A FILM REVIEW
FOUR-FIFTHS OF THE WORLD
by Malik Isasis
People of color comprise four-fifths of the world’s population making use of the term minority, spurious. The term minority was created for people of color as a political tool in the big toolbox of white supremacy to reinforce the colonization in the New and Western world. The people of color or humanoids rather, known as the Na’vi, on the planet Pandora in James Cameron’s Avatar, comprised of one hundred percent of the humanoid population--just as the Indigenous populations had throughout North and South America before the arrival of European ships.
James Cameron’s Avatar is interesting on many levels because we are trained as consumers of science fiction that alien invasion involves space crafts floating down from space and hovering ominously above cities with technology light years ahead of our own. Often these visitors are hostile with plans of taking earth’s resources, which sometimes include putting humans on the dinner menu. In Avatar, we are the invading aliens from outer space, floating down with mechanized horror with the intention of settlements and the taking of Pandora’s rich resources. Our technology is light years ahead of the people on planet Pandora, which is eagerly, put to use in dominating the Indigenous population. In using their vast technological advantage over the Na’vi, Cameron illustrates the corporate and government collusion in creating the seeds of genocide, and the neo methods of colonization.
Corporate henchman, Parker Selfridge, played by Giovanni Ribisi often uses derogatory adjectives as Blue Monkeys, or Savages to describe the Na’vi. Of course dehumanizing a race of people makes killing them go down a little easier. With flashes of humanity, corporate henchman, Parker, attempts to educate, or “reeducate” as it were, offer medicines and schools, to the Na’vi in exchange for relocating them—more like forced-relocation off their ancestral land, but Parker’s flash of humanity is spoiled in the first place, for he assumes that the Na’vi are less evolved than humans, nothing more than blue primates, this assumption is of course, wrong. Parker is unable to overcome his greed, even when he witnesses the horror show unleashed by an overzealous Colonel Miles Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang, whose one-track mind is bent on either destroying, or completely domesticating the Na’vi into submission.
One can’t help but think of current occupations of places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine while watching the film.
Many reviews I’ve read on the film unimaginatively compare the film to Dances with Wolves, a film where Kevin Costner’s character, an American Civil-War era military lieutenant integrates himself into the Sioux nation, an Indigenous tribe in South Dakota, while it is true that the films share common themes, the comparison seems only to criticize Cameron’s writing skills. It’s a cheap shot really; the criticism of the story itself tries to marginalize the film’s message itself. Every story has been told. We can reinvent new ways of telling the same stories, but we will always retell the same story. Cameron shouldn’t be faulted for reimagining colonization of an Indigenous population, which is done in this film to great effect.
Back during the Red Scare between 1917-1920 and again between 1947-1957, at the height of United States hysteria about communism, the government initiated a CO-INTEL program where FBI agents or informants went deep cover as communists’ organizers or members to subvert groups that were thought to be communists, or supporting communists’ activities. By the mid fifties, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI had been so effective at infiltrating so-called communist groups that there were more FBI agents posing as communists than actual communists. Hoover went on to use it in other movements like the Civil Rights Movement.
The corporate/military entity that has invaded Pandora has itself created a CO-INTEL program called Avatar, whereby humans are genetically match to drive Na’vi bodies. The goal of the Avatar is to integrate into the Na’vi society to gain intelligence and to sabotage.
The Na’vi are people of color, literally, they are a rich electric blue with huge gold eyes, like those of cats. They stand ten feet tall, yet their plight is an allegorical one. The film Avatar is about humanity's relationship with nature (or lack there of), corporate greed, and colonization. All indigenous cultures have been colonized, relocated, killed off by greed of a State and its corporate interests. It is why we currently occupy two countries.
Cameron shows a great deal of respect for the Na'vi people, and it is no accident that Cameron’s ode to African and other indigenous cultures’ from around the world are on display, from rituals, dress, to hairstyles, because it is their story he is telling. Aliens from another planet is just the packaging to make the medicine go down.
I’ve seen the film three times, thus far, and I believe it to be one of the best films of 2009.
