AI Sharpton wrote:
In the eyes of most if not all black people, the Jake was dressed in black face.
Okay, yes. I agree that he is a racially impure figure. I agree that he is attempting to change his racial identity. I've argued that this effect is consciously and deliberately produced by the film.
What's so bad about that?
These have always gone together, and in fact they are presented together in the movie: the scientist looking for her samples, the capitalist looking for his money. The romantic dream of the pure frontier motivating and guiding colonization. The network of scientific knowledge underwrites and makes possible techniques of barbarism. The mythology of the pure savage is the condition of the idea of cultural renewal, the American dream. So, yes, I see the criticism, but I do think that the movie consciously connects these two modes of colonialism, and is in a certain sense ahead of your analysis in this respect.
So you think that the movie equally condemns both forms of colonialism? That’s not what I saw. All of the sciency things, like the joke about wanting to collect samples, were in praise of science for the sake of science, no matter what. It was OK for the professor to enter the community, teach them English, taking biological samples, as long as it was for science, and to protect their culture. In fact, the Na'vi needed her to protect their culture, just like they needed Jake to tell them not to fight the humans head on, in the first confrontation at the home tree. The movie communicated this by making the scientists, those protecting the Na'vi, the internal enemies of the capitalists, arguably the strongest conflict in the movie. I agree that the two have always been connected in history, I just don’t think that Avatar did anything to condemn the museum form of colonialism. If you can give me some examples from the movie, I would appreciate it and grant you your point as it relates to this.
I do agree that Avatar did not display Jake Sully as lowering himself to the Na’vi, he had a high view of them. I was more criticizing that view in our culture today, which I find quite prevalent and offensive. The point is relevant to the discussion because it is an extension of the same idea, preserving indigenous groups as a museum, because they are cute.
Run Far wrote:
Annalee Newitz thinks it is:
......
Me Thinks thou dost protest too much! This Annalee Bimbette is probably a raging Racist who can't see anything without resorting to race baiting.
F*** You Annalee!!!
^-^ wrote:
So you think that the movie equally condemns both forms of colonialism? That’s not what I saw. All of the sciency things, like the joke about wanting to collect samples, were in praise of science for the sake of science, no matter what. It was OK for the professor to enter the community, teach them English, taking biological samples, as long as it was for science, and to protect their culture. In fact, the Na'vi needed her to protect their culture, just like they needed Jake to tell them not to fight the humans head on, in the first confrontation at the home tree. The movie communicated this by making the scientists, those protecting the Na'vi, the internal enemies of the capitalists, arguably the strongest conflict in the movie. I agree that the two have always been connected in history, I just don’t think that Avatar did anything to condemn the museum form of colonialism. If you can give me some examples from the movie, I would appreciate it and grant you your point as it relates to this.
Hmm. I read the drama as showing that the scientists and the educators were being used by the corporate and military interests. Because they were fixated on their "objective" sampling of the environment, their science was nihilistic and able to be co-opted by military and corporate interests. Grace resisted this to some extent, but her resistance was ineffective because in the end, knowledge was her highest value. Jake's first encounter with the Na'vi showed them to be very cynical of modernity's attempts to "educate"--there are long stretches of dialogue about how from the Na'vi point of view, it was modernity that needed the education. The Na'vi were portrayed as capitalizing on these feeble attempts to educate: you had a lot more ability to speak English on the side of the Na'vi than vice-versa, for example.
It was only when Jake, uniterested in the nihlistic accumulation of scientific samples, uninterested in corporate stakes, made a playful and living encounter with the Na'vi that a genuine possibility of communication opened.
I do agree that Avatar did not display Jake Sully as lowering himself to the Na’vi, he had a high view of them. I was more criticizing that view in our culture today, which I find quite prevalent and offensive. The point is relevant to the discussion because it is an extension of the same idea, preserving indigenous groups as a museum, because they are cute.
