and don't forget the spanish wiped out the aztec's and mayan's with plague...
still... the government intenionally gave the indians the blankets to murder them...
James Cameron's "Avatar" (grading and discussion)
- Thread starter chrisspringob
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and don't forget the spanish wiped out the aztec's and mayan's with plague...
still... the government intenionally gave the indians the blankets to murder them...
Even if you include alcohol, the Indians still must have a thousand to one kill ratio in biological and chemical warfare because of tobacco.
Nope. Plague is spread by fleas on the European brown rat, which doesn't exist in the Americas.
If it's accidental - which by all accounts the Spanish transmission of smallpox was - it's not "biological warfare." That reasoning would make the indigenous peoples guilty of biological warfare for transmitting syphilis to Europeans.
I posit that her fighting, being spunky, and a skilled warrior is what makes her sexy. For that matter, the entire Na'vi people are sexy, the males included. I don't think there is any misogyny there, except that which the viewer brings.
Which are two unrelated statements.
My apologies if this is mentioned in the previous 51 PAGES, but:
Is it ironic that the movie imples tech/science/modernity is bad, but Cameron is consciously trying to do THE technical/fx movie of his time? (Probably with corporate backing -- correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will -- though the movie shows corporations as evil.)
Is it ironic that "military is evil," but Cameron has the Naboo mass together and . . . fight? I was hoping they would come up with a unique, interesting way to disable the bad guys. Nope, they just shoot them with weapons. Yawn.
Is it ironic that the movie imples tech/science/modernity is bad, but Cameron is consciously trying to do THE technical/fx movie of his time? (Probably with corporate backing -- correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will -- though the movie shows corporations as evil.)
Is it ironic that "military is evil," but Cameron has the Naboo mass together and . . . fight? I was hoping they would come up with a unique, interesting way to disable the bad guys. Nope, they just shoot them with weapons. Yawn.
I don't think that the "message" of the story is either of those things - that technology is bad or that the military is evil. That kind of oversimplification is only useful for mounting ideological complaints against a story, which talking heads on both the Right and Left have been quick to do.
The Na'vi have technology - obvious to anyone who wants to pay attention to the actual meaning of the word - including some significant technology designed for killing. Arrows dipped in nerve toxin are generally neither a gift of nature's bounty harvested like fruit from trees, nor designed for the plowing of fields.
Technology and martial force are tools and means of achieving an end. I daresay that Cameron is suggesting that imperialism, theft, aggression against the weak and cultural narrowmindedness are bad things that have led to a great deal of injustice and unnecessary suffering. It's a lot harder to argue against such assertions, though, than it is to set up the "he's calling teevees and soldiers evul!" straw man and mock that instead.
So the answer to both of your questions is "no, it's neither ironic nor hypocritical."
The Na'vi have technology - obvious to anyone who wants to pay attention to the actual meaning of the word - including some significant technology designed for killing. Arrows dipped in nerve toxin are generally neither a gift of nature's bounty harvested like fruit from trees, nor designed for the plowing of fields.
Technology and martial force are tools and means of achieving an end. I daresay that Cameron is suggesting that imperialism, theft, aggression against the weak and cultural narrowmindedness are bad things that have led to a great deal of injustice and unnecessary suffering. It's a lot harder to argue against such assertions, though, than it is to set up the "he's calling teevees and soldiers evul!" straw man and mock that instead.
So the answer to both of your questions is "no, it's neither ironic nor hypocritical."
And I for one am tired of the PC nonsense that tells women they CAN'T be sexy. To be appealing to males on a sexual level is to negate everything else about you.
Nonsense.
And my biggest problem with the movie is that these things being bad are such completely conventional wisdom - resultingly in blindingly simplistic villains and heroes, and a story that was barely worth telling except as a vehicle for rendering in an original way (if not designing in any original way) the visuals. Which is fine for being that - a showcase of a visual technology. But that's all Avatar is.
