Yeah kinda sucks it's gotta have the white guy lead but the charitable interpretation is that Cameron knows white people have to see themselves in a character. Jury still out on whether patting white people on the back gets them to actually care about things. I'm interested to see if the next movies do anything different.
So why doesn't say, Last Samurai or Pocahontas get the same charity? It's pretty much the same plot.
Edit: in regard to patting white people on the back gets them to care about things, the jury isn't out at all. The caring only extends to the point of personal inconvenience. It's a lib movie with white saviour overtones.
Pocahontas is not as good politically as Avatar. If you watch Pocahantas there are evil colonizers and evil natives, that want war with each other. That is protrayed as a bad thing, and eventually the protagonist Pocahantas deflates the situation, and the movie ends with peace. It's a both sides narrative, a "why can't we all just get along."
Where Avatar says there is a good side, the natives, and a bad side, the colonizers, and it ends with the protagonist joining an armed resistance against the US government and expelling the colonial force.
You are right about the white savior aspect, but I still rate the movie pretty highly.
Well I think you've got a legitimate criticism of the movie, that Avatar does the "white savior" trope. Jake Sully being like, the best Na'vi dragonrider and leading the resistance is absolutely absurd. I can get over it tho. The Last Samurai doesn't even have like the semblance of a good political message though right? That was more about the personal journeys of the characters I thought?
Not really that much less than Avatar. Tom Cruise still figures out the invasive force he was part of was bad and fights back against them. Depends on how much you want to read into either, Avatar is only blatantly political because you are. Most people see it as Jake's personal story or a romance across cultures or some kinda action thing. The messaging is there but it's a cliched message and the bad guys are so cartoonishly bad that most people won't see it as a reflection of current and past events but what could happen if evil people were in charge. They're both shallow trash and not worthy of discussion on this level but you can do that with pretty much any movie if you want to.
I don't remember the plots to either of those but in Avatar at least the main character doesn't really do all that much right? His big thing is uniting the clans or whatever and fighting the head white guy in a one-on-one but I can't remember if he's even the one that kills him.
He's also the chosen one that marries into their royalty and is the only one who can hair fuck the really big dragon. If anything Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson in the other movies impose themselves less on the culture they decided to involve themselves with. Pocahontas is kind of a bad example vis a vis the protagonist cause he gets saved from the natives by Pochanhontas, doesn't do much in fighting off white people and the whole movie paints both sides as equally bad. Last Samurai, Tom Cruise spends a shit load of time there before there's a threat and the final standoff is a loss but Tom and the samurai both learn tactically from each other to do better in the battle so theres a collaborative angle there. I'm remembering very far back to when I saw it but for "that kind" of movie I recall it actually not being super white savioury. Especially cause they just get mowwed down by a gattling gun at the end so he literally wasn't a savior, just a defector.
For sure, but when you combine it with the fact that their chosen one literally came as a colonisers with an invasive force. White savior angle and there's also the whole thing where they wouldn't have needed a chosen one had he not been there in the first place
Edit: Kung Pow did the chosen one tripe perfectly.
Cameron knows white people have to see themselves in a character.
And if we're being charitable, focusing on the actions of the white imperialist could be read as "here's what a white imperialist can do instead of going along with it, ineffectively resigning in protest/going AWOL, marching against it at home, boycotting products made with unobtanium, etc." Pointing out that using your knowledge of the imperial machine to help destroy it is a good message, even if a better movie would focus on a Na'vi Ho Chi Minh with Jake Sully as a supporting character.
Both do. "Material conditions informs politics" does not mean that material conditions determine 100% of a person's politics -- it means that material conditions are a much bigger driver of a person's politics than is usually recognized. Media absolutely has a hand in shaping people's opinions, there are just other major drivers, too.
Yeah kinda sucks it's gotta have the white guy lead but the charitable interpretation is that Cameron knows white people have to see themselves in a character. Jury still out on whether patting white people on the back gets them to actually care about things. I'm interested to see if the next movies do anything different.
So why doesn't say, Last Samurai or Pocahontas get the same charity? It's pretty much the same plot.
Edit: in regard to patting white people on the back gets them to care about things, the jury isn't out at all. The caring only extends to the point of personal inconvenience. It's a lib movie with white saviour overtones.
Pocahontas is not as good politically as Avatar. If you watch Pocahantas there are evil colonizers and evil natives, that want war with each other. That is protrayed as a bad thing, and eventually the protagonist Pocahantas deflates the situation, and the movie ends with peace. It's a both sides narrative, a "why can't we all just get along."
Where Avatar says there is a good side, the natives, and a bad side, the colonizers, and it ends with the protagonist joining an armed resistance against the US government and expelling the colonial force.
You are right about the white savior aspect, but I still rate the movie pretty highly.
Fine, I'll stick with Last Samurai
Well I think you've got a legitimate criticism of the movie, that Avatar does the "white savior" trope. Jake Sully being like, the best Na'vi dragonrider and leading the resistance is absolutely absurd. I can get over it tho. The Last Samurai doesn't even have like the semblance of a good political message though right? That was more about the personal journeys of the characters I thought?
Not really that much less than Avatar. Tom Cruise still figures out the invasive force he was part of was bad and fights back against them. Depends on how much you want to read into either, Avatar is only blatantly political because you are. Most people see it as Jake's personal story or a romance across cultures or some kinda action thing. The messaging is there but it's a cliched message and the bad guys are so cartoonishly bad that most people won't see it as a reflection of current and past events but what could happen if evil people were in charge. They're both shallow trash and not worthy of discussion on this level but you can do that with pretty much any movie if you want to.
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I don't remember the plots to either of those but in Avatar at least the main character doesn't really do all that much right? His big thing is uniting the clans or whatever and fighting the head white guy in a one-on-one but I can't remember if he's even the one that kills him.
He's also the chosen one that marries into their royalty and is the only one who can hair fuck the really big dragon. If anything Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson in the other movies impose themselves less on the culture they decided to involve themselves with. Pocahontas is kind of a bad example vis a vis the protagonist cause he gets saved from the natives by Pochanhontas, doesn't do much in fighting off white people and the whole movie paints both sides as equally bad. Last Samurai, Tom Cruise spends a shit load of time there before there's a threat and the final standoff is a loss but Tom and the samurai both learn tactically from each other to do better in the battle so theres a collaborative angle there. I'm remembering very far back to when I saw it but for "that kind" of movie I recall it actually not being super white savioury. Especially cause they just get mowwed down by a gattling gun at the end so he literally wasn't a savior, just a defector.
That's also a criticism of "chosen one" tropes, which are extremely stupid in their own right.
For sure, but when you combine it with the fact that their chosen one literally came as a colonisers with an invasive force. White savior angle and there's also the whole thing where they wouldn't have needed a chosen one had he not been there in the first place
Edit: Kung Pow did the chosen one tripe perfectly.
And if we're being charitable, focusing on the actions of the white imperialist could be read as "here's what a white imperialist can do instead of going along with it, ineffectively resigning in protest/going AWOL, marching against it at home, boycotting products made with unobtanium, etc." Pointing out that using your knowledge of the imperial machine to help destroy it is a good message, even if a better movie would focus on a Na'vi Ho Chi Minh with Jake Sully as a supporting character.
Movies don’t produce how people think, economic conditions do.
Both do. "Material conditions informs politics" does not mean that material conditions determine 100% of a person's politics -- it means that material conditions are a much bigger driver of a person's politics than is usually recognized. Media absolutely has a hand in shaping people's opinions, there are just other major drivers, too.