“Blue Monkeys” and Space Whales.: An Intersectional Approach to Orientalism and Speciesism in James Cameron’s Avatar Franchise

• Autores: Natalia Mirón Florido
• Localización: Animal Ethics Review (AER), ISSN-e 2696-4643, Vol. 5, Nº. 1, 2025
• Idioma: catalán
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • In Primate Visions (1898) Donna Haraway postulated the existence of a Simian Orientalism: just like Orientalism pictures Eastern communities asthe civilisational ancestors of the Western world, primatology regardsprimates as living specimens of human genetic and cultural ancestors(Said 232-234; Haraway 10-11). However, this paper aims to prove that therecan be further links between Orientalism and speciesism, using as a casestudy James Cameron’s Avatar franchise.The purpose of the first instalment is to remark on the holistic naturePandora as a planet where the homogenous Natives, the fauna and floare part of the same religious entity, Eywa. Yet the narrative placesecological values over anti-speciesist ones, by normalising the Na’vi’sdomination of non-Na’vi animals, thus hierarchising the fauna of Pandora.The second instalment attempts to compound this mistake byemphasizing egalitarian bonds with non-Na’vi animals, namely with thewhale-like tulkuns. Despite them possessing complex societies andidentities, the narrative presents them as willing victims and ostracizesindividuals who fight humans. In this way, the non-Na’vi animalsPandora are denied any agency for resistance.These failures expose that Orientalism and speciesism biases areinextricably linked: for the Western onlooker, the classification of a subjeas Oriental/Eastern transforms them into a primitive being that is closer toanimality than humanity, but closer to humanity than other non-humananimals. In short, Orientalism implies the creation of a speciesist hierarchyby which the Oriental subject is placed under white humans but overnon-human animals.