Avatar Thoughts: Dances with Avatars in the Mist

March 4, 2010 by Robert Kozinets.

With the Academy Awards just around the corner, and Avatar up for nine Oscars, I wanted to share some reflections on that motion picture.

I thought that the movie provided a feast of metaphorical food for thought. First, please consider this light spoiler alert. I’m not intentionally revealing secret plot elements, but if you want to see it with completely fresh eyes, you should probably save reading this blog until after you’ve seen the movie.

All right, then…

A lot of people have written about the fairly obvious, low-hanging and perhaps heavy-handed ecological messages in the film (”And so the aliens [that’s us] went back to their dying world…”). The story from the film has created a ton of discussion and conflict on the Internet, with accusations that it is racist (the dump blue-skinned savages), it is naïve (um, this is Hollywood), and it is colonialist (see two points above).

My take on it is a little different. I’ve decided to really emphasize the ethnography part of the move. And to analyze a bit of the ethnographic alliance-shifting that is a central part of its plot.

The movie concerns a future military-industrial enterprise’s use of a biological remote-control system to undertake human participant-observation of the Pandora planet’s intelligent tribal inhabitants.

Along with all the other engaging metaphors that it weaves together, I find Avatar to also be an extended meditation not only on colonialism but also on the anthropological practice of ethnography in a capitalist military-industrial culture.

As my friend, Diego Rinallo from Milan’s Bocconi University noted to me after the movie was over “Avatar is all about ethnography.” And so it is.

Among the many other things that it is, Avatar is a science fictional concretization of the anthropologist’s journey. There is an alien–in this case, a literally alien– culture that needs examination. There is a scientific observer, the accidental anthropologist and paraplegic Jake Sully, who must learn the language, rituals, and ways of a new culture. In this case, instead of Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski joining the Trobriand Islanders, it is Sully joining the blue-skinned, animist, and very Native American-seeming Na’vi.

The movie is about identity, interests, loyalties, and change. A major concern is the classic anthropological dilemma of “Going Native.”

This was the same theme, sort of, as Dance with Wolves, and Gorillas in the Mist. There it is, happening again, on the big screen. Amazingly, Sigourney Weaver plays the head ethnographers in both Gorillas and Avatar. She’s our anthropological role model!

The ethnographer is, himself or herself, an avatar of types. This is a theme I explore in a recent poem I submitted to the Journal of Business Research as an extended meditation on introspection and ethnography, a poem that explores this avatar topic of possessing multiple identities and feeling identity conflict.

So this movie inspired some thinking in me about what we do as anthropologists-for-hire.

Why are we doing what we do as corporate ethnographers? Would we work for Exxon? Would we work for a company that wanted to mine the Amazon rain forest? Would we work for banks in poor countries where people might not be able to afford the interest rates?

The film reveals the dark side of the scientific-academic enterprise, and the dark secret that, although knowledge is power, academics sell out their power to the military-industrial system. In this case, science is anthropology, and anthropology offer understanding in order to manipulate and destroy. The Company in this film wanted to learning the cultural ways of the Na’Vi people in order to manipulate them. Does this sound like cultural marketing and applied anthropology to anyone else?

Of course, in the movie, understanding wasn’t geared towards selling the natives things. Apparently the blue Na’Vi had no need of Coca Cola and blue jeans, they were an anti-consumerist culture. The movie was classic colonialism—get them off of their land, and take it and its resources. Drain it dry. Kill the land and kill a way of life.

One big realization that I had was when Jake Sulley came back from his time with the Na’vi and, at some point, he had to realize his subversion, he had to adjust the flow of information to the flow of interests.

That is, once he had decided to help the Na’vi, the natives, he had to now tell them about the weaknesses or weak points of the human encampment (or, in the movie, to take the literal and powerfully figurative action of smashing the remote viewing lens on the tractor destroyer). This sort of double-agent stuff is classic ethnographic conflict. But I wonder about its wider implication for our daily life.

