tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9104902888839543296.post2951786916452162562..comments2023-11-05T01:40:42.842-08:00Comments on Tremoglie's Tea Time: Is Avatar Racist?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9104902888839543296.post-26945999729619455352010-01-19T01:37:59.038-08:002010-01-19T01:37:59.038-08:00So true. But a few things come to mind. Foremost...So true. But a few things come to mind. Foremost, that the movie was a two-hour video game for underdeveloped adults (and the cultural analysis probably hits a brick wall here). Second, that the story is kind of just a plot vehicle marketed for our times (resonances of Iraq-war politics). The plot has been used a hundred times before; Costner's "Dances with Wolves" always springs to mind. From a marketing angle, it is to Cameron's savviness to have toyed with popular political identities in order to generate nontraversy around his movie---its basically free advertising for a two hour children's movie. The the racism of the allegory is surely there, but in a way its just superficial. It's just the commodity that was needed to further the movie's marketing campaign.<br /><br />The most offensive thing about the movie (missed by liberals and conservatives alike) is that it propagates the highly consumerist ideology of parasitically taking someone else's identity, or assuming an identity that isn't really one's own. The thing about these becoming-the-other allegories is that they almost always co-opt the other and erase "the other" entirely---that is their function for a consumerist society, afterall, because "the other" is really just a symbol of a consumer society's perpetual sense of inauthenticity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com