Gender Normativity and Imperial Domination in Avatar

*spoiler alert*

So I just saw Avatar (2009), and came back to write a post, but it seems Ariel is one step ahead of me! Great job, Ariel. I completely agree with the creepy sexualization stuff, and I think your racial analysis is dead-on. This film is basically a Pocahontas re-make with blue “savages” instead of red ones, yet the color of the Cunning Savior is eerily the same…

I’ll start by saying that I was actually pretty entertained throughout the movie (I admit, I got goosebumps when the ENTIRE PLANET collectively attacked the invading humans). But I wanted to write this post to highlight some of the problematic assumptions surrounding binary gender and heteronormativity in the film. Before I launch into this, I’d like to explain that I do not believe that binary gender is natural or fundamental to our biological existence as humans, or even as animals. By binary gender, I mean the idea that Male and Female are the only legitimate sex categories (in our species and others), that males and females each have a set of personality and anatomical traits that are mutually exclusive from one another, that social gender necessarily follows from anatomy, and that anything outside the binary is defective, inferior, or freakish. I’m not going to completely open this can of androgynous worms right now, but I’ll just direct your attention to Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble , Thomas Laquer’s Making Sex , Ann Fausto-Sterling’s Sexing the Body , and Judith Lorber’s Breaking the Bowls if you want to read the some of the theories informing my opinion. I think many of you already get where I’m coming from anyway. Finally, I want to identify myself as a White, young, Queer, cis male, though I am increasingly beginning to identify as genderqueer.

With all that in mind, binary gender is completely naturalized throughout this film. As Ariel pointed out in hir post, female Na’vi physically embody a mix of White and “exotic” human femininity, have higher-pitched voices than their male counterparts, and generally look and behave according to our own socially constructed gender norms here on earth. Male Na’vi are muscular, strong-headed, and again, look and act in a manner that we tend to believe is “natural” or “inherent” to “biologically male” creatures. The message? Boys are boys and girls are girls no matter what planet they’re on. Binary gender is assumed to be so fundamental and natural to life itself that it undergirds evolution on every planet.

The naturalization of binary gender fits in with the whole motif of
biological determinism throughout the rest of the film. For example,
the pantheistic religion of the Na’vi is “scientifically proven” (by a
White earthling scientist, so you know it’s gotta be true) to have a
material basis in the biosphere of their planet, Pandora. (Yeah,
because we couldn’t have taken those blue injuns seriously if their
religion were just based on spirits and other such hocus pocus.) In our
culture, the physical is generally the final word. In terms of gender,
biological determinism means that, for example, if you have a penis,
you’re a dude for life and there’s nothing you can do about it. I’ll
just say that I have too many female friends with penises to put all my
faith in biological determinism, no matter what planet I’m on. And
further, I have too many pantheistic friends to think that their
spirituality needs to be legitimated by the study of Biology.

I’m not simply complaining about the lack of trans representation in
the film. It’s to be expected these days – and honestly, I think I’d be
afraid to see what a sci-fi movie has to say about trans people. I just
want to point out the overarching ideology of Biology-Equals-Real in
the film, which has been institutionalized here on Earth to oppress
gender variant people (e.g. the diagnosis of GID in the DSM). This
ideology interlocks with the naturalization/animalization of the Na’vi
people in the movie. By that, I mean that they are constructed as being
hyper-in-tune with Nature and their bodies, lead “simple lives” in the
forest, and even physically resemble certain earthling animals. This
portrayal falls in line with centuries of archetypal Noble Savage
narratives, in which White authors compare indigenous peoples to
majestic forest creatures, etc. So again, the point is that it’s
suspicious that what we see in this “Natural”, Noble race reflects what
we have socially constructed as binary gender here on earth.

