“It was a brilliant way to build an emotional connection to the audiences” and
“on a deeper level, however, the visual representation of Jake,
a crippled man, is a reflection of the state of the human race.” (Angry Hippie, Avatar:In-Depth Analysis)
Jake Sully’s body is used as a world-building tool. A dystopian Earth is paralleled with a disabled body.
Saying Jake’s body represents what’s wrong in society is ableist.
This assertion also perpetuates internal ableism by reinforcing the need for disabled people to be the ones who
obviously want and need to change.
The deeper meaning goes beyond saying the world needs to change its ways to avoid becoming a dystopia.
Jake is “someone who does not want to be treated any differently than someone able-bodied. In this way,
Jake not only agrees with but also extends the long-standing perception of disabled people as inferior because they need and want help from others.
His attitude, we are told later by Jake, remains unchanged” (Holtmeier & Park-Primiano, 8).
The perception of disabled people is not addressed in other adaptations of these historical events. And popular films don’t often tackle multiple issues in separate minority groups.
Intersectionality is ignored because it’s too complicated and not as entertaining or easy to accept that racism and ableism can occur together.
Of course, those are not the only biases in the world, but they are the two that intersect here.
The perception that disability cripples the individual and represents what’s wrong with the world perpetuates ableism.
The possibility existed to write Jake in a way that would not have perpetuated stereotypes.
Showing him as “relentlessly self-reliant, promoting a reactionary portrait of himself as the ideal disabled person” (Holtmeier & Park-Primiano, 8).
This “ideal” is meant for able-bodied people, not people who are actually disabled. This makes it impossible for me to think of the world we’re shown as real.
It is a movie with an agenda concerned more with the evils of Westernization than with disability representation.
The film copies and pastes an idealized version of a disabled person for plot convenience.
Sources
Angry Hippie. (2018, October 22). AVATAR | In-Depth Film Analysis: Neohumanism & Ayahuasca | Humanity vs Alternate Humanity [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4c8avw6qo8
Holtmeier, M., & Parker-Primiano, S. (2020). Ableism in Avatar: The Transhuman, Postcolonial Rapprochement to Bioregionalism. Studies of Humanities, 46(1-2), 3-17. https://go.gale.com/ps/i.doid=GALE%7CA673944097&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00393800&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=nysl_oweb&isGeoAuthType=true