Whether Avatar is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it’s undeniable that the film – like alien apartheid flick District 9, released earlier this year – is emphatically a fantasy about race. Specifically, it’s a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people …

It is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege.

- Annalee Newitz

I almost made it through the second half of 2009 without entering a single movie theater. But then, at a mega-shopping center in Palm Desert – a consolidation of luxury cars, Christmas consumerism, and plastic surgery – I joined three generations of family members to watch Avatar, the record-breaking Hollywood blockbuster at a time when there are no longer supposed to be record-breaking Hollywood blockbusters.

I was ready to be impressed by the computer-generated actors, the special effects, the fantasy flora and fauna of the planet Pandora. And, indeed, I was. I was also ready to be skeptical and even annoyed by the not-so-subtle social commentary of a $300 million film in need of mass public appeal.

I was less annoyed than I thought I would be. Avatar is most certainly a “Dances with Wolves in space,” as Cameron himself put it, but it is also a modern critique of “the abuse of power and creeping imperialism disguised as patriotism.” And just imagine how it must feel to be a US soldier having returned from fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan to enter a movie theater with an audience cheering on ‘the bad guys’ as they shoot arrows through the hearts of US marines. Here is how conservative columnist Nile Gardiner put it in “Avatar: the most expensive piece of anti-American propaganda ever made:”

When I saw the movie last night in a packed theater, I was disturbed by the cheering from the audience towards the end when the humans – US soldiers fighting on behalf of an American corporation – were being wiped out by the Na’vi. Washington is one of the most liberal cities in America and you come to expect almost anything here – but still the roars of approval which greeted the on-screen killing of US military personnel were a shock to the system, especially at a time when the United States is engaged in a major war in Afghanistan.

Imagine the public rage that would have been directed at Avatar and James Cameron if it had been released in October 2001. The fact that less than ten years after 9/11 mainstream America is now cheering on the oppressed as they fight back against the oppressors is something worth recognizing and celebrating. Cameron’s film elicits empathy and five years of Global Voices has taught us that doing so is no easy task.

Then again, Avatar is only the latest in a long history of narratives in which a male character (always the embodiment of Western masculinity) from the oppressors joins forces with the oppressed and becomes their leader to fight back against amoral imperialism. I’m sure that there are earlier examples, but the first such film I can think of is Lawrence of Arabia, based on the life of T. E. Lawrence. Other works in the “join and lead the oppressed” genre include Dances with Wolves, Fern Gully, The Last Samurai, District 9, Dune, and surely dozens of others.

This recurring narrative was pointed out in a widely cited article, “When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like ‘Avatar’?” by freelance journalist and occasional academic, Annalee Newitz. The article does a wonderful job teasing out the appeal of a strange fantasy in which a member of an oppressive, imperialistic, unsustainable group abandons his own people to join forces with (and become the leader of) those they are oppressing. But I think it is a shame that such a well-researched essay then simplifies a complex psychological issue by dividing the world into “white people” and “people of color.”

Analee Newitz at Harvard Law School. Photo by Beth Kanter.

It’s not just a wish to be absolved of the crimes whites have committed against people of color; it’s not just a wish to join the side of moral justice in battle. It’s a wish to lead people of color from the inside rather than from the (oppressive, white) outside.

Why does Newitz, a feminist geek from Orange Country, describe us Whites in the third person singular? If she is going to divide all 6.5 billion people on this earth into just two categories, then isn’t it pretty obvious which bucket she falls in? By writing in the omniscient tone of academic commentator does she hope to transcend/escape race altogether? (Many of the hundreds of commenters on the article point out that it is filled with as much “white guilt” as the movie itself.)

Avatar’s “join and lead the oppressed” fantasy appeals to more than just Whites. My friends who most enthusiastically recommended the movie to me are what Newitz would call “people of color.” (Whatever that means.) You could call the fantasy “white” as Newitz has done, but you could also call it liberal, Western, hegemonic, or even universal.

James Cameron first began working on the basic plot line for Avatar back in 1994. That is the same year when “Subcomandante Marcos” – likely a middle class professor of graphic design from Tampico – led an insurrection of what Newitz would call “people of color” in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Is Marcos white? He is if you ask most Mexicans. But if you ask proud Chicanos in Los Angeles, Marcos is a member of the oppressed. Marcos fulfilled the Avatar fantasy – turning his back on white, middle class Mexico to lead their insurrection against the oppressors, but without letting go of what Newitz refers to as white privilege – like appearing on the cover of Gato Pardo magazine.

Che Guevara – the Argentine idealized hero of liberaldom – also came from an upper-middle class family until he joined forces with Fidel Castro to free the oppressed people of Cuba. In August 2001 a young leftist Dutch woman (cutie!) traveled to Colombia to join the FARC and fight for the poor and oppressed in Colombia. Perhaps most famously, John Walker Lindh joined the Taliban in Afghanistan and fought against US soldiers at the Battle of Qala-i-Jangi.

The “Avatar Fantasy” of leaving one’s own group to join and lead a marginalized community is clearly more than just fantasy. And, unsurprisingly, it is a dynamic that I am sensitive to because of my own work. There is no doubt that the Avatar Fantasy is pervasive in the development sector, and this yearning by development workers to be loved and accepted by marginalized communities often leads to strange relationships. The Avatar Fantasy also idealizes Newitz’s “people of color” as flawless, ecologically sensitive victims. In truth, I have yet to meet any community on earth that is flawless, or for that matter, ecologically sustainable.

So what is our lesson from Avatar and from its criticisms? Should those of us who grow up in hegemonic cultures disengage from all other cultures? What, for example, should be done in Guinea which is creeping ever closer to violent civil war? Should international activists stay involved in the war in Darfur? Should Google work with the Suruí to fight against deforestation in Rondônia?

