Thanks for your reply to my second Avatar post. I see what you’re saying about the distinction with primitivity. It was my own fault for creating an equivalency between pre-colonial and primitive. My post was a reaction to the things that I’ve heard others say about the Na’vi in what to Western eyes would be a ‘state of nature,’ but is in fact, so much more (and different) than that.

I wonder about how Cameron might have done things differently regarding the presentation of the Na’vi. The humans and specifically Jake Sully is our guide to Pandora and the Na’vi–it is through him that we get to experience their way of life and personalities, despite their, as you say, lack of complexity. Most of the things that we learn about the Na’vi are physical–horsemanship, flying, hunting, death rituals for Na’vi and in hunting, a peppering of Eywa, and the Toruk Makto myth. The one point when Jake as Avatar first enters the circle of the people eating and presumably telling stories, we do not get to take part in that experience. What stories do the Na’vi tell? I would like to hear that, and perhaps Cameron may (or should) do something like this on the special features for the DVD/BD release. I guess we really only experience the Na’vi through the things that will prepare or enable them to challenge the human colonial power.

And considering what you say about Neytiri, I’m thinking about the way in which sex and heteronormative pair bonding play into her entering the contact zone. I haven’t read Pratt (are you referring to her “Arts of the Contact Zone?). The Na’vi apparently have male warriors choose their female mate. It seems to me that forces beyond Neytiri push her towards what turns into a sexualized contact zone. Ewya stays her hand when she goes to kill Jake. Moat puts Neytiri in charge of Jake’s Na’vi warrior education. Jake says that his mate choice must also choose him, but I think that by that point there isn’t much choice on the part of Neytiri. I’m only beginning to think about this, but it seems that she is doubly bound by her relation to the human imperialists and by her sex. Cameron did leave out the messy bits between Jake and Neytiri–there is so much potential about how human sexual binarism could be turned on its head here (I’m thinking about Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness).

Jason