Is blue the new black? Why some people think Avatar is racist
I am back after the holidays. Christmas day was bracketed by breaking news on health care on Christmas Eve and the underpants bomber on Boxing Day, but for the last few days I have been enjoying some time with the family.
One of the best things we did was see Avatar. Stupendous. Exhilarating. Extraordinary. I never thought 3D could work. The technology is stunning. I admit I am something of a science fiction buff, but I think most people are going to be blown away by this film. Predictably, columnists who live to attack whatever is successful and put the counter-intuitive point of view are having a field day.
But the criticism that has intrigued me is the charge that the film is racist.
I have tried in writing this not to blow the plot, but inevitably there are some spoilers. For those who don't know already, the story centres on a conflict between greedy corporate human invaders and the planet's inhabitants, 10-foot tall, blue-skinned people with rather feline features and tails. One of many such blogs argues that "Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege."
With a certain accuracy critics have pointed out that all the "human" characters are played by white actors and all the blue, cat-like Na'vi are played by non-whites. With a degree of American insularity they also say that because they use bows and arrows and wear feathers they are "really" native Americans. This ignores tribal indigenous people from New Guinea to Brazil, so deliberately misses a wider point.
The debate in the US is conditioned by the long-running argument among sci-fi writers and fans about the "magical negro". It is a term coined by black critics who noted white authors often featured non-white characters possessed of a certain sort of natural wisdom, mystic powers, who play sidekick to the white hero and often sacrifice themselves for the central character. They are a variant on the much-older ideal of the "noble savage".
If I have understood correctly, the critics say this is demeaning because the character, who need not actually be black, but native American or some other ethnic group, acts only to help the whites central to the story, and isn't part of a racial group, doesn't have a back story, or a fully developed character but is essentially a plot device. I'd note that American fiction has quite often featured a "magic janitor" and I think the key is what the author perceives on a very basic level as otherness as much as race.
The term surfaced in the political arena during the last presidential elections when in the LA times David Ehrenstein suggested Barack Obama was a magical negro: "Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes."
It is a thoughtful article, disturbing for its unspoken assumption that Obama is a self-constructed stereotype, not a real person and that "authentic" black people behave in a certain way.
In any case the term was gleefully taken up by Obama's opponents and set to the tune of Puff the Magic Dragon. You might guess their purpose was not to advance post-structuralist criticism but to earn the licence to repeat the naughty word "negro" and make fun of the candidate.
Thank the powers, of whatever race, that no-one has suggested that any character in Avatar is "really" the president. Although I thought I spotted Donald Rumsfeld on the big screen. The criticism of Avatar is an extension of the "magical Negro" idea. Indeed at one level it is an inversion of it: "the magical Caucasian" who turns out to be an even nobler savage than the common and garden, bred-to-it variety. Tarzan, Lord of Greystokes, Lord of the Jungle has to be top of the tree in this game. The central complaint is that in Avatar it takes a white hero to lead the natives.
This seems to miss two points. The first is simply about the way narrative works. The critics' version of the film would be very dull. Bad people land on planet. Good people defeat them - virtuous but not much of a story arc. An emotional journey, learning and changing are better narrative. Raising age-old questions about whether it is better to be true to your values and your friends rather than your country (species) is more thought-provoking than most Hollywood blockbusters manage.
My second objection is more profound. I strongly believe the racial divide has been the driving force in American history, and continues to play a huge, and often under-discussed role in its politics. I am not one to underestimate its power.
But that doesn't mean everything is about that debate. One of the reasons I like sci-fi, apart from the escapism, is the way it explores political ideas, old and new. The film is actually a rather old-fashioned, liberal, morality tale. As in many futures imagined by authors over the last several decades the company has replaced the state as the agent of colonialism and greedy conquest. Then there is the mainstay of Hollywood morality, the underdog mounting a ferocious fight-back. Added to the mix is a healthy dose of new age Gaia-ism (Pandoraism?). The idea of weaker opponents fighting back against a military force with an apparently overwhelming technological superiority, aided by the enemy within, surely echoes not only Vietnam but conflicts much closer to us in time and space. Perhaps it is easier for American critics to think it is about race.
Oddly enough I read a rather subtler take on the idea of technology versus nature just a few days after seeing the film. My wife bought me Peter F Hamilton's Fallen Dragon for Christmas. It is much more compact and better written than his past sprawling space operas but equally packed with ideas. One chapter sees the company's military defeated in a way very familiar to viewers of Avatar. The twist is, the planetary defenders of Santa Chico are not aboriginal but come from elsewhere, post-humans genetically mutated into a state of harmony with the local flora and fauna, which are themselves itself genetically uplifted into a state of scientifically ennobled post savagery. The natives are originally from California. I always thought the West Coast was magic.
I’m Mark Mardell, the BBC's North America editor. These are my reflections on American politics, some thoughts on being a Brit living in the USA, and who knows what else? My 
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This film is trying to create a story of the American natives living in the south eastern region of the United States in the early-1800s, and is based on the idea of the native Americans, who lived on land rich with gold, being able to defeat the invaders who wanted to mine their gold. In real life, Andrew Jackson got the better of them, but this film wants the ending to be happy, not accurate.
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your objection that 'the critics version' of Avatar would be dull runs up against a major problem for me - the movie was pretty dull as it was. Once my eyes had gotten used to the wonderful animation stuff (which took about five minutes), I was left sitting through a story with far less charisma and complexity than a mid-70s Dr Who tale of colonialism versus niceness. The worst one could say about a hypothetical different version in which the bloke who's just been learning the ropes for three months doesn't show the natives how to do things is that it might be equally dull.
I didn't see the blue people as necessarily black, but the narrative was pretty colonialist and represents a lot of stories in which, as Joe Queenan says, Africans just sit around while good white people fight bad white people. The other thing with Avatar was that the bad guys were one dimensional too - there should be complaints from the military-industrial complex at being represented by such paper tigers.
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The movie Avatar could also have an association with India and Indian mythology.
The word 'avatar' is a sanskrit word used in Hinduism and refers to the incarnations of God into the physical world. The blue colour also reminds one of the Hindu 'gods' and heroes like Vishnu, Krishna, Rama who are normally depicted in blue colour.
So...maybe James Camaron had some aspects of Hinduism in his mind while making the movie.
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Miyao Miyazaki's less technologically advanced but also very beautifully-drawn anime 'Princess Mononoke' (1997) used the almost identical plot line in a more nuanced way which, rather than a simplistic and moralistic good-guy/bad-guy standoff, demonstrated that those who despoil have an internal logic at least as compelling and self-consistent as those who wish to preserve. Given the racially homogeneous Japanese culture, perhaps it is a clearer, less obstacle-strewn path to this insight than in a culture where racial stereotypes clearly still obtain.
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"Stupendous - Exhilarating - Extraordinary" - Special Effects.
Mindnumbingly simplistic, cliched, story.
Don't waste your time on analyzing tripe.
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I am back after the holidays.
The British holidays evidently. Americans went back to work on Monday, December 27th. No wonder the work ethic is more evident in America than it is in the United Kingdom.
Blogging about a film which not everyone has seen would be best left to the entertainment columns. And since those who live there are rather particular, the newspaper cited is The Los Angeles Times. As one of the great American news publications, like its East Coast counterpart, it deserves its full title. 'LA' indeed!
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There is nothing that can't be found to be at fault and whined about when one really wants to.
The majority of the 'whites' are the bad guys who ultimately take an inglorious beating with the survivors leaving in chains... the natives win! Then there is a healthy dose of inter-species love and the main man even chooses to give up his white, human form for one of the natives'... could there be any less white supremacy in the movie??? and of those who take the aliens' side, not all are caucasian - the helicopter pilot is played by hispanic Michelle Rodriguez (though admittedly she does kick the bucket) and the man on the inside is asian if I'm not mistaken.
On top of all that the film leaves you in doubt as to which side you are supposed to support, and that's with plenty of prominent nods to Vietnam, the Indian Wars and whatever else you choose to associate it with.
The bottom line is... it's a brilliant movie.
Oh, good article too ;>)
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I also thought the story was a very dumbed down version of the events in Fallen Dragon, glad to see I wasn't the only one...
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Mark, thanks for participating in the debate, it's definitely one worth having. However, apart from your appropriate remarks on racial tropes and stereotypes in media, I have to say I disagree with you.
Your first objection is a complete straw man. Do you really think that a narrative essentially the same as at least four movies I can think of right off the top of my head (Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai, Ferngully) would be better than *anything* else? Is there *no* other interesting point of view character possible? *No* other thematically potent path the film could have taken?
Furthermore your second objection undermines itself completely and is actually a little insulting. You argue that the "more profound" thematic scope of the film ought to be analysed, but reject analysis of racial themes? Acknowledge that it is your white privilege that allows you to say "Perhaps it is easier for American critics to think it is about race." (And it is not only critics but everyday viewers that are objecting, too, you know).
Finally, what you you ultimately want to say about Avatar? So, the film is maybe a little bit racist, but not really, and I really liked it and the effects were totally awesome? We need to ask ourselves why Cameron et al, after years and years of consideration, made the narrative and production choices they did. This kind of thing shouldn't be good enough.
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8. David Cunard:
Blue Meanie!
I'm digesting the 'magic janitor', 'magical Caucasian', 'self-constructed stereotype' and 'Pandora-ism' ideas, not having seen the film, and, to be honest, not likely to, until it turns up on the telly, not having much interest. (I could bring in Iain M Banks's 'Culture' novels though. . .It's often seemed to me that American sci-fi, novels or film, right back to the fifties, has represented either American fears or wish-fulfilment of the American social psyche, and generally in a direction I don't care for. Much as the British 'Invasion' novels of the late 1800's and early 1900's traded on cultural fear. And we know where that led. . .)
There's a lot of meat in there if you think about it. I was very struck by loblollyboy's point, too.
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I really enjoyed this Hollywood film because, for once, the bad guys weren't stereotyped English.
It was nasty Yanks suppressing the natives.
Next movie by Mr Cameron please - nasty Yanks suppressing the loyalist colonists of British North America?
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The comment that all humans were played by white actors is a false one and so falls the racist idea. Granted that the Aliens were all seemingly non white actors. The chopper pilot, Trudy was played by a Latina. The sympathetic scientist, Dr. Patel, was played by a South Asian. And there was a host of other races in at least the shot of the "fight terror with terror" Rumsfeld speach. But I agree race WAS a (THE) issue in the film, and was a stark reminder of how white Westerners have taken what they wanted from "savages" throughout modern history.
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Even Alvin of the Chipmunks has brilliant white molars, not so the Na'vi all gloriously yellow, well done James! Not so well done with Jake using a machine gun in the final battle, surely it would have been better using native cunning and strategem to overcome technology? We were left wondering if he hung on to the rest of the 'white man's guns after they left and used them to become the dominant power on the (paradise) planet?
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I personally ignored all the hype about their being hugh political messages within the film but by the end of the film, had no choice to reflect on the obvious. Being English and being married to an American whilst living in America, is trying at most times. This film was a fine example as to why America has a damaged reputaion throughout the world. They want someting, they take it and find any reason possible to back up their doing so. It actually made me take a deep long think as to who is the bad guys and who are the good guys in the middle east right now.
Sure they have very strange ideals out there and ones that I cant conform to agreeing with. I beg the question though...did we bother to take the time in getting to know them and reason with them on an even level? No...america jumped in with size 9 wellies and pulled its allies with them.
There is good and bad in all races and cultures but what does fighting solve? It certainly made me think twice about the war and our motives behind it. It also left the retorical question in my head. Will we ever learn that fighting solves nothing?
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To think Avatar is racist you must yourself be inherently racist to try and dig up offence where in reality there is none.
As such, anyone suggesting the film is racist is simply not worth listening to, as anyone that is racist is simply not worth listening to.
Leave the racists, the bigots to wallow in their own misery and ignore them. The rest of us can continue to just enjoy the film for what it is, a beautiful masterpiece.
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As long as there is different races, there will be difference in our appearances. Is the races really important here or the values that our future holds? Just from this article, I can see that this film has left many people to associate the film with many different things. There is nothing right or wrong here, just critics. However, is it not true that unless we are racist, we will look at the values of the story than the skin color or races of the character?
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I enjoyed your blog, Mark. Avatar is fiction - and the story itself is quite simplistic - but it clearly touches on significant issues that are worth exploring.
Films may be primarily entertainment, but given their emotional power and their wide audience they can effect real change - for better or worse - and so are worthy of debate.
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Please stop giving these people the time of day.....the world is changing and while we allow these people to continually swing the racist bat the world will never be allowed to move on enlightened...
in todays world these warriors of racism detecting it in every form of media around the world and every aspects of our lives have become the biggest racists in existence...they now are the ones we must stop in their tracks.
it is counter productive and only causes division within our society....holding back future generations from living as our previous generations fought to make possible....
don't validation their discrimination.
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Do they have no other problems when they go into the Cinema? This US dance around political correctness goes more beserk by the day...
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Looked to me like Cameron air-lifted the machinery, characters (particularly glad to see Vasquez back again)and Western-corporate-greed sub-plot from 'Aliens' and then dropped it all into Pocahontas. And it certainly did feel uncomfortable to see the white(blue)guy riding like a God on the scary dragon to lead the naieve, good-hearted blue people to freedom. Tellingly, he led with grenades and a gun rather than a bow and arrow.
So the lesson seems to be, even though you've got the planet on your side you blue guys are stuffed without our weapons and a nice Godlike white guy. Still, the effects were cool.
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Ummm........... this is a movie !! Entertainment. Who thought they were watching a documentary??? Geez.
Anyway....... good movie, good entertainment, excellent special effects. Thoroughly enjoyed by plenty
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I sort off have a few objections about this article really, firstly it now seems obvious due to the world wide fame and popularity of Avatar theres going to be a far greater number of interpretations about James Camerons work. However it seems to be because of that, many people who are not movie buffs and big budget hollywood extravaganzas will more or less be the extent of there Film watching are going to comment on the film introducing ideas[no matter how far removed] such as race basicaly because it gives them a chance to be heard as they introduce a seperate political agenda.
Hijacking the popularity of something to introduce un related political issues is pretty lame in all honesty. And thats basicaly exactly what is happening.
Avatar seemd to me to be pretty much a remake of Dances With Wolves but in ultra shiny uber HD 3D whatever and pew pew action. And yes the paralles between "savages" and the white man is pretty obvious, but all that is a total illusion and is simply a sociological by product of competition for resources, money, greed etc. Sure the Native Americans took it pretty tight from Europeans and Americans alike, i think Avatar does well in pointing this out but the fact is it was never a racial thing, Cameron does well to highlite that, and i sinceraly hope people will begin to understand there enviroment a little bit better when they realise nobody gives a shit what colour you are, they just care wether or not you might have something they need/want, clowns who write articles such as this make it a racial issue.
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That was a very good analysis of the movie, and many people seem to be able to compare the storyline to numerous racial, ethnic, and historical equivilants. However, being a Sci/Fi buff myself....can't the story, no matter how often repeated, also be about good overcoming overwhelming odds? I see it repeated time and time again, where our protagonist triumps in an almost unwinnable situation over the forces of evil. Usually they motivate the viewers to hate the evil forces by watching the villians perform various unspeakable acts, usually on someone dear to our hero. I haven't seem Avatar yet, but PLEASE...just enjoy a good movie without disecting it.
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Its a film. Just leave it at that. We all enjoyed the technology and it was innovative. I agree with Sriram's comment that it might have been inspired from Indian mythology. The characters wore a smear on their faces, which closely resembles the smear which the hindu vaishnavaites wear (also called namam). And most of the hymns and prayers also seem to have been influenced from India. The color blue again is the color or Lord Vishnu and the characters riding an bird like creature is also symbolic with indian mythology.
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22. At 08:41am on 04 Jan 2010, alfalfa wrote:
"So the lesson seems to be, even though you've got the planet on your side you blue guys are stuffed without our weapons and a nice Godlike white guy."
Obviously the day has not yet arrived when filmgoers can identify with 'winners' or protagonists who have green scales and spiky bits in a Hollywood film. From the semiotic point of view, the tails of the 'Blues' bother me a bit.
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"Stupendous. Exhilarating. Extraordinary."
I was most intrigued by your article until these words. I thought this was one of the worst, stupid films I had seen. At one point I took off my 3D glasses and discovered that the film wasn't worse in 2D. It also did not in any way look real. The entire film looks like a cartoon.
In addition the story is pathetic, the lines are dull, and all the usual ingredients that make a piece of art, rather than a piece of populist junk, are missing. The fact that this idiotic product is making so much money is an indication of something.
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It wasn't the 'nature loving natives need godlike white male to save them' that I objected to quite as much as the point that 'our hero' was as thick as a brick.
Human scientists have spent years studying the place? Yup, but a marine corporal who dropped out of college is going to learn more about the place in two months flat. Pandorans are expert in living in their world? Yup, but someone with two months training is going to save them. Work hard, go to college and get a good job? Yup, but you're going to end up working for an evil corporate entity.
Broadly, education in Avatar is either bad or ineffectual. What you really need to save the world is a marine nicknamed 'moron' who dropped out of college.
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Yawn.
It seems the only growth industry these days is being offended. Sometimes a film is just a film, no?
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I haven’t seen the film yet, but come on it is just a film the over analysis seems a bit much. White capitalist imperialism trying to destroy a new environment and the society of natives who live in harmony with that environment, not exactly a new idea, as for those moaning that Cameron does not deliver a thought provoking film, can someone point to a Cameron film that does? I watch Cameron films because of the escapism, switching off a part of my brain to watch the big explosions, not to widen my social/cerebral experience.
It seems sad to me that certain critics feel the need to find hidden meaning in things, sometimes a film or book is just a story there is no higher meaning to it. For the most part if you want thought provoking science fiction you have to read it, the possible recent exceptions being District 9 and Moon.
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Coming from the Middle East and being a Palestinian, I felt that the movie is a reference to all the trouble coming from the other side of our world...
When the captain calls the Na'vi (natives) terrorists, it is easily compared to the fact that Middle Eastern people were also called terrorist for fighting for their land...just like the Na'vi’s
The attack on the natives sacred trees resembled the attack on the most sacred land to all religions, Palestine, 60years ago
I think the reason an “American" saved the day is just more propaganda, its just a way of saying " hey, don’t fight us...we ruined your land, killed your women and children, haunted your every dream... but we are there for you and solve the “Middle East crisis"
How typical.
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8. At 06:52am on 04 Jan 2010, David Cunard wrote:
I am back after the holidays.
The British holidays evidently. Americans went back to work on Monday, December 27th. No wonder the work ethic is more evident in America than it is in the United Kingdom.
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is the calendar different in America, as i understood the 27th December was a Sunday everywhere else in the world?!
But i digress, some (like myself) were back in the office last week, whilst many chose to spend longer with their families by taking annual leave. It was not a extended holiday for everyone. So please keep your general comment on the lack of work ethic in the UK to yourself. Generalising like that does no-one any good.
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Just a quick comment:
The 'company military' in many ways predated nations carrying out empire building. The British East India company with its massive army is the clearest example (and it was only after they part-caused the Indian mutiny that Britain as a nation took over India) but Cecil Rhodes in Africa, the Opium-Tea traders in China, the US Rail & Mining companies opening up the west and even the early explorers of the new world like Columbus, Cortez etc were primarily working for themselves with Royal sponsorship rather than state employees.
This race issue is nothing new. George Lucas was accussed of racism several times over the Star Wars films as all the main characters were white and the evil guy was "black". As a result we got the wafer thin Lando Carissian written in hastily to the later movies to have a token black hero.
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In Reply to David Cunard
If it wasn't for our work ethic, modern America wouldn't exist. Which would be a good thing, considering the misuse of your super power status in the last few decades.
Enjoy the stress related illness's that will come with your 24 hour work ethic, poor diet and family neglect.
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As an African writing from Kenya Im so sick and tired of the Noble native theme ,they assumption the natives were living without a trouble in the their world until the whiteman shows up is non sense ,by all accounts life for the natives wasnt at all rosy with the tribal wars,disease,slavery amongst themselves and as for being in harmony with nature is another fallacy if we had the same technical know how we probably would have done as much damage if not more to the environment than the whiteman, (its just human nature to expand and exploit)
so just go and enjoy the movie without guilt
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Is it just me or did Jake Sully in his Na'vi form look like a young Mel Gibson? The fact that he was blue didn't help either.
The only surprise was that, in the pre-battle speech, he didn't finish with "They may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!"
Loved the film and the racism watch should get over themselves ...
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I do find this very sad. Yet another Racist dissection of life.I'm sure that every aspect of life could be given this sort of scrutiny eg most peoples circles of friends probably don't include statisically balanced mixes of races and genders. I confess to not having seen the film yet, but will predict that it will be a very entertaining show made by Americans and absolutly chock full of American values-good and bad. Any time now there will be another British film full of British values and no doubt some Bollywood productions with a distinct flavour of their own. Interestingly no-one will find any racist undertones in those. I for one intend to ignore the doom merchants and enjoy the magical journey this life brings to us.
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Avatar may be the first film that has come out recently that has an anti U.S Miilitary and anti U.S policy thene that is commercialy sucessful.
I think that is more true to the movie than a racial divide.
We also saw that to some extent in the second Star Wars trilogy.
Although there is a racial divide in the U.S, european commentators and people who benfit by promoting (Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton)exagerate tremendously.
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#8. Most Brits went back on Tuesday the 29th. Xmas and Boxing day are bank holidays. As Boxing day was a Sat the following Monday was a bank holiday in Lieu. You have a day off for Thanksgiving, we don't.
As for your arrogance about 'US work ethic' Brits work some of the longest hours in the world and on average are some of the most productive workers in the world. Our Japanese owned car factories (like Nissan in Sunderland) are more efficient and productive than the Nissan factories in Japan. If Detroit copied our practices you might still have an auto industry. The idea that we sit around all day on strike drinking tea hasn't been true since the early 1970's (i.e before my life time)
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A Love Supreme (*)
Blue Nile (**)
(*)=John Coltrane
(**)=Alice Coltrane
The Nile dominates Khartoum and here the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet and merge in what Arab poets call 'the longest kiss in history'. ...
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This is Fern Gully... isn't it!?
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I saw this movie yesterday with my ten year old son. The 3D graphics were very good indeed but we were basically mostly watching a very clever (and very expensive) cartoon. I love good intelligent Sci-Fi but this wasn't it. I thought the film was just Dances With Wolves in space. I did think that the film had been done before but it never crossed my mind that this was racist at all. Poor and lazy scriptwriting but not racist.
My son loved it though which shows the level it should be viewed at.
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I just saw Avatar and would like to comment. Living more than 8 years in Asia,I've acquired a far different view toward alien cultures than I had previously in my home country the USA. It's not simply just about what's right or wrong. There's much written about advanced outsiders invading "primitive" cultures, exploiting their resources and in the process, destroy environment, negatively impacting host societies without need to understand or appreciate their culture. 'Others' won't continue to exist for long."Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad is an example. What struck me,is the behavior and language of the white forces (no others need apply)is contemporary military jargon that rings consistent with behaviors today and our collective pasts,to include also Nazis. Beyond the corporate greed, military might, there's an absence of a moral compass or compassion for indigenous people. A particular historical parallel, is the USA's decimation of Native Americans, first colonizing then by exploiting their country,(i.e., Pandora).I recognized a familiar resemblance, although other negative subtexts are in this film. An old caveat: military might doesn't determine who is right, only who is left. At the end of the day, we should ask ourselves, what have we really achieved for the better. Just simple stuff like that.
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I haven't seen the movie (though I would like to) but would like to comment. That the movie is like this or that movie, from the Lion King to Braveheart(bravo for Ferngully btw), according to Christopher Booker there are only seven basic plots anyway so difficult to make something which is nothing like anything else. Since when have Will Smith, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson and a host of other actors been 'the magic negro'?
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p.s. Holidays in the US are far more frequent than in the UK, and a weekend is truly a weekend. Though to be fair the annual holiday entitlement is only two weeks. (now when did I last have two weeks together? um, 2001)
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Hello,
I would like to first state that I am a Caucasian. I have been happily married to an African American woman for the last 5 years. Since then I have found out many things like African Americans do not like the word “Negro” that much and would preferred to be called African Americans. I guess it sounds too much like the other “n-word”.
At first I would like to say that I thought that the film was done beautifully and I can see why some people did not see anything racist in the film. I also would have seen anything racist, if it was not for my wife, who opened my eyes to the bombardment of racial stereotypes given to the public from Hollywood. Hollywood usually tries to show to the world that Caucasians are superior, that American Indians are savages that South Americans are drug dealers that Asian people are small, talk funny and are good in martial arts and that African Americans are no more than public servants. I know that there are very few films that do not show minorities in this light and that we have become accustomed to Hollywood’s racist ideology of people within certain races and gender for that fact. So the next time you watch a film from Hollywood, see if the minorities represented in the film meet those of which I noted before.
Make no mistake about it the film coming from Hollywood are racist and sexist.
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As in many futures imagined by authors over the last several decades the company has replaced the state as the agent of colonialism and greedy conquest.
Er, I don't suppose you've ever heard of the East India Company, have you? Or the Virginia Company? Most of the colonialism of the past was carried out by companies under nominal authority of the state.
I thought it was a good movie, even if it was a bit predictable. And if people are describing it as racist then Mark is quite right to report that fact. Americans seem to have an obsession with racial identity that outsiders often find quite unnerving. It's his job to tell us what's going on over there. Well done, Mark.
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The whole point is that the Navi can plug into nature like we plug into the internet and the greedy acquisitive corporates care only about 'unobtanium' a nod to utopia as a noun - unobtanium is a metaphor for the endless consumption of consumerism - you can never have enough. Slightly ironic in the most expensive (and fastest grossing) movie ever made.
It is interesting that so many people identify with the themes of the film but from a UK perspective I didn't see race as an issue and I'm wondering if people saw the same film if they think race was the focus of the movie. Firstly there are different 'races' of Navi - not delineated by skin colour but not all human races are either. Next there are a wide variety of skin colours among the humans. The only racism that happens gives background to the conflict (the Navi are profoundly racist towards the protagonist on first contact with him but forbear because of a spiritual intervention) but is demonstrably against their interests.
Spoiler alert!
The end of the movie all the humans die, one tries to become Navi but fails another becomes Navi by becoming one with nature, the non-combatants are packed off to 'their dying planet' - presumably to die. The final battle in the movie is not won by Navi or humans or even by the half Navi half Human using a combination of techniques but by the intervention of nature and it is an unusual planet which has evolved such that Navi can talk to 'nature'. He isn't Tarzan, he doesn't call the beasts to his aid, they come because it is in their interests to do so.
The message of the film is that if humans want to avoid destruction by the forces of nature then they must change but that the change will bring about release from meaningless pursuit (of unobtanium) and turn us from cripples to beautiful giants.
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I completely agree with Dahlia (comment 32). After watching the movie with my sister, she made a similar comment saying 'this is how the Palentians must have felt'. I didn't think much of it at the time as I was so wowed by the special effects and nursing a headache from watching a 3-hour long movie in 3-D glasses over my spectacles, but I do agree with her now. Not just the Palenstians, but Afghanis, Africans, Pakistanis,Indians,etc-any nation who has been 'colonized' by another aggressive nation.I guess the Na'vis were lucky to overcome their oppressors - I wonder if the movie would rake in over $350 Million if the ending had been abit more realistic?
