This video is made possible with the support of my patrons and super thanks donors. Click the link to
my patreon in the description or the super thanks button underneath the video to help support my
work. Thank you so much and now on to the video. In 2010 Canadian filmmaker James Cameron went to the
Amazon to join the Xingu people to protest the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam. While he was there
he said this now infamous quote. "I felt like I was 130 years back in time watching what the Lakota
Sioux might have been saying at a point when they were being pushed and they were being killed and
they were being asked to displace. This was the driving force for me in the writing of Avatar. I
couldn't help but think that if the Lakota Sioux had had a time window and they could see the
future and they could see their kids committing ___ at the highest ___ rates in the nation because they were
hopeless and they were a dead end society, which is what is happening now, they would have fought
a lot harder." 12 years later Cameron responded to criticism of Avatar by saying the important
thing is to listen and to be sensitive to issues that people have. "It's not up to me speaking from
a perspective of white privilege if you will to tell them that they're wrong, it has validity. It's
pointless for me to say well that wasn't my intention. The movie is intended to celebrate
those philosophies, that spirituality. If we offend anybody in the process I can only apologize
but we're doing the best we can." And to that I must ask James Cameron what is wrong with you?
I want to preface that this isn't going to be an entire video roasting James Cameron or trying to
cancel him or whatever but rather using Avatar and Cameron as a jumping off point to talk about
larger socio-political issues. Though I should say that I do find James Cameron to be a little
weird and wholly unimaginative when it comes to Avatar. Honestly I don't know how we can look at
someone whose passion project is Dances with Wolves but with blue people the same way ever
again. Like he thinks he's being so creative but in reality he's just telling us what we already know.
Why would we want to see capitalists and colonists destroying an indigenous culture on the big screen
when that's happening in our world today? What's so inspiring about it? That it takes place on a
galactic scale? Pass. As Ronda Lucy founder of the Toronto indigenous filmmakers Collective said she
doesn't plan to see the Way of Water. "I live that reality, my community lives that reality. Why would
I want to pay the small amount of money I make to hand over to a massive money making machine
to pay them to show me heartache and pain that's just glazed over?" Not only is Avatar unimaginative
but Cameron said he was inspired by dances with Wolves and the Jungle Book with no self-awareness
whatsoever. And just going back to the blue people like their design is just so weird to me.
Aesthetically they are so lackluster and bland to look at, but also weird enough to make me question
what was going through James Cameron's mind when he was designing them. Like okay let's make them
blue with stripes, they're sort of cat-like, they have braids and tails, and oh yeah they're also
nine feet tall. There's so much going on but also nothing at all. Nothing about their design seems
purposeful to me. Though I do like how they're kind of cat-like and how their ears move and how they
bear their teeth, there's no rhyme or reason as to why they're like cats, they just are because
that's alien right? In the end it's fine to have your fantasy characters be a little unfinished
or uninspired if that's the character and world you fantasize about and want to create do it But
at least own it and have fun with it, but Cameron doesn't do that either. Everything in Avatar is so
serious and pushed to this heightened sense of reality, that instead of coming off as whimsical
it comes off as very serious and almost curated and plastic-like. For example example Cats the
musical not the movie is weird but they at least have fun with it, but not Avatar where
everyone is serious 100% of the time. And I know the two are different genres and mediums but
Avatar could have been fun if it didn't involve the colonization plotline and actually explored
the world of Pandora and met the Na'vi and more specifically the Omatikaya clan on their level.
What's their day-to-day life like? What are their practices and traditions? What's domestic life like?
Are there any other tribes? Do they have a writing system? We see that they have the ikran thing and
the orange pterodactyl thing and the tree that's their god and the home tree, but we only see those
things through an outsider's perspective, and ironically enough this outsider happens to be
the best at everything, even better than some of the most skilled warriors after only living with
the Na'vi for six months. One thing I kept asking myself while watching the movie was are there any
other clans besides this one. This is answered in the sequel but it didn't have to be. In the
end we never get to know the Na'vi as a Na'vi and that really hurts any interesting world building
that could have happened. Part of the fun of world building that is specifically talked about by Ford
in Westworld season one are the little things. The little gestures and moments that make up everyday
life and those are totally missing from the story and instead we only see grand adventures because
those center our outsider main character. The best way to describe the plot of Avatar is overdone and
boring. Sully's change of heart is because of a woman - yawn. His want is to "get his legs back" but
his need is to be accepted by society again, but to be accepted by society he can't be disabled. Rather
than society working to accommodate him he needs to conform to society. It's not only boring but
really offensive. Life on Pandora could have been accessible the Na'vi could have included disabled
members showing how a communal anti-capital society is beneficial to those marginalized
in our reality, but no that would be too big of a leap for Cameron's mind to take. So Jake Sully
is a disabled veteran who has been outcast by society and by the military. He's called into the-
oh my god - He's called in to take his brother's place on a mission because his biodata is the
only one who will match his brother's Avatar. The military promises that if he does well on this
mission which is to find the location of this unobtainable source dubbed unobtainium, subtle,
he'll get his legs back. According to this article from Disability Studies Quarterly,
or DSQ, "To provide the appearance of a paraplegic's atrophied legs director James Cameron commissioned
the production of prosthetic legs for Worthington and post-production digitally edited out any trace
of the actor's actual legs." The DSQ comments how Avatar furthers this concept that Robert McRuer
had termed "compulsory able-bodiedness". "McRuer notes that definitions of able-bodiedness are
articulated in negative terms as in "free from disability", so that able-bodiedness is
always dependent on disability, in the same way that heterosexuality is definitively dependent
on homosexuality. While such a binary implies two choices people are socially compelled to
adhere to only one rendering the expectation that everyone at all times desires to be able-bodied."
