When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"?
- Thread starter Dusty Ayres
- Start date
- Status
No, but you (and I) benefit from a society built on a lot of bad actions by our ancestors. Personally, that means that I owe it to the people we crapped on to make the whole world a better place.
A
Amaris
Guest
Nah. I don't owe anything. My ancestors died, their debts are not transferable to me, because those they owed have died, and I do not owe their children a debt I did not create. Also, their children are benefiting from the previous generation's efforts. So either everyone owes everyone, or no one owes anyone.
J.
Making such movies is a good sign. Pretending that history didn't happen is worse.
My white ancestors were too busy being oppressed by other people's white ancestors. I reject the notion that all the members of any "race" share a common motivation because of their skin color, the reality is far more granular then that and the implication that all white people (or the people of any skin color) represent a monolithic block is offensive. As to people who were crapped on, pretty much every society is built on the bones of others. Certainly we can learn from the mistakes of history and try to do better going forward, but I don't consider that "guilt."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A couple of the Blackwater types as Jake wheeled off of the transport I think were Black.
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).
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.
Playing fast and loose with the history of the Buffalo Soldiers I see. Four regiments raised in 1866 does not make an Indian extermination forceActually, 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).
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
Brit
January 4th, Go Horned Frogs
It has different emphasis, though. We've had basically imperialist versions with the Kipling story The Man Who Would Be King, after all.
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.
Come one now, lets not say things that arent true.
- Status