Why must the Americans feel the need to make everyone like them?
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ref #31
It seems sad to me that certain critics feel the need to find hidden meaning in things, sometimes a film or book is just a story there is no higher meaning to it. For the most part if you want thought provoking science fiction you have to read it, the possible recent exceptions being District 9 and Moon.
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I agree great science fiction literature can't be done effectivly as a movie. Fantasy yes. Sci-Fi no. Go no further than Dune.
I would argue the best electronic media for in depth Science Fiction is telvision, especially Star Trek and in spite of Russell Davies Doctor Who
A point on Cameron his movies make money but are not great movies. Titanic was not a great movie but made tons of money.
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Racist ? Interesting. I happen to know one of the "models" that were used for the "blue-skinned people" and she is definitely white. So how can a "blue-skinned person" modeled on a caucasian female with voice over by a "non white actor" be racist.
Would it have been less racist to have a Green-skinned person modeled on a non white actor with a caucasian female voice over ?
Maybe they should have used Orange-skinned people modeled on blue people with violet skinned person voice over. Or would that be racist towards the Orange, Blue or violet person ?
Agreed the story was somewhat simplistic, but the point here is its a "story" being told in what can be described as ground breaking cinematography. No one complained that there was racism when the Star Wars films were made.
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#47. The problem is that Hollywood films are made for the lowest common denominator audience. The plots are generally very black & white (no pun intended) and the stories extremely simple.
Its bad business to depict your own target market (which in the US are youngish lower middle class white's) as the bad guys hence Hollywood heroes are normally white, normally youngish & rarely too rich. That means the bad guy has to be foreign... until 9/11 the terrorist/criminal was usually English or at least European. Now Arabs are the favoured bad guy although there's still plenty of room for evil upper class english (who are usually whiter than the hero so the racism angle doesn't play out).
Hollywood CAN do films that don't comply with simple stereotypes although the director needs to have serious clout to get away with it and the film is usually targetted at a slightly different audience. Spielbergs 'Schindlers list' or 'Amistad' or Costners 'Dances with Wolves' are good examples. The fact that in Avatar the bad guys are White is something that should be welcomed as it does mark a change.
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9. At 09:27am on 04 Jan 2010, Pip of London wrote:
"It wasn't the 'nature loving natives need godlike white male to save them' that I objected to quite as much as the point that 'our hero' was as thick as a brick. . . What you really need to save the world is a marine nicknamed 'moron' who dropped out of college."
I have wondered sometimes if that's how the Pentagon really thinks . . .
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#52 Actually lots of people complained about racism when Star Wars was made. Lucas's theatres were picketed and he had to add Lando Carissian in at the last minute as a 'black hero'. He was again criticised for episode one because Ja-Ja Binks talked like a stereotypical 1800's black man.
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I think it's great movie. Interestingly, I did not see any racial context or issue. If at all we want to find some "real-life comparison" >> to me, it feels more like a parallel to continuous destruction of the Amazonian rainforest by greedy companies, pushing tribes out of their natural habitat. The only problem seems to be there is no "magic" available to stop it...
To the US, UK and any other workaholics: help me to understand what's so good about going back to the office earlier than others? To spend less time with your family?
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I have watched the movie Avatar here in the Philippines, and I consider the story and plot of it to be a modernised or futurised version of an ancient African black tribal story or myth...
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When watching this movie, it reminded me a lot of the imperialism by European countries until mid 20th century, when they colinized the African nations plus current major top western countries that somehow still have power over other countries. I felt like the invadors in the movie "Avatar" were described as then-Europeans from the 20C and current Westerners and the Navis as the then-Africans and the people from ruled countries (incl. the natives). This film rather gave me the impression that the director wants to tell us to rethink about ruling over the weak ones only because some/we are superior than the others and make us judge on our/their behavior.
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Well, in Russia "Avatar"'s storyline is mainly interpretated as a play (and a bit satir) on the USA merciless and respect-lacking attitude to other countries, which they perceive only as economic resource. There are many comments like "finally, at least some of them understood what they are doing!". From famous Russian sci-fi writer Sergei Lukianenko, for example.
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26. At 09:03am on 04 Jan 2010, sesh wrote:
"Its a film. Just leave it at that. We all enjoyed the technology and it was innovative. I agree with Sriram's comment that it might have been inspired from Indian mythology."
Don't think you can 'just leave it at that'. Don't you think these resemblances are interesting, considering there's been so much in the US about, basically, "India being our newest best friends and allies"? There's so often a subtext in Hollywood films. Or exemplars of the 'zeitgeist', really, even if usually rather short-lived, if the mods will let me use a word we don't have an equivalent for in English. Maybe Umberto Eco or someone like him has written about it.
What was that silly one where the baddy was a Pharoah and the 'Egyptians' all got nuked? I thought that was rather odd imagery to pick on; sorry I can't remember what it was called, I was made to sit through the stupid thing when a friend wanted to show off his home cinema once.
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#55 I remember seeing Star Wars and enjoying the "Story". I don't pay much attention or credence to the "criticism".
If people have to label Lando Carissian as a 'black hero', or Jar-Jar Binks as having a Jamaican Accent then they are reading to much into a story that is being told. Lando Carissian was simply a hero and Jar-Jar Binks was...well an alien so what voice should he have had, Cockney ?
As George Lucas said "allegations say more about the people making the claims than they do about his films"
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This is a $500m, 3 hour long version of fern gully (75 minutes long but granted not in 3D).
As to those pointing the finger at the US, let's not forget the English, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, Belgians etc etc. are all guilty of similar plots throughout history. For me the only racism in this film is that the bad guys are all American, surely Mr Cameron could have spread some of the blame to an International force of mercenaries - of at least let Sam Worthington speak in an Australian accent....
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
48. At 10:27am on 04 Jan 2010, TaiwanChallenges wrote:
"As in many futures imagined by authors over the last several decades the company has replaced the state as the agent of colonialism and greedy conquest.
Er, I don't suppose you've ever heard of the East India Company, have you? Or the Virginia Company? Most of the colonialism of the past was carried out by companies under nominal authority of the state."
Yes, very 18th century . . .Don't forget the Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese ones. Most went bust in the end, or lost money right at the beginning even . . .But what I suspect informs the American aspect of this is more United Fruit, GE and IBM of the 20th century than the Joint Venture companies of Europe of the 16th-19th.
(I do keep wondering why 'Pirates of the Caribbean' has trouble with the East India Company rather than the Royal Navy, though.)
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Viewers who find Hollywood films too biased should better try other countries cinemas, maybe there you will find less racism and higher entertainment values. I doubt it but you can always try...
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When i saw the headline i wondered if i had seen the same Avatar film that seems to have caused claims of racism. I did wonder if a Republican minded American had become uncomfortable with the depiction of a seemingly American force being portrayed in the war mongering light of the film. To me Avatar was a direct parody of American activities in the Middle East. I can't see where that would cause offence though unless the film had celebrated this connection (it didn't).
Although visually stunning, this alone doesn't make a great film and certainly enjoyable tho it was, the plot was fairly predictable from an early stage. Regardless of the origins of the word Avatar, i'm sure the majority of younger veiwers would associate it with the picture used to represent yourself on internet messenger programs and online gaming platforms and indeed, within the film the human characters represent themselves with their own blue skinned avatars to interact with the planet's natives.
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Magic – Dr Who is made for kids, even if most of those kids happen to be in their 30’s these days. It has never really been hard Sci-Fi (that is based rigidly on actual science), but then again neither was Star Trek. I have more time for DW that ST, maybe because I grew up with DW, maybe because I never bought into ST’s semi-utopian vision.
I agree with you about Cameron’s flicks, Terminator is a bit of a classic but not really sure why. I like the film, but it is just a monster chasing a woman around for an hour and a half! As for Titanic, it is one of those films I am proud never to have seen, that and Pearl Harbour.
I am not sure about Fantasy being better on celluloid, other than the LotR trilogy hard to think of a decent fantasy film, mean Krull is a guilty pleasure but it is a terrible film only saved by childhood memories or watching at the cinema (in the good old days before the multiplexes)!
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If Pandora were Britain then the indigenous population would no doubt be forced to pay additional taxes to welcome the blue aliens, put them up in swanky houses on Park Lane FOC, give them great benefits and then sit there while they erode our culture and refuse to learn the language.
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People may associate the plot of 'Avatar' or any movie, for that matter, with anything that goes on or had happened in the world, and see some resemblance. I don't think the producers intend any racism only entertainment, and as "lesbur65" wrote:
... good movie, good entertainment, excellent special effects. Thoroughly enjoyed by plenty
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I miss ur blogging on the EU. Happy New Year.
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Surayoucantbeserious – Ummm if Pandora was Britain then we would be the indigenous blue alien population! I know you were trying to make an ‘enlightened’ social comment about modern Britain, but try thinking it through for a millisecond. Also maybe posting a comment on the film, the points raised or the US might have been a tad more appropriate?
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by my estimates it's monday morning 11:40 am
and some bbc clown is sending
threatening emails
and rejecting published posts
a white mans heaven
is a black mans hell
I can't understand people
who are racist to children
Comments posted to BBC blogs may be removed if they are seen to be repeated postings of the same or similar messages (referred to as 'spam') or if they contain no content, or contain content that is unreadable. Your content has been removed for this reason.
Subject:
Unstable equilibrium in 2010
Posting:
Beat Down The Fence (*)
(*)=Quench Aid
Subject:
Is blue the new black? Why some people think Avatar is racist
Posting:
Soul Sister (*)
(*)=The Gaylads
Baby I'm A Want You (**)
(**)=John Holt
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Lets hear it from another
10 year old child
called (*)=Little Harry
Wicked And Wild (*)
so me wicked so me wicked so me wild
tell you dem lyrics so versatile
me can't take the soya bean oil
me prefer the coconut oil
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71. D R Murrell:
I don't think that comment was particularly 'enlightened'. If we had colour posting, I think it would have come out green . . .
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"The British holidays evidently. Americans went back to work on Monday, December 27th. No wonder the work ethic is more evident in America than it is in the United Kingdom.
Blogging about a film which not everyone has seen would be best left to the entertainment columns. And since those who live there are rather particular, the newspaper cited is The Los Angeles Times. As one of the great American news publications, like its East Coast counterpart, it deserves its full title. 'LA' indeed!"
I felt the need to comment on David's rant above, though some of you already have and believe David is an American. As an American, one who used to work for the LA Times (perfectly acceptable btw) David, you sound more like a Brit who has a romantic idea (and misguided) of Americans and the U.S.
First, as I mentioned, The LA Times refers to itself that way and has for donkey's years. No one refers to the New York Times that way (i.e., the NY Times), so...er...that wouldn't work. I don't know why, perhaps because New York is two syllables and Los Angeles is four, thus the need to shorten it a bit. I'm sure you could look it up, but anyhow.
As for the LA Times being a great American institution, I would agree that it was once, but the Trib (that's the Chicago Tribune to you David) bought it in the 90s, partly because it was suffering financially, so I would argue that it still is a great institution.
And finally, many Americans routinely take the two weeks off over Christmas and New Year, though of course, those who have run out of their meager vacation time might not be able to. As someone who has worked in both countries, although the extra month of vacation time gets a bit frustrating when you are trying to hire someone in the UK to get something done for you, I think it allows a person to have a bit of a life, and makes them more productive over the course of the year.
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Mitchell Ortiz wrote: "...and is based on the idea of the native Americans, who lived on land rich with gold, being able to defeat the invaders who wanted to mine their gold. In real life, Andrew Jackson got the better of them, but this film wants the ending to be happy, not accurate."
In "real life" most of the land that was to become the country America was actually uninhabited so while it must be accepted that injustices occurred against American Indians that fact must also be accepted, including that many injustices also occurred against innocent settlers and amongst Indian tribes, to include land grabs.
Another fact that must be accepted, unless the words American and native have a new liberal meaning, is that a "native American" is simply anyone born in the country America. One does not have to be of Indian descent.
People need to realize how silly they sound using such a term while excluding anyone that is of non-Indian descent. It is also very disrespectful and racist to many other excluded native Americans, and rightly so.
Enough with the insane liberal white man's guilt and illogical political correctness already!
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#61. I totally agree. I see no racism in the Star Wars films either. The fact that a black man voiced Vadar was simply because James Earl Jones has a hell of voice and sounds much better than Dave Prouce's broad Bristol. Lando was a weak character and Jar-Jar Binks an abomination (and not because of his voice either) but sadly the fact remained that a lot of people DID try to claim racism & DID protest outside the theatres when the movie opened. The internet tends to fuel this sort of nonsense and people are very selective about what they choose to notice. I can think of a few Hollywood movies that had decent black Presidents well before it really happened (Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact for starters) but positive depictions of black characters are normally ignored.
#68 I think you'll find the foreigners who live on Park Lane probably pay a hell of a lot more taxes than you do. As most of them own Saudi Arabia and Russia they can afford too. My Polish dentist and Bangladeshi GP certainly pay more in than I do. I know the BNP have heavily infiltrated the BBC website but trying to make cheap polictical points about blue asylum seakers must be a new low.
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TaiwanChallenges wrote:
"Americans seem to have an obsession with racial identity that outsiders often find quite unnerving."
Also unnerving is that skin colour is used synonomously with "race" which in itself is a very arguable notion.
A Setswana chief once commented to me that "... whites are so conceited that they are even conceited about how nasty they are." He continued, "They came in my grandfather's time, they left in my father's time. We've had droughts that lasted longer."
BTW Native Americans won most of their encounters with colonialists. They were on average a lot bigger and stronger than the runty ill-fed economic refugees from europe. Smallpox destroyed them. -- Spaghetti westerns are not a reliable source of historical fact :-)
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I found that the story telling aspects of the movie "Avatar" sat quite well with me.
We have the "noble savage" story, the "good vs evil" story, there is also the main character over comming personal challenges both in the "waking world" and the "dream world" in which he is starting to prefer. There are other stories that make up the world of Avatar one only has to look for them.
With todays political climate ( yes there is one ) any self-styled journalist/blogger/columinist/pundit, or talking head can point their finger and cry out "racist" on just about anything. I find this practice boring because it is self serving and intellectually vacant. Once I find such places I do avoid them when I can, but the world is full of prejudices and the people who create them.
My goodness isn't that "Profiling"? Some people have too much time on their hands.
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bboyben wrote: "The bottom line is... it's a brilliant movie."
No, it's all about twisted liberal cliches, whites man's guilt and ideology.
The only thing that has determined the success for this movie are the special effects, period.
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I think South Park described the movie accurately when they called it 'Dances with Smurfs'
Are Smurfs racist now?
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Squirrelist – I was trying to be kind, I had to self edit myself or risk my response to Surablahblahblah being modded out. By the way anyone know what the hell Sofa King is going on about? I can access the links from work and so from here it just seems random!
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I haven't seen the movie yet, but I can say in the Age of Obama everything here in the U.S. has become about race. If you don't like the idea of universal healthcare, you're a racist. If you don't like the bailouts and stimulus packages, you're a racist. If you disagree with Obama on anything, you're a racist. This has become the easy way out for people to avoid debate and just demonize anyone who doesn't agree with you.
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Finally someone said it: "columnists who live to attack whatever is successful and put the counter-intuitive point of view are having a field day." Brilliant.
About the race nonsense - as a (Central) European, I find the constant allusions to race in Anglo-Saxon discourse (used to be just American, but it's spreading like a virus) extremely annoying and... well, racist. Not everything is about people's skin colour or ethnic origin and constant looking for such allusions is bordering on racist obsession. I am now using the term "racist" not in the very broad sense in present-day English (where it means pretty much anything the speaker wants), but in the 'continental' sense - a belief that minor biological differences somehow dictate people's behaviour, intelligence, culture, etc.
I keep hearing about how enlightened the Americans are ("look, we elected a black man as the President, worship us!"), how they moved past the petty ethnic squabbling that allegedly plagues Europe to this day, but what I see are deep national complexes, insecurities and almost pathological obsession with race, which is of course fiercely denied by most Americans.
Trying to interpret a film as some sort of race allegory is just pathetic and the critics who do that should perhaps get a therapy.
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Just remember, it may have been the white man who 'saved the day' but it was the white man that made the problems in the first place. So to be honest, if it was a racial issue, shouldn't they be upset?
I don't think so, the plot was a off this planet, the plot is much thicker than and supercedes any racial issues, the clear message was 'Change or face peril'.
The fact in the film that we tried to consume and intigrate our technology into another planet/moon with no discretion for any of it's inhabitants, basically invading it and calling it our own because it harbours everything we need, resonates to me the story of human activity on Earth.
If the story was underwritten with other ploys or messages this was it! The film has been delivered at exactly the right time, as the message being told today is more urgent and important than ever.
Today we still kill and ravage the planet and it's life, taking what we want with no-one else to think about. But climate change has made us think twice about how we conduct ourselves, and realise like in Avatar, that life and nature have a naturally entwined relationship and balance.
Great film, Great message
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#83. Didn't Bush say 'you're either with us or against us'? If you disagree with Obama you're racist. If you disagree with the Bush-ites then you're 'Un-American'..... which I believe was also a Senate commitee back in the 1950's which silenced debate by labelling anyone who disagreed 'a communist'.
There's nothing new about Obama or his people. The label has just changed a little.
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What is wrong with this world? Can't anyone take some popcorn to a seat in the movie theater and sit down and just enjoy a movie? Are we all so bruised in our minds that this simple task has turned into racism, negativity and evil thoughts...Wake up and smell the roses world, WHERE IS PEACE OF MIND ANYMORE...is this what we have taught our children?
Life is too short and Avatar is just a fantasy movie, not made to offend but to open your mind to good endless possibilities, like healing the sick,living together in harmony and enjoying nature, a gift to us all..
Diamond Lil NY USA
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Dan wrote: "I personally ignored all the hype about their being hugh political messages within the film but by the end of the film, had no choice to reflect on the obvious. Being English and being married to an American whilst living in America, is trying at most times. This film was a fine example as to why America has a damaged reputaion throughout the world. They want someting, they take it and find any reason possible to back up their doing so."
I guess that would explain why America kept Europe and Japan after WWII? And why they let the Philippines go? Etc, etc, etc?
Outside of some obvious examples of Indian land grabs America hasn't conquered any other country and continued to possess it.
As for American land, as I previous said in another post most of the lands that were to become the country America were actually uninhabited, even if you go by the highest estimated numbers of Indians at the time of colonization.
And if you are going to try and condemn those land grabs against Indians you need to also condemn the land grabs amongst Indian tribes. Or is it simply a matter of skin color or who was victorious?
Why is it "trying at most times" living in America? Surely if you can respect American's right to choose how they live their lives in their own country, a country that, by the way, takes a very positive and friendly view towards British people, at least for now, then I don't see why you would have any problems.
Thing is, in my opinion, you apparently have some chips on your shoulder when it comes to America. Your remarks and statement like below clearly points to that.
"Sure they have very strange ideals out there and ones that I cant conform to agreeing with."
You don't have to agree on the ways of other cultures to respect their right to choose their own path. Read your own comment below and apply it to yourself in regard to your own views of America.
"I beg the question though...did we bother to take the time in getting to know them and reason with them on an even level?"
If you do so you will not find your time in America so "trying."
As for war, yes, sometimes it is necessary. Your freedom today, if you value it, is a good example of that.
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#84 About the race nonsense - as a (Central) European, I find the constant allusions to race in Anglo-Saxon discourse (used to be just American, but it's spreading like a virus) extremely annoying and... well, racist.
Just American? I can remember a few 'central europeans' in the 1930's took the 'race issue in Anglo-Saxon discourse' to a greater extreme than anything the americans have managed. Hitlers ideology didn't make sense in the 1930's. The idea that you could work out 'race' by measuring skull sizes was discredited even then. Today it is impossible to tell someones race even with their full DNA profile. We're all so interbred (I can trace my family tree back to the French, Irish, Vikings and Picts) that any idea of 'racial purity' is nonsensical. After the German army raped its way across Europe then the Red Army raped its way back again I'd suggest that most of central europe has a few unexpected ancestors in their make up. My family have been soldiers for 400 years and fought across the globe so god knows who else shares my genes. I've got a Chinese aunt (by marriage) and three half chinese cousins for starters!
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ref #67
D R Murrell wrote:
Magic – Dr Who is made for kids, even if most of those kids happen to be in their 30’s these days. It has never really been hard Sci-Fi (that is based rigidly on actual science), but then again neither was Star Trek. I have more time for DW that ST, maybe because I grew up with DW, maybe because I never bought into ST’s semi-utopian vision.
I agree with you about Cameron’s flicks, Terminator is a bit of a classic but not really sure why. I like the film, but it is just a monster chasing a woman around for an hour and a half! As for Titanic, it is one of those films I am proud never to have seen, that and Pearl Harbour.
I am not sure about Fantasy being better on celluloid, other than the LotR trilogy hard to think of a decent fantasy film, mean Krull is a guilty pleasure but it is a terrible film only saved by childhood memories or watching at the cinema (in the good old days before the multiplexes)!
___________________________-
I would argue about ST: First interacial kiss on TV, talk about racism in the 60s with "Let this be your last Battfield" Environmentalism, other issues.
When I refered to fantasy I meant from books to movies. Was Krull a book? If so and it resembled the movie; a large waste of trees.
In regard to Titanic you know a movie is bad when the best thing is the song.
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Having seen Avatar (Sanscrit meaning incartations of god) though not in 3D, I can understnad the many discourse being presented on this blog. It is always interesting to listen to the views of others most of which can clearly highlight predominant ideosyncracies. The most interesting thing about Avatar is the concept of Pandora and the symbiosis that existed amongst its inhabitants (plant and animal alike) it appears that Pandora is light years ahead in it's development on the coexistence of the natives and the environment. The world as we know it has developed along different lines, technology, arms and aminution, for us this is developnent and progress. It would of been a greater message if the movie focused more on the symbiosis of life and matter being the superior form of development and evolution and not adopt the typical hollywood plot.
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This is a dumbed down version of Phil Hext (85). I'm glad somebody else saw it like I did...
I feel like another point to this film is being completely missed.
All of the races discussed above existed on planet earth, and they share one thing in common, they are all a part of the human race. This was the only race I thought about when walking out of the cinema (smuggling out my 3D glasses for good measure). I found myself really considering if that would be the true response of humanity against another race, and if that would be an alien races response against humankind. This film was not white humans against blue humans, it was humans against Na'vi.
For the all the wonder and awe moments in the film, I was overcome by a feeling of sadness. I felt disgusted to be part of a civilisation that could so willingly and unashamedly crush another civilisation on another planet into oblivion in the pursuit of material gain. We chose to do this rather than learn about them and see what they could willingly give us. We tried to give them and teach them things that we valued, rather than establish what they valued to see if they had got things right. Fundamentally, we are fighting as one planetary race against another, rather than a race of humans against another race of humans. Our human races are joined as one, in pursuit of a common goal. We should be free to kill each other and our planet if that is what we choose to do, but lets keep it to our planet and not spread our need to kill and conquer to other races on other planets, should they exist.
Basically, humanity as a whole failed (bar a few), and after watching Avatar I would be willing to bet that if the situation in this film were real, humanity would fail again. I would love to be proved wrong.
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#91. There are two good things about Titanic (both better than Celine's screeching). Kate Winslets backside for about 2 secs half way through when she has her portrait painted and the fact that Leo didn't make it at the end. Other than that you didn't miss much. The boat sinking is rather impressive in a technical sense but I'd have been more impressed if they'd achieved it with a smaller model rather than effectively rebuilding the titanic and sinking it in a giant swimming pool. George Lucas achieved more imnpressive effects in the 1970's with 4 foot models.
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I don't know why people need to take films like this so seriously. Just enjoy it for what it is, fantasy sci-fi in 3D.
As for the film itself, it looks magnificent in 3D but the story is unoriginal and very average.
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DouglasNYC wrote: "I haven't seen the movie yet, but I can say in the Age of Obama everything here in the U.S. has become about race. If you don't like the idea of universal healthcare, you're a racist. If you don't like the bailouts and stimulus packages, you're a racist. If you disagree with Obama on anything, you're a racist. This has become the easy way out for people to avoid debate and just demonize anyone who doesn't agree with you."
The left see it as an easy way to shut people up or discredit them. The communists put people in mental hospitals. Respect for freedom of speech means nothing to such people.
It is also because by far the most racist people I have ever known are those that are considered minorities, and I say that as an American that falls under the so-called "minority" label.
I also believe that racism amongst minorities towards majorities is much more common, widespread and accepted than racism amongst majorities towards minorities. That would explain organizations in America such as La Raza (The Race), the pro-Hispanic organization, amongst many others, and other organizations such as BET (Black Entertainment Television) and the NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), again, amongst many others.
Imagine a white organization being catered to by American politicians, media and celebrities called "The Race" or organizations called WET (White Entertainment Television) or the NAAWP) National Association for the Advancement of White People.
No? But the opposite obviously happens. Why is that? And by what side of the political spectrum?
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76. At 11:58am on 04 Jan 2010, AllenT2 wrote:
"Another fact that must be accepted, unless the words American and native have a new liberal meaning, is that a "native American" is simply anyone born in the country America. One does not have to be of Indian descent."
Hmm. I think Publius Detroit might argue with that. I think it's a peculiarly clumsy phrase, myself; seems to me the Canadian way of referring to the 'First Nation' or variants thereof would be better. Anyway "Native American' (with the capital letter' distinguishes from 'native-born American', or just 'American'.
I think people should be happy with those who want to (and have others) recognise their ethnicity or cultural background and how they choose to do it.
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I have not watched this film yet, but based on what I have read on this subject I believe some people consider it racist because it portrays a white man as the savior of indigenous people.
If my interpretation of this issue is correct, I think the whole thing is ridiculous and symptomatic of the political correctness that some people believe is an absolute necessity to maintain harmony in our society.
Obviously, mutual respect should be the norm, but suggesting evil in the probability of people of one ethnic group helping people of another ethnic group is not only absurd, it denies reality and in this case it does not imply the indigenous population was incapable or unwilling to defend themselves.
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This isnt about race, but it stands accused because there needs to be an obvious dividing line between the good guys and the bad guys to prevent blockbuster audiences from needing to think. If Terminator or Aliens were released now, we'd be having the same conversation about whether Robots and Aliens were a racist metaphor.
Avatar has a very standard "American" plotline. Hero, arrives in a new place, goes through some hardships, it becomes obvious who the bad guys are. The good guy takes up arms against them and wins the day/endures/prevails/dies heroically. Love interest optional.
This plot line, or a derivative of it could apply to half the epics and westerns made in hollywood. As such it is guilty of reinforcing some peculiarly American "Old West" style ideas. Namely: 1. Might makes right, 2. Redemption comes through taking arms and fighting. 3. There is always an obvious bad guy to fight.
If you want to see racism in a film, check out Rules of Engagement. Or even Star Wars (check out the accents, not the colour schemes).
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Victor wrote: "I keep hearing about how enlightened the Americans are ("look, we elected a black man as the President, worship us!"), how they moved past the petty ethnic squabbling that allegedly plagues Europe to this day, but what I see are deep national complexes, insecurities and almost pathological obsession with race, which is of course fiercely denied by most Americans."
If you knew America you would know you only see that from the left , or the more extreme left.
