Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and the Politics of the Natural
by Noël Sturgeon
Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009

Despite being widely, but unjustifiably panned by critics, M. Knight Shyamalan's The Last Airbender (a remake of the Nickelodeon cartoon series) managed a solid second place in this past weekend's box office sales behind the latest Twilight flick and ahead of Toy Story 3. In what promises to be the first of three films, the story follows the adventures of three young people seeking to restore balance to the earth from the ravages of a renegade nation of militarists and exploiters. The movie and the cartoon, in some important ways, exemplify some of the basic themes of a recent book titled Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and the Politics of the Natural, by Noël Sturgeon.

In the story, human life on earth is divided into four nations based on the ancient "four elements" once thought to make up all of nature: earth, air, fire, and water. In normal times, the four nations are in a balance and are overseen by a spiritual and magical creature known as the Avatar. The Avatar is randomly chosen by nature from one of the nations, and the job lasts a lifetime. Within a week of the Avatar's death, a new one is selected from another nation; the job rotates from nation to nation with each Avatar. In addition, the knowledge and power of past Avatar's are handed down, but the new Avatar must learn the special powers of each of the nations.

Certain members of each nation possess the power to "bend" the element that belongs to that nation. A water nation bender, for example, can manipulate water in rivers, oceans, even in human bodies to use it as a protective force, a weapon, or in ordinary tasks. While the power to do this is in-born, the bender must learn to develop the skill through a process of learning to build a connection with nature that allows them to use the power. Bending powers come from spirits that reside in some natural element, such as the moon or animals.

The Avatar learns the ultimate power of all four elements and through this maintains the balance of the natural world and its human components.

But something has gone wrong. When Aang, the latest Avatar, learned as a child (about 100 years before the action of the story) that he would have to sacrifice the pleasures of childhood to take on this awesome responsibility, he ran away and became frozen in a ball of ice. In the intervening period, with nature and human society out of balance, the fire nation has run amok. They have invented machines and have used their fire-bending power to conquer and exploit the other nations. Many people have been rounded up, imprisoned, and even killed in the process. The remaining people live in fear of conquest or have submitted to the power of the fire nation. In addition, the acts of conquest result in massive environmental damage, from devastating air and water pollution to deforestation and land erosion.

Though the people in the cartoon version of the story aren't identified by race, there are certain markers that indicate the presence of race, ethnicity, and nationality, but with a twist. Water nation members dress and live in communities similar to popular images of Inuit communities and live in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Two of the major protagonists, Sokka and Katara come from the Southern Water Tribe. They find the frozen Avatar, Aang. Aang comes from the air nation. They are referred to as nomads and dress similar to Buddhist monks. Meditation and a closeness to nature are important training elements for young airbenders like Aang. Fire nation members resemble stereotypical images of Japanese samurai characters. Earth nation people dress like and live in peasant communities. None seem to bear markers that identify them as explicitly white or American or western, however. (The movie works to maintain these themes and emphasizes racial, ethnic, and national ambiguities.)

Together Sokka, Katara, and Aang travel the world promoting alliances of different groups of people in a general rebellion against the fire nation. In the end, however, it is up to the Avatar to use his special power, known as the Avatar state, which is a combination of all the power of all the previous Avatars, to restore balance and defeat the aggressive fire nation forces.

The story adopts what I think author Noël Sturgeon would describe as an environmentalist narrative, though she doesn't discuss the cartoon. The Last Airbender links a notion of the needs of nature, its balance, to human activities and motives. Without a meaningful connection to nature and its inherent spirituality, people are prone to turn to militarism, violence, exploitation, and conquest. Using Sturgeon's analytical framework from her book, Environmentalism in Popular Culture, one might say that she would view much of The Last Airbender story positively, especially for its explicit linkage of exploitation with environmental destruction. She might also praise it for its refusal to link progress and power and redemption with overtly white or American characters, a recurring theme of American pop culture. That the most competent and powerful leaders of the resistance to fire nation abuses are women (from various nations), other than the Avatar himself, may also be seen by Sturgeon as a positive. In fact, as Sturgeon notes, most environmentalists in the real world are women.