And as soon as anyone can answer me why Jake was necessary to the story at all (his uselessness except as an expository device was mind-numbing), I'll stop criticizing the film on "ideological" grounds. It would have been an infinitely better movie (both in terms of storytelling and losing the Mighty Whitey trope) had Neytiri been the main character. Even Tsu'tey (if you just had to have a male main character - though Neytiri was far more fully realized than he or Jake) would have been better than a main character who constantly does nothing but prove his willfull ignorance - and then somehow manages to become the great dragon rider because he's been magically chosen by the Goddess, for no reason at all.
These are serious story concerns, and they are tangled up with "ideological" criticisms to be sure. But to dismiss the story concerns because of that - is apologetics.
I'd agree that being sexy does not in any way negate a woman's strengths. However the original poster's point that despite being a skilled warrior, next in line to be the high priestess of the tribe, a talented teacher instructing Jake in the Na'vi ways, and the most charismatic character in the film - Neytiri's function story-wise was simply to be the traditional Chief's Daughter, love interest and adjunct to the main male character. This is traditional, shall we say, for a female character, and it stands out starkly in Avatar because Neytiri is so much more interesting than Jake. One can't help but ask why the story had to be about him rather than about her.
I think the message of the story is that "hippies" and "nativists" are evil. The corporation and military were just there to do some mining. They had surprisingly little interaction with the natives, avoiding cultural contamination. They obviously spent decades attempting negotiations over mining rights but got nowhere.
Now along comes the science team and a former Marine who goes native. In the span of a couple of days he unites the tribes into a coalition of the willing, leads them in a combined air and cavalry assault on foreign forces with no purpose other than to "send a message" to the humans, just like we said about using B-52's to bomb Hanoi. He transformed their culture to suit his own desires.
Then there's Grace, who was uploaded into their planetary data network. Sully pleaded with their "Mother" to access Grace's memories, which Mother did. That forever corrupted the whole freakin' planet, and thus every generation to come. Suddenly their Mother Goddess is thinking like a human, marshalliing forces and thinking tactically and strategically instead of merely being a fair arbiter as had previously been the case. It was an act more profoundly damaging than Will Smith uploading a computer virus in "Independence Day."
The evil human corporations and their military/industrial complex blew up a tree.
The feel-good hippies wiped out an entire planet's cultural purity and turned even the innocent animals into weapons of war. A tree can grow back, but the human memories dumped into the planetary neural network will remain forever, forever twisting and corrupting all life on Pandora.
There, how was that for a complaint?
Now along comes the science team and a former Marine who goes native. In the span of a couple of days he unites the tribes into a coalition of the willing, leads them in a combined air and cavalry assault on foreign forces with no purpose other than to "send a message" to the humans, just like we said about using B-52's to bomb Hanoi. He transformed their culture to suit his own desires.
Then there's Grace, who was uploaded into their planetary data network. Sully pleaded with their "Mother" to access Grace's memories, which Mother did. That forever corrupted the whole freakin' planet, and thus every generation to come. Suddenly their Mother Goddess is thinking like a human, marshalliing forces and thinking tactically and strategically instead of merely being a fair arbiter as had previously been the case. It was an act more profoundly damaging than Will Smith uploading a computer virus in "Independence Day."
The evil human corporations and their military/industrial complex blew up a tree.
The feel-good hippies wiped out an entire planet's cultural purity and turned even the innocent animals into weapons of war. A tree can grow back, but the human memories dumped into the planetary neural network will remain forever, forever twisting and corrupting all life on Pandora.
There, how was that for a complaint?
If we're going to criticize this film for being sexist, then we may as well condemn all the movies ever made in the history of humankind. Because if anything, this film is more enlightened than the others I've seen. Are we forgetting that Neytiri is the one who has the killing blow in the final battle? She saves his life. And then she saves it again with the gas mask. Of course, the story is going to center more around Jake because he's the human, he's the Avatar. And that's what the damn movie is about.
