James Cameron's Avatar

Blueface James Cameron’s Avatar is a film that utilizes science fiction’s futuristic capabilities to create a story that discusses societal issues. Cameron uses human history with such topics to establish the world of the Na’vi and to describe the interactions between the alien planet and the newly arrived humans. Avatar attempts to describe the dangers of racism, capitalism, sexism and disability, but only partially succeeds in its goal. The film’s central plot heavily revolves around conflicts of race and how it parallels our own history with racism. From the very introduction of the movie, a conflict is established between the humans and the indigenous Na’vi. The Na’vi are described as “savages” and “blue monkeys” by the corporate head

This, more often than not, led to many physical conflicts, which continued the tensions between the Natives and the colonizers for years to come. As Jake explains, “This is how it’s done. When people are sitting on shit that you want, you make ‘em your enemy. Then you justify taking it”, clearly referencing the cruel treatment and alterity between races throughout human history, as discussed prior. To combat these tensions and alterity between races in the movie, Na’vi bodies (avatars) are created for humans to interact with the indigenous while having similar appearances to them, in order to try and connect the two worlds together in peace. This serves as a form of diplomacy, but even with similar appearances, the so-called “drivers” are shunned by the Na’vi. As Tsu’tey puts it when approaching Jake’s unconscious avatar, “[the driver] is a demon in a false body”. The very term “driver” suggests that the humans are attempting use the Na’vi’s race and appearance as a vehicle for negotiations. This is somewhat similar to blackface throughout history, wherein nonblack performers would play black roles by using makeup. Parker, the corporate head, even states

In contrast to regular blackface, which was mostly used for entertainment purposes, the avatars are an attempt to bridge the alien and human races’ understandings of one another by giving the drivers an opportunity to study the culture and interact with the Na’vi. The idea for ending the racial disparity is initially radical and both humans and Na’vi are hesitant to accept it. But ultimately, we see that Jake does brings about the coexistence of the human and alien race using his avatar, thereby demonstrating that the avatars have performed didactic blackface successfully. However, at the same time, we also see that the movie portrays this convergence of the two races very strangely. Throughout the movie, Jake slowly falls in love with the world of Pandora and begins to question whether or not his human world and race is his reality. We see that as Jake continually performs “blueface”, he believes more and more in the new world and race that he has immersed himself