Men, Aliens and Narratives

It is rather interesting to see how Children of Men and Avatar read alongside Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark. Western literature, Morrison argued in Dark, echoes Africanism, a tradition overwhelmed by colonial discourses. This evidently persists, and as revealed in the cases of Men and Avatar. Unfolding from the revelations that these characters/subjects are raced is an unsettling new indulgence in colonial nostalgia. What's interesting though, despite the insipid invocations that these narratives hurl to the fore, is the context of science-fiction (Children of Men and Avatar fall into this category). Both films deal with the question of technology and the role of human beings in reconciling with its usage and effects on human perceptions and realities. As texts of sci-fi, they are essentially racial allegories/parables, what have you.

On Avatar. In terms of what I consider its overratedness, I believe many are fascinated by it because of latent colonial nostalgia. However, what becomes unsettling is the way technology (CGI) is used in its production and out of it to suppress even the slightest utterance of Avatar as being a raced film. For example, in interviews, James Cameron said that Avatar was a story about technology’s role in the future and was not a racial one. As Avatar seeks to stifle its racialized aspect, consumers say that it is a visual masterpiece and the undertone of race should be disregarded. Thus, we understand colonialism not in the sense of race here. What we see is a sort of disengagement with its historical definition because of the visuality of the "film." In Children of Men, the gendered roles, which are also raced, are metaphorically interchangeable with the relations between humans and aliens in the case of Avatar. So, the west stands in for the men; and the nonwest stands in for the women--and this is so with white, male Theo opposite Black, female Kee. Again. Nonwest as producing and west as governing; hence it is Theo’s job to protect/save Kee. While constructions of such narratives may echo colonial discourses, they are only manifested so at the surface. In this trajectory, these retellings of the stories become very melancholic, holding on to this past, but rejecting it altogether.