In Defense of James Cameron's Use of Music in Avatar

So a few days ago, before I slept, I saw a YouTube video named “Why Avatar has the Most Ironic Soundtrack of All Time”. In there, the YouTuber “Sideways” brought up a few points and a few comparisons in that he was trying to prove that James Cameron purposefully created a world of aboriginals; but with malign intent, he only uses western instruments to produce the soundtrack for the movie. That night, when I was trying to sleep, I gave this critique some thought, and the second morning, I wrote a comment under his video. However, since his video is 2 years old, I am betting that whoever watches that video will not see it.

That’s what I am doing here. I am here to defend James Cameron’s choice of music for the movie Avatar. While some points that this YouTuber brought up are valid, most of his points are attacking one quality of the film’s music choices and magnifying everything around it without much justification. He spoke on a couple of points on Ethnomusicology and cited Professor Wanda Bryant from the Cal State University, yet, few points actually stick.

To show my sincerity for a true discussion of this topic, I must disclose that I am an avid Avatar fan. These points I am about to make are coming from a much more intrigued position and from hours of absorbing Avatar content, whether it’s the lore or is from the backstage productions. I will stay as unbiased as possible, after all, this is what I learned from 4 years of college.

One of the points that he brought up was with how Cameron carefully created the lore with the Na’vi, with specific prototypes from Earth in mind, yet, he still chose the most western music ever. While it is true that a lot of creatures and settings in the film have real-world counterparts (you can never create something without building on something else), for example, the Direhorse, a horse in the world of Pandora, was actually modeled after a real world horse. The YouTuber caught onto the Direhorse’s similarity with Earth’s horse, and came to his conclusion that since the film was created on the basis of real-world counterparts, therefore, the music should mirror that of aboriginals’ in Africa and North America. This is, of course, a shortened statement, but is a basic summary of his first point. As someone who is studying LSAT, a test that forces you to poke holes in every argument possible, I can tell you that this is not a fair, or even valid statement.

Just because one aspect of the world is similar to ours, doesn’t mean that the rest of that world is going to be similar to ours too. The same reasoning can be used as: just because one aspect of this world is different to ours, doesn’t mean that everything else should be different. It is a classic flaw. While creatures like the Direhorse can be seen as similar to our Earth horse, it should not be concluded that everything else of the world should be similar to our own. It is comparable to a statement like: since Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people all use chopsticks, therefore, they must eat the same type of food. It is simply not right to assume that the music, or ethnomusicology of Pandora will be the same to that of the Earth’s.

The second point that the YouTuber brought up borrowed heavily from Professor Bryant who co-created the score. He cited that director James Cameron shot down most of the original music composed by her and James Horner in favor of more western music. To his credit, the YouTuber actually provided the link to Bryant’s essay and encouraged his viewers to read. This is perhaps the strongest evidence that he has in his quiver, because it came directly from the person who actually participated in scoring the film. After reading the essay, I too, felt bad for the professor whose work was picked apart and denied after much dedication. As an amateur musician, I sympathize with her feeling. As a movie audience, there is much room to defend Cameron’s decision.

As someone who was a member of the Ethnomusicology — Music of China in UCLA, I can say that music from other worlds is not for everyone. While I am fascinated by every aspect of other cultures’ instruments and enjoy listening to them, most people tend not to appreciate them as much as we do. They may sound either edgy or weird to people who do not like them enough to try to listen to them in the first place, and they are the majority of the population, ergo the majority of the moviegoers. As Professor Bryant said in her essay, “each decision concerning Avatar’s score was influenced by both artistic and economic considerations.” It is true that the monetary value that comes with a successful score can sometimes outweigh the score’s original intent, we must also think in another direction, that the music of a commercially successful movie, like the movie itself, must please the most people instead of just a niche of viewers who might appreciate somethings more. There are people in the world that do not appreciate, or rather hate, sounds that are not familiar to them, and that includes everything non-western. To European and North American audiences, everything they haven’t heard before can sound weird. To Chinese audiences, everything non-European and non-Chinese can sound weird. The side effect of colonization in the past was that most of the world appreciates European orchestral music. If the composers are not careful, they will create something that can be disliked by a region full of people. Of course, this is the most extreme case, and the ability of Horner and Professor Bryant cannot be easily undermined; but one can understand Cameron’s decision to include more orchestral music in the end.

Another reason why indigenous sounds or music that is more foreign to people would fail to make good movie music, is that they cannot produce a more fuller sound than orchestral music. This is a hard concept to explain. By fuller, I mean that the instruments can resonate with each other in a frequency that is intertwining and therefore produces a sound that is both stronger and more including. The movie’s music is one of the most important aspect of the entire movie — it plays directly to the emotional attachment that the audience has to the plot and the characters. A good score can make you happy or sad within a blink of an eye. Most of the world’s music can be sad or happy, but only orchestral music can bring you the feeling of sadness, but also empowerment. Most sad traditional music from non-European regions are played in a slow tempo and is often by a solo of one instrument, and that instrument alone.

