Showing posts with label Avatar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Avatar. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Friday, January 01, 2010
Avatar
Everyone agrees that Avatar is a beautiful movie that is cliched in its storytelling and racist in its politics. Good job internet, you win again.
If you've seen The Abyss or Aliens, you've seen John Cameron make this movie before: gung-ho militarism and corporate greed failing to comprehend or control whatever exists beyond normal experience.
If you've seen Dances With Wolves or Pocahontas, you know what everyone's complaining about: white guilt, white assimilation, white privilege. Paternalistic attitudes toward the "primitive" other.
The problem with the social-historical reading of Avatar is that it fails to account for Cameron's science fiction concerns. What interests Cameron is the way that an unchanging human nature deals with and conflicts with both technology and the natural world.
If you've seen The Abyss or Aliens, you've seen John Cameron make this movie before: gung-ho militarism and corporate greed failing to comprehend or control whatever exists beyond normal experience.
If you've seen Dances With Wolves or Pocahontas, you know what everyone's complaining about: white guilt, white assimilation, white privilege. Paternalistic attitudes toward the "primitive" other.
The problem with the social-historical reading of Avatar is that it fails to account for Cameron's science fiction concerns. What interests Cameron is the way that an unchanging human nature deals with and conflicts with both technology and the natural world.
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