“Avatar” and the Abuse of Western Powers–More Than Fiction

Last updated on: February 10, 2014 at 11:59 am by Paul Louis Metzger

“Avatar” and the Abuse of Western Powers–More Than Fiction 2014-02-10T11:59:20-08:00 Paul Louis Metzger

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A few weeks ago, I was discussing the themes of Occident and Orient, Edward W. Said’s classic study on Orientalism, as well as colonialism, post-colonialism and globalization with a group of friends. A couple of my African colleagues encouraged me to repost the substance of the following entry from my blog at consumingjesus.org. I had made use of this entry titled “Avatar Revisited at Out of Ur” during our discussion.

The post that reappears here is a response to a question concerning an article I wrote for Out of Ur regarding Pastor Mark Driscoll’s critique of the movie Avatar. For the original article in Out of Ur, please refer to the following link: http://www.outofur.com/archives/2010/07/driscoll_avatar.html. At one point in the article, I write: “The movie Avatar was not simply a movie to Pastor Driscoll. Nor was his critique of this movie simply poor cultural critique to me. It was a symbolic statement of total blindness to what the Western powers have done and continue to do in our day to indigenous peoples and their habitats globally all in the name of progress.” This statement gave rise to the following comment by “Melody” in the comment section for the article at Out of Ur:

‘…total blindness to what the Western powers have done and continue to do in our day to indigenous peoples and their habitats globally all in the name of progress.’ Paul, could you give three specific examples of this?

Here is my response to Melody’s comment:

Hello, Melody. Thank you for your question. I will seek to provide numerous examples past and present, and from different angles, after first outlining different aspects of what I mean by oppression in this context.

Oppression takes place in various ways, including the following: first, through direct military confrontation by Western powers that involves annexing domains and taking resources, as in the colonial period; second, through Western powers’ fostering dependence among indigenous peoples and developing countries coupled with enticing developing countries to open their doors to foreign markets, which at times leads these developing countries to take lands and resources from their own indigenous peoples to build industry; and third, by failing to overturn the structures of evil that carry on from the past into the present. When I speak of “total blindness to what the Western powers have done and continue to do in our day to indigenous peoples and their habitats globally all in the name of progress,” I have this multi-faceted view of what I call ”oppression” in the blog article in mind. In what follows, I will engage these three points.

The way in which the Western powers function today is often quite different from previous times–here and abroad (as I stated in my Avatar article, the movie is a “page right out of American history”; while there are multitudes of pages to American history, the Manifest Destiny ambitions often present in US expansion fill scores of pages–see for example the video “How the West Was Lost: A Good Day to Die” {1993}). One church leader in a developing country told a friend who’s worked with indigenous peoples internationally that “They used to come with machine guns. Now they come with briefcases.”

My friend mentioned to me recently that in places like Rwanda and Cambodia indigenous people are displaced from land for the sake of big business. While it may be locals displacing the indigenous people, it is often bound up with efforts to cater to Western businesses and expansion of markets, as well as historic patterns of influence by the West that have inspired local manifestations of the drive to control weaker or more vulnerable populations and use their resources for one’s own good. While I favor international trade and affirm God’s calling on humanity to steward and cultivate creation, it is also important that we are intentional on protecting the rights of the poor and marginalized as we pursue trade that is truly free. Trade that is truly free ensures that the poor and marginalized do not fall through the cracks in the pursuit of ecomonic development.

I should say at this point that Western powers are not simply military powers, but also corporate business powers. Globalization has strengths and weaknesses, and it is extremely important that governments have in place safeguards that protect the marginalized and weaker parties here and abroad. Given the biblical, orthodox doctrine of original sin and total depravity, we should never favor unregulated free trade: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Recent movies draw attention to the reality of how Western powers put pressure on developing world countries, and in a variety of ways. Highly regarded film critic Emanuel Levy writes of the movie Blood Diamond, “Though mostly set in Sierra Leone in 1999-2000, ‘Blood Diamond’ clearly wants to draw attention to broader issues and other locales, namely, the exploitation of Third World countries by Western powers such as the U.K. and the U.S. While the scarce resource in this tale is diamonds, the same exploitation could be depicted in the case of other scarce natural resources, such as rubber, gold, oil, which more often than not results in a tragedy for the country in which they are found.” http://www.emanuellevy.com/search/details.cfm?id=5195

The movie Hotel Rwanda draws attention to the post-colonial situation in which Western powers largely abandoned Rwanda when the conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi people erupted into civil war and genocide (According to the BBC, the Belgian colonialists were responsible for increasing tensions between the groups: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1288230.stm). The movie also intimates that a sense of dependence was created, and when the Western powers exited Rwanda, the infrastructure collapsed still further.