So, if we are consumer ethnographers working in the public interest, where are our alliances? Do we need to rethink them?

What it could mean is that we need to look at our power-relationships-to the machine world or to a more naturally balanced world– and then think about how we can use the knowledge of one to begin to dismantle the other. This is an activist message that says that only by some sort of rigorous motion that first draws from inside the system, but then punishes that system and opens it up, can there be change. It is a revolutionary, not an evolutionary message. Not what Heath and Potter, or many other environmental activists would see. And climate change seems to offer one justification for that sort of revolutionary movement in a revolutionary Moment.

What does Jake Sulley do? In the story, he finally casts off his human form, as much as he possibly can. That means no more Coca Cola, no more beer, no more blue jeans or even old reruns of movies like Avatar. He’s back in the bush.

What happens to anthropologist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist? She’s the sacrifice (and, there it is again, Sigourney is the sacrificial mother/boss in Avatar…weird).

What about Kevin Costner’s character, Dunbar, in Dancing with Wolves? He disappears into the wild at the end, presumably sacrificing himself for his Sioux friends. We assume that he is fully realized and integrated into the natural order. He now identifies more closely with “nature” than with the corrupt and destructive American society.

Because the move ends with this eye-opening move, it can not be satisfying. There are too many loose ends. This is a start, a beginning, rather than an ending.

So that’s where the movie offers up only a good tale and an uplifting inspirational message. However, that message is delivered in the most technologically-intensive manner possible. With all of its 3D IMAX computer simulation technology, the movies is of course much closer to being produced by the earth-razing techno-society of the Earth’s future than the arrows-and-fires civilization of the tribal Na’Vi.

I thought that, if this meditation on ethnography-as-industrial-power was a science fiction book, it would have held up extremely well. Its religiously-inspired plot of The Chosen One had much in common with Dune, Hyperion, and even with The Fifth Element and the Matrix, two other brilliant messianic SF movies.

As a parting note, it is also quite worth remarking upon that James Cameron hired USC Prof Paul Frommer to create an entirely new language for the film-something that had not been done since the Klingon language was devised by linguist Marc Okrand in 1984 for the third Star Trek movie.

These two languages, then, are the most recent distinct languages deliberately created by members of our species, and they were crated for remarkably similar reasons. It remains to see if the Na’Vi language will gain a fan community-based life of its own the way that the Klingon language has. I could certainly see this happening if there are sequels, adaptations, conventions, gatherings, and other media fan community activity around the film-something I would personally enjoy see unfolding. As a matter of fact, it seems like this movie is indeed the first in a trilogy. (I had purchased an Empire magazine last year that featured a story about the upcoming blockbuster Avatar; in the story, Cameron was reported to say this was the first of a trilogy; apparently, like Lucas and Star Wars, it had been planned this way all along.)

In the same way that Klingon has become a type of intentional, if not ironic, “ethnicity” according to cultural studies scholar Peter Chvany, that people adopt to explore some of their primitive warrior characteristics, so too could Na’Vi be a way to seek to reclaim some of the productive elements of primitivism that seems vitally missing from our current contemporary culture.

Anyone want to be the first to start their own local Na’Vi fan club? I’ll join. Let’s get blue and wild and talk difficult made-up languages. C’mon. It’ll be fun.

It’s also evident of the continual rise of blue skinned people (often proudly bald) that began with the Blue Man group in Chicago and this year appears to be crescendo-ing with Doctor Manhattan (in the Watchmen movie) and the graceful blue-skinned Na’Vi.

Yep. If there’s no fan club set up by October, I know what I’ll be wearing for Halloween.

Posted in Qualitative Research Methods, Activism, Technology, Entertainment Marketing, Communities and Tribes, Green marketing | 1 Comment »

The Dirty Secret of Online Communities

February 8, 2010 by Robert Kozinets.

I can’t disclose the time, place, or people involved, and I’ve changed around the numbers, but I was recently at gathering where the social talk turned to business and the business was social media. The conversation went something like this:

“Joe”: Rob, my company is investing in social media like crazy now.

