When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"? - Avatar - io9

[curgoth]

When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"? - Avatar - io9

In which Annalee Newitz sums up the problems with Avatar and movies like it, and the fanboys fail to get it an have a tantrum in the comments.

Comments

[northbard.livejournal.com]

Yum. That there is an awesome article and also zombie-hunger triggering inasmuch as there is the tasty brain meats....

[northbard.livejournal.com]

Of course that comment was entirely in relation to the article. Oh fandom, O libertarianism, thou makest me to slit my wrists.

[curgoth]

STOP MAKING ME CONSIDER MY OWN PRIVLIG I WANT BEWBS AND SPLOZUNS!

[themusesbitch.livejournal.com]

WHY AM I READING THE COMMENTS???

Please make me stop.

Thanks.

[curgoth]

LOOK, MONKEYS!

[djinnthespazz.livejournal.com]

Yep.

What was the movie with the alien bugs? Where the psychic had to come in and prove that we would destroy their race if they continued to colonize in our direction, and the end sequence was 'she understands' Yeesh, what a message.

[curgoth]

Starship Troopers?

[djinnthespazz.livejournal.com]

That's the one. The ending turned my stomach. Bleh.

[athenalindia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but in fairness, it wasn't supposed to be an ending the audience rooted for. Paul Verhoeven has gone on record saying that he thought that if he dressed Neil Patrick Harris (among others) in a S.S. outfit, people would get that this is a fascist government.

But people didn't. It's a satire of propaganda films. Really it is.

[djinnthespazz.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Okay.

I get that it's supposed to be that.
Satire, eh? Hmmm.

[kettunainen.livejournal.com]

fantastic article! Thank you for sharing it :)

[tamago23.livejournal.com]

It would be nice if she'd actually seen the movie. In the comments the commenter "Dragonfliet" makes an excellent summary of the ways her article gets it wrong, and at the end of their exchange, the article writer admits she'll have to actually see the movie. (His comment starts with I think that this is a predictable, but ultimately very, very flawed examination. While I agree that this movie presents an overtly obvious and simplistic retelling of the colonization of the new world (and in this movie they very literally are stealing the land--the very rock the people live on--of the people) and I also concur on the frustration of having the white man being the leader, there is far more to consider., in case anyone just wants to do a search for it.)

For the record, I'm a white woman. I also do a lot of reading about racism, learning about it, educating others about it, and doing my best to be a white ally. *And* I thought Avatar was amazing. I had some cultural-appropriation issues, and going into it I knew it would be another rendition of the Honkey Savior trope. But Dragonfliet's comment did an excellent job of discussing the ways in which it was subverted and isn't quite like the analysis says it is. And as I said in the beginning, the fact that she hasn't actually seen it and is just riffing off of what she's read on the Internet, without any understanding of the nuances in the movie, makes her analysis hold a hell of a lot less credibility.

[athenalindia.livejournal.com]

I agree with many of her points, but I still loved the movie. And I thought where it was particularly strong was in its attack on commercial militarism (this isn't a government, it's a company hiring mercenaries - Blackwater, anyone?), and in its attention to how the process of othering an enemy works.

[djinnthespazz.livejournal.com]

"the process of othering an enemy"

Got that from the preview. Oh yeah.