous populations have been stereotyped into a uniform, uncivilized group of people who are at odds with the white population, and this representation has infiltrated the American conception of the Native American individual. John Mihelich (2001), a sociology and American studies professor at the University of Idaho, asked some of his classes to identify typical stereotypes of indigenous people. Two common responses were “uneducated” and “not diverse”. Despite these common media images of indigenous populations, Avatar represents the Na’vi as educated and as a diverse, complicated humanoid species.
In the film, the human scientists had been interacting with and studying the Na’vi before Jake’s arrival. They are mentioned to have built a school for Neytiri’s clan, the Omaticaya, and to have successfully taught English to many of the Omaticaya. At least the four leaders of the clan, (Neytiri, Eytukan, Mo’at, and Tsu’tey) are able to communicate with Jake in English, and through Dr. Grace Augustine’s school, it can be inferred that the children are being taught English, as well. Although this is a colonialistic way to view the Na’vi as educated, humans are literally an alien species to the Na’vi, so the way that the Na’vi minds operate are likely vastly different from how human minds operate. Despite this, they are able to learn English and the concepts of human culture. Of course, as a white savior film, the humans in the movie clearly understand Na’vi culture and language, too, but the Na’vi are not portrayed to be less intelligent than the humans from an ability-to-learn standpoint.
Additionally, the Na’vi are not conveyed to be a unified, uncomplicated, “not diverse” group of people. When Jake tames the legendary banshee, toruk, he rallies the Omaticaya and travels to other Na’vi clans on Pandora to convince them to band together to push the humans off of the planet. Although only two distinct groups are visually depicted, plains horse clans and banshee clans from the sea, the film implies that Jake gathers several other clans through the lengths he voyages to reach different areas of Pandora. Unlike other representations of indigenous peoples in film, the Na’vi are shown to not all be one homogenous group. They have different territories, cultures, and intergroup histories that likely differentiate one clan from the next.
Aside from a multitude of Na’vi clans across the planet, “not diverse” could also apply to the demographic of Na’vi within one tribe. While Neytiri trains Jake, she mentions that there are a range of skills to be learned in the Omaticaya people. There are warriors, like herself, and there are singers, hunters, riders, and craftsmen, among others. The film also visually displays Na’vi of all ages, including babies and a funeral for an Omaticaya that has passed on to Eywa, the Na’vi deity. By taking the time to outline the diversity of the Omaticaya clan, the film acknowledges the complexity of the Na’vi people, and it humanizes these people that might initially seem foreign and separate from human culture and interaction.
Overall, Avatar’s efforts to work against common indigenous stereotypes serve to potentially increase the credibility and relatability of native population images in media and the real world.
Negative Impacts of the White Savior Complex
The film does portray the Na’vi in a way that goes against common native stereotypes, but the oppositional reading for the white savior trope ultimately serves to undermine the positive preferred readings of indigenous populations. Because the film relies on Jake Sully, a white outsider, to save the indigenous population, the Na’vi are shown as incapable of saving themselves. A major ramification from this oppositional reading reveals a lack of agency among indigenous populations when it comes to their ability to incite change. This subtle theme can influence viewers’ real-world opinions about indigenous groups’ abilities to advocate for themselves, and it encourages sympathetic and condescending behavior towards these peoples because of their perceived, and media-perpetuated, helplessness.
An even deeper implication of the white savior trope lies in the film’s need for collectible, scientific proof of indigenous knowledge systems of life on Pandora. Instead of the Avatar Program relying on rich Na’vi culture to relay the connectedness of Pandora, there has to be a quantifiable measurement to justify the Na’vi people’s reality.
Oftentimes when discussing indigenous ways of knowing the world compared to western methods of knowing the world, western wisdom is referred to as “science”, while indigenous wisdom is referred to as “knowledge”. In the western world, the term “science” connotes measurable, indisputable studies of the world, whereas “knowledge” implies less tangible, more intrinsic understandings of the world. While “knowledge” is crucial to science, it is not respected at the same caliber, and thus it operates with lower standing and respect than cold-hard science.
This minute linguistic difference works to form a preference for western wisdom over indigenous wisdom. These two examples of word associations can be dangerous due to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, defined by Judith Martin and Thomas Nakayama in the 8th edition of Intercultural Communication in Contexts as “the assumption that language shapes our ideas and guides our view of social reality” (2021, p. 218). Associating indigenous systems with a less respected word works to shape our worldview into favoring or relying on western knowledge over indigenous science.
Because we typically use phrases like “indigenous knowledge” and “western science”, indigenous belief systems are written off as simply that: beliefs. Sure, they tend to lack the tangible data that is necessary for western science systems, but why does qualitative indigenous science have less credence than quantitative data? Western and European imperialism imposes that western science is the truth, but it turns a blind eye to qualitative observations and intuitions that continue to guide and have guided indigenous populations for thousands of years.
In Avatar, this western imposition of the superiority of science reveals itself through the focus of the “electrochemical communication” between the lifeforms on Pandora. While Jake Sully is being instructed on the ways of the Na’vi, Neytiri teaches him about a “network of energy that flows through all living things” (Cameron, 2009, 01:04:08). His experience demonstrates how many indigenous groups cultivate their relationship with the world through an inherent connection to the natural elements of the world, including deceased ancestors. The film does not allow this interpretation of the planet to stand on its own legs, however, because they foist a quantifiable, scientific explanation to make these connections seem more “real”. Defending a bulldozed, sacred, ancestral tree, Dr. Grace Augustine of the Avatar Program chastises the man who approved the destruction: “I’m not talking about some kind of pagan voodoo here. I’m talking about something real, something measurable in the biology of the forest… an electrochemical communication between the roots of the trees ” (Cameron, 2009, 01:32:06). This quote demonstrates how, without the science to verify their experiences, the Na’vi culture and way of knowing the world is not real and, therefore, invalid in its own volition.
Conclusion
While not exempt from the white savior complex, especially in the focus of western science, that taints many pieces of modern media that involve marginalized groups, James Cameron’s Avatar, takes the time to involve the viewer in a more complex view of the Na’vi so as to humanize real-world indigenous populations.
After many years of delay, the sequel to Jake Sully’s victory within the Na’vi community is set to hit theatres in December of 2022 (Sandwell et al., 2022). Although the original white savior will still be a part of this film, allowing a Na’vi character to be the hero of this new film would mitigate the white savior undertones of the franchise while proving that indigenous cultures can, in fact, be instigators of change in their own lives. Only time will tell if the writers of this sequel identified the problematic white savior complex in their first film so that they could work to continue improving media representation of indigenous communities in Avatar 2.
References
A Year for the Record Books. (2010). Film Journal International, 113(2), 3.
Cameron, J. (Director). (2009). Avatar [Film]. Lightstorm Entertainment.
Cammarota. (2011). Blindsided by the Avatar : White Saviors and Allies Out of Hollywood and in Education. The Review of Education/pedagogy/cultural Studies, 33(3), 242–259. https://doi.org/info:doi/
Martin, J., & Nakayama, T. (2021). Intercultural Communication in Contexts (8th ed.). McGraw Hill.
Mihelich, J. (2001). Smoke or Signals? American Popular Culture and the Challenge to Hegemonic Images of American Indians in Native American Film. Wicazo Sa Review 16(2), 129-137. doi:10.1353/wic.2001.0029.
Sandwell, I., Armitage, H., & Geisinger, G. (2022, March 31). Avatar 2: Everything you need to know. Digital Spy. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a785456/avatar-2-release-date-plot-cast-trailer/