Dear Editor,
Growing up in the midst of the big four cinemas (Metropole, Astor, Globe and Strand) in Georgetown, watching movies was for me as much a cultural imperative as Googling and Facebook are today.
Many movies of those days carried an insidious but pervasive message of racial superiority and stereotypes. Tarzan and Jungle Jim beat up on the natives (to our applause) and had to solve the problems of these backward groups, since the latter were incapable of sorting out their own affairs. Cartoons and comics were not much different. Mandrake the Magician had his leopard-skin clad Lothar as a counterfoil who grunted acquiescence to Mandrake’s wisdom.
I thought that such characteristics were a thing of the past. But no. The movie Avatar, with all its box office record-breaking, seems to be presenting quite an odious content and continuing an unacceptable and indefensible tradition.
I am not referring to the fact that the heroine is smoking cigarettes in the PG 13-rated movie. That’s bad enough to see the female role model insidiously influencing impressionable children about the ‘joys’ of smoking. No, my problem with Avatar is that it overtly, not cryptically, perpetuates a racial fantasy. The white guy who is not in consonance with his own environment gets acquainted with peaceful, nearly naked children of the forest, and in labba time becomes their champion athlete and the de facto leader. Oh yes, he overwhelms, with his charms, the prettiest princess native too. Talk about all-rounded superiority. But it does not end there. As the movie progresses it becomes clear that the natives cannot defend their territory without his presence, inspiration, wisdom and fighting ability.
One David Brooks writing for the New York Times feels that this movie perpetrates the “White Messiah” fable, which moves from totally annoying to totally offensive, since it rests on so many stereotypifications and questionable points of origin. Brooks argues that the film rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic, while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It further rests on the assumption that non-whites need the ‘White Messiah’ to lead their crusades. And it rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. Avatar inevitably also creates a sort of two-edged sword of cultural imperialism: Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones; but either way, they are just going to be supporting actors in the journey to self admiration and self consciousness.
I truly want to believe that the film is just escapism and benevolent romanticism, as many of my friends will argue in the film’s defence. Perhaps Mr Cameroon doesn’t see the element of condescension and counterproductivness as he walks happily to the bank. But it is not easy to get Mr Richard Shockley and his “eugenics” out of my mind. And how can one forget similar messages which were portrayed in A Man called Horse, At play in the Fields of the Lord, Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, Pocahontas, FernGully, and so many other brilliant pieces of entertainment which are unfortunately tarnished by their obvious and subliminal negative projections.
Yours faithfully,
Steve Surujbally