Take Chinese music for example, it can be the world’s happiest genre when the tempo is fast and when the composer tries to instill a happy image with a whole lot of instruments; almost all sad/slow songs are performed slowly and in solos. This is due to the fact that Chinese instruments, nay, all oriental instruments are not built to play harmonizing sounds in a slow manner. They do not play along with each other when being played slowly — an aspect that can be eliminated with a faster tempo. For a piece of music that is to instill sadness but wants to empower the listener at the same time, it must make use of multiple instruments to produce an effect of camaraderie, again, a hard concept to explain. Chinese instruments, on the other hand, has a very sharp timbre. Speaking from personal experience, I tried to incorporate Erhu, a Chinese instrument with 2 strings with a bow into a song with western instruments to replace the violin, and it failed miserably; because it is simply too sharp to play along with all other instruments, something a western stringed instrument is extremely good at. The intent of James Cameron is to create a situation for a foreign world that is sad, but ultimately empowering the main characters to fight back with great resolve, a situation that can only make use of music that is both sad and empowering, not just sad alone.

The last point I want to come across is with the YouTuber’s assertion that “indigenous” music are all shot down by Cameron is plain wrong. Granted, this is a detail that only the most avid fans would know, and it can only be known if you own the Collector’s Edition DVD that includes the featurette. I would not blame the YouTuber for not knowing. After all, giving him the benefit of the doubt, his only source material to draw criticism from, is the theatrical release. In this day and age, never expect someone to actually follow through and read/watch all the relevant evidence before coming up with an opinion.

For the creation of Avatar, there are three stages of recording. First stage, is with real actors, who performs in motion-capture suits. These are then transformed into the second stage, which is a rough animation based on the actors’ performance. Only after the scene is decided to be good enough will it be fully rendered into the uncannily realistic scenes we see today. While it is true that all of the instrument and music scenes did not make it into the final cut of the movie, it is simply wrong to say that Cameron passed on everything “indigenous”. In the featurette, one can clearly see that all the music and instrument playing scenes made it to the second stage, one stage away from being fully rendered. In these roughly animated scenes, actors can be seen playing originally designed instruments. Cameron also invited Maori actors to come and capture Hakas, an indigenous ceremonial dance that was performed to him on set in New Zealand, which was also animated and was awaiting for the full rendering. Cameron clearly liked the indigenous aspects that his team has created enough to give them the second stage treatment. Therefore, to say that anything musically indigenous was thrown away at the very early stage by Cameron is simply and utterly false.

This is the first time any of my personal blogs has reached over 3 pages. I have wrote some other more contentious topics that I chose to not publish for my personal safety. I doubt any Avatar or James Cameron haters will try to defenestrate me. But yeah, personal record. Like I said in the beginning, I am just a crazy fan of Cameron’s rendition of this future world. They say crazy fans will come up with all sorts of crazy explanations for plot holes or mistakes that the crew or cast has made. That is not what I am trying to do here. I am just wishing to share with you an even more balanced account, and showing you more evidence to make up your own mind. If I want to be more assertive, I would, but that is not my goal. Avatar is a fantastic movie. Perhaps not the greatest movie of all times (gasp), but who can really claim that throne anyways? We have to remember that Cameron’s world is entirely original. It is not a biopic of Native Americans and the persecution they endured, which many people think it is. It may have drawn inspiration from the story of the aboriginals, but is not a 1:1 copy of them.

Perhaps this is why I have taken issue with some of the comments under this YouTube video, claiming that somehow Cameron has culturally appropriated his own Na’vi people by not using more ethnic music that Professor Bryant proposed. This is just absurd. This is, by all accounts, a brand new world. This world that Cameron concocted may share similarities with our very own on the surface, but may be completely different otherwise. Our only exposure to the world is through the 3 hours of the movie, which was slimmed down from god knows how long in order to squeeze it in a bearable time frame. Just because you haven’t seen it on screen, doesn’t mean it is cultural appropriation. Comments like these are really uneducated. Just because the music is more orchestral, it somehow is cultural appropriation? Your exposure to the Na’vi culture is just the exploration of the fauna/flora and the action sequences, therefore you can conclude that orchestral music is not part of their culture? That is logical fallacy. Easy mistake, but more importantly, makes it easier to identify.

But, I should know better. Comments from the internet are usually uneducated. Not everyone is going to have the ability or rather have the time to write a detailed and educated argumentative essay to defend or advance one’s position. This is perhaps what motivated me to write this two-thousand words worth of an opinion.

This movie has a lot of haters, that is for sure. Even the YouTuber himself was eager to classify this movie as “Dances with Wolves but blue”, denying everything else that the movie is except that one faint similarity with a plot that has happened before. He let his bias seep into his discussion of the soundtrack. Unprofessional, but how much professionalism can one get from YouTube videos of random commentators on the internet? I will admit that saying these harsh words are coming from my biased side, but the points nevertheless stand.