Racism in Avatar

Reagan Campbell

September 12^th, 2012

Racism in Avatar

            Courtland Milloy, the author of the article: “’Avatar is a part of important discussion about race”, states in the movie Avatar, there is more to the plot than just a former Marine transforming into the body of an avatar. He says, “Then he infiltrates the cat people to gather intelligence for a military invasion but ends up falling in love with a cat woman. A "race traitor" to his fellow humans, Sully leads the cat people in thwarting the military invasion”. From this statement Milloy says Jake Sully is a traitor. In my opinion, Jake is not a traitor, but is a human adapting to the ways of the Na’vi people. He then shares his experiences with the humans, or Sky People when he returns to being human. For example, Jake wakes up from his avatar body and keeps a video log. This is used for the humans to gather more information on life in Pandora, the world in which the “blue people” live in.

            Giving his opinion on the underlying meaning of the movie, Milloy says: “Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people but never losing white privilege”. As a watcher of the movie, this can easily be seen. Jake originally is frightened by the Na’vi people, but gives up his human ways, and learns how to adapt to the blue people. Jake never loses sense of his human “ways”, but learns how the Na’vi people live and become one with the animals and land. When Jake is on Pandora in his new body for the first time, he is frightened, unstable, and scared when approached by the “blue people”. Eventually Jake shows freedom and equality. Freedom is shown after Jake battles the dragon and shows peace and equality by attaching his braid. In Native American literature equality between man and land is a common theme.

            Courtland Milloy says “Only white men are privileged enough to have such choices”. When saying this, Milloy refers to how only the humans have the choice to choose what they want to do. Essentially Jake is demonstrating shape shifting when he goes from being human to a Na’vi. Only Jake or other humans have the choice, and the Na’vi people do not. This could resemble how the Native Americans were stuck being who they were, but at any time the white men could come and overthrow their land or property.