what an avatar can do

Morrison writes on whiteness constructed in the case of Sapphira: “… she has the leisure and the instruments to construct a self; but the self she constructs must be – is conceivable only as – white. The surrogate black bodies become her hands and feet, her fantasies of sexual ravish and intimacy with her husband, and, not inconsiderably, her sole source of love” (26). I thought of this when watching Avatar because this kind of relationship is almost literalized in the film. Having lost his competency and ability to enjoy life (it seems) as a human being, Jake Sully nonetheless achieves mobility, confidence, excellence, love and fulfillment through the avatar body of a native, an other. Yet despite the appearance of Jake’s avatar as the indigenous racial other, underneath this appearance the subjectivity that is developed throughout the film is by no means indigenous – he alone is the anthropologist intruding into the indigenous culture to study the racial other; he alone is confronted with the ethical dilemma of whether to rescue the racial other or not; he alone has the courage, intelligence and capability to seek out a way to save the Na’vi’s home, which is precisely because of his being not one of them and not playing according to their rules; and he enjoys the freedom of moving between human and Na’vi, and the freedom to eventually choose to be a Na’vi and hence the perfect life. A dream through the mystified other, but definitely a dream about oneself.