I also lived many years in "continental" Europe and there is no doubt at all in mind where there is much more of a problem with "deep national complexes, insecurities and almost pathological obsession with race." Just consider the number of minorities in European governments and in the top ladders of business.
Sorry, my "continental" European, but there is simply no comparison between America and most European countries.
"Trying to interpret a film as some sort of race allegory is just pathetic and the critics who do that should perhaps get a therapy."
A person needs "therapy" because you disagree with their views? You sure you want to continue talking about "insecurities?"
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Being a longtime scifi buff myself, I was pleasantly surprised by this film, as Hollywood's latest explorations of the genre left much to be desired, although I thought the 3D colors looked rather dull. It does strike me as odd that the bad guy in this movie, as in many dystopian scifi stuff coming out of the States, is a representative of the corporate system. How this is possible in a country that is so fiercely anti-socialist never ceases to amaze me. The US of A surely is the most paradoxical nation on Earth...
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You state: "One of the reasons I like sci-fi, apart from the escapism, is the way it explores political ideas, old and new." Since this debate on racism is still raging, it could easily be argued, I think, that it has not yet been "won" by either side.
Colonization and the exploitation associated with it are definitely not new ideas. Look a couple hundred years back, and you'll see that most European nations were doing things at least as bad as the US is now. Much of racism,in one way or another, stems from the left-over effects of that colonization. It's not always "bad" in that we're doing it because we still look on other cultures as inferior. White Americans feel awful for what happened to the American Indians, so we assign them mythical powers to make ourselves feel better. White Americans feel awful not just for slavery but for Jim Crow laws, the KKK, and the fact that many blacks still face a world in which effigies of black men (even the one leading the White House) are hanged. So we hope they don't mind, and we portray them as actually supporting our culture. Hollywood has so often reinforced those stereotypes that we don't even realize they exist until others point it out to us.
You identify racial issues as a driving force in the US, but it is surely not just here that it's a problem. I have read several blogs and quite a lot of news articles about the BNP, whose sole goal seems to be to kick out everybody in the country who arrived with or after the Normans. (Look to Comment 68 for an almost-funny summation of their POV on the issue of other races in Britain.) Other European nations face similar problems. These are still pressing issues today.
So I guess what I'm saying is that there ARE interesting stories to tell about current race relations. While racism is an old issue, it's definitely not a dead one, and addressing it through literature and the media can be a powerful way to educate. (Even if it's a "this is the way NOT to do it" tragedy type of thing.) The fact that this movie that's being called ground-breaking not only fails to do that but falls into very old stereotypes (including the white guy coming in, learning the native culture, and leading them to victory) is frustrating for those who want to see a better future, where, for example, an American Indian can play a role that doesn't involve doing magic but can instead be considered as identifiable with as a protagonist, even a flawed one.
"But that doesn't mean everything is about that debate." This is an example, if you are willing to learn, of white privilege. To us white folks, it seems ridiculous that people keep bringing up issues of race. We don't say the n-word, we aren't going to not hire someone because of their race (assuming they've had the education and experience equal to the other candidates, which is actually a problem, but we'll ignore that for brevity's sake), and we think the KKK is evil. Yet if you are black, you see people who look like you being portrayed either as gangsters and criminals or as someone imbued with magic power who helps the white guys (never mind that the black people around him are being discriminated against left-and-right). Hollywood tells you that you're supposed to either be a criminal or support the white establishment. So yes, many things, if not everything, becomes about the debate, because there are still problems of race, still people who say the n-word, still people who beat up on someone because their black, still people who hang effigies of black men in the middle of town. (And most people don't have the Secret Service to investigate that sort of thing for them.)
It can seem absolutely ridiculous (at least to us white folks) to go to this length to discuss race in related to a movie. Movies are trivial! Yet, like books and TV, they inform our culture, and perhaps we don't give them enough credit for the effect they have on it.
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pat wrote: "A Setswana chief once commented to me that "... whites are so conceited that they are even conceited about how nasty they are." He continued, "They came in my grandfather's time, they left in my father's time. We've had droughts that lasted longer."
He was probably white in color and his name was something like John Henderson. :)
And if he wasn't, way to go in perpetuating racism on his part.
Yes, that's sarcasm.
"BTW Native Americans won most of their encounters with colonialists. They were on average a lot bigger and stronger than the runty ill-fed economic refugees from europe. Smallpox destroyed them. -- Spaghetti westerns are not a reliable source of historical fact :-)"
So then the white man's guilt isn't necessary after all? Awesome!
Yes, more sarcasm. :)
By the way, I am white and I am also Indian, and I am also American. All of my fellow Americans, of any color, that were born in this great country are native Americans. Look up the meaning of the word native.
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This film is a real threat for US.
1. America loosed the battle in this movie, and those who betrayed US are "good guys" - this is the first time in the Hollywood machine
2. This movie calls America to refuse from it's Messianizm, stop to realize themselves as a single source of good and perfection. This idea seems to be unacceptable for average WASP and can damage the nation's mentality, since Messianizm is the foreground for US people
3. There is direct support of the terrorism - collect as much troops as you can and throw them into the battle. If you attack will be unexpected, you will win, even with bow and arrows. Just try to imagane what will think Ben Laden after such a movie? What will say people in Afganistan, Iran, Iraq...
Remember in 1985 USSR was a superpower and it was started to damage only by the crash in ideology. This is what such idies can do with US.
P.S. Why does this movie make a promotion of smoking? "Good guy", a doctor can not smoke at the screen! This breaks all the rules!
More at costya.livejournal.com in Russian
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**SPOILER WARNING** - No favors are delivered explaining this movie if you want to see it yourself or need more time to think about it, which it deserves.
Positives first: Great movie that is doing tremendously at the (1) box office (passes $1B worldwide in 17days). (2) it is being enjoyed by a lot of people for a lot of good reasons!
1. James Cameron is quoted as saying, people will misinterprete this movie - EG you see the whole spectrum in these blogs (excellent posts and unmentionable posts)
2. Critics job is to analyse the movie, but dissecting a film often they forget as James Cameron says, he wishes 1st People think: "Wow, what a great & fun movie I just saw, and also got great value for money!" Then maybe think about the primary and secondary themes this wonderful film touches on and take more individual responsibility?
3. Race is more of a big theme in America hence the source: Washington Post and this author Mr. Mardell is a US correspondent propounding this message. You can equally state this is a frontier movie, as well? Maybe previous stories in the US have a foil or cypher of a non-white man assist to the Prime Narrative of a White Man Hero which can be dubious tbh, but very innocent as a cultural artifact of the population likely to buy these stories or listen to them in this culture made up of mixed races but founded Primarily by Western Europeans (Advertising does this trick all the time in other ways positive to who they are selling to). Eg Watson always makes Sherlock Holmes "look good"! BUT extending this formula to Avatar is INCORRECT. It's a perfectly balanced and moral movie made by Hollywood reflecting the template of Western civilization's spread and wars which resounds with people watching movies of today, across the world because it is accurate reflection of historical reality (see below).
4. This is fiction at the basic level and any extrapolations about specifics are spurious if taken too literally or "ABUSED" as "fundamental human givens" thrust down ppl's throats! Wrong, hence the power of stories to entertain and educate! EG you can always say Na'vi are Na'vi even if there is intentional reference to indigeneous cultures and should have their special rules as per the fiction (they live in Alpha Centauri in space). If people become too literal they are showing the fact they are fools or obessed with shallow externals and lack of perception: Sophisticated savages. EG Na'vi are quote unquote James Cameron "are symbols of higher version of ourselves" not a like-for-like perfect simulation of tribal conditions in prehistory: Tribal wars with disease due to no medicine with >45% homicidal rates of cause of death of males etc. (Ref: Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate & Myth of Violence lecture).
5. Archetypal story plot & themes. This story is a very entertaining story and works on this level wonderfully: James Cameron's awesome action and a love story with a (pure) heart between an alien and a human, and unimaginably beautiful images and colours, BUT all cultures across the world forget with too much consumption of entertainment and lack of personal production of their own stories, that stories can work on more levels (deeper meaning) and have more than one telling, too (Ref: Karen Armstron - a short history of myth, Ref: Christopher Booker - 7 Basic Plots).
6. Primary themes of this movie: 1. Clash of civilizations a) Technologically superior culture attacking/land-grabbing a morally equal culture but of lower technologically-able warfare, causing injustice (Ref: Guns, Germs & Steel - Jared Diamond [see b) below in Secondary themes]. 2. The destruction and Collapse of civilations or cultures based on ruining the biosphere or ecosytem and not having a complete understanding of it due to avarice, lack of morality or true understanding of the world (REF: James Lovelock - Theory of Gaia, Jared Diamon - Collapse & James Cameron interview: On Coral reefs disappearing and rainforests).
7. Secondary Themes: 1. b) Clash of civilizations - Modern foreign policy and imperialism eg quotes: "Shock & Awe, Terror with terror" & "...racial memory...". (Clash of civilizations S. Huntington or Amartya Sen as a counter-balance to this hawkish view though Huntington shows some strong trends in global politics and possible answers. 2. Loss of ethics and morality in big business that leads to damage to the environment and land-grabbing from tribals that leads to short-term profit for small number of remote people but will cause conflict, injustice and murder of a weaker culture and rape of environment that is detrimental for all in the end. EG Equador and Oil-companies.
8. Work of art? All the above as well as a damn fine storytelling!
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Magic – Apologies, I see what you mean by Fantasy films, on that score I agree. ST had many good elements, but I still don’t ‘get’ the utopian view though, prefer my Sci-Fi a bit grittier. That said ST is probably the most socially effective Sci-Fi around, even though most people don’t realise that.
AllenT2 – Germany is not commonly regarded as Central Europe, it is normally stated as being Western Europe, though that is debatable. US doesn’t own any foreign land!?! Tell that to the American Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and a few others! Truth is most people outside of the US do have a jaded view of America, one that has become increasingly jaded as the last century progressed. The US, via Hollywood, may have promoted a viewpoint of the USA as the good guys, but the rest of us rarely buy it. Most Europeans are jaded enough to believe that there are no good or bad guys, just shades of self interested grey.
Really guys again this film is being over analysed and should be critiqued on its own merits, rather than the prejudices of those who review or watch it. For such a simplistic film it is clear that people are getting more out of than would be expected, which is probably a good thing.
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**SERIOUS SPOILER!!**
9.Artistic License: Jake Sully is a HERO and hence this is his story. He is the "chosen" of Ewya and has the necessary "vision" as an outsider also has knowledge of his culture that Pandora needs to save itself but equally sees with "new eyes" and therefore as a hero with qualities of strength, insight and pure of heart is "The One" to unite the Na'vi (using the most powerful Na'vi Symbol); as a wounded soldier from humble beginnings he is able to learn the "cup is empty" Na'vi way: (a bit too quickly but this is a movie remember artistic licence but the blogs are accurate!) Of deeper communion with their world and harmony of life with each other. He surmounts several challenges and turns back from several mistakes or betrayals and is even saved by Neytiri in the end. Finally his transformation is complete and "through the eye of Ewya" is born again. The fact he is originally a product of his culture, a Western civilian is an artifact of historical reality and no more in this movie. Even the "chief in waiting" shows acceptance and humility when JakeSully becomes "Mato-Turok" (sp.). Finally he becomes his avatar and the people of true virtue win the war and save the planet!
That some people going on about racism in this movie could have worked out a meaning for themselves and not twisted a reflection of themselves is because of how they define themselves in a limited way. this movie will help.
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Certainly, it can be complained that Avatar presents an overly sentimentalized picture of indigenous people. While this could be viewed as racist in some quarters, much more controversy has been occasioned by the fact that such a popular mass entertainment movie, during a time when Americans are actively engaged in armed conflict, focuses on questioning the mistakes of our past, and implies that we might repeat them, at a time when it would seem that Hollywood should be encouraging patriotism as vigorously and as single-mindedly as it did during the Second World War.
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I saw the movie and there was a multitude of races from the planet Earth, If blacks have a problem with it then the should make their own movie, why should the whites keep supporting and do the work for blacks..
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I am not white and this is not in defence of the whites. Colonisation was practised by ancient civilisations Chinese / Mongols / Turks. It is human tendency to exploit the weak for resources. If Africans had acquired the technology and the wealth they would have moved out of Africa to conquer foreign lands who knows maybe we would be talking of the enslavement of other races. Enslavement of the conquered was common since ancient times what was despicable of the enslavement of Africans was inter alia it's commercialisation.
Enjoy Avatar! the movie for entertainment.
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Avatar is a fantastical movie. I was totally transported into the world presented before me, which showed Nature as our one true gift. The message I received loud and clear was to recognise and honour this gift and strive to protect it at all costs. Racism? NO. The want for power equals chaos and destruction? YES. A simple view perhaps but safe to say you will take from all things what you want to see. Great movie.
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84. Victor:
I'm tempted to agree. We seem already to be in one if those circular 'yes there is', 'no there isn't' or 'if there is it all comes from the "liberals" or "the left" ' bouts. I've railed often enough how the concept has now come to disguise characterisations of not only ethnicity, but religion and now, most recently, even nationality by those who are prone to propound its fundamental tenet of threatening 'otherness'.
Somehow, it seems now OK more or less to say "I don't like blue natives with tails, and I don't care if they're exterminated, either by war or economic competition, or climate change or all three, but they're not strictly 'a race', we even call some of them 'aliens' now, so that's not racism and we can all be comfortable." But the language, and in the end, the evil consequences, are the same. . .
I'll stick with the sorts of issues raised by, say, by Rabindra Suraj, Phil Hext, Felmar Rowell and one or two others, if I can, rather than those who seem intent on actually proving Mark's view in his 14th (I think, I foolishly gave the Squirrels' abacus away yesterday) para. . .
(I don't want to quote it, since I've learnt all too easily now that a few lines like that would be the only ones out of this post to be taken out of it and used for a fresh round.)
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#90 by Peter_Sym
Invoking Godwin's law usually doesn't lead to anything useful. I am talking about the present-day world, in which (sadly) the obsession with race and racism is once again growing. Just consider how profoundly has the term changed its meaning in English - today, you can call someone who opposes Muslim immigration (an example as good as any) a "racist", even though it has absolutely nothing to do with racism in the correct sense of the word. Practically anything that happens these days is construed as having racial connotations, and that's definitely coming from the "Anglosphere". I look in disbelief when people try to use Anglo-Saxon terms in ridiculous situation in my own country - like kids trying to mimic the ways of adults, even though these ways are bad (smoking, drinking, swearing...).
#100 by AllenT2:
"If you knew America you would know you only see that from the left , or the more extreme left."
Where I live, I'd be called conservative.
"Sorry, my "continental" European, but there is simply no comparison between America and most European countries."
Indeed it's not, thank the gods. Europe has its own (multitudes of) problems and complexes, but obsession with one's race isn't one of them. Might have something to do with the fact that there is no after-taste of two centuries of organized, state-sanctioned, brutal racist slavery and segregation for which some people feel the need to constantly apologize (despite having nothing to do with it, hence the collective guilt complex) and which other people (ab)use to claim unfair benefits (affirmative action and similar policies).
It's a good place here to note that one exception here is Britain, which seems to be eagerly importing the American national complexes and adapting them to its own bad conscience stemming from its colonialist past. The result is equally pathetic.
"A person needs "therapy" because you disagree with their views? You sure you want to continue talking about "insecurities?""
A person needs therapy if his/her obsession starts to influence his/her behaviour in a profoundly illogical way and becomes a paranoia. Which definitely applies here - claiming that Avatar's story is in fact a well-masqueraded white man's dream of becoming a privileged native is ridiculous beyond belief. If somebody claimed that it is in fact a well-hidden dig at Islam or that it carries a hidden Marxist message, it would be equally ridiculous.
Try to look at the film as it is, because if you look for a hidden meaning hard enough, you will always find an imaginary one.
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The movie is a series of cliches with amazing special effects. We saw it with 2 other families and had fun afterwards compiling a list of cliches over dinner.
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After 10yrs in the US I do find it a country with troubles regarding race, but the "Avatar is a racist film" discussion just perpetuates what is at the heart of the problem here in the US - over-simplification, over-use of metaphor, desire to read everything as a "message" and denial about the core problem. Despite power and wealth America is still a young country that is growing and defining itself in contrast to many old countries changing but having the issue of only defining themselves by the past. America runs as a cohesive society based on the simplicity of the "pioneering" new world idea, for most of us here to work hard and raise our families the best way we can we all in some way belong to that theme, no matter what the color of our skins. The people most disenfranchised by this concept are the native americans and descendants of slaves, it really isnt skin color its about belonging to the club and no matter how much MLK opened the door for the american dream to be for all americans I believe many people still either feel excluded or dont want to join up for the pioneer theme - remember the conflicts around Obama , the flag, loving the country etc???
My guess is that social exclusion will remain until the US grows up a bit more and adopts something more inclusive and sophisticated than "pioneer".
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Ref #104 Constantin.
This film is a real threat for US.
1. America loosed the battle in this movie, and those who betrayed US are "good guys" - this is the first time in the Hollywood machine
______________
I don't agree with the premise that Cameron sees the bad guys here as a metaphor for the US. I think he just likes having big corporations as his bad guys (Cyberdine, Weyland Yutani) precisely so he doesn't have to get involved with politics.
Entertaining the premise for a minute though, what about Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai or even Dr Strangelove?
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108. At 1:37pm on 04 Jan 2010, John Savard wrote:
"much more controversy has been occasioned by the fact that such a popular mass entertainment movie, during a time when Americans are actively engaged in armed conflict, focuses on questioning the mistakes of our past, and implies that we might repeat them, at a time when it would seem that Hollywood should be encouraging patriotism as vigorously and as single-mindedly as it did during the Second World War."
Shouldn't that read "have repeated them"? Anyway what you are asking for is war propaganda, and some of us would say there's been plenty of that has come out of Hollywood since the Second World War.
Me, I want to see a Hollywood action movie version of the life of Buddha. Now there's a challenge. (Spoiler: the tiger gets to eat him at the end. . .)
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Again, so many humans find it impossible to see beyond their (insert race here) noses. The white westerner didn't save the planet or the Na'vi. The Na'vi didn't save it, either. No, at the end of the day the races - the humanoids - were trumped by a bigger force, the planet herself. In case you all missed it (and it seems you did), the main deity of the planet was said to be concerned only with the balance of life. When that balance was upset, presumably by the war that was being fought over territories on her surface, she acted. It just so happened that the Na'vi were part of that balance. Lucky for them.
If you absolutely insist on glossing over the entertainment factor of a piece of visual entertainment and simply *must* find a message, then try this one. We are upsetting the balance of nature on Earth. The planet will survive, but there's nothing that says we'll be allowed to share in that survival. The planet may decide it would be in her best interests if it did away with us all.
Now can we just watch the movie?
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Racist? Avatar?
Truthfully, such a notion never once entered my mind. If anything, I thought that the movie itself was quite nice, if a bit too vicious in its condemnation of the human race. I mean, certainly, we do have a nasty streak when it comes to the acquisition of wealth, but that's generally counterbalanced within our own species by those who have a conscience. Though, I suppose it could be argued that, given the tediously long voyage required between Pandora and Earth, those with a conscience did the best they could under the given circumstances.
Personally, though, I actually thought that the movie was essentially the story of Pocahontas, but set in the future and with a happy ending. Don't you think so? I mean, the romance between Jake Sully (An ex-Force Recon) and the native princess really smacks of the alleged romance between John Smith (an armed explorer) and Pocahontas (daughter of Chief Powhatan). The only difference between the two stories is that Smith/Sully doesn't leave, and the princess doesn't later marry a tobacco planter and lives among the invaders.
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There is recognition, from a historical point of view, that colonisation had a negative impact on indigenous people, and still does in regions such as Amazonia. e.g.
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1222-hance_avatar.html
The distance of time allows people to see a more balanced picture of history; many of today's audience is now able to accept that. Avatar is essentially a romanticised allegory about the worst excesses of the Indian wars in the USA; in its late stages a number of US generals resigned at the time because of their disagreement with the govt. policies towards the American Indians.
Some criticisms of Avatar are valid, those about a white man (or human in this instance) leading the alien native fight-back, that the natives are over idealised, that an indigenous culture could be wholly absorbed in just three months.
But Avatar displays Conservative values too. The natives mate for life, are self-reliant, to become a member of their society means adopting their ways and beliefs; 'citizenship' is earnt, not taken for granted; all its citizens (male and female) have the right to bear arms and engage in the fight in defence of their homeland, they clearly are not pacifist.
As for the alien natives religion; it is essentially a cross between some indigenous American beliefs and Taoism. 'The Force' in Star Wars was essentially a souped-up version of Taoism too; but then did anyone expect Obi Wan Kenobi to reveal himself as a member of, say, the Plymouth Brethren?
For many movie goers Avatar is simply a ’siding with the underdog’, ‘against impossible odds’, ‘zero to hero’, ’save the day & ‘win the heart of the princess’ type of movie. All traditional movie plot-lines.
A fairy tale in-other-words; as Star Wars was also (and which had a similar story, substitute 'The Empire' for the mining company).
Avatar is also a romance; there seems to be public appetite for an unabashed love story, and it’s a film set in a future that offers hope, and a happy ending; most such films offer up dystopias or post-apocalyptic settings (2012, Mad Max, The Road, Book of Eli etc) that are pretty bleak, or endlessly recycle plots where humans fight mindless alien monsters.
Given there is considerable interest in the question as to whether or not there is life elsewhere in the universe, it might be worth asking how we, as a species, would respond towards an alien intelligent species; particularly if they had resources that we wanted and were able to reach that planet?
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A few people above have mentioned the Sanskrit derivation of 'Avatar'; however 'Avatar' has a more modern meaning from its usage on the web; "a computer user's representation of himself/herself or alter ego" in a game such as Second Life or as a cartoon image used to identify oneself.
It is from this modern meaning that Cameron has taken the word Avatar as his title.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(computing)
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My apologies, the final link in comment 120 above (usage of the word Avatar in computing) was broken, it should be this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(computing)
Or type 'Avatar computing' into Google.
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I did not think about racism after seing the movie. Now that I see all these comments, I wonder why not ask Mr Cameron himself about his intentions, rather than assume and imply racism was part of the script?
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'Avatar' is basically a retelling of an earlier animation movie called 'Fern Gully;' just on steroids. The special effects were amazing, but the storyline was flat and perdictible. Happy New Year Mark!
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"One of the reasons I like sci-fi, apart from the escapism, is the way it explores political ideas, old and new."
I seem to recall, though I don't have it to hand to check, that Cronenburg's Crash has a foreword making a cogent argument that science fiction has supplanted the role of philosophy in our society as a means to explore such issues.
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Why is it that when a 'white' film maker makes a film about 'white people', he or she is racist against all others? How many black film makers get flogged for not including enough 'white content' in their films? All other races are encouraged to share the stories of their cultures, why not caucasians?
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I'd like to point out that a white bad guy shouldn't be considered any more or less evil than a bad guy of any other color. I'm a white man from a small town in the southern united states. And, I have to say, that as far as I can tell white people are not rascist anymore. We are often confused, annoyed, or offended by other cultures. But that isn't rascism, simply, for lack of a better word, cultural ignorance. The problem in my humble opinion is reverse-rascism, which the word itself is rascist. That and self hating whites. If you watched avatar and happened to be offended by the white on blue violence, ask yourself, Do I hate white people?
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Do You Remember/I Spy/Maliscious Intent
(*/**/***)
(*/**/***)=Eek-A-Mouse/Linvall Thompson/Scientist
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@ SheffTim: Enjoyed reading your informative, well-written post.
But which do you think JakeSully was? An avatar in the computing sense or an Avatar in the Sanskrit sense, by the end of the movie?! I know you'll like that question! Good thought, eh?!
SheffTim: #120: wrote:
"Some criticisms of Avatar are valid, those about a white man (or human in this instance) leading the alien native fight-back, that the natives are over idealised, that an indigenous culture could be wholly absorbed in just three months."
These criticsms are taking things a little too dryly and literally. As with stories of this type, a bit of heart is need to judge the hero by his actions, not his origins is the golden rule! He may seem a little lucky but that is also part of the story... ; )
See my post above concerning the other 2 criticisms idealism & assimilation (posts: #105, #107) which come down to artistic license and never intend to "masquerade" as factually representative.
What do you think?
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120. At 2:19pm on 04 Jan 2010, SheffTim wrote:
"it might be worth asking how we, as a species, would respond towards an alien intelligent species; particularly if they had resources that we wanted and were able to reach that planet?"
Fortunately, given much of human history so far, that is very unlikely ever to be possible unless Nature (or the Large Hadron Collider) comes up with some brand new laws of physics.
I'd concentrate on the planet and the species we've got if I were you. And forget about colonising the moon or Mars. At the rate we're going this planet might be uninhabitable long before more than a few dozen people can do either. And given some of the people NASA trained as astronauts, I wouldn't want to be one of them anyway. There's a point at which sci-fi does notcoincide with either real life or science. . .
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tricky girl
(*/**/***)
(*/**/***)=Max Romeo + Jah Batta + Bullwackie
last night I heard this riddim going through my head
it was an irie melody with some drum and bass
but that was no dream it was a reality
waaaaa 555555*******
bullwackies styleeeee
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I was also intrigued by the blogosphere's take on the blue terrorists of Pandora.
What I found most curious was the implicit refusal to speak about the glaring parallel between the mercenary force sent to exploit a natural resource and the war in iraq. Everyone discussed the "race" issue, but the clearly expressed idea in the film was actually imperialism and the military industrial complex.
At one point the protagonist actually says "This is the way it works. If they are sitting on something you want, then you make them the enemy so you have an excuse to take it from them."
So I thought the parallel with Iraq was 100%. There was even the notion that the natural resource was located in underground reserves, much like oil fields.
But the debate now seems to be about race, which I find exceedingly boring, and far fetched.
Still, Avatar is a good film, and got me thinking about the way we see our own modern political world.
I wondered about Star Wars, and how those films would be interpreted if made today.
Would people now see the attack on the death star as a direct parallel to the attack on the twin towers?
Would the "rebels" now be called "terrorists"?
Is it still acceptable to go around destroying the symbolic buildings of empire and killing everyone inside, because you are fighting for freedom against a force that kills innocents with drones?
I don't think the critics have really embraced the central issues in Avatar. All the talk about race is a "safe" diversion. Americans can talk about race and keep looking only and ever inwards upon their own society. They don't have to "face" the world, and how their profit driven military behave.
For a society which professes to understand "Do unto others as they would do to you.", the use of drones to exterminate people without trial or due process must be a difficult topic of conversation.
Far better to talk about race, and history.
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People haven't paid much attention to Mark's last para about 'Fallen Dragon':
"The twist is, the planetary defenders of Santa Chico are not aboriginal but come from elsewhere, post-humans genetically mutated into a state of harmony with the local flora and fauna, which are themselves itself genetically uplifted into a state of scientifically ennobled post savagery. The natives are originally from California."
So that's what will happen when Monsanto rules the world. GM: good for people, good for the planet.
(Me, I'll settle for not being crippled -- who was it used that word!!!?--and becoming beautiful. Not bothered about being a giant as well, not interested in basketball either.)
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I mean, how many innocent people died on the death star?
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Only racists can find racism where it does not exist.
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Mark, I am trying to take your article seriously but I just can't. Avatar, like most Hollywood bigger-than-big budget special effects action films has a tenuous, easily assimilated plot that exists to propel the film from one action sequence to the next. The plot is basic West-Coast liberal pap and frankly it is laughable!
