Science fiction creates a perfect blank canvas onto which storytellers can project their attitudes about the interactions between dominant and subjugated cultures. Directors aware of this opportunity can wield this canvas for productive social commentary, especially through the creation of narratives that condemn the colonial attitudes of the dominant culture. Through the framework of postcolonial studies, the divide between aliens and humans becomes an extended metaphor for the divide between real peoples, and the level of sensitivity used in handling this divide in fiction deeply affects the condemnation of reality the director sets forth. James Cameron’s film Avatar and Neill Blomkamp’s film District 9 both have this intended effect; parallels between their fiction and real events—the United States’ colonization of Native Americans and South Africa’s apartheid, respectively—indicate a will to highlight the subjugated culture in these historical moments and indict their attackers. Specifically, both films create a binary relationship between humans and aliens, but examining how District 9 more effectively blurs binaries societally, physically, and interpersonally leads to a better understanding of how Avatar fails.

 

Avatar creates boundaries for its humans and aliens through stereotypes relating to technology and nature. Cameron depicts the Na’vi as in tune with nature, spiritual, and undeveloped with regard to technology and weapons, while the RDA, the main human administration, shows a disregard for nature and spirituality but has guns and steel to exert their will over the helpless Na’vi. Cameron utilizes the very common “noble savage” trope in which a native’s primitivity allows them to connect more deeply with the world around them. This trope relies on the native being primitive in contrast to the developed hegemonic culture—in this movie, the RDA. Although the trope grants the natives a sort of moral high ground, it still reinforces a binary in which the hegemonic culture is firmly in power. Philosopher Jacques Derrida asserts that “there are very few neutral binaries;” one pole of the binary “is usually the dominant one, the one which includes the other within its field of operations” (Hall, 253). Cameron recreates this binary by establishing these same power relations. The RDA has the capacity to subjugate the Na’vi through the use of force and technology, especially taking DNA to embody and infiltrate their ranks. The dominant pole of the binary is the one with the power to enforce its narrative, and in this domain, the RDA is securely in control.

 

The society in District 9 splits its humans and aliens along the binary opposition of purity and contamination. Within the documentary frame of the film, the prawns, District 9’s aliens, appear only ever digging through trash, emaciated, or fighting over scraps. Blomkamp places these scenes in juxtaposition to clean offices with professors analyzing prawn behavior and the city itself, standing in pristine, colonial glory. The offices invoke the elitism of academia and the clean and rigid structure inherent to its operations. Academia keeps itself at a level above the populace, earning the title of “higher” education. The city itself appears in the film many times from a bird’s eye view, allowing the steel to shine in the sun. The glare off the steel, too, evokes the image of cleanliness; the media certainly does not show parts of the city they consider dirty. In contrast to the prawns, who are “down” in the dirt, living in shacks swarming with flies, the media in District 9 creates a binary opposition between the clean humans and the contaminated prawns. The direct juxtaposition of these scenes in the frame narrative reveals a deliberateness in the establishment of this binary.

 

Jake’s physical transformation cements the binary opposition between Na’vi and human. Throughout the film, Jake relates to the Na’vi through a synthetic recreation of their own body; the titular avatar is a blend of Na’vi DNA and the DNA of Jake’s late twin. Despite the apparent physical blending of these two poles of the binary, the product is something distinctly Na’vi. The physical form that Jake occupies is only offset by his unpracticed mannerisms; Neytiri comments that he acts like “a baby” in the lush forests of Pandora, but the synthesis of human and Na’vi goes uncommented on by the tribe. The hybrid body, too, can take part in inherently embodied Na’vi rituals, especially the linking of their hair to other creatures and spiritual objects. The human DNA hardly plays a part at all besides allowing Jake’s consciousness to inhabit the body. Therefore, the addition of Na’vi creates something that is Na’vi rather than a blend; one may shift from one end of the binary to the other, but not exist in a middle ground. Cameron depicts this shift in the culmination of his film as one akin to rebirth. Jake abandons his human body in favor of an able Na’vi one, and states in a voice-over, “The aliens went back to their dying world.” Through this symbolic move, Jake fully embraces the Na’vi end of the human-Na’vi binary by ‘otherizing’ the human culture. Refusing to acknowledge commonality or middle ground, Jake reinforces boundaries between the groups despite his apparent transition. This transition, too, accentuates binary themes present throughout the piece. In order to take up the able Na’vi body that he inhabits for most of the film, human Jake must die in a ritual. Through requiring the death of the human body to accept the native body, Cameron reinforces that these bodies are forces completely opposed. Jake’s commitment to the Na’vi comes inherently as a rejection of humans and the opposite end of the binary extreme.

