Wow.

I’m not saying “wow” because I thought the special effects were so fantastic. Maybe they were, but I was pretty much aware the whole time I was watching it that I was watching special effects. Some people say they were totally immersed in the world, but perhaps reading has handicapped me when it comes to the moviegoing experience. To become totally immersed in a world, I need to read about it.

Anyway. The point is, Newitz’s article,“When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like ‘Avatar’?” was spot on. The movie is totally about white (male) guilt.

In case you aren’t familiar with the premise, it’s about a white guy, Jake Sully, who goes native and then saves the natives from white guys. The blinding clarity of this story line was a little shocking to me. The whole time I was watching it, I was thinking: Did nobody tell James Cameron what he was doing?! It was as if every single cliche about “natives” was resurrected in this movie: exotic feather headdresses; earth mother/goddess-worshipping; great-spirit-connectedness to nature; weird tribal rituals involving chanting; strange battle cries; primitive weapons. I could go on, but you get the picture.

This was more hilarious to me than offensive, because let’s be honest here: the story is totally about how evil white male invaders are. Yeah, it’s ridiculous that the natives are saved by the white man, but frankly, the overt (and I mean super overt) message is that white male colonizers suck. Big time. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and theorize that James Cameron actually is trying to send the right message in this respect. (It just happens to be a message for white men, not people like me. But that’s OK; white men need stories, too.)

However, one line particularly stuck in my craw. It happened after Jake Sully passes all his tests of manhood among the native people. After the chief’s daughter—the alluring, exotic, strong yet recognizably sexy (as in, she has breasts) Neytiri—teaches Jake all the tricks of being a hunter, she turns to him and says, “You are a man now. So you may choose a woman.”

Jake Sully in avatar form (left) and Neytiri

WTF?

You may choose a woman?!

Even worse, Jake then kind of laughs at her and explains that he has already chosen a woman, but this woman must also choose him. As if he’s giving Neytiri a little lesson in feminism. How patronizing, on top of ridiculous.

Neytiri

Up to that point, there had been absolutely no indication that the Na’vi, Neytiri’s people, envisioned women as chattel to be selected as prizes by young men. Yeah, there was the wise woman/voodoo priestess archetype in Neytiri’s mother, but there were also women as hunters, doing the same things the male Na’vi did. Where the hell did this “you may choose a woman” crap come from? It was like Cameron just wanted to insert that line to give a dorky thrill to the guys in the audience. It didn’t make sense, and someone should have cut it.

I can stomach a reenactment of colonialism in sci-fi. Science fiction, in many ways, is about exploration, and exploration—at least in our history—has been about colonialism. I understand why we as a culture would want to atone for those wrongs through metaphorical space operas.

But stop it with making native women into trophies. Really, stop it.