You seem to delight in taunting us that race is an issue in America. Yes, of course it is, as it is in Australia, as it is in the UK, as it is in Japan (where they handle it by excluding foreign immigration), as it is around the world. Let's see, in Watchmen...there was a blue guy! What does that mean? It means that if you want to pick a color that DOESN'T have racial overtones, you can't use red, you can't use yellow, or orange, that leaves blue, green (which looks truly awful, witness the green young lady in the new Star Trek), and purple.
OK, recast Avatar and make the hero black...NOW you have some issues! Make him a native American...whoee, issues! Make him Asian and you have an anime!
A lot of money was spent developing the CGI technology that made this film possible...that really is what this film is about. It's about INVESTING MONEY in new technology that will dominate the industry in coming years. Hopefully someone...someone less plugged into Hollywood's current production values...someone other than James Cameron...will use this technology to make a good film.
Hopefully you will find a better use for your word processing program than running about saying "Nyeah-nyeah! America is racist!" We live in hopes of better times!
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You know, I gotta bring my boys to Avatar. I'm sure they'd love it. I just find the 3D goggles annoying...
So, is Avatar about the threat of Racism, of Technological Imperialism?
-- Both, probably.
There are often themes of racism in American popular film, teevee, SciFi and pulp fiction. Isn't Twilight about this? Vampires aren't all bad, they're just misunderstood and marginalized...
IOW this ain't nuthin' new.
The X-Men Comics were all about the racism in light of the American Civil Rights Movement. Prof Xavier was like Martin Luther King and Magneto was Malcolm X. (Eventually Malcom X realized that people of all races are Muslim and that he could not be both Muslim and Racist... but that's another story.)
But then, the X-Men were written in the 1960's. That's, like, soooo last century. These days, most kids shows are racially integrated. America's moral lessons nowadays tend to be about ecological responsibility and inter-cultural tolerance.
Got that? News Flash:
There's a big difference between being inter-racial and inter-cultural.
Cultural imperialism is not racial tolerance. Sry.
Respect for another's race requires respect for their culture.
So, I haven't seen the movie yet. I thought it was about cool 3D computer graphics. Ho Yeah! Bring it! Cat-People are Cool!
Avatar might be reminding us of the uncomfortable truth of white colonialism funded by enterprising greed -- Or, it might just be celebrating blue body paint in honor or The Blue Man Group.
Or the Scotts.
Or, perhaps, our dear LOLCatFrends.
Whatever.
BTW: Happy New Year Ya'll!! I work at a University. The Liberal American Intelligentsia got a full week of Holiday! HA!! Take THAT, my capitalistic work-a-holic American proletariat comrades! Fu fu fu...
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I think many people all over the planet will read various things into this "Avatar" masterpiece. The film doesn't specify and pinpoint many things, thus leaving a lot of leeway to interpretation.
Actually I agree there are racial elements to it. It isn't ONLY about Iraq War.
As a Russian, I saw in this fairy-tale the Nazi and the later Anglo-Saxon technologically superior and morally low, arrogant invaders trying to take over native gullible Russians and their land and the Russians striking back, helped, as usual, by dragons, rhinos and the forces of nature.
But I am sure Latin Americans, Africans, Vietnamese, Koreans, Iraqis will see a similar RACIAL war image of a brutal Anglo-Saxon in this film. It is not about "corporations" but about Anglo-Saxon brutality against us. (What was missing in the film so far is a typical Western reporter giving a news report about what happened!)
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@ squirrelist # 129:
You really took that one and ran with it! But, hypothetically: SheffTim's question does raise interesting scenarios that Hollywood movies are already tackling in a good way. The discussion of "Us & Them" is a hot button (Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate) and art is a way to explore this positively.
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I don't think the movie is necessarily "racist," but it's certainly wrong-headed about race. As someone has noted, the idea that "noble savages" lived in peace and harmony with Nature is fundamentally patronising to those peoples and cultures considered so - and incidentally, given that the Na'vi are so peace loving and so forth, why are they all such adept "warriors" when it comes to the crunch? Why do you think many Native American cultures were warrior cultures, and before Europeans showed up? Furthermore, to all the people who just want to see it as "entertainment," and nothing more, I watched the late, sadly missed George Carlin last night; as he put it, Americans have been bought off by stuff so as not to ask questions about anything. This movie is certainly "stuff" - 350 (or however many) billion dollars worth of it. And you'd think they could have spared a few hundred thousand so as to employ a decent writer? Or perhaps J. Cameron is responsible for the appalling script and simplistic concept and story line? (Incidentally, blue people who live in peace and harmony with nature? Anyone remember the Smurfs?) If so, the whole thing is the product of an ego that knows no bounds - something that would make it a very American artifact indeed.
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Mr Big Man/Little Lover/Poor And Humble/Cloning Process
(*/**/***/****)
(*/**/***/****)=Junior Reid/Johnny Osbourne/Wayne Wade/Scientist
sound di big ting
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123. washuotaku:
"'Avatar' is basically a retelling of an earlier animation movie called 'Fern Gully;' just on steroids."
*****************
This was the opinion of the younger ones in our group as well.
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To respond to several comments above that question the ongoing relevance of race and racism--
Academic studies repeatedly demonstrate that race and racism permeate life in the U.S. and have significant and painful consequences for millions of American citizens. There are countless websites, journals, and books dedicated to the issue, but here are just a few that I usually share with my students.
(1) The American Anthropological Association's official statement on race: www.aaanet.org/issues/policy-advocacy/AAA-Statement-on-Race.cfm
(2) An interactive website dealing with race and racism (a project of the American Anth. Assoc.): http://www.understandingrace.org/home.html
(3) An interactive website by PBS, associated with their documentary on race: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm
(4) One example of contemporary, peer-reviewed, sociological research demonstrating just how deep racism runs in U.S. labor markets: http://www.princeton.edu/~pager/ASR_pager_etal09.pdf
- much of Pager's other work also demonstrates the practical, ugly consequences of racism in the U.S.: http://www.princeton.edu/~pager/publications.htm
(5) Several books to consider: Racism without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva; Racist America by Joe Feagin; How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America by Marable Manning; Everyday AntiRacism, edited by Mica Pollock (on undermining racism in schools)
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Back on topic: BLUE was chosen in part because it was the only color to work asthetically for people (structure of human eye limitation & less baggage than GREEN which already was taken by eg "little green men")
**But also as INTENTIONAL EMPHASIS on racial, cultural difference as a KEY story element and lack of understanding of the OTHER and lack of morals in dealings with the OTHER.**
It has really worked wonders and glad to see people's clear insights and good instincts to the silly, sloppy and overly-sensationist TITLE that Mr Mark Mardell decided would so easily press everyone's buttons!!
A more measured assertion/contention/motion might have been better, Mr. Mardell? What do you think? Kind regards.
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go yoda 134
What bull. can't comment on the film though.there are few films in this gendra that do not cover two cultures clashing.
so that normally ends up with a racial subtext.
"District 9" was mentioned by Mark . did see that. that covered a few here.Same arguments as we read here so often.
the "magical negro" so that's what annoyed the gherkin so much he thought he was the only one with super powers.
"9" saw that . covers tech gone wrong.
Mark if you are a sci fi fan, being from Britain did you ever read 2000AD ?
Now there is a comic that covered all .
a classic still living in the british sci fi world.
I say in the british because it never made it here to the states.
"special order only" hard to find.
Comics can be sci fi too.(as a euro you might know there are lots of non sci fi comics)
we have all those america heroes in the shops , on the TV, in the culture.
But do they have any 2000AD?
go try. good luck.
I mention this as a connection to discrimination of cultures and cultural imperialism.
"fern gully" Oh no why did someone have to say that.
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indescernibles Wrote....But I am sure Latin Americans, Africans, Vietnamese, Koreans, Iraqis will see a similar RACIAL war image of a brutal Anglo-Saxon in this film. It is not about "corporations" but about Anglo-Saxon brutality against us.
THIS is simply no true, the people who cry racist the loudest in America are the African Americans, schoolastically for the last 40 years African Americans have scored the lowest year after year,immigrants from other nations who had to learn the language all became successful in a generation or 2.
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Racism(or speciesm in this case!), colonialism, exploitation, the deliberate creation of conflict for gain and the moral justification of such activities for the purpose of entrenchment are all examined in this film. These are all symptoms of greed or : general unhappiness with our lot leading to ill considered and unsustainable action. I agree with the article and many of the comments that refer to historical or fictional incidents where such events have unfolded with calamitous results for all involved. I think we can all agree these incidents have put 'hate in our hearts'.
What is refreshing about this movie is that it adds an element of personal choice to a very old idea. The movie starts and ends with the main character opening his eyes. A big-hearted marine, crippled and burdened by personal loss, courageously decides to look at life through different eyes.
In doing so he discovers the concept of awareness, of being in touch with himself, of balance, of honor, of fighting righteously without anger or the desire for gain, of duty to his community, of love. Slowly he develops courage to fight for the right reasons.
Finding all this in the midst of battle, he discovers peace and a connection that he never had before. He becomes part of something much bigger than himself and is left with no choice but to surrender to this new, more fulfilling perception of the world. And his eyes open a second time.
We tend to look at the down side : lingering racism, hatred exploitation and the rest. But there have been great victories on the righteous side - the american and french revolutions, the abolition of slavery, of apartheid, of nazism, of many perceived injustices.
It seems that both these aspects of human nature , beautiful and terrible will always be at odds with each other. The battle rages on...but the choice is yours.
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There is a meaning in this film, but it's not racist. The blue people don't represent a race, they're our collective past - we all came from these same hunter gatherer tribes and in our hearts, we still yearn for those days, like an old man remembering his youth. The film has a familiar theme because it's the theme that lives in the savage heart of humanity, a heart that hasn't changed much in the few millenia of farming, civilisation and traffic jams.
Most entertainment these days is concerned with our dreams of breaking away from civilisation's rules and doing what we what we want, when we want.
This film is a recognition that in our highly civilsed and advanced society, we still have an ache to return to the savage, primal creatures we recently were and turn our backs on science and civilisation. Like the film, we are looking through rose tinted glasses. The reality of that chaos is much harsher then we would admit. It doesn't stop you aching for it though, as you crawl through the traffic jam on your way to another day at work...
Racist film? No.
If you are out to cause offence, you generally make a simple, loud exclamation to leave your victim in no doubt as to how you feel about them. If the person being insulted has to deeply analyze the insult and debate it at length with others to determine if it is, in fact, an insult then it clearly is not a very successful insult. If James Cameron was racist I'm sure he would have the ability (and the special effects) to leave us in no doubt.
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You know, for a few years I lived a short ways down 134 from Hollywood... watching... pondering... wondering... and I have to tell you:
I find the 'Conservative Right' suspicion of the 'Liberal Media' very, very silly.
'The Media' is all about marketing and sales. It is a research-driven industry designed to dish up entertainment that American People will BUY.
The only subversive design in 'The Industry' is the terrible secret that producers are out to make money, and the only significant value of their product is that art mirrors culture, providing an interesting medium for socio-cultural analysis.
Yeeesh.
Although, and I am soooo glad that Lt Uhura finally became slightly more three-dimensional in this latest Star Trek... TYVM.
-- A womyn's power ain't just in the legs, but the brain, the heart and the attitude. You know it. Work it, honey.
______________
133. At 3:36pm on 04 Jan 2010, democracythreat wrote:
I mean, how many innocent people died on the death star?
Meh. They wore nazi-like uniforms and spoke with European accents, so their losses are merely incidental to the greater good of the destruction of the Universe's Biggest, Baddest WMD. Right?
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cheesefuller, your style of prose is alarming.
What is with all the full stops?
It is as if. You think the impact. Of very short sentences. Will enhance the snappy ideas. Contained therein.
I am reminded. Of a corporate military drone. The human kind. Who speaks in much the same way. As a military sergeant. Orders folks around. Has not time for normal discourse. Everything is a military operation. Terror everywhere. No time. Must be direct. Must be efficient. Robot man is the future.
Commas are for surrender loving pinkos. Subordinate clauses are for subordinate folks.
Divide the english language. Then rule it.
Hoo-RAH.
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Hungry Pickney / Man Hungry
(*/**)
(*/**)=Jah Nyne/Sugar Minott
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I don't have the tiniest bit of interest in Avatar, but this statement of yours I must take exception to:
"I strongly believe the racial divide has been the driving force in American history, ... " (Mardell)
The driving force in American history is upward mobility, and the idea that it is available to all based on merit, not only to a privileged class. The "racial divide" (whatever that is) is the exact opposite of a "driving force" because it is contrary to the ideal of a meritocracy and acts as a drag on progress, not as an impetus.
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#113 I'm not 'invoking Goodwins law'. I'm pointing out that Europe has a much nastier and longer history of racism than the USA. We were carrying out mass murders of Jews 500 years before there was a USA. The slaves were taken from Africa by Europeans to work on European owned plantations in the new world before there was a USA.
You make a good point that 'racism' is a broad, and probably mis-used term but your example of someone opposing muslim immigration even though muslims aren't a race could also be said to have existed in Germany in the 1930's. Hitlers definition of 'Ayran' or 'Jew' was equally dodgy. Whether or not you think Jews are a race is of little relevance in the face of 6 million dead.
When the USA had its civil rights battles in the 1960's we had Enoch Powell and his 'rivers of blood', the tories using the slogan 'if you want a nig**r for a neighbour, vote labour' in a west midlands by-election and Leicester coucil advertising in Ugandan newspapers that 'Leicster is full'. The National Front was doing as well in the 1970's as the BNP is now.
Basically I don't think anything much has ever changed. The economic boom is the mid 90's maybe made for a less racist society briefly, but it was only brief.
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All of the races discussed above existed on planet earth, and they share one thing in common, they are all a part of the human race. This was the only race I thought about when walking out of the cinema (smuggling out my 3D glasses for good measure). I found myself really considering if that would be the true response of humanity against another race, and if that would be an alien races response against humankind. This film was not white humans against blue humans, it was humans against Na'vi.
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i dont like half human and half animation movies, the only movie I really liked was the one which had the walkt disney character Roger Rabit...I can watch it anytime and anywhere...I will not watch this movie..because it is racist...otherwise the guy would have made it totally animated..He chose to have white actor to play the part of a marine who saves animated blue charatcters with tails...the plot is set in some faraeay century, the director conviently thinks that in that century there would be white marines busy doing their heroism work...A flawed fantasy or as a tribal easterner would say, the westerners even to injustice to their fantasy...
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What the heck is "old human meatsack"
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I think it is quite sad that critics can watch the movie and one of the first things they seem to look for is racism. Does that say more about them or the movie?
Now, I have not seen Avatar, so i may be a little off, but if a writer wants to come with up with some cool fantasy character, should he be limited? He cannot give them spears or bows, etc because they will automatically portray the character as a representation of an ethnic group or religion in the real world? To me, that is silly. The way I view it, I think it is unlikely the film was ever construed by the writers/director(s) as being racist. They just wanted to make a cool movie and this was the equipment the native race had on that planet and - OH NO!!! There was not a black actor in the cast!!! This is clearly because the movie is racist!!!!... No, maybe it just so happened that whoever cast it didnt follow the line of "oh, I must remember to cast one black person on this side or I will be seen as racist" - They maybe just cast who they thought was best suited for the role.
How is it that critics notice these so-called "racist" traits within a movie? Is whoever first notices this racist themselves? I know that if I was to go see the movie, the "racial" undercurrents mentioned here would not have been noticed by me - I would just have seen a revolutionary action movie and come out with an opinion on whether i enjoyed it or not.
I am sure a majority of people who have seen the movie did not notice the so-called "racism" contained within it, and I feel that the movie is not racist and this has been blown out of proportion
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"It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things." -Terry Pratchett
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lol squirrelist.
hell this planet's wrecked lets stick a turbo charger in the shuttle and see if we can make it to canis major .
PS people . it is possible to enjoy a film. see the subtext and still enjoy it.
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On a more practical note: An article that elicits this level of response is a marketing gem, sadly an opportunity squandered by the hosts of this article. So much white space (oops! I mean blank space) on the right of this page. The force the with you....
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Colonial – Sorry to burst your indignant bubble here but the heroic white marines doing their job, are corporate wage slaves acting as the bad guys. Our hero is someone who realises this and turns against the rest of the heroic white marines.
Really it should not be that difficult to grasp that the predominately white guys, ignoring the non-white ones, were the imperialistic bad guys. Would have thought it would have been right down your street, capitalist imperialists getting their comeuppance.
Philly Mom – I had forgotten about the X-Men, as well as the other Marvel comics (DC were a bit slower on the up take), these comics were all about the underdog becoming the hero. Some of the adversity they faced came internally or their pre-super lives, some of it like the X-Men came from simple prejudice. US comics have in the main been a good example of what America can do. Of course in recent years have been helped by the influx of British talent.
Cheese – Hey if the US doesn’t get 2000AD why did they decide making that dross Judge Dred? Not a huge fan of JD but he deserved better than having an aging action hero mangling his catchphrases!
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@ godkumario #146: Brilliant post!
@ indiscerbibles #137: Read godkumario's post: There is the real battle that is on the inside, you have misinterpretated this movie very cynically that reflects more about you than real knowledge applicable to reality.
Your trappings are a lack of understanding and basic information of the reasons why history occurred the way it did (Read: Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs & Steel). Technology as James Cameron states is both a curse (war, genocide etc) and a blessing (Modern science, medicine, education, IT) but in itself actually that is incorrect, it is the people's choice how to use it that is the difference as Cameron actually said about some of his film's recurring themes!
Will you also ATTACK "Anglo-Saxons" for all the technological and scientific and medical progress and learning since the enlightenment to the present as well? Did you know the USA has the most number of Nobel Prize winners than any other country by a long-shot? With a president like like Barak Obama, this great country (US) will be a great blessing once again.
As well as shaping the classic world since 18thC in blood, Western Civilization's have also contributed to shaping the Modern World into a better place as well?
Your comments are selective to be almost hypocritical, all you just need is more information before you make a real choice.
Since modern times violence has diminished in ALL MEASURES! You may think that the last century with all the wars this is absurd but google Steven Pinker - The Myth of Violence lecture or see it at TED for discussion on it.
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113. At 1:43pm on 04 Jan 2010, Victor wrote:
#90 by Peter_Sym
Invoking Godwin's law usually doesn't lead to anything useful. I am talking about the present-day world, in which (sadly) the obsession with race and racism is once again growing. Just consider how profoundly has the term changed its meaning in English - today, you can call someone who opposes Muslim immigration (an example as good as any) a "racist", even though it has absolutely nothing to do with racism in the correct sense of the word."
It has everything to do with rascism. Races do not exist. Rascists do.
Anti-moslem sentiment could also be described as anti-semitism.
There is no such thing as "moslem immigration", religions do not immigrate or take out mortgages for that matter.
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A person needs therapy if his/her obsession starts to influence his/her behaviour in a profoundly illogical way and becomes a paranoia. Which definitely applies here - claiming that Avatar's story is in fact a well-masqueraded white man's dream of becoming a privileged native is ridiculous beyond belief. If somebody claimed that it is in fact a well-hidden dig at Islam or that it carries a hidden Marxist message, it would be equally ridiculous.
Try to look at the film as it is, because if you look for a hidden meaning hard enough, you will always find an imaginary one."
HMMM but films do have messages do they not? As art forms?.
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142. At 3:59pm on 04 Jan 2010, Kathryn Worley wrote:
To respond to several comments above that question the ongoing relevance of race and racism--
Academic studies repeatedly demonstrate that race and racism permeate life in the U.S. and have significant and painful consequences for millions of American citizens. There are countless websites, journals, and books dedicated to the issue, but here are just a few that I usually share with my students."
Of course they do, only an idiot would say otherwise. What form of human abuse has been done away with? Answer none.
Dishonesty, intentional cruelty, etc are as rife as they have ever been. Goes with the species.
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@ Rob Drake #147: This aspect of the movie has very little discussion! Brilliant post!
Quote:
""There is a meaning in this film, but it's not racist. The blue people don't represent a race, they're our collective past - we all came from these same hunter gatherer tribes and in our hearts, we still yearn for those days, like an old man remembering his youth. The film has a familiar theme because it's the theme that lives in the savage heart of humanity, a heart that hasn't changed much in the few millenia of farming, civilisation and traffic jams.
Most entertainment these days is concerned with our dreams of breaking away from civilisation's rules and doing what we what we want, when we want.""
For most of homo-sapiens and other prior homo-subspecies, our inner lives were formed this way. And some of the sheer joys of the movie tickle this place in our minds so wonderfully well!! But combined with the higher versions of ourselves that the Na'vi represents, it is a sublime story that a lot of people who complain of "the lack of original story" seem miserable or chiming away about what some other critic wrote? Either way these comments are usually poorly backed up or explained is the common factor!
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Filmed on green screen, so can't use green. Pink, red, orange, yellow, black, purple all have racist overtones. So aliens in blue it is. Avatar is a story filmed many times before, eg as Dances With Wolves. It's about colonialism. Was colonialism 'racist' in the past? Yes. Will it be in the future? Avatar say 'yes'. But you have to define racism. In Dances With Wolves it was European advanced civilisation against a Hollywood idealised Native American culture that was actually barbaric; men with factory-produced guns were fighting a bow and arrow hunter/warrior society (many of whom actually never stopped fighting each other - was that racist?). Europeans met something equivalent to what Europe had left behind 2,000 years earlier in Ancient Sparta or Rome, admirable for all sorts of reasons but none that made sense in the 'modern' world of the invaders. In Avatar, it is Earthpeople (whether 'white', 'black' or 'yellow') with rocket ships and technology against jungle-dwelling primitives (blue) using spears and flying beasts. Is the conflict due to colour or a clash of incompatible cultures? I'd suggest colour has actually very little to do with the root of it, though such labels make it easier later on to define or dehumanise your 'enemy' - a necessary process to make the average decent human being into a killer. (Some US and UK soldiers in Iraq talk about shooting 'r*gheads' while fighting alongside and supposedly for other Iraqis.) Let's leave racism out of it and keep our powder dry for when and where it's needed.
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157. U14270171:
Oh dear. The Squirrels say they're very sorry. And they'd been saving up for a less sticky keyboard, too.
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89. At 12:30pm on 04 Jan 2010, AllenT2 wrote:
Dan wrote: "I personally ignored all the hype about their being hugh political messages within the film but by the end of the film, had no choice to reflect on the obvious. Being English and being married to an American whilst living in America, is trying at most times. This film was a fine example as to why America has a damaged reputaion throughout the world. They want someting, they take it and find any reason possible to back up their doing so."
I guess that would explain why America kept Europe and Japan after WWII? And why they let the Philippines go? Etc, etc, etc?
Outside of some obvious examples of Indian land grabs America hasn't conquered any other country and continued to possess it.
As for American land, as I previous said in another post most of the lands that were to become the country America were actually uninhabited, even if you go by the highest estimated numbers of Indians at the time of colonization. "
Which shows your ignorance but little else.
Native Americans did not live in bungalows and work in insurance. They were nomadic (largely). Therefore the land they "inhabited" has no relevance, they needed all of it.
Australia has wide spaces where no one lives, but rest assurred the land is owned and used.
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And if you are going to try and condemn those land grabs against Indians you need to also condemn the land grabs amongst Indian tribes. Or is it simply a matter of skin color or who was victorious?"
Did the Native Americans openly declare they desired to conquer new York and anihlate all whites from the face of the earth?
When did they declare that?
The phrase the only good Indian is a dXXX Indian, who said that again?
The US as with Australia wanted its native peoples to dissapear and was more than willing to help them do so.
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There are people who see race in everything and whine and cry about this past injustice or that past injustice as if history could be changed..but more likely because they gain attention. On the gene level of things it is much more difficult to define race as they are all mixed over time and the purist simply fail to accept realities beyond skin color. Sad state of human beings, race, culture, religion, gender, so many reason to hate and seemingly so few to connect. People love to see corporations or evil governments be overthrown in the movies, because it so seldom happens in real life. Suffering human beings...all of us. Feb. 14th is the Spring Festival, lunar new year,....year of the tiger. Share a hot-pot with some family and friends.
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Mark, I thought your blog entry was really well written. I completely agree with your objections and also thought Avatar was much more a critique of US efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam than anything else.
One thing though - they did such a good job with Sam's legs that I honestly thought he was a disabled actor. When I found out he wasn't I was really disappointed. Why couldn't they have casted a disabled actor? Now that's discrimination!
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" 164. At 5:01pm on 04 Jan 2010, Lijaha wrote:
Filmed on green screen, so can't use green. Pink, red, orange, yellow, black, purple all have racist overtones. So aliens in blue it is. Avatar is a story filmed many times before, eg as Dances With Wolves. It's about colonialism. Was colonialism 'racist' in the past? Yes. Will it be in the future? Avatar say 'yes'. But you have to define racism. In Dances With Wolves it was European advanced civilisation against a Hollywood idealised Native American culture that was actually barbaric; men with factory-produced guns were fighting a bow and arrow hunter/warrior society (many of whom actually never stopped fighting each other - was that racist?). Europeans met something equivalent to what Europe had left behind 2,000 years earlier in Ancient Sparta or Rome, admirable for all sorts of reasons but none that made sense in the 'modern' world of the invaders. "
No need to define what rascism is. It is fairly clear. And teh conquest of the Native Americans was brutal and marked by genocide.
The fact the Indians had a warrior society is entirely different.
And the whites were not butchering them because they fought each other.
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160. At 4:49pm on 04 Jan 2010, information1st wrote:
As well as shaping the classic world since 18thC in blood, Western Civilization's have also contributed to shaping the Modern World into a better place as well?"
Do you think the Koories at Uluru would say the world has become a "better place". The Mong in Laos? The Karens? The Bushmen? or do their opinions not count in this Panglossian extravaganza
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Every time I say to one of my friends it's like Pocahontas, they say "It's more like Dances with Wolves," and I can only think "Dances with Wolves is like Pocahontas too..." Now I just have to deal with reneging on the promises I made to watch it again with other people who couldn't make it out on opening night, because I don't think I can take another two hours and forty minutes of James Cameron lighting three hundred million dollars on fire.
The two things I enjoyed about the film were A) In the beginning you see a large vehicle pulling in with arrows still in the tire. I just enjoyed that attention to detail, and B) The idea that empathetic connections between organisms is made a physical manifestation, by both the "tails," that connect, and the "tree," that acts as a network. I like this because it could have interesting implications for writers who aren't James Cameron.
Of course, these physical "empathetic connections" are problematic for the plot and script in Avatar, (remember when the main character was scolded near the beginning for causing the death of a creature when the Pocahontas figure appears and saves him? And remember almost immediately after that they begin hunting for food? That is problematic). The writers of Avatar ignore ideology as a weapon, trying to twist it as a physical fact, when ignoring actual physical facts, like the need to kill to survive--something that can probably be extended to Earth's need to "kill" Pandora to survive (or even, Britain's need to "kill" native populations to survive against other European powers). But the fact that they couldn't even keep the "don't kill animals at all" policy consistent in the writing was saddening. Also, what are "space horses" doing in a jungle? Did you see the giant tiger things? Horses don't exist where tigers do. Because tigers eat horses. Last I checked horses were grazing animals, not precariously placed chicken nugget animals. The only reason horses existed in the New World is because Europe brought them there (I believe) and then fostered their existence. That's fine if that's what previous generations of the Na'vi did, but judging by their anatomy, namely, their ability to "physically empathetically connect" with even the tiger-like aliens, I don't think that was the intended assumption here. There's so many mixed tropes that don't belong together in this movie that I could barely keep from insulting it almost continually. Is James Cameron the new James Fenimore Cooper? I have no idea. But I think the other people in the theater didn't appreciate my critique.