She might, however, express concerns over the story's reliance on a hero and its romanticization of nature and violence for conflict resolution. While real racial formations are altered and subverted in the story, one underlying theme is that members of nations possess particular traits and powers and habits that are naturally determined, suggesting "racial"/biological explanations and motives for culture and group and individual actions. In addition, as Sturgeon asserts in the book, solutions and change in real human society and the natural world will come through mass action of non-supernatural humans with conflicted interests, alignments, and orientations that require complex coalition politics and negotiated cultural practices to build meaningful and effective local and global alliances.

In her book, Sturgeon traces the origins of environmentalism in American movies, TV shows, popular music and music videos, advertising, as well as political activism since the 1980s. Her argument, however, takes a critical stance, urging the creation of environmentalist narratives that challenge received values on race, gender, imperialism, capitalism, and other systems that produce and reproduce social inequalities. She writes, "If we want to create a truly sustainable future, we must think about social inequalities as much as we think about environmental problems, and we must understand their interrelations." Often, however, environmentalist narratives, whether consciously or not, reproduce the idealized notions of nature, racist views of indigenous peoples and other communities of color, sexist notions of masculinity and sexuality, and fail to focus meaningful attention on the system of capitalism and imperialism that cause or legitimize environmental degradation.

Sturgeon adds, "[I]f social inequalities and environmental problems are connected such that we cannot solve one set of problems without solving the other, environmentalists need to be more careful about using popular narratives uncritically, not simply because they are wrong or not politically strategic, but because they may prevent us from fully understanding the causes of and solutions to environmental problems." For example, if the urge is to simply "reduce, reuse, and recycle," we may be advancing individualist solutions to a social and global problem whose causes lie in systemic issues such as environmental racism and capitalism itself. Though, social movements that promote individual and collective action shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

Scientific and technological developments go a long way to protect humans from natural disasters. Sometimes we view this power – the possession of which has also been determined by the struggle over and control of global resources – as the only way to resolve global problems. But it alone cannot reverse environmental damage or save lives. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina revealed important truths about this point, she writes. "Both of these 'natural' disasters are environmental justice issues because, on this actual Earth, how badly someone is hurt by a disaster depends on how many resources he or she has and whether those in power value that particular life." Resources are historically and socially determined by capitalism and imperialism and, thus, thinking about how these systems work and enforce inequalities cannot be separated from our thinking about "natural" disasters and the political and social movements to make meaningful change, Sturgeon forcefully argues.

Popular culture is an important arena because it is where ideological messages about racism, sexism, individualism and so on are presented and contested, according to Sturgeon. Viewpoints that sustain the status quo are presented as "natural" or "common sense" and are used to build some sort of an emotional connection between consumers and a particular "brand," she points out. For example, when the war was popular, Boeing used images of patriotism and the "protection" of US troops in harm's way in Iraq to build public appeal for its "brand," i.e. its corporate goals: promoting massive military spending and global conflict in order to increase its profits. Such emotional connections serve to erase the historical and social context in which commodities are produced, distributed, and the waste products discarded, or simply to hide the fact, for example, that the war in Iraq was an aggressive war of choice by the Bush administration. These ideological messages are also designed to win support not just for corporations trying to sell products but for the basic ideas that prop up a capitalist society.

This is an important book and deserves wide readership. It should serve to metaphorically give us new lenses to view the popular culture we consume or participate in. The book's one drawback, which Sturgeon admits to in her closing pages, is that it doesn't focus on how activists and artists have produced alternative, potentially more liberating narratives. Popular culture isn't only about the dissemination of ideas and images by powerful corporations, it is about negotiated and oppositional meanings made by individuals and movements and communities that differ and challenge dominant ideas, a fact that is only hinted in this volume. In addition, people frequently contest the meanings imparted to symbols, images, and objects. This struggle over meaning often reflects political struggles over equality, liberation, and social justice. Does this unaddressed dimension mean we might look forward to a second book from Sturgeon that examines this side of the issue?