Influenced by cosmopolitanism, I believe that we should work across cultural and linguistic divides to shape a shared human morality that is tolerant of group and individual differences. But I think that we should also be aware of the strange and unhealthy psychology of the “Avatar Fantasy”. Rather than giving up on our own communities to attempt to lead others – especially those we treat as “marginalized” – I believe that we can be most effective by combining local political change with global discussion toward a shared vision and common objectives.

… unmodified sexual organs are unaesthetic; that the ritual gives young people the opportunity to display courage in their transition to adulthood; that you can see their excitement as they go to their ceremony, their pride when they return. You will say that it is very strange that someone who has not been through it should presume to now whether or not sex is pleasurable for you. And, if someone should try to force you to stop from the outside, you may decide to defend the practice as an expression of your cultural identity. They say it is mutilation, but is that any more than a reflex response to an unfamiliar practice? They exaggerate the medical risks. They say that female circumcision demeans women, but do not seem to think that male circumcision demeans men.

Let me clarify, Appiah is himself against female genital cutting, but what he wants to emphasize is this: “a good deal of what we intuitively take to be right, we take to be right just because it is what we are used to.”

Those butchers want to torture you on your first days in this world and cause you unbearable pain when urine touches the gaping wound .. those ignorant butchers! Fear them not, no one will lay a finger on you as long as I am alive. When you grow up you can cut off whichever part of your body you choose … until then no one will touch you.

That is an excerpt from a blog post of an Egyptian mother who recently gave birth to a newborn baby. The doctor suggested circumcision, but the mother adamantly refused. The baby, I should point out, is a boy. (A Facebook group in Arabic to end male circumcision currently has 973 members.)

Is male circumcision wrong? On the one hand, it alters the most private anatomy of a baby boy before he is able to make the decision for himself. It also reduces his sensitivity and sexual pleasure. On the other hand, doctors report improved hygiene and lower HIV transmission among males who are circumcised. Is there a single moral answer for all humanity or does it depend on each culture, community, and country?

This is where Cosmopolitanism becomes deeply philosophical. Tracing its roots to the Cynics and the Stoics, Cosmopolitanism is founded on moral universalism, the idea that the same moral code applies to all humans regardless of their race, religion, culture, nationality, or any other sub-category of our humanness. It stands in stark contrast to moral relativism, which states that our moral beliefs do not reflect universal moral truths, but rather are mere values based on our social and temporal circumstances.

For the vast majority of the past 10,000 years, it was not considered ‘wrong’ to kill someone from outside your tribe; that is just how it was. Today it is not considered ‘wrong’ to kill chimpanzees for science or cows for dinner; that is just how it is. Moral relativists say this is because our “morals” are simply social norms that we construct to live peacefully. Kwame Anthony Appiah says that morals are universal and eternal, even if we haven’t yet discovered what those timeless moral laws are.

Conversation doesn’t have to lead to consensus about anything, especially not values; it’s enough that it helps people get used to one another.

As a believer of evolution, I don’t subscribe to Appiah’s moral universalism. (And I have yet to find a way to believe in one without contradicting the other.) But that doesn’t lessen my appreciation of Cosmopolitanism as a framework for thinking about ethics at a global level. I would consider its golden rule to be this: “focus on understanding difference first; work on coming to an agreement about universality later.” It is very much related to what Chris Blattman half-jokingly calls “A Thinkavist Manifesto“: that it is better to understand without acting than it is to act without understanding.

Several of the book’s chapters challenged some of my previous-held thoughts, but none more so than “In Praise of Contamination.” Appiah pokes fun at “cultural preservationists” who “make their case by invoking the evil of cultural imperialism.” Such talk, he says, is based on “an image of how the world used to be – an image that is both unrealistic and unappealing.” He reminds us that there is no such thing as cultural purity. Brightly colored kente clothing that is associated with West Africa and worn by so many Black nationalists in the USA was originally imported by the Dutch from Indonesia. Most “native” cultures and languages in Southern Africa actually came from a single group, the Bantu, who made up the African cultural empire from 1500 to 1000 BC. And the bombin, the most distinctive accessory of female indigenous dress in Bolivia, was introduced by British railway workers in the 1920′s.

Any group of individuals have the choice to maintain their own culture or to adopt the culture of others. While so many cultural anthropologists lament the latter, Appiah is adamant that the choice is not theirs to make. He says it is “deeply condescending” to force anyone to adopt any cultural practice or tradition, even if it is their own.

As Lokman and I finished our last foamy swigs of beer at Cambridge Commons I asked him what he’s learned so far in his Ph.D. thesis research of Global Voices. What were his impressions, for example, of how we all communicate on the vast network of mailing lists Global Voices uses to stay on the same page?

“Something that stands out for me,” he said, his words always slow and measured, “is just how polite and receptive everyone is. No idea is treated as too far out there, and everyone is encouraged to speak up.” We walked another 30 yards back toward Harvard Law School until Lokman was ready to finish his thought: “and that’s one of the reasons I’m interested in studying Global Voices. I think it represents the future for all of us. We are all going to have to learn how to communicate and work with people from completely different cultures who speak different languages.”

I thought of Lokman’s observation weeks later when I was staying at a $10-a-night hostel in northern Argentina. It was late, we all had drunk too much wine, and in the corner by the pool table two Israelis, a German, and an Australian Jew were yelling at one another about when it is and is not appropriate to make holocaust jokes. At one point I thought fists were going to fly. I finished my glass of wine, headed back to my dorm room, and made a mental observation that not every global community was as exemplarily tolerant as Global Voices.