Here is an email from a College professor about the movie to me:
"I saw Avatar on New Year’s Eve and indeed it...could be 'read' as a new version of Pocahontas (among a myriad of other references). The whole Earth-Mother (Pandora-Mother??) indigenous wisdom, folk knowledge theme could have come right out of Beloved...For all of its creativity, in the end, alas, Cameron could only come up with what Adrienne Rich might call the same tired old “one great idea”—violence as purification. The new myths are nearly always built out of the old ones – those are the materials at hand after all."
I kept the name of her class and her name out of the passage because I didn't ask to use her words here, but I feel she put it better than I could, and with more gravity to boot, being a rather seasoned American Literature professor and poet herself.
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People who think Avatar is racist generally also see racism in a glass of ice water.
I walked away from this movie thinking about our excessive materialism and beauty of self-enlightenment and not wondering why it wasn't the technologically less-advanced locals who beat the long odd against the tanks and planes. To make a movie insisting on a politically correct but otherwise laughable fantasy is an insult to anyone's intelligence.
Some people see hidden beauties in this world while some see crap everywhere they turn. I choose to be the former, thank you very much.
oh, by the way, I am in no way a white person.
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1. Weird over-reaction by the critics.
Movies often use different race actors to portray differences. Sometimes it's just other races, like Americans/Brits (okay not necessarily diff races, but it was the first that came to mind) playing Jews/Romans in The Last Temptation of Christ. It's not an offensive practice, it's just meant to heighten the dissimilarities of the race. Of course, that was back in the day (the 90's?) when using words like discrimination in a sentence did not mean racial profiling.
I'm not saying it's not a simplistic film making tool, but it is harmless. Next they'll complain that BLACK music is used to identify Southern US in films. (Wait, Stevie Ray Vaughan isn't black?) OMG, the rampant racisity !
2. Did you just spoil a Peter Hamilton book I have not yet read?
Great. Next time you write an article about other people's articles, your own original contribution should be to NOT spoil a sci-fi book. They should change the job code on your paycheck as a reminder:
2010-NS01 No Spoilers ₤9,000
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168. At 5:07pm on 04 Jan 2010, brunno wrote:
"Why couldn't they have casted a disabled actor? Now that's discrimination!"
Because reality conflicts with fantasy. American audiences don't want to be faced with the idea someone couldn't reallyget up and walk away at the end. . .
Funnily enough, thanks to our discrimination act, if he'd cast this in Britain, he might have had to. . .
(I want to be James Bond in the next movie but four when we finally get over it. I really fancy a rocket-firing Aston-Martin wheelchair or exploding crutches and stuff. And the girls. I wouldn't even have minded being blue with a tail; often thought one would come in handy. Could swing from lamppost to lamppost, save the bother of trying to walk. Hang from the grab rails in the tube, so people didn't trip over my crutch. Yes, I like it.)
Er, just out of sort of professional curiosity, what is wrong with his legs?
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What is it that makes people so scared about this movie? And since when have we held Hollywood to such a high moral code? There are parallels between the Na’vi and many different indigenous groups throughout the world, but the Na’vi are a caricature, not the real thing. Humans don’t really have crestatious legs coming out of their hair so that they can connect to the energy of the universe and bond with animals. Sure the movie was romanticized, but all in all, it meant well. The main character was a little goofy and scores an animated hottie, then rides a big terradactyl, unites the people and together they defeat the globalization of Pandora by the man with the golf putter and the man with the scars (fact: all bad people have scars).
The majority of us who are responding to this article come from a culture that is doing its best to get into other people’s business. Imagine the other version of the movie, the one that happens in real life. Who would want to watch that? This movie is a fantasy, and that is what you are going to see. I am sorry that some of you didn’t find the movie intellectually stimulating. If you wanted that, you could have read a book, but you went to see a major motion picture instead. It is amazing to me the places where people choose to fight their battles.
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Mark: '"In any case the term was gleefully taken up by Obama's opponents and set to the tune of Puff the Magic Dragon. You might guess their purpose was not to advance post-structuralist criticism but to earn the licence to repeat the naughty word "negro" and make fun of the candidate."
Gee, you think? And to think you actually doubted whether Joe Wilson's '"You Lie!!" outburst last September was grounded, if not wholly smuthered in raceism!! If Obama's political opponents really did want what's best for the country and not just themselves, then I should like to think that this misportrayal of the "others" (AKA any race other than whites) as being good little poodles, not intelligent enough to be a strong, independent thinker who can solve complex problems on their own thank you very much and only need partner with a white person because of a true friendship or because the task which they deam necessary and worthy of carrying out is too daunting
for them to handle by themselves would alarm them, and cause them to raise their voice in loud concern and protest just as the L.A. Times columnist did (all be it perhaps a little rashly) at Obama having been seen in this light by a large swathe of the population during the campaign. I should think that Obama's opponents would stand up and say without reservation that this 21st century equivalent of the 20th century's 'Black Face, with its massivly exaggerated facial features, lusting personalities etc is wholly and catigoricly unacceptable, and at the very least start a national debate over why, till this day, we seak to portray others in this most demeaning and offensive light. But no, of course they don't. They would rather score cheap political points and let their true racest colors show through their chomping at the bit to use the word "negro" without getting in trouble than help to improve this hopelessly hypocritical country.
Entertainment is, after all, often times merely a reflection of society as a whole. And since Hollywood is the entertainment capital of the world, and since it is based in America, then obviously Avatar is a reflection, according to James Cameron, of 21st century race relations in America. The fact that we have our first black (well, technically mixed race) president doesn't mean jack sh*t!! Our problems didn't go away, if anything they merely got shoved further under ground because the vast majority of the people now believe that black president = perfect country, and it couldn't be farthest from the truth!!!
"Raising age-old questions about whether it is better to be true to your values and your friends rather than your country (species) is more thought-provoking than most Hollywood blockbusters manage."
Because people, especially Americans, go to the movies, especially at these ridiculous prices, largely to be entertained, and not to be introduced to a new mature way of looking at their country, its place in the world, and their fellow man throughout that world. Hollywood, in an effort to make a dime, merely gives the consumer what they want. And during the midst of the great recession, can you blame them?
"My second objection is more profound. I strongly believe the racial divide has been the driving force in American history, and continues to play a huge, and often under-discussed role in its politics. I am not one to underestimate its power."
Ironic, isn't it, that we never hear of the racial divide having played, or playing a huge role in any other western country's history? Could it be that our friends know how to treat their citizens right? But "often under discussed?" Perhaps so from the civil rights era to Bush 43. But as you can see now, its impact on everything it touches is being excavated, like a precious prehistoric relic everywhere we turn.
"But that doesn't mean everything is about that debate."
But it can be. All that has to happen is someone has to draw an analogy, write about it and bam!! The most respected and revered news organization in the English speaking world's North America correspondent devotes nearly a whole page's worth of writing to a topic that could very well have racial undertones to it. See how fun this is?
"The idea of weaker opponents fighting back against a military force with an apparently overwhelming technological superiority, aided by the enemy within, surely echoes not only Vietnam but conflicts much closer to us in time and space. Perhaps it is easier for American critics to think it is about race."
And by "conflicts much closer to us in time and space" I presume you mean Iraq? While I'm not sure if it is best for a paid news reporter to let their personal political feelings and preferences show on their blog, nevertheless I completely agree with you!! Because some of those critics, if they're not blaming it on race (no matter how much truth may be in that argument,) then that would mean that they might have to take a long, hard look at themselves in the mirror and realize that perhaps, just perhaps, the United States of America doesn't always act toward the rest of the world with the utmost altruism, selflessness, respect and kindness. That may be other people in other countries might know what's best for them a little better than we do. But admiting that our country is imperfect would be simply too hard for some people, so they instead accuse the mirror holders of throwing the mirror at them.
P.S. Mark, I would love it if you could do an entry on your thoughts regarding the racial divide's huge impact on our politics today and compare it to Britain, Canada and other western countries. Aside from the Joe Wilson outburst, you haven't written much about that at all. Thank you.
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I have to say that the critics were NOT accurate when they mentioned that all the "human" characters are white. Let's not forget Michelle Rodriguez who plays the helicopter pilot who helps save the day, as well as Dileep Rao who is the inside informant. Both actors played roles which were crucial to helping the Na'vi succeed. The critics are wrong and are looking for a controversy where there is none.
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#35. 2die4: David Cunard "If it wasn't for our work ethic, modern America wouldn't exist. . . Enjoy the stress related illness's that will come with your 24 hour work ethic, poor diet and family neglect."
Modern America wouldn't exist.? How do you figure that out? I really think that without modern America, a lot of Europe either wouldn't exist or would not live in the comfort it does today. Poor diet? Perhaps you've never been to the USA because, although meat based (which is believed by some to be carcigenous), American diet is among the most varied in the world. As for "family neglect" I can't see that it is any worse than in the United Kingdom.
#75. SherriMcLain: "I felt the need to comment on David's rant above"
My dear lady, a comment consisting of two paragraphs is hardly a rant. Since you have never posted here before, turn back and read some of the actual rants, the Middle East conflicts being a prime example.
". . . believe David is an American. As an American, one who used to work for the LA Times (perfectly acceptable btw) David, you sound more like a Brit who has a romantic idea (and misguided) of Americans and the U.S."
You're wrong. I'm British but have lived in Los Angeles for probably longer than you've been on this earth. Only in the last three months have I moved to somewhere less hectic but still within driving distance to Los Angeles. So I have a very realistic view of Americans and the United States in general.
"First, as I mentioned, The LA Times refers to itself that way and has for donkey's years."
Show me an article which illustrates that. It may be acceptable for reporters and even Los Angeles residents to use the abbreviation, but I was taught that one should never abbreviate in print. For a foreigner (and non-resident of America's second city) to use local vernacular is generally unacceptable. An old-fashioned notion perhaps, but them I'm an old-fashioned person.
"As for the LA Times being a great American institution, I would agree that it was once, but the Trib (that's the Chicago Tribune to you David) bought it in the 90s"
Keep up with the times - Sam Zell bought the papers two years ago. But perhaps you didn't read it.
"many Americans routinely take the two weeks off over Christmas and New Year"
I don't know what occupation you have or where you live, but plainly you have no idea of work in the USA. Christmas is over at midnight of the 25th and work commences the very next day. Business and government does not come to a virtual stop as it does in the UK.
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All of the humans are white? Michelle Rodriguez, Dileep Rao, Sean Moran, Sonia Yee, and Ilram Choi might disagree.
A fantasy about ceasing to be white? How about a fantasy of ceasing to be human? A fantasy of not being surrounded by stupid, selfish, self righteous people.
There will always be someone who complains.
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168. brunno:
Sorry, I got carried away.
I meant to say thanks for using the right word. As I keep having to point out, goodness only knows why after all these years, I can call myself 'crippled' 'cos I am; you (i.e. everybody who isn't) had better call me 'disabled'. Not ideal, but some of the more 'PC' versions are either just clumsy or downright silly as well as being an affront to the English language.
(I see now how I came to misunderstand an earlier reference because of the 'c' word. Didn't realise it was meant literally rather than metaphorically.)
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ref #178
It is true many companies take the last week of the year off. especially true for factories.
also a new trend in the work place is unpaid furloughs.
Of course if anyone deserves an unpaid frlough it is the U.S congress
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My post above was repeatedly disputed. Just a clarification: I wasn't intending to discuss brutality of Anglo-Saxons, Nazis and similar racially-motivated arrogant war-mongering nations. I just meant to say that a lot of people all over the world will see this racial aspect in the film: the Anglo-Saxons attacking them and killing them. Yes, I of course saw the free-thinking people who "betrayed their race" and sided with the Russians (=Na'avi =Iraqis =Vietnamese = Native Americans etc), the traitors. I met many people all over the West who similarly take this side, and hope that Iraqis, Russians, Vietnamese, etc, WIN their battles against the overly powerful brutal Nazis/West/"Freedom". This is why many thinkers all over the West are considered to betray their kind! (Enemies of freedom, aren't they?) This is another powerful message in this film. This is not about corporations, this is "cultural racism".
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To all of the Brits offended by David Cunard's comment about British work ethic:
From previous posts David appears to be a transplanted Brit. He beats both sides of the American/British drum, depending on the topic at hand and his mood. Don't know if that changes how offended you might be, but I just thought I would offer it.
To those going on about American/British/French, et al. colonialism/imperialism--one quote:
"A rich enemy excites their cupidity; a poor one, their lust for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them.... To robbery, butchery, and rapine, they give the lying name of "government"; they create a desolation and call it peace." Tacitus in his "Agricola" puts these words in the mouth of a Caledonian chieftain about to fight against the Romans.
Tacitus, of course, was a Roman. The noble savage fighting a just war against an oppressor is an old theme in Western literature.
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This is a general grumble from a biologist. "Evolution" and "ecology" have been embraced by the literary profession and I guess a lot of people might think this is great. But for biologists, evolution are ecology subjects for study rather than metaphors or literary devices or whatever.
Most authors' ideas about evolution and ecology are very different from our understanding. (For example, living in harmony with nature is a laughable concept for an ecologist or anyone who understands Darwin). It's not that we can't enter the fantasy but I think that many people think that this aspect of the fantasy is real. Do fantasy writers invent fantastic ideas about economics or politics. Perhaps they do.
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@ aminaz Yeaaaa for listing Ilram !
Nicest stunt/editor/martial-artist/actor ever. :)
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Mark -
Who is #157 U14270171 - cheesefuller? Does this mean he has been banned?
The poster most concerned about the silencing of voices by the BBC, to the point of being criticized by others for suggesting it, has been silenced, on a thread concerning racism?
Would you be so kind as to inform us please?
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@ Simon21 #166:
People who overtly and explicitly reference real world history and conflicts of say US conflicts with other countries and also Native Indian populations, are falling into the trap of being too specific and too literal as to loose any further meaning by trying to extrapolate from this story.
This is like trying to press-gang specifics into unrepresentative positions, that can only fall apart when the emotional pitch of their accusation slowly simmers down. But equally as some people abuse the story, others will gain something positive from it and choose the themes to promote peace and enhance understanding and avoid adding to the conflict of civilizations.
@ Simon #170: Quote:
"Do you think the Koories at Uluru would say the world has become a "better place". The Mong in Laos? The Karens? The Bushmen? or do their opinions not count in this Panglossian extravaganza"
The difference between the Modern World and the Age of Conquest is that infrastructure and communication between nations makes it possible for technology to enhance progress without the destructions of conflict now!!
You could extend what you are saying to Dolphins, Chimpanzees or much of biological life both present and in history such as the mega-fauna that existed in the United states in prehistory that soon became extinct after the first humans traversed the Bering Straights and began settling in North America? Has the world become a "better place" for all the other species that humans have caused to go extinct? The only "extravaganza" is the technological progress of humans at the price of conflict.
See the charity Survival, founded by Norman Lewis for the stories of tribal people everywhere (S. America, India, Africa) that need modern governements to give their cultures and ownership of land legal and practical recognition. It is an ongoing tragedy.
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information1st. # 128.
In the Artificial Intelligence field an 'Avatar' often refers to a remote body or identity, hence the use of the term characters in Second Life or a visual identity (e.g Yahoo uses them) on a website that is different from your actual one. e.g.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/other-gadgets/avatar-machine.htm
Avatars on websites are also used by organizations as a way of interacting with consumers. e.g. Anna on the Ikea site.
http://193.108.42.79/ikea-uk/cgi-bin/ikea-uk.cgi
The Matrix also used the idea of Avatars for the bodies that Neo & Trinity and the 'agents' (bad guys) inhabited in the virtual world. (The Matrix writers clearly had researched and understood much of the work into AI.)
Tron, Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity and (later this year) Tron Legacy also explore the idea of characters living in virtual worlds.
Earlier Sci-Fi writers such as William Gibson had also explored the concept of virtual bodies and identities.
Surrogates is a recent (Bruce Willis) Sci-Fi film that uses a similar idea to Avatar; in it second robotic-bodies [Avatars] exist in the real world, allowing people to download their consciousness into them and remotely explore and experience it without leaving their homes (of course being a Bruce Willis movie it all goes horribly wrong...).
Humans can't [yet] create physical bodies and control them remotely, but that is what a physical Avatar would be.
In Hinduism an Avatar is the physical manifestation of a deity, usually in an animal form. (In Greek mythology their gods also had a similar trick of appearing disguised as animals.)
To answer your question:
Do I see Jake as the physical manifestation of a deity? No.
Is Jake's alien persona a physical body, remotely controlled, used as a way of interacting with the aliens and their world? Yes.
I'll go with the modern meaning derived from its use in computing and AI.
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129. I guess your not a major sci-fi fan - or big on thought-experiments.
The answer to the question I posed - "it might be worth asking how we, as a species, would respond towards an alien intelligent species; particularly if they had resources that we wanted and were able to reach that planet?" - could also give us an idea of how to treat others on this planet.
If we're honest (putting nationality and race aside) as a species we humans do have our faults (history's pages are steeped in blood) as well as good points, however uncomfortable that makes some feel.
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I suspect that the race issue is a bit of a red-herring with Avatar. The sub-text to Avatar is clearly environmentalism; given an outright attack on that is a bit like kicking kittens PR-wise, some are trying (none to convincingly) to use race or the native's nature-centred-spirituality to attack it with instead.
Avatar makes the story unsettling by reversing the usual plot-line and making humans the alien invaders, but also shows humans that question or oppose the mining company's motives and methods.
Star Trek explored a similar story to Avatar (The Devil in the Dark) back in 1967, where miners on a planet are being killed by an alien that burrows through solid rock. The Enterprise crew set out to destroy it.
The plot hinged on Spock's realisation that the creature was a silicon-based-life-form protecting it's eggs that the miners had thought were mineral deposits. That realisation leads to an accommodation where-by the life-form helped the miner's tunnelling in return for its eggs being protected.
In many respects Avatar also shares similar themes with Lord of the Rings (and that had talking trees and wizards); defence of a homeland and restoration of the status-quo and good vs evil.
Tolkien wasn't at all keen on industrialisation (The wicked wizard Saruman destroys forests to fuel his furnaces), hence his romanticised, idyllic rural Shire of the Hobbits.
The Avatar story may seem simplistic, but like Star Wars, LOTR and even Harry Potter it has universal appeal for that reason. As with all such stories with mass-appeal the location is mythical, allowing people from many cultures and nations to identify with it and project onto it their own concerns.
BTW. One major difference between Star Wars and Avatar is that in Star Wars Luke saves Princess Leia twice and she plays no role in the attack on the Death Star.
In Avatar [princess] Neytiri saves Jake's life at least five times and plays a full role in the final battle, she even gallops to his rescue at the end.
As a sign of how attitudes have changed, no-one is questioning that.
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Don't know about the print edition, but here's a link to the Los Angeles Times web site http://store.latimes.com showing the use of "LA Times" (not to mention the web site name itself).
"Old-fashioned" doesn't begin to describe what Mr. Cunard is. As an old-fashioned pedant, he should know that the "second city" in the US is Chicago. Being second in population is not sufficient; there is a lot more to being a city than having a large population.
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ref #142
(1) The American Anthropological Association's official statement on race: www.aaanet.org/issues/policy-advocacy/AAA-Statement-on-Race.cfm
(2) An interactive website dealing with race and racism (a project of the American Anth. Assoc.): http://www.understandingrace.org/home.html
(3) An interactive website by PBS, associated with their documentary on race: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm
(4) One example of contemporary, peer-reviewed, sociological research demonstrating just how deep racism runs in U.S. labor markets: [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
- much of Pager's other work also demonstrates the practical, ugly consequences of racism in the U.S.: http://www.princeton.edu/~pager/publications.htm
(5) Several books to consider: Racism without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva; Racist America by Joe Feagin; How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America by Marable Manning; Everyday AntiRacism, edited by Mica Pollock (on undermining racism in schools)
_______________--
Do you share opposing views. And considering academia one sided view of politics in general should you and fellow proffessors. What about race baiters like the Duke 88?
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#183. tim: "From previous posts David appears to be a transplanted Brit. He beats both sides of the American/British drum, depending on the topic at hand and his mood."
Not a bad assessment! Having maintained homes in both countries I have the ability to compare life in them from direct experience.
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tigerlily (#186) "Does this mean he has been banned?"
He was banned a long time ago, but keeps coming back under various pseudonyms. For a time he was changing his names about as often as he changed his socks. I thought he would survive as "fluffytale," under which name he seemed to improve his behavior. Don't know why that name was eventually dropped, when it was obvious for a long time that it was Jack. The "cheesefuller" identity went sooner. Perhaps the mods have made a New Year's resolution to be more diligent.
"Would you be so kind as to inform us please?"
Don't expect them to answer this. The moderators do not enter into the discussion.
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Imagine folks that our Earth was attacked by aliens. How ALL OF A SUDDEN we’d all be one….
Come on guys, let's stop all this negative talk. Love, and live.
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Welcome back from your holiday, Mark. You bring up an interesting point about the genre of speculative fiction aka Science Fiction and Fantasy. One of its guiding principles has always been to confront social issues that contemporary literature finds difficult confront without much criticism. Hence, you find books like Hobson's Gentlemen's Agreement
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186. At 6:04pm on 04 Jan 2010, tigerlily wrote:
Who is #157 U14270171 - cheesefuller? Does this mean he has been banned?
The poster most concerned about the silencing of voices by the BBC, to the point of being criticized by others for suggesting it, has been silenced, on a thread concerning racism?
I don't think Mark will actually be informed himself, necessarily. But the substitution of a 'U' number usually means exactly that. So, sadly, we probably won't get any more about comics. But we no doubt will get a lot more from Comedians (the capital 'C' is a deliberate reference.)
(I don't care any more, but publicising this has turned people into U-numbers before now as well.)
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Ref 181, Magic
"Of course if anyone deserves an unpaid frlough it is the U.S congress"
I think what they should do is spend more time in Washington taking care of the people's business, and less time campaigning and asking for political contributions.
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@ SheffTim #188:
Another post that was very interesting to read.
Thought-experiment is the word and agree history paints humans as an aggressive species, but Myth of Violence - Steven Pinker paints a scientifically rosier picture that our current civilization appears to be doing very well at!
The Race issue is a disctint theme in this movie: See my post: #143
""Back on topic: BLUE was chosen in part because it was the only color to work asthetically for people (structure of human eye limitation & less baggage than GREEN which already was taken by eg "little green men")
**But also as INTENTIONAL EMPHASIS on racial, cultural difference as a KEY story element and lack of understanding of the OTHER and lack of morals in dealings with the OTHER.** "" etc...
But James Cameron does emphasis the environmental issues especially coral reefs and rainforests, you are right: Google interview James Cameron avatar film
SheffTim #188: Quote:
""To answer your question:
Do I see Jake as the physical manifestation of a deity? No.
Is Jake's alien persona a physical body, remotely controlled, used as a way of interacting with the aliens and their world? Yes.
I'll go with the modern meaning derived from its use in computing and AI.""
The science in Avatar is brilliantly realised but for me even this and the 3D are outdone by a great story for more reasons than I can mention on a blog.
My question was a set-up: Jake controls his avatar remotely at the beginning, but after his transformations in the middle he ends by "passing through the eye of Ewya" to become an "Avatar of Ewya". His transformation is complete and he has become as much a higher being as the other Na'vi are symbolised to be. After all, he was "chosen" by Ewya and his various actions suggest in the film he is the "The One". Alternatively you can just read that he became his avatar which is an interesting and less mystical change?
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191. David Cunard:
#183. tim: "From previous posts David appears to be a transplanted Brit. He beats both sides of the American/British drum, depending on the topic at hand and his mood."
I still maintain the British drumskin should be made from pages of The Guardian, not the Daily Mail, Times and Torygraph, and the American one from The Nation, though. The beat to march to would be much better :-D
(The squirrels will make a couple of proper tom-toms for next Christmas, now they've had the idea.)
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#198. squirrelist: "I still maintain the British drumskin should be made from pages of The Guardian, not the Daily Mail, Times and Torygraph"
I read them all as time permits - The Independent and even the red tops on occasion. Best to have a cross-section than one narrow viewpoint.
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If we are going to do the whole socio-political dissection of this film, let's do it properly.
What is the fundamental political structure of the blue folks?
Divine theocracy, right?
The warrior class have a high priestess and a "king" chief. The daughter of the king is the object of desire, the classic "princess" from the right family.
Divine theocracy is promoted as the way forward, because the alternative seems to be fascism: a military industrial complex where corporate interests dictate the policy and law. (that is the textbook definition of fascism, by the way: the corporate control of government. I am not talking about the American definition of the term, which is "bad things germans do".)
Avatar shares this dichotomous worldview (divine theocracy vs corporate fascism) with numerous other burnt offerings from the hollywood elite.
The Lion King is an extremely perverse example of the art form. Here we witnessed animals in the lower food chain singing and dancing with joy at the return of the Lion king. I mean, WTF? I'm no antelope political activist, nor do I subscribe to some doctrine of marxist class war within the animal "kingdom". But even so, I draw the line at herbivores lining up to sing and dance at the return of a carnivore. That is just way, WAY to much like the blackshirts screaming their love for the state which brutalizes them.
But this love of divine monarchy is promoted in the British public, also. Harry Potter is perhaps the most striking example of the mass appeal of the divine rule of monarchs.
Consider the caste system that underlies the Potter world.
Harry supposedly comes from an ordinary family (we find out later that in fact he hails from extremely special and glorious heritage: imagine our relief), and yet he is somehow "special". Due to his special circumstances of birth, he has "special powers" which he possesses by virtue of bloodline.
And, of course, he gets sent to a special school for special children with special powers, and eventually these super beings (blessed with the power to do magic: proto-christian shamanism) SAVE THE WORLD.
And that, of course, is the crucial plot twist that underpins these fantasy representations of social order.
The superior social authority of the super class within these divine theocracies is always made legitimate by an external threat of total destruction. We are always introduced to a super class within a society ruled by magic, and then we see the masses are joyous and blessed because they are saved from a fate worse than death by the superior class of warriors.
And therefore, the subtext tells us, we need the divine class of warrior priests to save us from certain death.
It is enough to make you want to shake prince harry (the real one) by the hand and say "THANK GOD YOU ARE HERE!!"
Because, after all, that is the reality. If god did not bless the priestly class in any given society, that society would inevitably be destroyed by some external enemy.
This is the American contribution to social and political philosophy in the modern epoch: a one note screaming endorsement of a theocratically endorsed class system that operates with fear as the fundamental rational for order.
Sometimes you get sanity and reason poking its way through the corporate fascist bile.
The Ice Age, in stark contrast, is all about a collection of traditional enemies having to work together and apply tolerance in order to overcome mutual adversity.
Sid the sloth may not jump out as the obvious candidate for Christ's new incarnation, but the fact remains that he is the light on the hill, as far as modern artistic philosophy is concerned.
