‘Avatar’ has a racist message?

[FarCenter]

Near the end of the film Avatar, the villain snarls at the hero, “How does it feel to betray your own race?” Both men are white — although the hero is portrayed as a blue-skinned, 9-foot tall, long-tailed alien.

Strange as it may seem for a film that pits greedy, immoral humans against noble denizens of a faraway moon, Avatar is being criticised by a small but vocal group of people who allege it contains racist themes — of a white hero once again saving primitive natives.

Since the film opened to widespread critical acclaim three weeks ago, hundreds of blog posts, newspaper articles, tweets and YouTube videos have made claims such as that the film is “a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people” and reinforces “the white Messiah fable.”

<SNIP>http://beta.thehindu.com/arts/cinema/article78822.ece

[onehandle]

1. Yawn. Sometimes a movie is just a movie. nt

[YOY]

2. +6,000,000

Sick of this shit. It's a flipping movie. A good watch...not the seventh seal in terms of cinema...but a good watch.

[ChazII]

6. Thank you for your common sense. n/t

[Nikki Stone1]

7. Movies reflect the ideals and prejudices of the people who make them

I don't watch movies much at all because they tend to reflect the narrow views of a narrow group of men. The last two movies I went to see were "Capitalism: A Love Story" and "Fahrenheit 911".

[alittlelark]

3. Did you miss the WHOLE point of the film?

I saw it for the first time this weekend.

There is no 'white messiah'.

There are those who discover a 'morality' outside of memes.

The flick shows that ppl can re-discover morality after living within nationalistic/corporatist paradigms.

[wtmusic]

4. Probably.

A lot of racist themes in media these days. They're powerful because they appeal to a primitive instinct.

Not a very civilized one, however.

[Orrex]

5. Now wait just a damn minute.

I thought they were ten feet tall?

[YOY]

9. and no mention of "teh kittehs"

n/t

[beyurslf]

8. So any movie with a white hero is just a part of the white messiah myth?

[Orrex]

17. Usually it's confined to a white hero who acts as the savior of a primitive race.or culture.

Can't be sure, though; does that sound like the plot of Avatar?

:shrug:

[Dorian Gray]

24. Yes, it does.

[beyurslf]

26. I think the humans looked at them as primitive but they were more advanced in some ways,

just not technologically.

[Orrex]

27. Well, that's how the film also plays into the "noble savage" archetype

I'm not singling out Avatar out as unique in this regard, but as the soon-to-be biggest moneymaker of all time, it gets more visibility.

[Recursion]

37. That's the left's version of the white man's burden, though

That sort of fetishization of non-industrial cultures grates on a lot of people. I mean, despite what we have all been taught, Native Americans were neither environmentalists nor pacifists, nor were they more just or less greedy than Europeans. Hell, when the Puritans settled Plymouth county the first thing they did was join the Narraganset in an already-started war of conquest against the Pequots.

[Recursion]

31. No, the white hero has to try to go native

Think Lawrence of Arabia, Dances With Wolves, Last Samurai, for that matter Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness for the conscious exploration of the darker side of the fantasy.

[proteus_lives]

10. Who cares? It was a shitty movie.

Yeah, there was a White Messiah trope. But the dude was talking about the human race.

It also had the Noble Savage trope.

Plus, shitty writing, wooden acting and one-dimensional characters.

[Hissyspit]

11. All par for the course for James Cameron.

[proteus_lives]

14. To be fair:

He made good sci-fi in the 80s.

[Orrex]

12. You have to see it in the super-expensive IMAX 3D format

Then the lame-ass story will seem awesome!

[proteus_lives]

13. Ooohh, shiny!

Maybe you're right.

Maybe if the wrapping paper is brighter and prettier, I won't notice the empty box!

[Dorian Gray]

25. This is true

thought the plot, characters, and story were horrible. Dialog embarrassingly bad. Beautiful to watch, though.

The fact that such a shitty movie has engendered such serious discussion is a little perplexing to me, but I"m guilty of it too. I'm sort of fascinated by the film because it was so beautiful, yet so bad.