Me: Sounds good. What are you doing?

“Joe”: Well, aside from the Facebook fan-page and the PR firm we’ve hired to Tweet for us, we’re investing big in building online communities and forums from our web-sites. We’re building technical forums so people can help each other solve technical problems. It turns out that a call to our help lines costs us about ten dollars. When they solve it online themselves, that saves us the cost of a call. We’ve calculated our breakeven at saving a thousand calls a month.

“Anthony”: Do they really do that? Do they really just help each other out?

Me and Joe: You bet.

“Anthony”: Who are these people? Some technie geek guys who tinker around with stuff and still live in their mother’s basements [laughs]?

Joe [laughing]: Yeah, isn’t that amazing?

At that point, I get all reflective and brooding. I have heard variants of this particular conversation before. Many times, in fact.

What was that old definition of Web 2.0? “You do all the work, we keep all them money.” This is not the way social media was supposed to work.

Yes, we have known for a long time that people give freely and help each other in online and other types of communities. My research on on “virtual communities of consumption” may have been the first to note that online consumption communities function as a type of gift economy.

But it should be a far stretch from noticing that these networks offer assistance and help, to banking on that fact. Doing so is, in effect, using up or free-riding on a free resource and, even moreso, attempting to undermine the social logics of online communities by turning them into an economic resource. Yes, it’s very capitalist. But, like clear-cutting a thriving forest, it isn’t smart long-term management.

These notions, popular among consultants and business people alike, are going to come back and bite them.

Here is one way it will play out. There will be certain kinds of people, and certain kinds of advice, that may seep into those online communities. People will complain. Some of them will do the math. Some of these will get it right. The chatter will at some points be less about giving and more about taking.

Eventually, if the marketing or PR management-consumer relations are acrimonious enough and the offenses grevious and plentiful enough in scope, I believe, there will be organizing, activism, and perhaps regulation among community members. Consumers will request and perhaps be legally required to be paid for their labor, just like everyone else. The party will be over. It will have been crashed, corporate style. (Look familiar anyone?)

Or else they will just collectively agree to call your help lines. Get their friends and families to call. And call them a lot.

The other thing that sticks in my craw–and it is not unrelated to the first point- is the way these consumer community members are referred to in casual conversation by managers, consultants, and marketers. Online community members and technical contributors are referred to as lonely geeks who have nothing better to do with their time.

This phrasing reminds me so much of the way fans are regarded and refered to by many managers and marketers. The same alarming disrespect. The same infantilization. The same insulting, dismissive tone. The same sense that these people are okay to use and exploit because they are lower that us, not as good or as smart as us.

In my experience, those consumer often know the manager’s business better than the managers do. In fact, that’s why they make such excellent members of technical communities.

Those are the two dirty little secrets of online community. First, that it is being justified as a straight ROI play based on cheap labor power, where the company gets consumers to do something in the community for it for free or on the cheap. It can be tech support or other customer support. It could be innovation and coming up with or rating new ideas. It could be offering marketing or other feedback. The second secret is that some managers often refer to these consumers as socially backwards suckers, dupes, clever peons, and rubes.

A little later in our conversation, “Joe” said he was a bit surprised that very few consumers were joining up on his brand’s Facebook fan page, that almost none of the company’s many customers wanted to be known as fans of his company.

Well, go figure.

Posted in Economy and General Business Management, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Technology, Marketing Research, Marketing News & Insights, Communities and Tribes, Marketing Science | 2 Comments »

Free Netnography Book Links Here: Finally!!!

February 4, 2010 by Robert Kozinets.

It’s been a long time since I wrote this blog. Been a long time, been a long time, been a long….lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time. Actually, not all that lonely, but unbelievably busy, with teaching starting up, teaching social media finishing (finishing well, too), articles to review, articles written and submitted, book chapters done, serving on the JCR Policy Board, travel, and so on and so forth.

