this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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Pros: As an effect of him writing the script in the 90s, the movie feels like a 90s movie with modern fx.
Cons: As an effect of him writing the script in the 90s, the movie feels like a 90s movie, with ancient overdone tropes, including the racist ones.
oh come on, what racist tropes now?
I mean the Na'vi are an infantilized hodgepodge of several shallow stereotypes of indigenous people precision designed to be sexy so the lowest common denominator sympathizes with them. The commenter may be referring to that.
what stereotypes are these, for example?
The Na'vi are basically native American stereotypes in every conceivable way, except blue and have tails.
Is that not all true even for some tribes today? I don't mean native American, but for example look at the people on Sentinel Island or similar - I think this is what they were going for with the NaVi
No.
this is what humans were like for thousands of years, how is it racist to make characters based on that?
I can't think of a culture that treated all plants and animals as sacred and apologized to them for killing them for food like in Avatar. That's a bullshit stereotype. Some indigenous American groups used to drive herds of buffalo off cliffs, harvest the meat they could carry and then leave the rest to rot. And that's just one of plenty of examples.
Indian here, can confirm this is true.
Nobility is on an individual scale, trying to say a whole race is "noble" and "certain traits", even positive ones, is racism. Racism is specifically trying to define someone based solely on " observable traits" from their race.
I'd like to think I'm a pretty stand up guy, but I know some fellow Indians who are real pieces of shit, that's just how society works.
You have fallen for the myth of the noble savage. A racists mischaracterization of non-western human groups born from the very heart of slavery and colonialism that is used as a justification for dehumanizing others as wild or natural state humans, distinct and separate from civilized domesticated humans. It invites a tacit sanctioning of treating “primitives” or “savage” people as different and non-human, “not like us”. It's the basis of several centuries of abuse, oppression, appropriation and destruction.
If you can confirm that James Cameron used Sentinel Island people as the direct design influence for the Na'Vi, you might have some kind of a point. But he didn't. He made them sexy babies with big eyes so he could override your Disney brain and sell some toys.
There must have been some primitive tribes that were nihilistic nothing is scared, did slash and burn farming, and animal torture.