[proteus_lives]

30. "so beautiful, yet so bad"

That applies to several ex-girlfriends as well. ;-)

[Dorian Gray]

47. LOL...

in that case, that would be a good thing, no?

[proteus_lives]

48. It always starts out as a good thing....

But it gets harder and harder to ignore the "red alerts" after awhile.

[greennina]

15. You mean like every other Hollywood movie?

[Hissyspit]

16. +1

[JVS]

18. The "Noble Savage" depiction is always problematic, why shouldn't it be in this case?

[Romulox]

33. 3D! nt

[ecstatic]

19. This movie was no District 9

District 9 had racist overtones.

I had skimmed over the headlines about Avatar being racist prior to seeing the movie. I went in to the theater expecting to be disappointed by another typical, predictable movie with racist themes. I honestly don't believe the people who have made this particular movie a race issue have actually watched it. From watching the previews, one could easily come to that conclusion but you have to actually see the movie before judging.

[Recursion]

36. I loved District 9. And Children of Men. But I like fugee movies.

I think both of those were better explorations of race than Avatar. I remember for some reason being really impressed that the graffiti in Children of Men was in Arabic (or rather heavily Arabicized Urdu) and that "intifada" was written on most of the blast walls.

[Incitatus]

20. "This is how it works, when people are living on something you want, you make them your enemy" -Jake

There was a message there, but it had nothing to do with race.

These are probably some dumbass freepers who hate what the movie was really about.

[-..__...]

21. Critic not lissen...

only lissen to mesa cause one, two-y little bitty axadentes, in PC head.

[Arctic Dave]

22. Racist? I thought it was a movie about being "Handi-Capable". I was way off.

[howard112211]

23. Telling, that precisely the people who are pissed about the mercs gettig greased are complaining.

I don't think it has a racist message.

It has a protagonist who becomes a hero, such as virtually any movie of the Fantasy/SciFi/Adventure/Action genre.

People like hero stories.

We should not forget that the primary audience are children.

[SteelPenguin]

28. Racist? More Race Fantasy than Racist.

There's a reason that people like the movie beyond it's gosh-wow effects, and that's because the story is familiar. Cameron isn't breaking new ground here, and for some people it detracts from the movie, and for others it makes it comfortable and fun.

The story though unquestionably is a merging of a few familiar themes. One of course being the Hero's Journey. It follows the scripting beats of that one spot on, and why not. It's one of the most common themes we use in films because it gives us a protagonist we can root for, obstacles to overcome, and a happy ending after some conflicts and drama and danger, and usually he gets the cute girl in the end.

The second of course is the White Guilt theme. There's a better writeup for it here than I can put in this space.

http://io9.com/5422666/when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar

White Guy (and even if he's in the 'body' of a Na'vi, it's just a costume. He's still at heart, and in his mind a white guy) comes to native people, learns their non-technological ways and how his own people are dicks and just treating the world like shit, and then joins the natives and eventually becomes their leader.

That doesn't make it 'racist' though in my opinion, just a race fantasy. Keeping white privilege while gaining the benefits of sexy ethnic women... ;) Avatar, Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, Dune, and even Disney's Pocohantas all fit the mold. Pocohantas itself is particularly close in story...



In fact you could argue that in ways it's very un-racist. It's saying that the non-white people's are doing it better, that the white people are flawed (and the different movies have different introspections on exactly why that is, though generally since we're paring white people with the noble savage, there is a message of "simple is better" and a Gaia message). But the White Fantasy involved is that the White person can then escape from this, and become a leader of the noble savages rather than the white people. That's why it can be argued it's racist. It's basically saying that the white person is so superior to noble savages, that if he becomes one of them in spirit, then obviously he'd be their leader.

Anyway, it's an old theme, and I think if anything the racist message is that white people suck, but not you...not the person watching this...you're awesome and if YOU were to go to some native people's they'd teach you how to use a bow an arrow, give you a sexy girlfriend, and you'd get to lead them.

Toss that into a Hero's Journey and you have fanboysplosions dreaming of blue catwomen.