But once you get Led Zeppelin into your mindstream, it’s like a chronic thing. You can ask my Wyoming colleague Kent Drummond or the brilliant writer Erik Davis all about it. Erik’s book about Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3), is one of the most inspired and inspiring pieces of music scholarship I’ve ever read.

Okay. Last post, written almost a century ago by Internet standards, promised you free online access to my new Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online
book.

As those of your outside of Europe may have noticed, that didn’t happen. Surprisingly—and somewhat disappointingly, I might add—there was no angry revolt on this blog. No pushback at all. You were all very well behaved, like polite Canadians who will stand in the cold for 3 hours, in the middle of a blinding blizzard, just so they can pay their ridiculously high parking tickets on time. I was hoping more for angry, ravenous, outraged complaints.

“Kozinets, you promised me a damn book. Google books doesn’t even offer me a limited preview. Just a stinking cover and table of contents. Now you deliver that book unto me immed-ee-ate-ly or I swear, I am gonna…”

Okay. I’m starting to scare myself. You get the picture.

But despite your lack of expressed outrage, I was more than a little annoyed. My esteemed academic publisher, Sage, had promised Google Books access for January. Indeed, when I checked with them, they thought it was being delivered—because it was in Europe (as some of you already know).

But not in many other parts of the world, like the USA and Canada. This was a problem, apparently, widespread, with Google Books. Google Books has a checkered history of showing a lot of books that the authors didn’t want seen. Oops. Now, its gone the other way around. It won’t show the books that the authors do want people to see. Go figure.

Harriet Baulcombe at Sage, on of their finest marketing managers, has actually been scrambling for me to find a solution, and at last, we have it.

The book is available free online now as an ebook for you to read and review in its entirety. You can just click here.

If you want it all spelled out the link is at http://dc.eb20.com?v=A7Y1YlJaCVIQhKLFZCIP1wFxjb487z8M.

You do need to register, but you then can access the ebook for up to 30 days, but the link only works for the month of February.

If you are the type of person who likes to invest in the future beyond February, or who enjoys the feel of a dead tree-based book in their hands (and who doesn’t), then you have options.

The book is also for sale as an ebook via ebooks.com at http://www.ebooks.com/ebooks/book_display.asp?IID=480095 or simply click here. But, apparently, not yet for the Kindle (or iSanitaryPad, I presume).

Or you can invest your money in a bright and shiny netnographic future by buying it from Amazon here: Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online. Maybe you can ask your library to buy it, then you can keep renewing it and borrowing it and reading it for free forever. Wow: think about that.

Sage has also been working with Google HQ to try to find solutions, so they may also have it up at some point on Google Books, too.

Either way, I am happy now because I have been able to keep my promise to you, oh faithful, undemanding, and perhaps-a-bit-too-well-mannered-and-complacent Gentle blog readers.

So if you are interested in how to do netnography (online ethnography), and what netnographers have found, and what some of the latest and most exciting and inspiring theories about online communities and social media area, and where that field is going, go get the book for free right now, read the book, and let me and the world know what you think. Your life will then be complete and perfect in every way. I can most sincerely promise you that (my fingers are crossed behind my back, though, but don’t worry about that).

That’s all I’d really like is for you to read it and review it and thus be completely and utterly perfect and complete. Lots of you. Lots of comments. PLEASE review it on Amazon, or on the ebooks site (preferably Amazon…), write about it here, in your own blogs, post it on Facebook, on Twitter, on your social media sites. Tell us all (especially me) what you think. Don’t be so shy.

Be complacent and book-free, no longer, for the book is free and the time for complacency is nigh, oh ye of little MySpace.

Read the book. Spread the words. Review for the world. Read and Spread, oh ye who gather in the netnoverse of bloggy pals, Read and Spread.

Posted in Netnography, Qualitative Research Methods, Social Media, Technology, Marketing Research, Marketing News & Insights, Word of Mouth Marketing, Marketing Science | 1 Comment »