Grade: A+
FOUR-FIFTHS OF THE WORLD
by Malik Isasis
People of color comprise four-fifths of the world’s population making use of the term minority, spurious. The term minority was created for people of color as a political tool in the big toolbox of white supremacy to reinforce the colonization in the New and Western world. The people of color or humanoids rather, known as the Na’vi, on the planet Pandora in James Cameron’s Avatar, comprised of one hundred percent of the humanoid population--just as the Indigenous populations had throughout North and South America before the arrival of European ships.
James Cameron’s Avatar is interesting on many levels because we are trained as consumers of science fiction that alien invasion involves space crafts floating down from space and hovering ominously above cities with technology light years ahead of our own. Often these visitors are hostile with plans of taking earth’s resources, which sometimes include putting humans on the dinner menu. In Avatar, we are the invading aliens from outer space, floating down with mechanized horror with the intention of settlements and the taking of Pandora’s rich resources. Our technology is light years ahead of the people on planet Pandora, which is eagerly, put to use in dominating the Indigenous population. In using their vast technological advantage over the Na’vi, Cameron illustrates the corporate and government collusion in creating the seeds of genocide, and the neo methods of colonization.
Corporate henchman, Parker Selfridge, played by Giovanni Ribisi often uses derogatory adjectives as Blue Monkeys, or Savages to describe the Na’vi. Of course dehumanizing a race of people makes killing them go down a little easier. With flashes of humanity, corporate henchman, Parker, attempts to educate, or “reeducate” as it were, offer medicines and schools, to the Na’vi in exchange for relocating them—more like forced-relocation off their ancestral land, but Parker’s flash of humanity is spoiled in the first place, for he assumes that the Na’vi are less evolved than humans, nothing more than blue primates, this assumption is of course, wrong. Parker is unable to overcome his greed, even when he witnesses the horror show unleashed by an overzealous Colonel Miles Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang, whose one-track mind is bent on either destroying, or completely domesticating the Na’vi into submission.
One can’t help but think of current occupations of places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine while watching the film.
Many reviews I’ve read on the film unimaginatively compare the film to Dances with Wolves, a film where Kevin Costner’s character, an American Civil-War era military lieutenant integrates himself into the Sioux nation, an Indigenous tribe in South Dakota, while it is true that the films share common themes, the comparison seems only to criticize Cameron’s writing skills. It’s a cheap shot really; the criticism of the story itself tries to marginalize the film’s message itself. Every story has been told. We can reinvent new ways of telling the same stories, but we will always retell the same story. Cameron shouldn’t be faulted for reimagining colonization of an Indigenous population, which is done in this film to great effect.
Back during the Red Scare between 1917-1920 and again between 1947-1957, at the height of United States hysteria about communism, the government initiated a CO-INTEL program where FBI agents or informants went deep cover as communists’ organizers or members to subvert groups that were thought to be communists, or supporting communists’ activities. By the mid fifties, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI had been so effective at infiltrating so-called communist groups that there were more FBI agents posing as communists than actual communists. Hoover went on to use it in other movements like the Civil Rights Movement.
The corporate/military entity that has invaded Pandora has itself created a CO-INTEL program called Avatar, whereby humans are genetically match to drive Na’vi bodies. The goal of the Avatar is to integrate into the Na’vi society to gain intelligence and to sabotage.
The Na’vi are people of color, literally, they are a rich electric blue with huge gold eyes, like those of cats. They stand ten feet tall, yet their plight is an allegorical one. The film Avatar is about humanity's relationship with nature (or lack there of), corporate greed, and colonization. All indigenous cultures have been colonized, relocated, killed off by greed of a State and its corporate interests. It is why we currently occupy two countries.
Cameron shows a great deal of respect for the Na'vi people, and it is no accident that Cameron’s ode to African and other indigenous cultures’ from around the world are on display, from rituals, dress, to hairstyles, because it is their story he is telling. Aliens from another planet is just the packaging to make the medicine go down.
I’ve seen the film three times, thus far, and I believe it to be one of the best films of 2009.
Grade: A+
posted by Malik Isasis at
9:56 PM
1 Comments:
I didn't understand the concluding part of your article, could you please explain it more?
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