It is not simply Western political powers and market forces that create such dependence; churches do as well, as when largely white mega churches speak of ”adopting” villages in Africa or inner city African American churches. In contrast, John M. Perkins rightly charges that we must replace charity with community development. Community development involves working among people, drawing from their experiences and looking to support them rather than drive them, helping but also being helped by them, ministering relationally in a particular region together with them. A friend of mine from Africa who is ministering in Haiti with a North American ministry providing holistic care is challenging North Americans and others from the developed West to minister with a Christ-centered approach that views the Haitian people as being as valuable as people from developed Western countries. This more redemptive approach that my African friend espouses entails asking Haitians what they believe is necessary to effect change and not patronizing them. ”Patronizing them” involves telling them what they need to do rather than partnering with them to confront the crisis. The Haitians have told my African friend that they often feel as if they are treated as projects by Americans and other people from developed Western countries, and that the end game is producing a product that can be exhibited as a trophy back in the developed West. This is a subtle form of oppression–not like the overt hostility of Avatar, but nonetheless still dehumanizing.

Like in Avatar, the Haitians may not have the technological and technical resources, but they do have strong relational bonds–they have one another. In addition to my African friend, a pastor from a mega church that has a significant ministry in Haiti has conveyed the same point to me. Both individuals have claimed that they have rarely if ever experienced such profound relationality. My African friend said that he did not need to be known to be loved in Haiti–he was sucked in and loved and ministered to, even though he had come to minister. We have so much to learn from such people, and so should not go trying to fix them, but to partner with them, joining them in our shared search for significance and life in the midst of horrific suffering.

Mention was made above of the need to overturn longstanding structures of evil. Native peoples in what became the United States were often forced onto some of the poorest land, and some reservations are on land used as key sites for storing nuclear waste. See a recent AP discussion on the storage and cleanup of nuclear waste that bears directly on Native peoples today at http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iM3xkapqBxYkFxJyYO4QIGDf4TK gD9GV63180. Also, see an earlier article on a related topic at http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/kendziuk.html. To the extent we benefit from the evils committed in the past and present against such indigenous people, to that extent we ourselves are culpable.

Lastly, Western consumers–myself being one of them–find it very difficult not to fall prey to furthering oppressive structures in impoverished communities worldwide, where sweatshops are created to produce goods at far cheaper costs and at far greater benefit to American consumers–and at great cost to the employees in those lands. While one may say the people there are better off than they would otherwise be because they have these jobs, their well-being is certainly not up to the humane standards we prize. Nike, Wal-Mart and other companies have had to face front and center these concerns, and these issues require resolution and reform in many spheres of industry and business worldwide (see the following articles: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/business/global/27nike.html and http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2008/db2008109_219930. htm).

I should add that the West is not alone in this and related problems. See the following article for a multi-faceted discussion of China on the environment: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/13/think_again_green_china. See also the articles on worker abuse in China: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/business/worldbusiness/05sweatshop.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/opinion/06tue2.html. Lastly, see the article on ethnic minority oppression in China: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/08/china-protest-uighur-deaths

While the West, and America in particular, has done much good across the globe at various times through such efforts as world relief in times of crisis and in restoration of devastated countries after times of war as in the Marshall Plan for the restoration of Germany and also parallel efforts in Japan after WWII, our history is nonetheless a checkered one. We must be alert to both dimensions if we are to further good practices and guard against destructive patterns and tendencies….

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Question to the readers of this republished post: What are some concrete ways in which we can become more alert to the good and bad in global dealings so that we can further good practices and guard against destructive patterns and tendencies today?

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I am excited that The Justice Conference Portland will be hosted by New Wine @ Multnomah U. This event is a great opportunity to engage justice themes such as those I’ve raised here. I hope you’ll join us on February 21+22 for The Justice Conference Portland.

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