I don’t know much about sci-fi/fantasy narratives, but think of other movies like Avatar : Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings
…they all have non-human races that adhere to strict gender norms as
we have constructed them in White, cissexual, heteronormative,
masculinist, human society. Elves, dwarves, and all the various races
of the Star Wars/Star Trek movies reinforce the notion that
binary gender is fundamental to all life, and is rooted in everyone’s
biology no matter hir species’ evolutionary history. By the same token,
creatures whose gender is not visibly apparent to us are depicted as
sub-human monsters (the slug-like Hutts from Star Wars and the demonic Orcs from LOTR
both come to mind). The same is true for intersex, trans, and
androgynous humans in our culture: if your anatomical gender markers
are confusing to us in any way, well darnit, you’re just some sorta
freak. Strict, binary gender categories are markers of humanity.

In conjunction with this naturalization of binary sex/gender,
heterosexuality is naturalized in the movie. The Na’vi have a
coming-of-age rite in which a male and a female choose each other as
mates. Again, the fact that binary gender is naturalized opens up the
possibility for this heteronormativity; no binary gender, no
heterosexuality. The message we get from the film: females and males
are attracted to one another no matter what planet they live on. And
even more, a male human and a female Na’vi fall in love, teaching us a
disturbingly “heart-warming” lesson that it’s their “fundamental” male
and female sexes that really count. Yes, heterosexuality is so
magically universal that it transcends the bounds of interplanetary
species – especially when one of those species is a sexy blue catlike
creature that has probably already made its way into nerdy internet
porn…

No, I’m not saying that heterosexuality is somehow wrong, nor am I
making any bigoted statements about interracial relationships. And yes,
I understand that this movie is a thinly-veiled allegory, and that I’m
probably reading the Na’vi on a more literal level than Cameron
intended us to. I also understand that statistically, it is possible
and probable that a humanoid species on a different planet would
develop similar gender concepts as we have in our earthling cultures –
especially given the resemblances between our environments. I also
realize that I’m working off of little concrete evidence for these
pretty big claims: just because the Na’vi have a heterosexual
coming-of-age rite doesn’t mean that queer Na’vi don’t exist; and just
because we only see strictly male and female Na’vi doesn’t mean that
some of them are not trans, or that intersex or androgynous Na’vi don’t
exist. What I’m arguing is that it’s telling that these
gender-normative rituals and presentations are the aspects of the Na’vi
race/culture that we see – that James Cameron decided that the Na’vi’s
gender normativity is one of the most important aspects we need to know
about them. We apparently have to know that they follow dominant
heteronormative, binary-gender models, just like we do.

This leads to my ultimate point: that gender-normativity and
imperialism are intertwined in certain ways. Look at India, West
African Nations, and the Americas. Historically, European colonists
justified their domination of several cultures in these regions, in
part, because some of them had matriarchal kin structures, “effeminate
men”, “sodomites”, etc – and thus, their societies were seen as weak
and sub-human. In general, the less a people look and acts like yours,
the easier it is to oppress them. The color of imperialized people’s
skin plays a huge part in this domination, as does their language,
their kinship structures, their clothing, their religion, and their
gender norms.

Noble Savage narratives, like Avatar , spin a tale in which
none of these differences of creed or skin color matter. Because
really, the Savages are just like Us, the privileged audience of
“insiders”. This can mean either that the dominated races are “smart
enough” to assimilate to Our imperial culture, or that they are
fundamentally the same as Us in the Eyes of God. But since God is dead
and all, Cameron instead shows us that the Na’vi are fundamentally the
same as Us in the Eyes of Science. The message is not to respect and
honor difference, but to respect that which conforms to the socially
constructed norms and ideologies of the imperial power – in this case
Science and Gender Normativity. So again, the Na’vi’s gender and
sexuality norms look just like ours because those codes are fallaciously constructed as fundamental to Life itself.
The Na’vi people are different from humans in certain ways, but they do
conform to the imperial culture in two important ways: they
“biologically” embody earth’s socially constructed gender norms, and as
a corollary, their religious ideology fits with our scientific one. If
the Na’vi’s gender norms were anything but what they are, their race
would surely be relegated to the sub-human domain of Hutts and Orcs.
And if that were the case, why would a Respectable White Earthling like
John Smith – er, sorry, Jake Sully – want to help such beasts fight
against imperial domination?