Now i am not saying that Hollywood has some kind of conscious "conspiracy" to produce fascist drivel and repetitive homage to theocratic kingdoms. Clearly the public demand this world view. Nobody made so many people go out and buy Harry potter.
But the fact remains that life imitates art, and insofar as our artists lead us from philosophy to philosophy, I'd say we are being pretty poorly served.
If the market defines what we think, because it defines what art is available to the society, I fear we will continued to be ruled by fat and idiotic middle class crawlers whose most complex fantasy is to marry a prince/princess and ride of in the sunset, to the adulation of their peers.
If it were me, I'd write about Sid the Sloth raising an army of pre-historic animals and waging a war of aggression on humanity. He would put the human animal to the sword, and implement a system of direct democracy and vegetarianism. The lions would eat tofu and deceased herbivores only. Sid might publish a little Red book, just to move the plot along and to pay homage to certain truths of raw military power, but in the end his cult of personality would be eclipsed by a higher force: the will of the individual sentience in the natural world.
But that's just me, and obviously Oprah would have a hard time squaring it with the jesus freaks.
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Sorry the previous post (194) was incomplete. What happened to the Preview Post button?
...which chronicles a gentile pretending to be a Jew confronting antisemitism, becoming a controversial best seller and then an Oscar winning film. While for decades, science fiction had been writing about similar circumstances, albeit behind a thin veil of "speculative" fiction and what ifs. That Avatar's subtext is now being hotly debated is rather amusing.
In point of fact, I don't believe there is a shred of intentional racism in the film, or in its production. And by intentional I mean that the creators did what most people do, they write what they know and do what they are most comfortable with. It never occurred to them that casting "ethnic" actors to play aliens with voices that differed enough from the "oppressors" to make a particular distinction, that it might appear racist in any way. As far as they were probably concerned the production was as multi-ethnic as one could find in Hollywood.
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The David Ehrenstein piece in the LA Times that Mr. Mardell found "thoughtful" I merely found offensive.
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As a African American, I never once thought the movie was racist. The only objective of the movie is to provided entertainment and it does an excellent job. Labeling a fictitious alien race as "black" seems a bit ridiculous.
Fictitious racism is an issue now? Give me a break...
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# 195 squirrelist -
"I don't think Mark will actually be informed himself..."
Forgive me, I disagree. To quote Mark, "I read them all, so please have your say."
# 192 GH1618 -
"The moderators do not enter into the discussion."
The question was directed at Mark Mardell. Perhaps he would be good enough to supply an answer.
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SaintDominick (#196) "I think what they should do is spend more time in Washington taking care of the people's business, and less time campaigning and asking for political contributions."
I don't see why you think it is necessary to be in Washington to conduct the people's business. Much of the work of members of Congress is reading, which can be done at home and on airplanes as well as in the office. Vice President Biden, as a Senator, went home every night (to Delaware).
It is only necessary to be in Washington for debate and votes. Congress accommodates the need of its members to visit their districts by scheduling these to allow travel.
Do you think that only people sufficiently well-heeled to be able to travel to Washington frequently (the lobbyists) should be able to visit their representatives in Congress?
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Before watching the movie I saw reports saying that there weren't any people of color in the movie or that it was being racist. But I wonder that those who made these claims even saw the movie or at least paid attention to everything other than the action scenes and the special effects. There are people of other races (who don't play the Navi) in the movie. In fact one of the scientists are of a darker complexion.
Then there are that of the Navi. If those who watched paid any attention they would have noticed the use of different cultures, traditions, and languages to make up that of the Navi.
P.S. I am of Caribbean, European, African, and Asian decent and live in NYC.
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On whether Avatar should be seen as a straightforward entertainment piece, or a commentary on the nature of global conflict....
I'm a firm believer that art (including films) should have a certain self-contained beauty before explicitly attempting to project any deeper message onto the audience. We appreciate things, at first, on the literal plane, and so with a stronger emotional contact established, we can be more certain and more emphatic about any metaphorical or transferable meaning we infer.
From a technical viewpoint, James Cameron has achieved many great things in creating Avatar, but in my opinion it falls short of being that most rare of things in today's Hollywood landscape - a truly great story. Perhaps that is why I see people feeling around in the dark for some deeper meaning, but ultimately succeeding only to draw speculative, superficial parallels with historical events.
Secondly, we also have to accept that our reaction to such works is path-dependent. In other words our subjectivity will cause us to interpret the meaning of a story differently from others based on our experiences to date. Any interpretation is valid if that's what you genuinely take home from the film. I personally took very little of real value - although I would say I enjoyed watching it. But I am a white, middle-class technophile in his mid-twenties, not a Vietnam War (or similar) veteran. So perhaps I am not the authority how to evaluate Avatar.
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Frankly, I think that everyone who's trying to read into Avatar more than necessary, and is critical of it for that reason, is too cynical for their own good.
Long story short: Blue guys = good, Corporations = bad, mechanised warfare = bad, genocide = bad, ecocide = bad, environment = good, materalism = bad.
That's all you need to know to enjoy the film, and enjoy it you should. It's sci-fi escapism at it's very best.
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200. At 6:50pm on 04 Jan 2010, democracythreat wrote:
"This is the American contribution to social and political philosophy in the modern epoch: a one note screaming endorsement of a theocratically endorsed class system that operates with fear as the fundamental rational for order."
Yep. I don't read a lot of science fiction, but it does suddenly strike me that theocracies, priesthoods and absolute monarchies do seem to have featured quite a lot, especially in the last few years, now you mention it. Could that be because (he says wickedly) a US-style republic can't be made plausible in fiction?
Not so sure about the rest though. The Wizard world seems to be a kind of parliamentary democracy; it's got the Wizengemot and Prime Ministers who are forced to resign. And Hogwarts can't really be elite, since it seems to be open to all wizards, even Muggle ones. So I think your thesis starts falling apart a bit, there. And it's not sci-fi, of course.
But the Squirrel Party will definitely be starting on a "doctrine of Marxist [capital M, please, I'm a 'new-fangled pedant' or post-structuralist one, or maybe just adolescent, something like that] class war within the animal 'kingdom' " just as soon as they've read Animal Farm again.
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172. LeonHAHA wrote:
People who think Avatar is racist generally also see racism in a glass of ice water.
-- Ah... but exactly how pure is that ice water? eh?
Some people see hidden beauties in this world while some see crap everywhere they turn. I choose to be the former, thank you very much.
-- Preach it, Honey. Much Agreed.
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188 SheffTim:
Star Trek explored a similar story to Avatar (The Devil in the Dark) back in 1967, where miners on a planet are being killed by an alien that burrows through solid rock. The Enterprise crew set out to destroy it.
'PAAAAAAIN!!!!!'
God I loved Spock in that one!
The melodrama was thicker than molasses in January.
Of course, for politically poignant melodrama with Tongue-In-Cheek, I'd recommend StarShip Troopers -- which I found to be poignant statement against militarism and colonialist warfare, fraught with blood-splattering irony. And really big bugs. And Nazi-Like Uniforms. And a direct homage to Spock in 'The Devil in the Dark'. I laughed. I cried. It was better than CATS.
Net-Flix it Today!
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As a African American, I never once thought the movie was racist. The only objective of the movie is to provided entertainment and it does an excellent job. Labeling a fictitious alien race as "black" seems a bit ridiculous.
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Not as black, but the fictitious aliens replaced the blacks, or the red indians...The concept is cowboys vs red indians....its a recycling of dances with wolves....Any tom dick and harry idiot person can see it...
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Interesting analysis!
I would hope any critic who has ever seen Battlestar Galactica would think twice before accusing Avatar of applying the "magic negro" archetype.
Avatar was solid in developing a completely unfamiliar world, inhabited by an equally unfamiliar race, whose cultures and behaviors, while often similar to the stereotypes surrounding African and Native Americans, are primarily characterized by the extreme distance between their society and that of humanity's. It is this which creates the atmosphere of "otherness" in the Na'vi, far much moreso than their accents or the ethnicity of the green screen and voice actors portraying them.
Compare this to something like Battlestar Galactica, where every main actor throughout the 4 season series was white, except for when a role calls for a mystic, a seer or a pseudo-intellectual (or a criminal, traitor or android).
I am aware that Avatar utilizes a formula previously seen in Dances with Wolves, but hey that's Hollywood. Given Hollywood's racial history, I think one will see that Avatar took great steps to mold a strong aesthetic difference between the Na'Vi and the humans, and I admit that some of this involves the ethnicity of the actors. However, at some point, we have to assume that age-old narrative devices can be a vessel for a certain density that exists within modern cinema, and I think Avatar, despite a few problems, succeeding in providing its audience with a deeper look at this old plot formula.
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204. tigerlily:
I'm really risking my neck here, since discussion of this aspect of the BBC blog setup is not popular with those primarily concerned with it, or so it has proved in the past, but he sees just what you and I do on the page. Not the decisions that result in posts appearing or not; or those deleted. That process is entirely separate, and there is no appeal procedure and, as far as I, and others can tell--and I really don't want to go into this any further--no interaction with the journalists whose byline is on the blogs either.
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Hi all,
Haven't seen Avatar, do believe that there is racism in Hollywood, but that sometimes it is seen where it is looked for.
On the workaholic note, I am an American, I work at a US national lab, and I was locked out of work from Dec 23rd until today. It was lovely. I felt no withdrawal symptoms, and even left my email inbox to fester for over a week. So I think the supposed pandemic of american compulsive workaholic-ness is blown far out of proportion.
Back to work!
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On one hand you have that movie called Borat, and on the other hand you have this movie....Both mainstreaming racism....
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All I have to say http://i47.tinypic.com/6puxi1.jpg This is a link to the story of Pocahontas with the names changed.
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i202. At 6:56pm on 04 Jan 2010, GH1618 wrote:
"The David Ehrenstein piece in the LA Times that Mr. Mardell found "thoughtful" I merely found offensive."
Why?
If you read it in conjunction with the other piece Mark quotes, it makes a curious point. I can't make up my mind how valid it might be, but it does explain quite a lot of the reaction to Obama on many sides over a mere twelve months, the speed of development of which, and some of its vehemence, has rather puzzled me.
(As a European, and not much of a filmgoer, and not much of a sci-fi reader either, it's not something I'd thought of; we, I think saw only what we hoped were sort of pink-tinged wings or a vaguely red-ish halo. It's maybe Icarus that might spring to mind rather than a 'Magic Negro'. Or 'Magic Janitor' though that's an informative concept too in the circumstances of last year's campaign, and the behaviour of many Democrats since, when you think about it. I'd never realised that was how that revolting song came into being.)
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Ok - couple of quick points:
- It's a film - it's entertainment
- It's visually stunning
- It's not exactly groundbreaking in terms of plot or dialogue
- It has a very obvious (and somewhat heavy-handed) point to make in the area of ecology etc
- It was fun.
- It isn't racist. It takes a rather perculiar mind to see everything through a prism of racism (similar - one might say - to someone who sees anti-semitism in any critism of the State of Israel). It must be a sad way to live your life.
Oh and Mr Cunnard, I believe you were one of the people calling for Mark to take a wider interest in US culture and civic life - rather than the within the belt-way stuff. In that respect, your old-fogeyish complaint and pedantry in post #8 did you no favours nor frankly, the rather dated generalisation regarding the respective 'work-ethic' of the UK and USA. Maybe you need to do more than read the newspapers every now and then and go and see what it's like in the average office and factory these days.
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Yankee, Spanish, Swahili, Hatian, Trinidad and of course Jamaican Styles all mashed into one!!!
International Style (*)
(*)=Sister Carol the one and only..
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209. At 7:30pm on 04 Jan 2010, squirrelist wrote:
I don't read a lot of science fiction, but it does suddenly strike me that theocracies, priesthoods and absolute monarchies do seem to have featured quite a lot, especially in the last few years, now you mention it. Could that be because (he says wickedly) a US-style republic can't be made plausible in fiction?
Try reading The Lost Regimentseries by William R. Forstchen - all nine books, or Eric Flint's Assiti Shards series - all 15 books and 21 e-magazine anthologies, before you go around making snarky statements about the implausibility of writing fictional US-style republics. I could name a long list of other very successful series, but I'm guessing you'd prefer authors like S.M. Stirling, who specialize in writing Dystopias, so I won't.
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211. At 7:37pm on 04 Jan 2010, colonelartist wrote:
"The concept is cowboys vs red indians....its a recycling of dances with wolves....Any tom dick and harry idiot person can see it..."
I thought you'd only seen "Who Killed Roger Rabbit"? Aren't you just recycling bits of what others have 'seen' here?
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216. David:
Who was it said there were only so many plots? Has the number shrunk since?
Must take a day trip to Gravesend, see if the poor girl is turning in her grave. . .
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re. 191. David Cunard:
Having maintained homes in both countries I have the ability to compare life in them from direct experience.
I've only made two short trips to Britain in the last 30 years, so I would not pretend to have any real knowledge of the country. But I have some training in the social sciences and I do know that it's dangerous to stereotype any society on the basis of one's direct experience. You need statistically significant amounts of data to draw general conclusions. And with direct experience you run into the Margaret Meade problem of the observer influencing the events one is observing.
And I took off from Christmas eve until today. Holiday time and vacation time. My wife was required by her employer to take unpaid furlough days as a cost-cutting measure, so I joined her. It was lovely. We saw relatives, spent time with our adult son, slept in, cooked more lavishly than we might have otherwise. I started building a new instrument for myself. I don't feel a bit of workaholic guilt. Except that now I really should be serious about a diet.
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ref #196
SaintDominick wrote:
Ref 181, Magic
"Of course if anyone deserves an unpaid frlough it is the U.S congress"
I think what they should do is spend more time in Washington taking care of the people's business, and less time campaigning
______________
Well so do I but I don't think we can count on that. Even those with safe seat spend time campaigning. example do you believe Nancy Pelosi has viable opposition?
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I thought you'd only seen "Who Killed Roger Rabbit"? Aren't you just recycling bits of what others have 'seen' here?
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I said, the only half animated half human movie...I admit I tried to watch dances with the wolves after I was told in a typical western way by a westerner to go and watch dances with the wolves before i generously commented on it...(its a western way to recommend others to either read, or see the places or live in countries or watch the movies before commenting on something, although they dont practice what they preach, but thats not the point here). Dances with the wolves was the most pathetic movie ever produced, directed and released...After hundred's of cowboys vs red indian movies where cowboys were the heroes, acted by your national hero, John wayne, and red indians the portrayed as the savages, comes a director who decided to make a condisending movie towards the red indians...and the hero as always was a white male...the same concept here, and already through these posts i know what this movie is about and for once I will watch it, I dont think I have to actually go and smell, see and touch the garbage to know its a garbage...Same goes for that racist movie Borat, where people instead of critisizing the message of racism that movie gave, thought it to be extremely funny...Why do americans have this urge to make movies where they save either the earthlings or the animated beings has to do with their reality both past and present...from the times of red indians, to slaves and mexicans and other nations, they have always been the ones in reality to treat others whom they dont like as evil savages, killing and destroying them..To save humans or animated beings in their fantasy is a a wishful thinking...
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tim (#223) "But I have some training in the social sciences and I do know that it's dangerous to stereotype any society on the basis of one's direct experience. You need statistically significant amounts of data to draw general conclusions."
Correct, but know-it-alls never let that stand in the way of demonstrating their erudition (real or imagined).
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plagiarism paganism colonialism and racism is rife in the world wide white wild wild west... just look at the history of christianity
Love Me Forever Riddim Compilation Pt.1 (*)
(*)=Brigadier Jerry, Carlton Livingston, DJ, Dancehall, Dub, Junior Reid, Lee Van Cliff, Lone Ranger, Lovers, Reggae, Rockers,Sister Carol
that cheese man never troubled no one
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220. Gavrielle_LaPoste:
I only asked a question. (Retires hurt.)
That's an awful lot of books by two authors. Are they any good? And I said I liked Iain M Banks's 'Culture' novels; I don't think I'd call them 'dystopias'. I don't like dystopias (real, or imagined) either.
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218. At 8:18pm on 04 Jan 2010, Feohme wrote:
"It takes a rather perculiar mind to see everything through a prism of racism (similar - one might say - to someone who sees anti-semitism in any critism of the State of Israel). It must be a sad way to live your life."
Well, in a way that was Mark's point. He added, about the 'Magic Janitor' "the key is what the author perceives on a very basic level as otherness as much as race."
Not enough people read through to the last para, I think.
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223. tim:
So glad to see you are not quite the downtrodden wage slaves we thought. Hang on a minute; we don't call a compulsory 'unpaid furlough' a 'holiday'. We call it 'being laid off'.
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information1st. 197. To continue the discussion.
Avatar in Sanskrit covers a number of word concepts. One is 'one being in another form'. Hence its adoption by those working on virtual worlds and AI. It can also mean the 'reincarnation of the same soul in a different body'; a similar meaning, but with more spiritual connotations. There is another (below).
The ending of the film, the death of Jake's human body so 'he' inhabits his Avatar permanently can be seen as his literal 'reincarnation of the same soul in a different body' (spiritual) or his rebirth as a changed man (personal growth).
Alternatively, as you put "he became his avatar" (That simply means his consciousness is transferred) which as you say is a "less mystical change".
The scene with Jake and the seeds of the Tree of Souls settling on him could suggest that he is a 'pure soul'.
Pure Soul is both a Buddhist concept (those that such achieve such a state achieve Nirvana) but also is used in other religions; Catholics compare the transcendent nature of the pure soul to the decay of the mortal body and so on.
The concept that "All energy is borrowed, and someday you have to give it back." is Taoist.
Essentially Avatar allows people to interpret its native society and spirituality however they want. (As with the nebulous nature of Star Wars 'The Force'.)
Pick-n-mix new-age spirituality. Another reason I'm sure many find it attractive, still life is a personal journey etc.
A character as "The One" is a familiar one. Neo, Harry Potter and many superheroes all are often seen as pre-destined for some purpose (strangely villains never are). Audiences like to identify with the idea that people that seem ordinary are secretly special.
There's an interesting take on the Hindu meaning of Avatar and the film here, by a [Hindu] Hare Krishna guy.
"...the movie reverses the very concept that the [Hindu] term "avatar" is based on.
Leave aside the fact that Hindu theology reserves the use of 'avatar', which in Sanskrit literally means 'descent', almost exclusively for appearances of Vishnu on Earth. The key point here is that an avatar always descends from a higher realm into the lower, restores prosperity, wisdom, and happiness - and moves on unchanged after the mission is accomplished.
However, the 'avatar' Jake Sully - and we the viewers along with him - shortly after his descent into the world of Na'vis sees the 'higher' realm of earthlings rapidly grow pallid and repulsive in comparison to the pristine world of supposed savages. The 'civilised humans' turn out as primitive, jaded and increasingly greedy, cynical, and brutal - traits only amplified by their machinery - while the 'monkey aliens' emerge as noble, kind, wise, sensitive, and humane."
http://www.nationaltimes.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/avatars-reversal-of-fortune-20100104-lpod.html
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If anyone's interested in written SF precursors to Avatar's Pandora then its worth reading this.
http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2009/12/all-energy-is-borrowed-review-of-avatar.html
The author missed Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom (John Carter) series e.g. Princess of Mars, published 90 years ago, that Cameron has already said he read as a child and inspired him when creating Pandora.
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If anyone is interested in real life analogies about exploitation of indigenous people's lands it is worth reading this about the Peruvian Govt. pushing ahead with plans to exploit oil, gas, timber and minerals from indigenous people's lands.
'In the film the Na'vi are dismissed as 'blue monkeys' and 'savages' by the corporate administrator. Both the corporation and their hired soldiers view the Na'vi as less than human.
In Peru, President Alan Garcia has called indigenous people 'confused savages', 'barbaric', 'second-class citizens', 'criminals', and 'ignorant'.'
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1222-hance_avatar.html
Avatar raises moral issues that have bearing to human conduct on our own planet.
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re. 230. squirrelist:
...we don't call a compulsory 'unpaid furlough' a 'holiday'. We call it 'being laid off'.
It was only a few days. We don't call it 'being laid off' until it stretches for a few weeks. The idea was that if staff took a few days off without pay (on a rolling basis, not all at once across the business) it would reduce the need to actually lay anyone off. I think some of the staff actually proposed the idea themselves.
The recession has caused not so much workaholism as paranoia. In the spring we went through layoffs where I work, and the survivors went for weeks fearing that if they slipped up on their jobs they would be laid off as well. It wasn't true, but it was a natural fear.
However, I do envy British and European workers some of the benefits and protections they have. You seem to get more vacation time than we do, and you have things like paid maternity leaves. And of course with the various flavors of national health care and retirement benefits across the EU, you go through a working career without some of the worries we have. Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S., for example. You hit the limit on your lifetime expenses and you're on your own as far as a lot of health insurance companies are concerned.
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squirrelist (#217) "Why?"
I found it offensive because I believe people should be judged as individuals, not as stereotypes. It is the stereotype, which evidently was invented by filmakers to compensate for the earlier black stereotype, which is offensive. Ehrenstein, by his use of the term, gives it new life and legitimacy, and he displays his contempt for the American people by attributing Obama's popularity to this effect, rather than for reasons of substance (belief that he might actually do a competent job). Ehrenstein is a little full of himself, I think, thinking that this is profound insight when it is merely (in my opinion) hot air.
Anyway, it's old news now. We can judge the President on his actual performance instead of our expectations.
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Ref 224, Magic
"Well so do I but I don't think we can count on that. Even those with safe seat spend time campaigning. example do you believe Nancy Pelosi has viable opposition?"
I am not that familiar with what is going on in her home state, let alone her district, so I really don't know if she is facing a viable opponent or not. If you are referring to remaining Speaker of the House, that depends strictly on whether or not Democrats remain in the majority come November. If the GOP regains control of the House Boehner will probably be the next Speaker.
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Pelosi is certainly not going to waste much time or money campaigning for reelection to her House seat. In 2008, she received 72% of the vote in an election in which an independent got 17%. The Republican received only 9%.
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Science Fiction has always been about race, sex, gender, and the fear of the unknown. But more about race than any subject. It is easier to write about Blue men than Black men or the Red men the Blue man represent. It keep the guilt down.
The coming of Colin Powell and Barack Obama was first told in a science fiction comic book. The artist was chastised because he did not use a space monster, but the drawing of a Black man with sweat on his face as the protagonist that was helping to save the world.
The Fellowship in their production of the movie the Blob used the mass of protoplasm to represent communism and how it was eating up the world. I never knew this until lately. The message was completely wasted on me.
What about Darth Vadar and the Western fear of the dark? The dark and forboding nightmare and things that go bump in the night.
Blue men or Blue Moon both men the same thing: We all got the Blues.
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Gavrielle_LaPoste wrote:
209. At 7:30pm on 04 Jan 2010, squirrelist wrote:
I don't read a lot of science fiction, but it does suddenly strike me that theocracies, priesthoods and absolute monarchies do seem to have featured quite a lot, especially in the last few years, now you mention it. Could that be because (he says wickedly) a US-style republic can't be made plausible in fiction?
_________________-
Well first there has been much good Sci-Fi in years. There are no Clarks, Heinlen, Farmers or Chalkers whose universe for the most part praised capitalism.
And of course the ideals of Star Trek resembles the U.S with the Federation which could be the equvilent of Nato plus Australia Japan and Israel.
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Star trek has been using, warf. Spock never dies and has pointy ears? change the o and stitch in an i and bingo. The lone ranger had an injun who only got respect if kimosabe was around. The insinuations in south park and poor cook, the friend Mr. Hankey- dudu- and relevant cast. The hero of almost every rescue effort had always been a fair skinned lad. Perpetuating life as art is common. So lets say the color was green, it would still focus on the suspicion which is not suspicious but is accurate. One thing that we all need to acknowledge is that when civilized Americans, patriotic or unsympathetic are melded into the fibre of this society, and their intellect, compassion, character and demeanor coincides with that of preexisting citizens, then they are you and you are them. With respect to each ones cultural differences.
So what if they make a movie and want to portray a message within, it's not like it is a lie. And if the movie is fun then we can all laugh. geez what do we do boycott everything in life ? Because we are pretty close to that now. Lighten up and receive, everybody doesn't have to like rap or Sinatra, but don't hate them just because they are non this or that. Berate the people who berate people. The movie is great. The sequel then should be us invading the invaders in their court.;)
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@ SheffTim #231
You have explained the different ideas that relate to "avatar" very well! I have go with the "Reversal of Avatar" idea that Mazim Osipov describes in detail. Thanks for that link!
But as you point out:
SheffTime #188: Quote:
""As with all such stories with mass-appeal the location is mythical, allowing people from many cultures and nations to identify with it and project onto it their own concerns.""
I really believe this to be one of the best features of this story, along with:
Rob Drake #147: Quote:
""There is a meaning in this film, but it's not racist. The blue people don't represent a race, they're our collective past - we all came from these same hunter gatherer tribes and in our hearts, we still yearn for those days, like an old man remembering his youth. The film has a familiar theme because it's the theme that lives in the savage heart of humanity, a heart that hasn't changed much in the few millenia of farming, civilisation and traffic jams.""
I replied: "some of the sheer joys of the movie tickle this place in our minds so wonderfully well!! But combined with the higher versions of ourselves that the Na'vi represents, it is a sublime story."
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the movie reverses the very concept that the [Hindu] term "avatar" is based on.
Leave aside the fact that Hindu theology reserves the use of 'avatar', which in Sanskrit literally means 'descent', almost exclusively for appearances of Vishnu on Earth. The key point here is that an avatar always descends from a higher realm into the lower, restores prosperity, wisdom, and happiness
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So the white male is vishnu? next they will make a movie where they will make the white male a G-d...who saves dinosaurs..Why dont they make a movie about some white male saving monkeys..the mandrills,
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free willy, was done already.
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@ SheffTm #231
Thanks for this link.
The real Avatar story: indigenous people fight to save their forest homes from corporate exploitation
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1222-hance_avatar.html
"The curse of oil
A battle of a different kind is ongoing in Ecuador. Oil giant Chevron is currently in a $27 billion lawsuit with Ecuadorian indigenous tribes for environmental damage caused by Texaco, a company acquired by Chevron in 2001. In court Texaco has admitted to dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic waste inside Ecuador's rainforest from 1964-1990. A court expert found contamination at every one of Texaco's former well sites, estimating oil damages 30 times larger than the infamous Exxon-Valdez spill and spanning an area the size of Rhode Island.
The case, known to some as the 'Amazon Chernobyl', involves 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorian plaintiffs. The toxic spill impacted six indigenous tribes, one of which has vanished entirely. The court has found that over 1,400 people have suffered untimely deaths from cancer due to contamination from the oil spill. "
Avatar has done a good job of turning people's attention onto this. Survival Charity set up by Norman Lewis:
http://www.survivalinternational.org/
Highlights further stories...
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Racists see racism everywhere they look, I personally find that WHAT people see as racism is more telling about them then it is about the IT they see racism in. We have a market here in America for those looking to be offended. I am not sure it is strictly artificial and propagated by those who find it profitable to whip up division or if there are really regular folks who truly wish to be offended but most of what comes up that causes a stir is artificial. The world will never move ‘past race’ until those who profit from the catchall buzzword concept of current ‘racism’ loose their audience and can no longer profit from it. One could suggest that the film was racist due to the way it cast Whites as the bad guys. Or maybe anti humanist as the humans were the villains. See, it just gets trite, simplistic and silly. To those offended, climb on down off your cross and grow up.