I agree that this is a problem. I think that the film is conscious of this problem and resists it, to some extent. I came away from the film feeling as if Cameron had masterfully deployed an array of cultural archetypes and symbols in order to tell a powerful story. I think the film is emblematic of our times. Racism is certain a part of our times, and the film is not afraid to reckon with racism. But my sense was that the film is not racist, but instead carefully and probably dangerously puts race to work in the telling of the story.
All that said, I can see the argument that the film is racist. Even if it is racist, I still think that it is worth seeing--perhaps because it is racist, but in (I think) ways that perhaps can create openings for rethinking race. It's up to us to seek out those openings, to create them, even if Cameron did not intend them. Our interpretations reflect our positions, seems to me, more than the reality of the work of popular art that we interpret.
How did you feel about The Blind Side?
culpepper wrote:
How did you feel about The Blind Side?
THAT was a racist movie.
This was a very interesting article. Originally when I saw the movie I thought it was a decent movie that had meaningful thematic elements such as environmental concerns, white imperialism, wars over energy, etc etc.
However, I never thought about how in Avatar and other films the white "traitor" always ends up leading the natives...almost like a superior individual. Film analysis is a very interesting study that always opens my eyes to important truths.
The Blind Side was racist too. They even had to sneak in a little part where he steals a biscuit. All black aren't thieves. What color is Bernie Madoff?
flyswatta wrote:
Film analysis is a very interesting study that always opens my eyes to important truths.
No, more often than not it'll lead you to overanalyze and miss out on the sheer enjoyment of watching the good guys triumph over the bad guys. I'm sure the quasi-intellectuals and those looking for 'isms under every rock see that as checking your brain at the door, but if I want to spend my day analyzing the hidden meaning of everything I see, then life really starts to suck. There is time to analyze and there is a time to simply be entertained without worrying about whether the author is making a statement on 17th century European colonialism or anything else.
keep_going wrote:
I saw it in a movie theater that was about half black, half white, and half hispanic.
What the blue blazes!
Run Far wrote:
Annalee Newitz thinks it is:
http://io9.com/5422666/when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar"Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy. Spoilers...
Whether Avatar is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it's undeniable that the film - like alien apartheid flick District 9, released earlier this year - is emphatically a fantasy about race. Specifically, it's a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. Avatar and scifi films like it give us the opportunity to answer the question: What do white people fantasize about when they fantasize about racial identity?"
Read more at the link above.......
Why do we need to read more PC garbage? It's generally offered up by the hypocritical and self-deceptive chosenites who call themselves white in public and then non-white behind closed doors - or when it gives them some kind of advantage. Besides, the bad guys in Avatar are white.
or maybe whites could just not feel guilty, then movies like Avatar wouldn't get made anymore. Without guilt, we could start taking over shit again even faster than we did the first time.
Cogent points all.
Well said.
Compelling.
My dog is the worst racist I ever knew! Come to think of it all my dogs, all my life, were the biggest racists! If any person male or female, of a certain other race came near our home , anywhere near my house, my dog would go ballistic. White people he is fine. Why is that? Oh I know I train him like that. This dog is just a big puppy.
UncleB wrote:
Yep.
I am sure other races could have come up with worse practices than the genocide of natives and the enslavement of tens of millions for centuries.
Thanks God the whites were in charge and instituted these benign practices and thank God white people like you are so understanding of history
European colonizaiton was much better than everything it replaced. For example:
500 Spanish soldiers, 50 horses, and 12 cannon couldn't have conquered the Aztec empire without a huge army made up of the subject native tribes behind them. Why?
Well, it is bad enough to pay taxes in the form of money to the government, but having your friends and family ritually sacrificed to the Aztec gods and eaten, well a religion and culture that didn't involve eating people is an easy sell to everyone who could be on the menu.
keep_going wrote:
I saw it in a movie theater that was about half black, half white, and half hispanic.
Salisbury wannabe wrote:
What the blue blazes!
LOL! He obviously saw it not in 3D but 4 or 5D!
The movie was stupid, the humans have robots that do nothing but carry guns, but they don't have surface to surface missiles?
The humans are just going to come back with some sort of orbital station and nuke the shit out of pandora, then go in remotely and drill that sweet, sweet mineral out of the ground.
No, it's just stupid.