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

[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.