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I am a white male american. I was raised in a U.S. military family, and was born overseas, in Europe. I have a very mixed ancestry, with immigrants, at least four native american tribes, and even one of the founding fathers. While I look white, I can honestly say that I don't think I live the stereotypical life that white men are supposed to have, according to all those who aren't white men. The idea that "Blue is the new Black" is somewhat ridiculous to me. I understand the concept, but in reality there are too many flaws with it for me to pass up. The concept of "magic negro" would hold some water I suppose if the story in any way related to the struggles of blacks, such as slavery or a civil rights movement. If it had though, you could also relate it to Jews and gays. If anything it should be relative to the story of the native american tribes.
I take personal offense to the insinuation of "blaxploitation" as it were, because I am being accused of something, in the "typical white man" way. Being a white man, I get quite tired of the idea that I am still separate from all the other colors, and I find that racist. I see racism against white men by the very nature of the arguement.
If the main character in Avatar was black, or indeed if anybody in the movie that played a significant role were, I would see more credibility to any argument, but there were none.
It reminds me of somebody I know, who negatively interpreted District 9 to be about mexican immigration in the U.S. when it had nothing to do with it. He saw it there, but it was about apartheid in South Africa, and it had absolutely nothing to do with any U.S. immigration trouble. It was a completely different story.
Avatar was very "dances with wolves" and it had a somewhat recycled plot, even though it was done very well. At this point, the story has been done many times, though the reason for that is that the story is still compelling. It has been a huge success financially, but it is not the best movie I've ever seen. However, the idea that my race is once again getting blamed for the movie having a supposed relation to exploiting black people is the last straw for me. If a black person can't see the difference between their story and the one on the screen, because of the whiteness of the main character, then they are the ones being racist and they need to grow up. Stop blaming and inciting racism, and maybe it wouldn't be as prevalent. If you continue to claim you are a victim, even when there is no attack, people won't listen. The minority that cried wolf, but only if the wolf is white.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
'So the white male is Vishnu?' colonelartist. 240.
His point is the opposite is occurring. If anything Avatar is about turning received wisdom on its head.
"Contrary to The Matrix's Neo, Jake plugs into a supposedly illusory world to discover it to be much more tangible, wholesome and true than his own - and wants to stay in.
This makes us ask the question: Why? And what on Earth (or on Pandora) do 'culture', 'civilisation', and 'human' stand for?"
I'm just presenting it as a Hindu take on the Avatar allegory. He doesn't think it does follow the Hindu interpretation.
Read it yourself:
http://www.nationaltimes.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/avatars-reversal-of-fortune-20100104-lpod.html
information1st. 239.
I'm sure you know of the work of Joseph Campbell, who studied world religions and mythologies, and identified in his book 'Hero With A Thousand Faces' certain universal elements (mono-myths) that were common to stories from all of them.
Screenwriter Christopher Vogler wrote a book 'The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers', based on Campbell's work, which has been very influential on how Hollywood film stories are structured, starting with the first Star Wars trilogy. There's a lot on the web about Campbell and his books.
Often these stories take the form of a journey (quest) in which some object (grail) or knowledge is sought, or a task has to be accomplished, and follow a series of steps.
Not all of Campbell's steps are always followed, some are omitted, some combined but most adventure (and religious) stories follow them.
Given more time I'm sure Avatar's story could be analysed much better; but as a quick example:
1) The Ordinary World - Introducing the hero's normal world as the story begins. (Jake's arrival on Pandora.)
2) Call to Adventure - The hero is presented with a challenge and begins a journey. (The Avatar program. The company's plans.)
3) Meeting with a Mentor - The hero meets a mentor to gain advice or training for the adventure. (Grace the scientist.)
4) Crossing the Threshold - The hero crosses leaves the ordinary world and goes into a special world. (Jake's Avatar enters Pandora.)
5) Tests, meeting allies and enemies - The hero faces tests, meets allies, enemies & learns the rules of the special world. The hero faces setbacks & may need to adopt new ideas &/or make new allies. (Jake is introduced to Pandora, Neytiri and the Na'vi tribe, and has to win their trust.)
6) Ordeal - A great life or death crisis. (Attack on Hometree. Jake has to choose sides.)
7) Major Setbacks - (Jake is captured by the company, Jake escapes but is rejected by Neytiri and the tribe.)
8) Becoming the Hero - a test where the hero faces death and has to use everything he's learned to survive. (Jake sets out to capture the flying Toruk, a fierce creature of special symbolism to the Na've.)
9) Return as a hero - (Jake returns with the 'grail' (Toruk) and uses it to rally the Na'vi. Jake survives ordeals to finally triumph.)
10) Triumph and Reward - (The final battle won Jake is reunited with Neytiri and stays with the Na'vi.)
The same can be done with Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potters and many other stories
BTW, I really enjoyed Avatar, as I did Star Wars, LOTR, ET etc. It is a good repackaging of various mythological elements and seems to hit a chord with today's audience.
Back at work tomorrow.
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If an angry bull was charging at you, would you notice the flea on its back?
If a tornado was headed for your house and you had no basement to hide in, would you worry about the smudge on your blouse?
If you lived in a culture where skin color played a huge role in the scholastic opportunities that poorer children have, a society that set up men of certain "racial" minority groups to be more likely to go to prison, a society with an educational system that produced massive numbers of badly-educated folks, a society where racism is built into the language, would you focus your attention on one partly-animated sci-fi movie that might arguably be considered racist?
I think we need to straighten out our priorities here.
Mr. Mardell, if you want to see what causes the rants of certain tinoy-hearted posters here, I suggest that you take a trip to your children's school (in a Maryland suburb, right?), an inner-city school in Washington, D. C., and a private elite school such as the Quaker school that the President's children attend.
Privilege, power, and prestige (all usually associated with a certain skin color here in the US) create schools where teachers are enthusiastic, creativity flourishes, and children love to learn.
Poverty, imprisoned parents, and self-fulfilling prophecies create schools where teachers have little to be enthusiastic about, creativity is wilted by dull, No-Child-Left-Behind curricula, and children dream of escape.
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Hang on! Where in the movie did the "bad" guys say they were Americans? There was no American flag in this movie. The fighters referred to Marines but did not say "US Marines". I thought that was clever. Also, the mission was not a government led. The mission reported to a board of directors. Therefore, the armies of tomorrow will be owned and operated by big business. Pretty clever, eh?
I really enjoyed this movie. Racist? Perhaps. But the idea that corporations will have that kind of power into the future is what is really scarey.
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It's sad that our Fresh Oregano (or would that be Oregeno? He never was too good with spelling) is geting nipped by the mods again. He was (is) such a wonderful antidote to the saucy noodles in this crowd.
I'm glad to see that the blog's official Sense of Humour has finally flown from France. I can't help but wonder, though, what happened to an "L" in his name. Did some French chef mistake it for an eel, snatch it out, cook it, and eat it? Or did it simply get lost in the baggage at the airport? Or did I suddenly become old and senile and imagine something that never really was there, like those poor deluded sheep in Animal Farm?
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Most people like to identify with and root for the "good guys." To do that in Avatar, the viewer must identify with the blue forest people rather than with most of the white men. That pushes a lot of viewers out of their comfort zone.
Additionally, identifying with the "good guys" also means at least contemplating connectedness with nature. For many of us, that is not a problem. For many others, that seems an artifact of an ancient, primitive time to which we consider ourselves superior. The movie may have even been seen as an attack on whites men instead of their attitudes.
This movie evoked the memory of Dr. John Rae, the great Scottish Arctic explorer. Instead of seeing the Inuit as "savages" he learned from and worked with the Inuit. This radically changed Arctic and Antarctic exploration. The lesson was to work with nature rather than against it. From then on, Western-civilization explorers were able to conduct long-term Arctic and Antarctic explorations. Some of us are troubled by the concept of working with nature. It seems to diminish our superiority.
Dr. John Rae? Yeah, I, too, had ancestors on the Orkney Islands. Growing up to be an Arctic explorer and scientist was one of my reoccurring passions. Of course, as often happens, reality intruded on those aspirations.
Racism? Really? Must have been in the glasses.
Liam Jumper
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People who deny global warming or want to use military solutions or love capitalism will not like this film.
They will say it has an underdeveloped story line and that it is doing well because of its special effects...but this movie is important in expressing the evolution of values and ideas that many people in the US are going through.
Cameron says there will be two more films in this series, if Avatar does well.
Rob Drake understands at #147
This film is mythic and develops the theme of wanting to be a part of nature and desiring a return to the garden of Eden, and to be one with God. There is a rejection of militarism, greed and a rejection of the supremacy of the capitalist culture for causing that separation from being at one with God or for causing a separation from the natural force that is called God.
Having destroyed their own world, mercenaries (Blackwater types) want to use shock and awe to destroy and kill sentient beings and to steal the Na'vi world's resources for their own dying culture. Earth was already destroyed by greed caused by a disconnect from the natural environment ( God).
The protagonist, Jake Sully was different, because he had a good heart and had been chosen on that basis by the force within the planet (God) to make the transition to a set of different values and to another world ( Eden.) His body broken by his previous life as a marine, he could have chosen to return to the militaristic, capitalistic world with a new body, a new body paid for by his potential betrayal of the Na'vi. But his love for the Na'vi and Neytiri prevented that betrayal. Love and a good heart saved him from making the wrong choice.
The film is from News Corp, run by Rupert Murdoch and if he tries to stop the development of this series into an even more forceful philosophic exploration of contemporary American values I hope Cameron will find others who will continue the Avatar series.
Citizen Kane is recognized as the greatest film and it was based in part on the life of William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was so enraged he limited Orson Welles' career and prevented the film from being shown in some movie houses. But great art will often survive and great ideas will return. Citizen Kane's themes are that the pursuit of money and power will not bring happiness, or peace to an individual. It is a connection with those we love that brings us peace. Avatar's themes are to work with nature and not focus our goals on greed and power and in the end destroy our planet. This is a concept of mythic proportions and is at the beginning of the Bible with the simple story of the loss of Eden and humanity's loss of a relationship with God.
The Na'vi are not the noble savage, ( although the story line does use some of the concepts of the "noble savage") and they are not human. They are still in Eden and have maintained a close relationship with God.
Perhaps with the criticisms of this film we will get a more complex story line with the next two films.
It might be interesting if in the next film Cameron concentrates on the Na'vi and the humans have less of a role. Perhaps there could be some conflict among them... regarding militarism and capitalism and greed. I would like to see more development of the Na'vi and their values. Perhaps a Na'vi traitor? Perhaps a temptation toward greed? A serpent in Eden?
One of the underlying themes is whether greed is destroying our planet,
so people who have trouble facing that question will deny there is a theme to this movie and people who believe capitalism has been successful will think this movie has a poor plot line.
.............
Na'vi is now becoming a language in its own right..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na'vi_language
and I expect not too far in the future there will be conventions with people painted blue speaking Na'vi...what fun : )
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I very much agree with your article. All I would add is that, perhaps, it is easier to view this movie through the lens of the past than the lens of the future. That is, if we are to survive, we'll have to get off this (lovely) rock and, until we can terraform planets, we'll be touching down on someone else's home... as has happened so often in the past. The discussion we need to be having is... do corporations continue to have more rights than individuals? We allow, nay demand, that corporations do whatever it takes to improve the bottom line. We don't allow individuals to commit murder, nor do we allow individuals to set public policy... but money (and the corporations who weld it) are King in this country. So, easier to focus on race than the fact that corporations are already too powerful... and have been for a long, long, long time.
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I've read 4 or 5 interviews with Cameron on Avatar and he never once stipulated he based the Navi on any real-world peoples. I think they're more a representation of the under dogs than anything else.
Oh, and David Cunard, the US has ten public holidays to the UK's 8. Please keep your baseless opinions to yourself.
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#252 fairfieldia
Corporations have been able to gain the recognition of a person in our courts. I think if a corporation can be proven in a court of law to have caused the deaths of people then the death sentence should be considered ...which means a dismantling and selling off of the corporations assets to others and the end of that corporation.
The corporations have too much legal protection in our courts.
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To enjoy Avatar one needs imagination. To see allegory to "superior race" activities in this era on this planet ones need imagination plus wisdom. Some people recognized Rumsfeld, others recognized arrogant war machine directed at usurping others mineral resources by force. The end of the movie might serve as a veiled artist's warning identifying ultimate vanquished party. Racial undertones? None whatsoever. Well, I know of a fellow who would argue incessantly that white is not really white but contains a shade of gray; trying to prove his point in multitude of ways. Humanoids with tails, facial features straight from animal world - with what would a sick mind associate those traits? It does not matter that evil was represented by white majority, somehow Negro race was slighted by Cameron! Hm, to come to THIS conclusion one also needs an inagination. I call it sick imagination.
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Avatar, avatar, look what you started, No Mark.
Mark, Mark, look what you started, Lets go to the Squeekeul. Blue man group watch out, you're next.
did you hear about the guy who tried to kill the cartoonist who made fun of Elijah the prophet.
No sense of humor for that guy. Jesus, well he's fair game. Glenn Beck would have offended many Jews with his cover of the book he probably wrote. Seriously now; when enough people come together, of all walks of life and demand from the demander (US) equal treatment or else, then Corporations and people will behave with the utmost respect for all.
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#221
Squirl,
To be fair, he did (in the last thread) profess to have deep familiarity with 'Pornographic booths' at airports. I don't see them at the airports I go to, but he does appear to have some experience with a genre of movie that most of us are less aware of. I'm glad I don't see those at DFW!
He also said '"...Spend five nights in one of the three places (sic India, Africa, the Amazon Rain Forrest) and when you come back to your western civilization, if you don not remember those five nights of insects talking to each other when you listen to the voices of the westerners, I will change my name..."
Well, I spent 5 nights with the Masai in Tsavo, 10 nights in the Amazon (important safety tip. If you hear two troops of howler monkeys meet at night,or in the day,do not walk underneath unless you are wearing a large, study, hat) and 7 days sleeping in villages in India. I heard monkeys, big cats, small cats, rodents, wind, birds, the occasional snore, rain, more monkeys, cattle, goats, lion, hyena, cape buffalo (scary), hippo (really scary) and the odd fart (OK, me).
I also checked Nature and Science to see if there was any paper describing the scenario of insects screeching higher and louder when a new insect arrives. I could find nothing, but as a good scientist,I stand to be corrected. It sounds like one of those simple preaching tales to justify the 'new' voice trying to be drowned out. Apocryphal tale. We should all be Scientologists.
So, the colonel (small c, no rank) needs to live up to his commitment and change his name. I suggest a native American theme. Based on his last posts, perhaps 'Seeksgloryhole' or 'speaksthroughrearend'.
And he really needs to keep away from those porno booths.
Ewww.I mean Ewww.
Craven
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249. At 00:50am on 05 Jan 2010, trueconservative wrote:
"I can't help but wonder, though, what happened to an "L" in his name."
I'd be tempted to say it was a 'liquid' L and was confiscated at the airport, but actually, It's the BBC's slimming programme. Between signing in and posting it disappears. Amazing. One day, you might be slimmed down to just a conservative. It slimmed down the cheesefuller until he disappeared altogether, poor chap.
Or the BBC got a spellchecker, which would also explain why our friend is no longer with us, since they must have been afraid his posts would blow a fuse.
Nice to have you back with us. The Squirrel Party was getting worried there was a humerous removal programme being installed, too.
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257. Ron Craven:
You might think so, I couldn't possibly comment.
(At least, from my inbox looks as though I'd better not.)
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254. At 03:26am on 05 Jan 2010, bepa wrote:
"if a corporation can be proven in a court of law to have caused the deaths of people then the death sentence should be considered"
Now that's the only form of capitalpunishment I could support. . .bring back the deodand!
(I see the Iraqi government is going to help people bring a civil case against the Blackwater (now renamed 'Xe', which sounds rather Hollywood sci-fi, doesn't it? 'Revenge of the Xe') mercen.. .er.. . .contractors a la OJ.)
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218 Feohme,
"- It's a film - it's entertainment
- It's visually stunning
- It's not exactly groundbreaking in terms of plot or dialogue
- It has a very obvious (and somewhat heavy-handed) point to make in the area of ecology etc
- It was fun.
- It isn't racist. It takes a rather perculiar mind to see everything through a prism of racism (similar - one might say - to someone who sees anti-semitism in any critism of the State of Israel). It must be a sad way to live your life."
Agree with these 100%. I thought the attempt to compare the movies situation with the one in Iraq/Afghanistan was especially ridiculous though. "Shock and awe" campaign + "fight terror with terrror". Come on, the blue people did literally nothing to the humans, ridiculous comparison.
I thought it was decent overall, especially in IMAX 3D, but the beating you over the head with the chosen political viewpoints kinda ruined it for me. I may stand alone on this, but I prefer my entertainment to not bother making a political point unless it is pulled off in a subtle fashion and is at least a little clever...
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Insofar as this film advocates a marine rejecting his patriotic role and assisting the enemy to rid the holy land of the infidel, is it treasonous?
Imagine how the troops in Iraq feel about this film!
All they have been asked to do is go to a foreign land and liberate the theocrats and secure the oil, and yet now the pinko fringe have turned on them. Even St Obama has been to see this surrender monkey film.
No doubt he said it was wholesome and swell. Then he would have smiled, maybe said something cute, before going back to talk about the need for drone strikes in Pakistan.
And all the while, the US public are demanding that the film is about RACE. For goodness sakes, it is far worse than a film about race: it is inter-species soft porn.
I haven't been so outraged since the terrorist Skywalker murdered hundreds of thousands of innocents on the Death Star.
Everyone is avoiding that issue, by the way.
Was Luke skywalker, or was he not, a terrorist? Did his ends justify his means?
And who were the terrorists in Avatar?
Clearly the blue folks can't claim to be non-terrorists just because they were there first. Iraq and Afpak are full of terrorists.
And after all, the marines did try their best to get the blue people to see reason. They even cleared out the tree before destroying it. They didn't need to do that.
After all, the marines could have sent a bunch of drones into the terrorist camp and just.... er, liberated?.. assassinated is the wrong word... one only assassinates good people in white hats...
Actually, why didn't the marines just send in drones?
Maybe they are saving that for the sequel.
In the next movie, jar heads on earth will be seen to operate computers, and the blue folks will be liberated by remote.
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I don't think one should take the colonial theme of this film too seriously. Avatar is an action-adventure-fantasy. More precisely, it is a role playing game. Even Disney's Pocahontas has more intension to engage in the issue.
James Cameron had directed Titanic. If he wishes to say something about the history, he would have spelt the historic names out. More importantly, Avatar doesn't try to represent the complicated interactions between natives and colonizers, nor dose it try to represent realistic peoples who really once lived. Instead it gives a simplistic adventure formula, with roles that fit the story framework neatly. The beauty of creating these alien natives is that it allows the modern and urbanized people of *all nations* to project their "noble savage" fantasy together.
To see the film as a reflection of Early American History would ignore a more consistent theme of this film and the massive campaigns around it: Avatar: the Game. One must not forget that much of Cameron's efforts went beyond a single film. Instead he intended to launch a serial franchise business. The film comes with a role-playing video game, and strange toys that employ the strange idea of "Augmented Reality". The film was shown in 3D IMAX to create an "immersive experience". Cameron tirelessly reminds us that all "digital assets" of the film are reusable, and we can easily foresee that if this business takes off successfully, the speak-able artificial language will be used by costume players painted blue. The revolutionary way the film was shot couldn't fit this theme more: a man "playing" an avatar in a virtual world. (I couldn't help but to toy with the idea that the man who tries so hard to blur the boundary between the real world and computer aided fantasy is the man who gave us Terminator)
The theme behind the film is so consistent that even the film's title is a pun. Avatar, besides its original sense of Indian mythical incarnation, means a picture representing the player in a computer game.
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tino wrote:
"I may stand alone on this, but I prefer my entertainment to not bother making a political point unless it is pulled off in a subtle fashion and is at least a little clever..."
So, you are saying the Iraq war was not entertaining?
Seems a bit harsh. I thought they put on a jolly good show. The censors even cut out the bits where the children got minced into paste by American heavy weapons.
That was pretty subtle, don't you think?
You know, go invade a country, butcher huge numbers of children in the process, but nobody in the mainstream press says a word, and never a shocking picture of horrific brutality is shown?
I'd say that is subtle, and therefore, by your own criteria, hugely entertaining.
Still, you have a point. The next time we go to war in foreign lands and kill a bunch of folks, I think we should get the news journalists to do their thing in 3D. After all, we're desperately frightened. Those terrorists are just about destroying our whole civilization. They represent a real and present danger to our very existence.
If a terrorist is going to blow me up in 45 minutes, I want to see his town explode in 3D.
That'll teach them to frighten me out of my wits, and I won't get bored either.
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263. At 06:15am on 05 Jan 2010, AirBa wrote:
"One must not forget that much of Cameron's efforts went beyond a single film. Instead he intended to launch a serial franchise business."
I see now. I thought 'Titanic' was just a bad mistake, but I see now it was a mistake because it couldn't be a franchise because everybody knew it really had sunk . . .
(I just don't seem to have the right kind of capitalist appreciation of film.)
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AirBa wrote:
"I don't think one should take the colonial theme of this film too seriously."
Quite. It is ridiculously over the top and could have been written by a well read fifteen year old.
"Avatar is an action-adventure-fantasy. More precisely, it is a role playing game. Even Disney's Pocahontas has more intension to engage in the issue."
Intention. And it is precisely a film. It may also be marketed as a role playing game. So what?
"James Cameron had directed Titanic."
Why "had"? Am I missing something here? What is with the creative use of nonsensical grammar? Is that a fashionable American thing?
"If he wishes to say something about the history, he would have spelt the historic names out. More importantly, Avatar doesn't try to represent the complicated interactions between natives and colonizers"
Wished, surely? Past tense?
Whatever. Look, did you even see this film?
The blue folks use bows and arrows, they paint their faces with war paint, they whoop their war cries like, er, American indians.... and they ride horse like creatures. And they are shamanistic.
Cameron could not have spelt out the issue more clearly unless he had walked into the cinema and tattooed "dances with pterodactyls" on your forehead.
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These discussions of detailed semantics are pointless. This movie is no more racist than "Shaka Zulu" and if it mimics any move its "The Emerald Forest". The story is about cowboys and Indians. Be they The British in Africa. The Spanish and the Americas (Inca, Aztec). The Americans(British rebels) and The Sioux and The Apache. The Chinese and Tibet. It is also about progress (population) versus nature. Strip mining, slash and burn agriculture, human induced climate change etc. The "Natives" in the movie are rightfully depicted as "non-white" just as all the destroyed cultures that our so called progress has claimed are "non-white". There is nothing racist about it. It is simply a fact of history. As described by the lead character in the film "they cannot be defeated, they killed their mother and they will come like rain" (paraphrased). witch is exactly what and how we are. If there is a sequel to the film and it is to be depicted accurately, humans will come back in force and destroy Pandora. I would hope that by the time we have the technology to make it to another planet, if we survive ourselves that long, that we may actually have matured as a species. Then again without all our "progress" we wouldn't have this cool movie to watch or this nifty computer to blog on, would we?
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267. At 07:27am on 05 Jan 2010, Rabbitsmoker wrote:
"The "Natives" in the movie are rightfully depicted as "non-white" just as all the destroyed cultures that our so called progress has claimed are "non-white". There is nothing racist about it. It is simply a fact of history."
Depends whose progress you're talking about. Celts and Romans? Heard of Boudicca? (They painted themselves blue, but the Romans were quite impressed when blond, white, British slaves arrived . . .)
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But Avatar isn't the first time a white man leads a group of blue people to freedom.
Mel Gibson did it in Braveheart (1995).
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267. At 07:27am on 05 Jan 2010, Rabbitsmoker wrote:
"These discussions of detailed semantics are pointless."
It's semiotics not semantics, really; but I see there are a lot of people who are anti-semiotic.
(I know, somebody used that ages ago, forgotten who, I'm afraid. Just thought it was too good not to use again.)
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I have seen the movie twice, both 2D and 3D- honestly, I thought the 2D version was better. Although initially pleasing the 3D format is not the same as seeing 3D in everyday life. Normally, the eye can focus on objects further away, while ignoring the details of the objects close to the viewer. Although the 3D format tries to recreate that, it is not entirely successful- the viewer gets distracted by too many details in objects close by, not strictly relevant to what is going on. Example-Jake Sully recording his video log- the details on the presumed camera screen through which he is recording are so close by and crisp, you are automatically drawn to them, thus ignoring the actor’s face and the emotions he is trying to portray.
Apart from that I liked the movie. Granted, my first thought was that the it was the Dances with wolves or the Last Samurai, but with aliens. But never did I think it was racist. For me it was a story a about the conflict of a society ultimately dependant on modern technologies and another one, which has maintained its links with nature, and cherishes the natural way of things. Something which is relevant today, when people start to question themselves whether a drive to ever increasing share of modern technologies in our lives should be done at the expense of destroying nature and losing our bond with it.
Personally, I found the idea of destroying an enormously beautiful planted to turn it into a mining site abhorrent. If such a planet existed I would have loved to be able to go and see it, and live on it. On the other hand, what I really liked were the big walking war machines the marines were driving. God, I wish I could get my hands on one of those!
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8. At 06:52am on 04 Jan 2010, David Cunard wrote:
I am back after the holidays.
The British holidays evidently. Americans went back to work on Monday, December 27th. No wonder the work ethic is more evident in America than it is in the United Kingdom.
Frankly young man who are you to cast aspersions on a Nation? Oh I see judging by your activity and claim of living on both sides of the Atlantic; someone who trolls the internet all day passing judgment on others and claiming your morals and ethics are better than most of an entire hard working nation based on one mans comment...
I for one cannot see how anyone can compare this Science Fictional film to undertones of racism. As previous comments have indicated if you do indeed draw comparisons maybe you still either harbor unmoral thoughts and ideals and want to draw comparisons or lack imagination to such a scale that you cannot see past this for what most big budget films are all about nowadays, entertaining those who want to part with some disposable income in hopefully an awe inspiring way.
I agree with
6. At 06:35am on 04 Jan 2010, loblollyboy
Fantastic choice of film and spot on comment!
Overall back to Avatar. Good film, my children, wife and I all enjoyed the day out and must in 3D, it made the difference and was a great improvement on the Red/Blue days of old that made my eyes bleed.
Good article and does make you think.
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I that think as long as there are differences that exist, there will always be movies that tell these kinds of stories. The truth is that this is a very old story with a new twist(SciFi). It's very creative in the way that it presents an age old struggle. Of course there have been other movies as well that show how far people are willing to go to protect their freedoms and way of life.
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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I see the idea of really colonising another planet persists. I've had a look around -- not literally, of course --and the nearest one with any potential at all orbits the red dwarf Gliese 581.
(There does appear to be another possible, but since it zips round a rather dull sun in the same area every two days, anybody settling that one is going to get pretty dizzy. They'd also probably have to be English, since we're the only ones who've got the hang of coping with four seasons in one day.)
"Nearest' means 20 light years away. So, unless the laws of physics change, anyone setting out from our solar system will be dead before they ever see it.
Quite apart from the little problem of building what would basically have to be a miniature planet on which to live and breed in order to get there at all.