 

The depiction of Jake’s relationship with his humanness and Na’vi-ness eliminates nuance in the conversation of identity binaries. Hall argues that although binaries are necessary as tools to understand the world, they also tend to be “reductionist and over-simplified – swallowing up all distinctions in their rather rigid two-part structure” (253). Cameron absolutely falls into this trap within his film. By framing Jake’s nativeness strictly as a rejection of his humanness, Cameron creates a strict dichotomy that allows no room for “distinctions.” He creates a system that is maximally “rigid,” as one has to die to transition from one end to another. More than that, “over-simplification” is one of the film’s largest flaws; after just three months of living among the Na’vi, they accept him as one of their own, eventually embracing him as their leader due to a demonstrated dominance of natural elements. When Jake dominates natural beasts that prey on the Na’vi, he demonstrates mastery over the Na’vi’s realm of the binary dynamic. This mastery, then, creates the conditions for his acceptance because the Na’vi mostly stand in for an end of a binary rather than an alive political community. They resist him at first, but once Jake completely dominates nature, the community has no choice but to yield to his transition.

 

Wikus physically crosses the boundary between human and prawn in District 9, and in his transformation, the relationship between the two groups is cast less in terms of extreme opposites and more in terms of a spectrum. Wikus’s body gradually transforms into prawn, starting with his arm and extending into his torso. Here, difference appears as parts of a whole rather than distinct opposites. Wikus embodies a crossing of boundaries between those parts, complicating their separation as opposites and introducing a sense that they are inherently intertwined, even if unwelcomely so. When Wikus attempts to cut his prawn arm off, he attempts to symbolically remove the prawn part of himself; the attempt not only fails, but inflicts great pain on his body. The doctors, too, comment that the nerves in his arm have fused with his body. The attachment and necessity of Wikus’s prawn arm further demonstrates the blurring of the boundary between prawn and human. No matter what Wikus is, the arm is his, and he cannot simply eliminate it. Wikus’s transformation defies categorization through most of the film as he is neither fully prawn nor human. He lingers in a gray area between the binary the society around him imposes, indicating the presence and perhaps necessity of such a gray area. 

 

Wikus’s embodiment of the prawn binary does not fundamentally change his identity, unlike Jake, who becomes akin to a stereotypical Na’vi to demonstrate a full shift into the ‘Othered’ end of the binary. Jake’s attachment to those embodying the ‘noble savage’ trope leads him to adopt their characteristics, placing more value in the spiritual and natural aspects of the Na’vi’s culture. As he becomes more and more assimilated, he becomes anxious about the stability of his identity: “I can barely remember my old life. I’m not sure who I am anymore” (Avatar). Jake stands at the crossroads of both extremes of the binary; as a veteran, he is entrenched in the technology of the dominant culture, but as an assimilator, he is immersed in the values of the subjected one. Within the worldview of Avatar, this crossing of boundaries leads to an identity crisis. The image of one end of the binary cannot be reconciled with the other. As Jake accepts his life as Na’vi more, he refers to his human experiences in the hegemonic culture as a “past life,” and calls into question who he is rather than what he wants to do. This identity crisis does not occur for Wikus; Blomkamp establishes early his attachment to his wife, and this attachment never changes. The poignant final shot of the film is a fully-prawn Wikus, the viewer assumes, folding tin roses to leave at her doorstep. While the transition to the other end of the binary brings him an understanding and empathy for the Other, it does not fundamentally change who he is. He is still attached to the institution of marriage, one obsessed with purity through monogamy, despite his “contaminated” form. He has the same values; his embodiment of the opposite extreme of the binary does not require a complete personality change. Wikus can exist in a position between the two, where he is attached to both the human and prawn identity. Thus, Wikus’s transformation allows for a sort of middle experience, not adhering to any one extreme, while Jake’s transformation is depicted as all-or-nothing.

 

This middle existence lends much more support to the plight of marginalized groups. The binary, especially in its manifestation as a set of stereotypes, creates “two extreme opposites” that subjected groups “are obliged to shuttle endlessly between” as the dominant culture refuses a greater complexity of personhood from the Other, sometimes even representing them “as both of [the extremes] at the same time” (Hall, 263). Those within these binary systems, then, become caught in an impossible situation: defying the stereotype by practicing its opposite still affirms the poles of that dynamic and lends more power to the culture creating those distinctions. In Avatar, Cameron has Jake transition from one end of the binary to the other. Jake, then, upholds the RDA’s framing of humans versus natives, technology versus nature. Cameron does not use his protagonist to challenge those ideas that create depictions of savage and primitive natives but instead reinforces those ideas through keeping his narrative within the framework of savage versus civilized. Blomkamp’s choice to have Wikus exist between the two poles of the binary directly combats the binary system that traps marginalized groups. His situation does not fit a category in comparison to Jake’s, which is a switch from one end to the other. In defying this binary structure, Blomkamp creates a stronger message against depictions of subjugated people as distinctly primitive, questioning the concepts society uses to label groups of people rather than what labels it assigns.

 

District 9’s portrayal of the human-alien divide as a metaphor for real life difference is more effective because it blurs and confuses binaries while Avatar reinforces the concept of binary divisions. These films begin in the same place, establishing societies with clear prejudicial treatment towards subjugated peoples, endeavoring to comment on parallels to reality. Again, science fiction is a prime locale for conversations about the treatment of Othered identities; not only is it optimal for this treatment, but the routine presence of aliens and Others frequently necessitates some broaching of the subject matter. For science fiction narratives to approach these subjects well, they should address the binary division between galactic species the way District 9 does, not allowing the presence of a binary to dominate the conversation.