[Recursion]

29. I compare it to the God-awful "Billy Jack"

Though that's a white actor pretending to be Native American (when the villains talk about "that damned Indian" you have to remember they mean "that white guy in a hat"). But it's the same race fantasy, and same preachy, way-too-long, unbearably written dialog.

[Romulox]

32. Seems like your standard issue Noble Savage trope...

Not having seen the film, the basic premise seems dripping with noble savagery.

[Recursion]

34. It's upthread

And the noble savage trope is inseparable from the Lawrence of Arabia-esque white savior trope (white hero goes to his benighted wog cousins, learns from their simple and just ways, and leads them against the white oppressors). It's what we all dream we would have done had we been alive back in the day, though we're all wrong.

[Romulox]

38. Nice posts. Missed them on first skim.

"The Last Samurai" immediately came to mind when I heard the loose outline of Avatar's plot.

"left's version of the white man's burden"

What a brilliant poem. Is it intended to be read at face value? Is it chilling satire? Does it even matter at this point? The poem obviously taps into something so primal in our cultural psyche that it is invisible to most of us.

[Recursion]

39. Oh it's completely tongue-in-cheek

Kipling was a lot more cynical than we give him credit for today; we tend to remember him for his WWI cheerleading (at least until his son died).

I don't think he was as concerned with the injustice of empire as we are today (though he clearly saw that); to me the poem is more about how ultimately pointless it is to try to build up an empire.

[Romulox]

40. Your reading is still consistent with a rather dim view of "savage" peoples

First three stanzas of the poem:

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/kipling.html

[Recursion]

41. I'm sure he had a rather "dim" view of them, though consider Gunga Din

From the standpoint of Victorian values, non-Europeans were "inferior", and that's the worldview he had. He also thought it was kind of pointless to try to "enlighten" them (and even had enough of a touch of relativism that he would say "enlighten" with some sarcasm).

[rucky]

35. They should've casted real Na'vi for those roles.

[howard112211]

42. I liked Avatar, but if I could pick a movie character...

... I want to be Gandalf !!! :rofl:

I wonder what that says about me on a deep psychological level.

[fascisthunter]

43. now I have seen it all... enough is enough

buh bye

[Xithras]

44. i think this guy watched a different movie than I did.

Spoiler warning.

He, at no point, was their leader. They had a leader when he arrived (Eytucan). When that leader died, another native took over (Tsu'tey). Sully pledged himself to support both leaders, and simply acted as a warrior for them.

In the final battle, it was the natives who won the decisive victories. Na'vi warriors took down many of the human soldiers. Pandoran wildlife took down nearly the entire rest of the army. Heck, the native Na'vi princess personally saved the films only "good" white people from dying.

Sully's only great victory occurs when he takes the heavy bomber down. On a practical level, that victory makes sense. As a human, Sully is the only person who understands the machine and knows its weak spot. Where a thousand Pandoran birds and arrows would have bounced harmlessly off its hull, he understood that a single grenade in a turbine intake would knock it out of the sky. On a storytelling level, it happened within the context of a battle between two humans and two human perspectives on the world. Quarich was Sully's enemy and wanted him dead. Sully was trying to kill him first. The bomber was taken down during that fight. Even here, however, the human ultimately failed. Quarich nearly killed Sully, and only the intervention of the Na'vi princess kept that from happening.

Yes, he managed to wrangle the big dragonbird thing, which then helped his people to unite the various tribes. That was certainly a great contribution on his part, but it hardly qualifies him as a messiah.

Also, don't forget the OTHER often overlooked message in Avatar. In the end, both the humans AND the na'vi failed to stop the army. It was only when the planet itself got pissed off and sent in the waves of wildlife that the human army was really destroyed. In the end, the planet saved itself. No messiah required.

[mmonk]

45. pfffffft! They don't get the obvious.

:spray:

They don't get the obvious.

He was the one saved.

[Fresh_Start]

46. +1

you are right, he didn't save the "savages". THe "savages" saved him

[ItNerd4life]

49. I wonder what they would have said if the hero was a black man?

Probably something about how the black man betrayed his race or joined the primitives because he's primitive.

Racism is screamed so much, when true racism occurs nobody knows it for what it is.