To imply that James Cameron is sexist in any way is a bit far-fetched IMHO. Not after Ripley and Vasquez in "Aliens", Sarah Connor (especially in "T2"), and even Max in "Dark Angel".
However, there's a certain pattern in Cameron's movies that during or shortly before the climax (no pun intended) the male hero is killed or otherwise incapacitated so that defeating the villain is up to a female character.
In "The Terminator", Kyle Reese is killed by the Terminator, and the Terminator is then "killed" by Sarah Connor. In "Aliens", Corporal Hicks is badley wounded and Ripley has to go rescue Newt and kill the Alien Queen on her own. Finally, in "Avatar" Jake Sully is incapacitated and Neytiri is the one who kills Colonal Quaritch. "Dark Angel" is perhaps noteworthy because the character of Logan Cale is bound to a wheelchair, which limits his fighting skills and leaves the more physically challeging tasks to Max.
However, Cameron is alternating between male and female protaganists and therefore also between the genders of their respective love-interests.
Aliens: Ripley - protagonist, Hicks - love interest
Titanic: DiCaprio's character - protagonist, Winslet's character - love interest
Dark Angel: Max - protagonist, Logan - love interest
Avatar: Sully - protoganist, Neytiri - love interest
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I wonder if what it says about Neytiri that when she rushed over to put the oxygen mask on Sully, there was no hesitation in her actions seeing her lover in his 'true' human form and cradled him with affection once he was breathing again?
Also, I wonder if it was intimidating for Sully to see Neytiri for the first time from a human rather than his avatar's perspective. Seeing your lover who you were previously slightly taller suddenly towering an extra 4 feet above must be somewhat jarring to say the least
Also, I wonder if it was intimidating for Sully to see Neytiri for the first time from a human rather than his avatar's perspective. Seeing your lover who you were previously slightly taller suddenly towering an extra 4 feet above must be somewhat jarring to say the least
That's the one scene that brought a shameless tear to my eye.
But you are forgetting that making the story about a human, about an Avatar - was a choice on Cameron's part. And I'm not calling Cameron sexist. He's one of the few film makers, especially in the SF/F genre who consistently has strong female characters and who tells stories where females are the main characters. Meanwhile there's no reason, other than a choice, that this story had to be told about a human in a Na'vi body (much less about a dumb, untrained human in a Na'vi body). The tale is about technologically superior forces coming in and destroying an indigenous culture's village to steal a natural resource. It would have been much more interesting if an indigenous person had been the main character instead of falling back on an outdated trope in which a white guy "goes native", seduces the Chief's Daughter and bests the natives at their own skills to lead them in battle against the invading forces of his own people. Granted Avatar updates a little of this by having the Chief's Daughter be a badass warrior - but it should hardly be congratulated for taking a throwback plot and making minor pc concessions to tell it in essentially the same form it's always been told.
While Cameron isn't sexist, this is the closest he's ever come - which is jarring for me as I've been enjoying his work as a feminist for 25 years. For him to tell this story about as cardboard a main character as Jake, while having dreamed up Neytiri and then relegating her to such a traditional Chick role - I just expected better of him, is all.
Huh??
Hicks is not a love interest for Ripley - there is no romance in Aliens. He's a sidekick. Rose is completely the protagonist of Titanic and DiCaprio is the love interest. It's Rose we follow from the first frame to the last - it's her story.
They could have flipped the genders, also. Dumb marine gal goes native, falls in love with hot athletic Na'vi guy who is supposed to be hitched to this stiff, boring girl.
That would have felt odd, though. Cameron's all about the familiar in this movie, plotwise.
That would have felt odd, though. Cameron's all about the familiar in this movie, plotwise.
You can't win. If they had reversed the gender roles in this movie, everyone would have been in an uproar saying "Oh, of course, the know-it-all male is showing the ignorant female that her way of life isn't good enough" or something like that. Seriously, sexism can be seen in anything if you look hard enough.