It's all very well for NASA to keep announcing there may be water here there and somewhere else, because they have a vested interest in their manned Mars trip. And the 'Earth-like Planet Found!' headlines feed the fantasy, though the distances or, sometimes, the fact that these are generated from computer models, not real planets, seldom gets out of the very small print. It would be more accurate to call some of them 'Mercury' or 'Mars-like' or even 'asteroid-like' to be honest.
But just think how much water you drink in a day; how much plants would need to feed you for months, and so on, and the idea that any more than a handful of people will ever live on another planet besides Earth for any length of time is fantasy.
Sorry. We're stuck with the one we've got. Better make the best of it while we can. There probably isn't a ready made Pandora handy, with or without a nice eco system and blue felines with tails. Or if there is, we'll have to call it "Unobtania".
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Having seen the film I can say it's not racist........ it's pony.
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Do the "Star Wars" movies have some hidden meaning I've been ignorant of? Racism against Wookies?
Everything is not a political statement. Even Frued knew that, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
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"With a certain accuracy critics have pointed out that all the "human" characters are played by white actors and all the blue, cat-like Na'vi are played by non-whites. With a degree of American insularity they also say that because they use bows and arrows and wear feathers they are "really" native Americans. This ignores tribal indigenous people from New Guinea to Brazil, so deliberately misses a wider point."
I stopped reading and started skimming after this ridiculous paragraph. First of all, there were human characters played by non-whites, including (but not limited to) Michelle Rodriguez. Not to mention that Scully and Grace (both white) not only became Na'vi, they seemed to prefer it.
Secondly, even if your assumption that the Na'vi were representative of Native Americans is correct, why does that demand he acknowledge other tribal people? What point was he "deliberately" missing? That the Na'vi were fashioned after the indigenous population of the entire world, not just one part of it? I don't think that was his goal at all. Not only are you putting words in his mouth, but you are misinterpreting the entire premise of the movie.
Lastly, the Na'vi weren't human at all, they were aliens who just happened to share some characteristics of humans (emotion, grooming, etc.) Seeing how "some people" nitpick at every little thing, the only way Cameron could have avoided being labeled a racist was to make the Na'vi COMPLETELY inhuman. Which wouldn't have worked from a story perspective, as they needed to relate to and interact with humans on an intelligent level. Either that, or you expected him to somehow make the Na'vi a hodgepodge of every ethnic group on the earth. Which wouldn't work because people would still complain that they resembled THIS people more than THAT people.
There's no way he could have made the story he wanted to and pleased "some people" at the same time. But he made the movie he wanted to, and I, for one, am glad for it.
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colonelartist wrote:
Not as black, but the fictitious aliens replaced the blacks, or the red Indians...The concept is cowboys vs red Indians....its a recycling of dances with wolves....Any tom dick and harry idiot person can see it...
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A fictitious alien species replaced the blacks? You and Jessie Jackson would get along wonderfully. It is a recycling of dances with wolves but my post had nothing to do with that fact. My point: You can't really make a strong comparative analysis of a fictitious alien species with african american culture. But you seem like you're one of those people that can't really enjoy a good movie without playing the race card...or reading too much into it.
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In The Light (*)
(*)=Horace Andy
Listen to me carefully:
when I was a little child
I used to think Israel was in the sky
when I was a little child
I used to think Egypt was in the sky
according to the teacher
that I learned in school
oh how they used to teach I
to turn a fool
but now:
I'm in the light I'm in the light
and its shining bright
Keep That Light (*)
(*)=Slim Smith
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Most people like to identify with and root for the "good guys." To do that in Avatar, the viewer must identify with the blue forest people rather than with most of the white men. That pushes a lot of viewers out of their comfort zone.
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Even when the good guys blue inimated figures, the hero, the savoiur is a whie male who is a marine..
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I was actually dragged to see it (in 3D) by my wife who had been going on about it. I can safely say my biggest interest on arrival was getting to the Pick & Mix counter.
I am no film critic, or eco-warrior, but I can't honestly remember the last film I saw which got under my skin so deeply. Not only is it epically beautiful to look at, but I found myself actually caring about the Na'vi people and their habitat.
I think cries of racism are ridiculous. There are precedents of similarly shabby treatment of the poor / technically disadvantaged by the wealthy / technically advanced going back through human history, within single races and across multiple races. This is simple human nature, and in my view, is what gave the film's depiction of humanity's disrespect for, and cruelty against the Na'vi its credibility. We've done it before to ourselves, why wouldn't we do it to non-humans?
The fact the film has provoked debate I think proves it has succeeded in being more than a simple CGI FX extravaganza. I loved it, and I never expected to say that.
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A fictitious alien species replaced the blacks?
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Yes, you dont really think that any american would dare to make a film like this and use black human actors instead of these blue animated figures? Within usa the whites have segrated any minority group, and outside the country, their record isnt good either, all they can do now is to draw animated figures and fantasize how their brave soldiers help them to survive...
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bepa - In support of your #254 some would simply say, Warren Anderson.
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i am all with wyrvenrose on this one!
if human kind keeps on perpetuating racism then we, as humans, will never be free of it! it strikes me as funny that a person will cry racism against them selves but they are usually the first one to spew a racist comment about someone else! it is, pardon the pun, the pot calling the kettle black, or blue in this case!
what ever happened to the thought that all men are created equal? those who look for racism will find it everywhere but they will be the only ones! i think that this film (and others like district 9) are showing us the side of humanity that needs to destroy what it doesn't know, what it fears, destroy for the sake of greed!
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colonelartist wrote:
Yes, you dont really think that any american would dare to make a film like this and use black human actors instead of these blue animated figures? Within usa the whites have segrated any minority group, and outside the country, their record isnt good either, all they can do now is to draw animated figures and fantasize how their brave soldiers help them to survive...
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1. It's a fantasy movie....
2. Humans vs Aliens ≠ racial segregation. If you're suggesting that the film writer used blue aliens in his sci-fi flick only because he was afraid of using black actors I suggest you avoid all fantasy films in general. I think your twisting the logistics of the film to support an argument of racial segregation/discrimination which fails because african american, caucasian, asian, native american, hispanc, etc...all fall under the category of Human/Homo(Genus)
3. It's a fantasy movie....
4. Definition of a Fantasy film: Fantasy films are films with fantastic themes, usually involving magic, supernatural events, make-believe creatures, or exotic fantasy worlds.
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you bring me Joy In The Morning
maybe we can live in Happy Land
I would never ever Never Give Up
I up dated lo ve me for Iv er link carlton lewis and the shoes
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I have to agree with the view that this is mostly over-analysis by someone looking for offense. The only real racism in the film was that displayed by (most of) the humans towards the Na'vi.
I say mostly, because I agree that the "Noble Savage spiritually in-touch with Nature" is a bit of a silly and over-used cliche. Although, in this case, the Na'vi were aliens, not humans, and their "connection with nature" was a provable and (within the context of the film) scientifically explainable fact, not mere new-age mumbo-jumbo, so it is probably excusable.
And I suppose the "(White) human goes native and does what the natives do better than they do" could also potentially have dubious implications. But again, it's justified in that really the only way the Na'vi could win in a direct confrontation with the humans would be with the help of someone who could not only do what the Na'vi traditionally do, but also understand the human's intentions and strategy, use human weapons, and know the vulnerabilities of their vehicles. And the only that could be done would either be to have a human side with and become a Na'vi, or for a Na'vi to travel to Earth, learn about human culture, serve in a/the Earth military, and then return to lead his/her people.
Now, the latter might have made for a more complex and interesting story, but what they did wasn't unreasonable in my view.
Overall, Avatar is (in my view) a some-what simplistic but nonetheless engaging story about the exploitation and destruction of the environment and of native peoples by the greedy and powerful, told, as SheffTim said, using the classical "hero's journey" plot structure.
As for real-world parallels, despite not being American I too say it as essentially cowboys and Indians, with the Indians clearly being the "good guys". Probably partly because it was an American film, and so it would make sense for that to be the main reference. Probably also because that conflict has had much more representation in popular culture than other colonial ventures.
Which, as an aside, got me thinking. America has an unpleasant history of first oppressing their natives, and then glamorizing that oppression in film and literature. However, there are also a lot of more recent American films etc that redress the balance (even if they sometimes do so in a rather simplistic manner). Pretty much all major powers in the world today (and those that are no longer powers) have a comparable record of historical oppression, but I can't think of many stories owning up to it.
Although the use of terms like "terrorism" and "shock and awe" were undoubtedly deliberate chosen to make you think about parallels with current conflicts in the Middle East, overall I think they don't have that much in common. The "unobtanium" is completely worthless to the Na'vi (and also of no obvious use to humans other than its monetary value), but cannot be extracted without destroying their homes and sacred sites, and as such is more analagous to driving the native Americans off their land in order to mine gold than it is to an oil war. (If that were the case, the unobtanium would have been vital to both parties, and the conflict would be about who gets to use it or sell it to the other side).
Also, for other contempary relevances, I'm not so sure the film should be seen as a criticism of the American military, but of mercenary companies like Blackwater. After all, the human military wasn't a national army but worked for a private company. Jake Sully said that he had joined the marines to fight for freedom, but it was only since being discharged and taking on this job that he viewed himself as a "hired gun".
Another possible criticism those is that made by DemocracyThreat (#200) make some good points about problems in the about the uncritical portrayal of what is essentialy a monarchical and/or theocratic society in this and several other stories. (I disagree about including Harry Potter in this, for a number of reasons, but would suggest Star Wars as another offender).
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#284 tigerlilly
Warren Anderson even looks like the crazy military guy in Avatar (Colonel Miles Quaritch )...Anderson is also called the "Butcher of Bhopal".
"He ( Anderson) is wanted by India and INTERPOL to face charges of culpable homicide over the deaths of 20,000 people since the disaster and the lifelong illnesses faced by over 120,000 people.[6][7]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Anderson_(chairman)
How to go after these criminals..thats the question. Dow Chemical bought up Union Carbide and is famous for making agent orange and people are still affected by the dioxin used in Viet Nam. Vets from the Viet Nam war and their children are affected by this chemical too...and there are parts of Viet Nam that are still contaminated with dioxin
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"Pandora is inhabited by the Na’vi, a blue-skinned neolithic species of sapient humanoids with feline characteristics.[19] Physically stronger and taller than humans, the Na'vi live in harmony with Nature, worshiping a mother goddess called Eywa."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)
With all the posts I just wanted to make it clear what the original creatures ..the Na'vi... were like in the film.
The Na'vi had tails which they used to form bonds with other creatures on Pandora...in a bond related to their relationship with Eywa.
Also Rupert Murdoch (whose Newscorp was the financial backer for this film) may have been sold on this film because the Na'vi are very self reliant and willing to live on the edge. They will drop from great heights onto leaves to break their fall and must risk death in order to form bonds with their horse like companions.
"Avatar is primarily an action-adventure journey of self-discovery, in the context of imperialism and biodiversity.[53] Cameron has said that Avatar shares themes with the films At Play in the Fields of the Lord and The Emerald Forest, which feature clashes between cultures and civilizations, and acknowledged the film's connection with Dances With Wolves, where a battered soldier finds himself drawn to the culture he was initially fighting against.[54]"
If you go to the wiki link you can read the plot and some analysis..which may help clarify the themes in this film. People may be so overwhelmed by the film's physical beauty that they are missing the themes
"Cameron acknowledged that it implicitly criticizes America's War in Iraq and the impersonal nature of mechanized warfare in general.[57] In reference to the use of the term "shock and awe" in the film, Cameron stated, "We know what it feels like to launch the missiles. We don't know what it feels like for them to land on our home soil, not in America." A scene in the film portrays the violent destruction of the towering Na'vi Hometree, which collapses in flames after a missile attack, coating the landscape with ash and floating embers. When asked about the scene's visual resemblance to the events of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Cameron said he had been "surprised at how much it did look like September 11".[57]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)
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Copy and paste to make this link work...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)
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Your Ace From Space (*)
Version Galore (*)
(*)= Daddy U-Roy
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It's a fantasy movie....
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The WMD were also fantasy, but that fantasy led to war....Yes, its a racist movie. People who deny palestinians are occupied, who go to war on the bases of lies, who segregates whole nations because of one or two person are not expected to see the racism in this movie...
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Good or bad? Chi ching, It made the blue people a lot of green.
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First off, I enjoyed this movie immensely (and I only saw it in 2D). I don't even mind the plot similarities to Fern Gully. I mean, who didn't love that movie? However, if you didn't like it, don't stress. Nobody is gonna make you watch it again.
I enjoyed reading this blog and the comments. I don't agree with the racist bit, but I did see the anti-war, new age tree hugger flavors. If it only served to made you think, then the blog and the movie did more for you than you realize.
Harsh words won't change anyone's mind or convince them that you are right or better. In the end, nobody cares whether it has an underlying racist theme or not. You will have your opinions and everyone else will hold theirs. Racists will point fingers and non-whites will point fingers and say "See! I told you" ... but that is how it has always been and all you can really change is yourself.
Avatar was good entertainment. It wasn't the best movie ever, but it wasn't a Saw XV either. Thank God.
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Kingston 12 Toughie (*)
(*)=The Morwells
Heavy Heavy Load (**)
(**)=Larry Marshall
its a heavy heavy load jah jah children a carry
heavy heavy load jah jah children a carry
its a heavy heavy load very heavy load
through this rocky rocky rocky mountain
heavy heavy load jah jah children a carry
through this bushy bushy mountain
and the wicked men walking behind us
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I wrote above #246 about how Avatar can be broken down as an archetype following a similar structure to some of the great universal mythological stories.
I've had a go at refining it whilst keeping it to a basic 10-part structure.
You may recognise the plot structure from other movies and stories; most great hero stories, consciously or unconsciously, follow it.
Joseph Campbell, who studied world religions and mythologies, identified in his book 'Hero with a Thousand Faces' certain universal elements (mono-myths) that were common to major stories from all of them. (See also footnote.)
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1) The Ordinary World - Introducing the hero and the hero's normal world as the story begins. (Jake's arrival on Pandora.)
2) Call to Adventure - The hero is presented with a challenge and begins a journey. (The Avatar program. The company's plans.)
3) Meeting a Mentor - The hero often meets a mentor to gain advice or training for the adventure. (Grace the scientist. Later Neytiri fulfils this role.)
4) Crossing a Threshold - The hero crosses leaves the ordinary world and goes into a special world. (Jake's Avatar enters Pandora.)
5) Tests, meeting allies & enemies - The hero faces tests, meets allies & enemies & learns the rules of the special world. The hero faces setbacks & may need to make choices and adopt new ideas. (Jake is introduced to Pandora, the heroine Neytiri and the Na'vi tribe, and has to win their trust. He also makes allies amongst the science crew.)
6) The Ordeal Begins - A great life or death crisis; often the enemy strikes. (The company destroys Hometree. Jake has to choose sides.)
7) The Darkest Hour. - (The tribe faces destruction. Jake is rejected by Neytiri and the tribe. Jake is captured by the company.)
8) Becoming 'The Hero'. - The hero faces choices, calls on the aid of allies, faces death and uses everything he's learned to survive. (Jake's science crew allies free him, his mentor Grace is mortally injured. Alone Jake sets out to capture Toruk, a fierce flying creature of special symbolism to the Na've.)
9) Return as 'The Hero' & Hope Arises - (Jake returns as a warrior with the 'grail' (Toruk) and rallies the Na'vi. He is reunited with Neytiri. Forces assemble for the final battle for the Tree of Souls.)
10) Triumph and Reward. (The final battle is fought. Jake survive ordeals to finally triumph. Jake and Neytiri declare their love. Peace restored Jake stays with the Na'vi.)
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The same can be done with Star Wars, Man Called Horse, Dances with Wolves, Clash of the Titans, Excalibur, Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potters even Dirty Harry, Die Hard and many other stories.
Campbell identified a total of 17 main stages to the basic story in all.
The A-Team managed to reduce each episode to around 6 stages.
There are variations to the story; some stories are revenge quests and so on. Adding more characters, each with their own story arc adds complexity to stories.
For more information see Campbell's works and Christopher Vogler's book 'The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers', based on Campbell's work.
Most screen-writing courses refer to Campbell's hero's journey.
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Footnote: Often these stories take the form of a journey (quest) in which some object (grail) or knowledge is sought, or a task has to be accomplished, and follow a series of steps.
A mentor figure usually figures, but often at a key moment the hero is separated from the mentor and has to act on his/her own.
Not all of Campbell's steps are always followed, some are omitted, some combined, the middle ones can be in a different order, but most adventure (and religious) stories follow them.
Needless to say the theme of an underdog vs a stronger enemy is universally popular.
In religious stories the final triumph is often a moral/spiritual one.
In Gladiator or Braveheart the final triumph is a both moral one and in becoming inspirational legend.
See also:
http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=the+hero%27s+journey+joseph+campbell&meta=&aq=f&oq=the+hero%27s+journey+joseph+campbell&fp=698b2be80cf6bcd7
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White people are racists, everyone else is traditional, that is the theme of our modern world.
Name me one civilization that wasn't built on the backs of slaves or wrecked nature to build itself up. If memory serves, the developing world used to be the ancient world and was much more advanced than Europe, so people from those parts of the world love to brag. Big cities, machines, irrigation, river ... See Morediversion, massive siege towers, gunpowder, sailing ships, precious metals, jewels, etc.
I suppose that someone is going to tell me that the ancient world built its massive cities and momunents, many of which stand today, without ripping up the environment or without legions of slaves from defeated nations or lower classes? What sort of ancient mysticism allowed those wise old societies to conjure up advancement without cost? Was it temples of wise and powerful priests summoning the ethereal powers of nature that built the pyramids? Macchu Picchu? The Great Wall? The Mayan cities? Or was it slaves being worked into their graves?
So what happened to the massive forests from the Yellow River Valley? The swaths of cedar that used to carpet Lebanon?
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Sometimes a movie is just a movie. God save us all from social pundits that try to interject their view into a movie. again its was just a movie, it is not real. Get a grip, folks..
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maybe some of you are right...and it was just a MOVIE...but doesnt this tell u something about the american mind and how it functions?! they show u that they distroy with motives like greed and such...they show u that they go around ruining lands, houses, homes and families... and not feel bad about it...they feel like they've "served" their countries and are good citizens...
but look at the bigger picture...even if the movie WAS just a movie... does it not tell u anything about how the human race is living?
all of you have come up with several theories about the movie...they might all be false...or all correct... either way if it wasnt made by hollywood we all wouldnt have had those thoughts...but we all did.... meaning we all know that the bigger picture is not put together correctly...and it we need to take action..
he didnt mean to portray palestine and the other countries that have been "assisted" by america...but some of us saw it
he didnt mean to be racist... but some of us saw it
thats just coz its there, being talked about in our daily lives..day in day out, and action needs to be takes ASAP because alot of ppl are getting hurt and if this continues we wont have a world to go to...no ppl no nature no nothing...
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Avatar was a disappointment. The effects were amazing, but the storyline was pretty insipid and boring. We've seen this thousands of times before (Pocahontas anyone?), and I must admit that I'm stunned at the OTT reaction from people - claiming it's the best movie ever?? Seriously?? Have standards dropped so dramatically? I love James Cameron, but this was not his best work. Again, effects-wise...AWESOME, the rest....*yawn*
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As an American, I find much of the criticism of the American mentality to be accurate. However, the foundation from which others are slinging their barbs is shaky. Glass houses and all that. But the thing about the film that strikes me as the most patronizing is the notion of the harmonious natives living in glorious concert with each other and nature and all that. Hollywood films will have made a leap forward when they can get past the "noble savage" image and depict complicated, flawed characters on both sides of a conflict. I'm not holding my breath for that day to arrive though.
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First, I think one would need to ask James Cameron what his intentions were. I didn't know the main female character wasn't white until after the movie, but it didn't make a difference to me.... it didn't even dawn on me that the "hero" was the only white. The mother seemed like a spiritual Maya Angelou or someone similar, but to automatically assume that all the "blue" people were black actors never occured to me while watching the movie. I thought it was a good reminder to people (and kids) about history and how wrong many of our actions were in the past, and a good portrayal of the "original inhabitants'" point of view as a lesson for what people shouldn't do in the future (or stop doing currently!) It reminded me of "Wall-E", an animated movie with an important message. I just wish that people would actually come away WITH the message! Loved Avatar.
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Regarding:
loblollyboy and his assertion that
" racially homogeneous Japanese culture, perhaps it is a clearer, less obstacle-strewn path to this insight than in a culture where racial stereotypes clearly still obtain"
Japan is not a racially homogeneous culture, and if you had studied or knew anything of Japan outside of Miyazaki films then you would be aware that racial stereotypes abound to the degree that you can still buy Sambo books. Every nation has issues with the Other, but I saw only the environmental impact and corporatism/technology out of control. The same as all his other films.
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What about the smurfs? They were blue!
Anyways, you have hit the nail right on the head.
Just look at the Obama Beer Summit. Obama did not want to take the white cop's side because he knew how it would look to black people. However, why didn't the black professor cooperate with the officer? Was it simply because the officer was white? I believe it was. In fact, you would think the professor would be grateful that police were there to make sure no one was breaking in. But the respect between the two was not there.
Another recent incident was a guy who worked for the Obama Admin. He became publicized because of a past comment he made about the Columbine school shooting. The guy claimed that only white kids would do a school shooting. This was before the Cho (who was Asian) incident at V. Tech, which was our biggest school shooting. So clearly the guy working for Obama was being racist toward whites.
Then you have that Chicago cemetary scandal. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson Jr. were outraged when they heard that the workers were moving the bodies around to make money. They were outraged until they heard that all the workers were black. So it was black people taking advantage of the black people's cemetary. There was not a single white worker involved.
There are more diverse movie stars, musicians, athletes, ect. than ever. On the Today show, Ann is Asian, Matt and Meredith white and Al black. On Good Morning America Robin is black, George is white and Zu Zu is Asian. All the shows, movies, commercials, ect. seem to promote one person of each race, like you can only have one character that is white, one that is black, one that is Asian, one that is Hispanic, ect. The first Disney movie with a black princess came out this year, as well.
As Bob Dylan said, "The times they are a changin', " and they surely are. The future holds a more diverse world.
But no matter what, it comes down to who you are a person.
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"However, why didn't the black professor cooperate with the officer? "
maybe because he was in his own house and thought the cop could go to hell. as is his right.
maybe he was given little opportunity to be polite. some consider raising your voice to a police officer a crime.
even in your own home.
I see the rest of your examples sort of make more sense.
Those times are a changin but then they won't go much further if we all sit back and pretend the work is done.
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It comes down to who you are as a person.
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Child Of God ( Its Hard To Believe ) (*)
(*)=Millie Jackson
I know some people who go to church on sunday
These same people, they wear a sheet on monday
Talk about justice being free
They're watching lynchings so easily
I find it hard, I find it hard, I find it hard
It's hard to believe these are children of God
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gen pen, the officers were called because the professor lost his key and a passer-by noticed that he was breaking into the house. The professor told the police officer that it was his house, but he refused to show his id or cooperate in verifying that it really was his house.
Since it really was his house, the professor should have simply shown proof and laughed it off as that was no crime. However, by being combative, the officer had no proof that the professor was really who he said he was. The officer was just doing his job. Sometimes cases do not involve race. Ironically, the officer was the teacher of a class about racial profiling. I hope that he taught his students that sometimes civilians also have racial profiling toward police, as well, such as the professor.
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Geez, this was a "fictional" story and movie. Period. has no more undertoned meaning then Humpty Dumpty or The Cat in the Hat.
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"If so, the whole thing is the product of an ego that knows no bounds - something that would make it a very American artifact indeed."
This about sums up quite a few opinions here about Hollywood's products.
Sorry, after copying and pasting this I couldn't find the reference no.
I agree that Hollywood is potentially the most dangerous element on this planet. While they sometimes toe the PC line, they have been known to promote American hypernationalism, you know, "Truth, Justice and the American Way!"
AND they make lots and lots of money doing so! I haven't seen and will not [at least pay] to see the film. I still prefer to read science fiction [when not reading political science, history or other real subjects] and I put down the book right fast if it is too simplistic, inept, derivative etc.
Power [to do good or to do evil] is power, and in whose hands is it entrusted? Hollywood.
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Mark
l saw Avatar in Digital lmax 3D, Fantastic movie. lt's totally fiction, the people who think it's racist should get real.
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this movie was fictional story i can not believe that people have so much negative opinions on the movie ,was really the best movie i ever saw and have some avatar movie wallpapers on my pc 2
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lucy it is his house. end of story. or it should be.
he is allowed to be pissed off. he had to break his front door open.
the officer maybe didn't learn enough himself.
Given the double standards in your posts given your complete utter lack of understanding things like Obama didn't kill your health care. given everything you have written I am not surprised you saw no offence in an older guy saying "this is my house".
The cop could have remained on guard while he figured out what was going on.
That would have been sensitive.
Given you don't like people that move to the states and then complain about it , that anyone who dares to disagree with any temporary situation in the USA with the aim of changing it should leave and get out. This is what You have said.
I don't think you are really as open minded as you pretend.
What do you say to the interpretor for the US forces who's family was killed who moved here and said " I don't like it" in the end.
Bugger off your family died I don't care Love it or leave!
You say you didn't like Bush but still support the massive patriotism that said. "With us or against us"
or the same mentality that said "traitors" to those who opposed the wars.
Again and again you seem to want the right thing ALMOST. but you would support the devil to get it.
Obama is not your problem. the dreams you seek that you mention he seems to seek as well. so try thinking a little harder and stop listening to the idiots.
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I've gotta confess, I still don't get this argument.
It seems that there are far too many people looking to dig out a niche for themselves by finding fault with something (anything). Many of them may be doing so because they have a genuine issue, but more I suspect are looking to create high ground where none exists.
There are plenty of soapboxes to climb on without the need to manufacture them.
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Racist? Well, what's racist? I'd define it as justifying asymmetries of power (and wealth, and ...) by invoking a set of well worn racial memes ('whites' are this, 'blacks' are that, 'yellows' are this, etc., etc.)
That this film invokes 'racial' stereotypes (though presented as differences between species) is clear. But does it validate the dominance of the 'civilized' humans over the 'savage' Na'vi?
Hardly.
Does it present the 'civilizing' process as something inevitable against which the blue savage resists in noble futility?
Not.
So what is it about this film that supports, validates, justifies, or promotes the clear power asymmetry between humans and Na'vi?
Like many films of its genre, (my own favourites are Terry Malik's The New World -- one of the most beautiful films ever made, if I may say -- and Roland Joffe's The Mission -- the iconography of De Niro dragging his armour up that bloody cliff is just perfect) Avatar invokes racial memes to question and challenge them. And it is in this that I think Avatar could be faulted -- the blue dudes are just too perfect, the nasty humans just too ... well, nasty. It's all too blue and white. One wants some shades of, er, ... gray?
Still, a beautiful film to look at.
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The racism charge is inevitable, mostly for the film's resemblance to other White Messiah films like Lawrence of Arabia. But really the issue is that the film flatters us while saying our way of life is fundamentally wrong. The best analysis I've read is this one at ryeberg.com: http://www.ryeberg.com/curated-videos/avatar-race-relations-light-years-from-earth/ -- I think the writer makes an excellent point: "We get to revel in our equal regard for Na’vi culture from the safest distance possible—4.4 light years from Earth to be precise..."
Glad you raised the issue again. It's worth the discussion!
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I don't think that James Cameron has any racist intentions with Avatar. Its only a fiction.
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