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

[Hyperspace05]

Truth_Seeker wrote:

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Making such movies is a good sign. Pretending that history didn't happen is worse.

Quoted for truth!

[bigdaddy]

HUMANS ARE ALL ONE FUCKING RACE!!!

There are different ethnicity, is that too much for people to remember? Oh yeah..... nevermind!

[Lt. Trull]

Truth_Seeker wrote:

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Making such movies is a good sign. Pretending that history didn't happen is worse.

what about global warming... our children are going to think we owe them a hugh debt for screwing the planet up like we did.... using your philosophy we shouldn't care what we do to the ecosystem cause we're just not responsible for it. even though our children will realize differently... there not going to be able to go back to us and tell us how much we f'd them over.

[Star Wolf]

Lt. Trull wrote:

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I thought what worthington brought to the Na'vi what that he was a warrior...
he was a United States MARINE...
everything else was gravy.

That's my opinion as well. The Na'vi are so intertwined with the forest there is no growth among their society and people lived the same as far as they remember their generations then the sky people show up. There is no scarcity to force the people to strive for more as the forest provides for all their needs, even if a predator eats one or two of them every so often.

They are presented with avatars, scientist who are useless, they have no function. They have no skills to add to the society and their feet are to soft to even walk around. With Jake Sully they finally ran into someone with a purpose. Maybe stupid in the ways of the forest but at least a man with a purpose in life.

[Kegg]

I tend to see white guilt as hardly an imposed thing. It's something voluntarily taken up by people who feel in some way responsible. It's like Germans feeling guilty for the Holocaust; though the only ones old enough to be any way complicit at this point are mostly nonagenerians.

It's an identity thing; actualy the natural consequence of say, patriotism or any other identification with a group.

Australis - Ah, but it also had to be the heroic white man. For that matter, the alien chick was played by a black woman from a foreign country. And so on.

Lt. Trull wrote:

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what about global warming... our children are going to think we owe them a hugh debt for screwing the planet up like we did....

Avatar has a strong ecological theme, also. It suggests that we screwed up Earth for good and the whole thing is just going to happen again on Pandora.

[The Wormhole]

This thread got me thinking, were there any black people among the humans in Avatar? I know there were black actors playing the Na'vi, but the humans seemed to be mostly white, with some Asian scientists in the background.

[Kegg]

The Wormhole wrote:

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This thread got me thinking, were there any black people among the humans in Avatar? I know there were black actors playing the Na'vi, but the humans seemed to be mostly white, with some Asian scientists in the background.

There were only two non-white humans of any consequence in the film (the Indian scientist, the Latina marine). They're also two of the people of side with Jake Sully, not coincidentally I'm sure.

There may have been some non-white background people, of course, but I don't remember.

[Star Wolf]

Kegg wrote:

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There were only two non-white humans of any consequence in the film (the Indian scientist, the Latina marine). They're also two of the people of side with Jake Sully, not coincidentally I'm sure.

There may have been some non-white background people, of course, but I don't remember.

A couple of the Blackwater types as Jake wheeled off of the transport I think were Black.

[Forbin]

DrummerBoy wrote:

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As a white person, I don't think I have anything to "feel sorry" for. Yeah, what white people did in the past was terrible and disgusting and I hate it. At the same time I haven't done any of it and neither did any of my direct ancestors. So I've nothing to feel guilty or sorry about.

This.

And I don't owe anybody reparations for things I didn't do.

[John Picard]

Hyperspace05 wrote:

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Quoted for truth!

Actually, ignoring ALL of history is worse (ie - ignoring the Buffalo Soldiers were formed to exterminate the Indians and that Africans enslaved their fellow man long before whites became involved).

[Arrqh]

Kegg wrote:

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I tend to see white guilt as hardly an imposed thing. It's something voluntarily taken up by people who feel in some way responsible. It's like Germans feeling guilty for the Holocaust; though the only ones old enough to be any way complicit at this point are mostly nonagenerians.

The thing is, I don't see "white guilt" in the movie at all. I see a movie about environment guilt crossed with a fantasy of being able to step into an awesome cool body which has nothing to do with skin color. The fantasy of having the chance to become someone else and leave all the crap in your own life behind is quite accessible and Jake here has a physical injury he's trying to get away from which makes it all the more obvious. The fact that he's jumping races seems to me to be almost the excuse to make the rest of the plot work, not the other way around.

So in a way, I do see it as imposed. I don't see anything intrinsic in the movie to classify it as "white guilt" and yet we have articles accusing it as such, apparently because there's a body swap and Cameron is white.

[Star Wolf]

Ebeneezer wrote:

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Actually, ignoring ALL of history is worse (ie - ignoring the Buffalo Soldiers were formed to exterminate the Indians and that Africans enslaved their fellow man long before whites became involved).

Playing fast and loose with the history of the Buffalo Soldiers I see. Four regiments raised in 1866 does not make an Indian extermination force

[Brit]

Never, because the basic trope of "Avatar" is as old as there have been story tellers gathered around campfires even before writing was invented. The characters in "Avatar" were only this incarnation, but the story will continue to please people as long as someone is oppressed, or thinks he is, and is in the way from whatever the powerful antagonist wants. Doesn't matter if it is Unoptanium, gold, oil, land, the captains chair, access to females, or the number three AP ranking, the story is basically same. James Cameron told it in a very good way, and deserves his success.

Brit

January 4th, Go Horned Frogs

[Kegg]

Brit wrote:

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Never, because the basic trope of "Avatar" is as old as there have been story tellers gathered around campfires even before writing was invented.

It has different emphasis, though. We've had basically imperialist versions with the Kipling story The Man Who Would Be King, after all.

Arrqh wrote:

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The thing is, I don't see "white guilt" in the movie at all. I see a movie about environment guilt

There's that too. But that the film has reservations about advanced cultures stepping on more primitive ones is fairly obvious, and emphasized by Cameron himself in interviews.

It's not an either-or guilt; and indeed the film here frames the problem so they're identical: In Avatar, disturbing the ecology is actually exactly the same thing as disturbing the natives since they're quite literally in tune with the system.

That said I was talking about white guilt as a concept rather than its application in the movie.

[MNM]

Dusty Ayres wrote:

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What about White Chicks? That was a comedy...

Come one now, lets not say things that arent true.