By Eisa Nefertari Ulen

Avatar is the best feature film ever made by director James Cameron, which is saying a lot, as he also directed Titanic, Aliens, Total Recall, and any Terminator movie worth watching. Though it lost the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars to Kathryn Bigelow and Hurt Locker, the film has already won two Golden Globes in the same categories, and 9 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.

The mega-hit did nab Oscars for Art Direction, Cinematography and Visual Effects. Indeed, the beauty and majesty of the special effects, especially in 3-D, have made an imprint on a generation of theatre-goers, which has earned the film over $1 billion worldwide since its December 18 release, indicating a tipping-point in American movie-making. But Avatar isn’t significant only because of stunning new technology or box office receipts. It has generated a conversation about American movie-making—and about the persistent image of a single white man among people of color in American film.

In Avatar, an arrogant American named Jake Sully must learn from a local Na’vi (or “native”) population and then save them from the destructive force of a technologically advanced invader—one that looks more like Jake Sully than the dark, feathered Na’vi. Sounds too Tarzan, doesn’t it? And yet, somehow, this formula works. Well.

Despite what some in the blogosphere have suggested, Avatar isn’t anti-African (though it is anti-Bush Doctrine). It doesn’t penetrate the Darker Other (though there is a lovely inter-species romance). And it doesn’t fall into the neo-Tarzan genre of films from Dances with Wolves to Last Samurai. (In fact, it acts as a strong counter-narrative to that type of film, even with a crippled white guy as the lead.)

This film does what all successful big-budget movies must do: It tells a great (and usually familiar) story. The summary on IMDB reads, “In the future, Jake, a paraplegic war veteran, is brought to another planet, Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na’vi, a humanoid race with their own language and culture. Those from Earth find themselves at odds with each other and the local culture,” wrote Giorgio C.

The Massie Twins wrote, “When his brother is killed in battle, paraplegic Marine Jake Sully decides to take his place in a mission on the distant world of Pandora. There he learns of greedy corporate figurehead Parker Selfridge’s intentions of driving off the native humanoid “Na’vi” in order to mine for the precious material scattered throughout their rich woodland. In exchange for the spinal surgery that will fix his legs, Jake gathers intel for the cooperating military unit spearheaded by gung-ho Colonel Quaritch, while simultaneously attempting to infiltrate the Na’vi people with the use of an “avatar” identity. While Jake begins to bond with the native tribe and quickly falls in love with the beautiful alien Neytiri, the restless Colonel moves forward with his ruthless extermination tactics, forcing the soldier to take a stand – and fight back in an epic battle for the fate of Pandora.”

The rich resource mineral buried deep underground Pandora, along with the female lead’s nearly-Nefertiti-sounding name, suggest the Earthlings have traveled to a distant planet only to do what explorers did on this one a few centuries ago: begin to exploit a new Africa. This is a movie with good guys and bad guys, and as I watched it, every fiber in my African-American soul wanted to chant, shriek, I am Na’vi. But I couldn’t. I know deep down (actually, I know this pretty close to the surface) I am not one of the super-cool, all-love, blue-black aliens.

I, and anyone reading these words right now, belongs instead on the corporate-funded, American-manned spacecraft, far from Mother Earth, and further still from our ancient, indigenous, all-original selves. If anything, we might be able to hitch a ride with Michelle Rodriguez’s character, Trudy Chacon, another former Marine who turns against the invader force and fights to help the Na’vi with Jake Sully. Like her, we might claim a desire to right our own wrongs against Spirit and Life and Trees and Air. But we can no longer claim identification with Zoe Saldana’s Neytiri, a Na’vi leader as fierce and powerful as Rodriguez’s Trudy Chacon. We are nowhere near the sacred center of native peoples Neytiri occupies. And this is why:

Every year, deforestation claims about 13 million hectares of tree life worldwide; since 2003 the U.S. war in Iraq has taken over 4,000 American lives and countless Iraqi souls; and nearly 9 billion of God’s good creatures are born, raised, and slaughtered every year in the dim filth of factory animal houses before they were wrapped in plastic, shipped, and sold in this country for our consumption. Even if you joined The Sierra Club, went Ovo-Lacto, hugged a tree, and voted for Obama, you didn’t do enough. Not nearly enough. And neither did I.

Director Cameron isn’t asking us to feel sorry for all the exploited brown peoples of the world who depend on the occasional Great White Hope for survival. He’s asking us to do something much more counter-intuitive. This film asks us to take our place on the cold, gray invader spacecraft, and to join the few who jump ship, literally, to try to save what’s left. And this is the thing: Jumping ship requires a complete transformation of our very selves.

It is entirely fitting that the character that must risk the most in this film, and change completely, is a white dude. Cameron has explored geo-political realities facing our world that make the politics of color in this film work.

Could an African-American (or Latino or Asian or Samoan) actor—or actress of any color—have taken on lead actor Sam Worthington’s role as Jake Sully to help lead the Na’vi to victory? Sure. I don’t need that, though. Will Smith has saved the world from aliens. Wesley Snipes saved us from vampires three times now. Heck, even Martin Lawrence has delivered us from the bad boys. Jessica Alba, our Dark Angel, kicked butt every week on the TV program James Cameron created a decade ago. Halle Berry blew cool power as Storm in X-Men, and, speaking of Halle, I have all the other Cat Women too. And Wonder Woman and Charlie’s Angels. (Not to mention plenty of the very gifted speculative fiction authors Octavia Butler and Tananarive Due.)

More importantly, in the future of Cameron’s vision, it makes sense that a former Marine, symbolizing America’s military, is a paralyzed Earthling. Reduced to life-threatening labor to protect a privately-owned multinational corporation intent on “pre-emptive” strikes with absolutely no relationship to the American people, but clearly in bed with the American government (Halliburton, anyone?), makes all the film’s former military men mean—dangerous, a bunch of sulking Sullies, with no regard for others and disdainful, even, of their own.

In Avatar, these are the men who have done the most harm to Earth and are slowly destroying Pandora, so Sully is the man who must suffer and nearly die; and (and this is the key point) Sully, who double-crosses not only the Na’vi but also his own research team in his quest for greater personal power, must change who he is. He is required to completely take on new form. Without the complete transformation of this powerful white male, there is no hope for a sustainable future.

Colonel Quaritch is the main obstacle to Sully’s success. Quaritch has lost all his humanity. He enters an oversized machine reminiscent of the one Sigourney Weaver wields in the Aliens franchise. Quartich is in this device when he shakes hands with Sully and seals their deal, committing Sully to the corporate-funded military invasion of Pandora and the death of the Na’vi. Jake Sully makes a deal not with a man, but with the machine that has consumed the man, a character who becomes like the devil himself in his cold, sadistic resilience and will to kill. After this pact, Sully must completely change not only to help save the Na’vi, but also to save his own soul.

As Ralph Ellison wrote in Invisible Man, “we are the machines inside the machine.” I understand the compulsion to identify with and advocate for the Na’vi, the folk some in the blogosphere think were marginalized away from their own triumph in Avatar. Thing is, we have become more like the Sullies and Quartichs in this world. Our tax dollars fund the wars. Our consumer dollars fund the deforestation. We are the Americans eating hormone-injected animals and genetically engineered plants, unsatiated even after our super-sized Happy Meals, and then eating even more. We are the machines inside the machine. And only big changes will save our sisters and brothers who still live in rhythm with our planet—only big changes will enable us to save our very souls.

Eisa Nefertari Ulen is author of the novel Crystelle Mourning and lives with her filmmaker husband and son in Brooklyn.