For example Jake Sully is disabled so it's automatically assumed that he must hate himself.
Thus one of the driving motivations and love for his Avatar self is that he can use his legs.
And once Jake is able-bodied in his Avatar form Cameron frames him as a christian-like figure.
"Seedlings overwhelm Jake's body as he holds his long blue arms outstretched in a Divine Christ
pose. It's an image steeped in paternalism. At last the white able-bodied savior has arrived." Avatar
recognizes ableism as it shows how hard Sully's life is as a disabled veteran. He gets mocked and
taunted by his own colleagues. But rather than them needing to change and society needing to
change as a whole, it's Jake who must change. In addition as this article pointed out the Na'vi
are supposed to be the perfect image of creation, "the kindly angelic counterpoint to humanity." "In
trying to convey this idea an unfortunate undercurrent manifests in which the pure vision of creation is
one devoid of disabled people. Interestingly Avatar the way of water appears to be confronting this
problem by featuring openly deaf performer CJ Jones as a Na'vi character." But either way at
least in the first movie this flawless foil to humanity also says there's no fat people.
There are no fat Na'vi. They're all slim, tall and buff. If you've seen the sequel and they've
changed this point please let me know. A 2010 ABC News article interviewed wheelchair users
and echoes sentiments that still ring true today. "I do think that it's in advance in seeing people
in wheelchairs in the entertainment industry," said Philip Klebine, who's a counselor and teteraplegic.
"I just wish people who have a disability get a chance to play those roles." So it's well known
that Avatar is Dances with Wolves or Pocahontas but with blue people. That, and they have sex with their
tails are jokes that always come up when talking about the film, but what does being like Dances
with Wolves or Pocahontas with blue people really mean? Well in short it means that Avatar is a white
savior movie that focuses on an exceptional white man who is special and way better than
the indigenous people at doing tasks they've done their entire lives just by virtue of his whiteness.
For example Jake is framed as a divine figure to the Na'vi he gets his own ikran and he's able to
ride the orange pterodactyl or toruk that only five members of the tribe have ever been able
to do. The more experienced warriors in the tribe are obviously and rightfully pissed at Jake for
his Mad Skillz because they've been training their whole life and he's been here for like
a day. In addition the Sigourney Weaver character is basically a residential school teacher yet the
kids all love her for some reason. As Crystal Echo Hawk president and CEO of IllumiNative told CNN
"It's based on what James Cameron's notion of what he thinks indigenous history is what he thinks
indigenous culture is. Everyone thinks we're a monolith. What it does is flatten who indigenous
people are what indigenous cultures languages and practices are." Chase Iron Eyes, an activist and
attorney for the Lakota People's Law Project, said to CNBC "He could have given us a call. He
could have given me or any number of organizations institutions and Indigenous storytellers." However
Iron Eyes said there is one particular theme in the film that was accurate. "That connection that
you see with the Na'vi and their surrounding natural elemental universe. We still carry that
relationship with Eywa in the film except we call it TakuSkanSkan. We have a whole set of knowledge
systems that have been passed down for we don't really know how long. We're talking about millennia
eons maybe and because Indigenous Nations respect that relationship we still uphold those sacred
covenants which were passed to us." However I will say that this connection to nature though accurate
is extremely essentialized in the film. Cameron's view of native people is that they're connected
to nature so let's have them literally connect to nature, into animals. He takes stereotypes and
literalizes them to an extremely odd degree. "Adam Peron a filmmaker and director of the indigenous
program at Sundance Institute said he hasn't yet seen the latest installment of Avatar however
he plans to but he sees Cameron's sci-fi epic as part of a long history of white filmmakers
projecting their own ideas of indigeneity on screen rather than involving indigenous
people themselves. All that's left anymore with those films is the non-indigenous desire to be
indigenous or to have some sort of connection to indigenous people." And I find this quote
extremely fascinating because it's something that I have been thinking about a lot after
watching the first Avatar movie a little over a month ago. I feel like movies with white saviors
or exceptional white people are aspirational to white audience members they wish they could be
not racist enough to be as cool and at home with people of color. They want to occupy that space
and be that one good white person who's accepted into the group. It's like the sort of white liberal
fantasy that I think a lot of white people must have. I think it stems from a lot of things but
mainly white entitlement and maybe white guilt. Entitlement because white people feel like extreme
resentment when they're left out of something or barred from doing things hence this white
savior fantasy where they can break the color line. I think a lot of white people look up to
the likes of Eminem for instance because he gets to exist in this sort of space where he shouldn't.
And guilt in that as the DSQ cites, "Jake's love affair with Neytiri ritualizes ___ through
a process that bell hooks has termed eating the other. For hooks intimate contact with
the racialized others often figures as a way to assuage the guilt of the colonizer and to
bypass the thorny issues of domination by trying to actually become the other. Since
the biotechnology of Jake's Avatar actually makes us physically possible, Avatar manages
to extend this cultural phenomenon to the level of koroporial spectacle." Lastly I think this need
to dominate the racialized other in today's world comes from a lack of white culture. FD signifier
talks a lot about this in his videos as to why Black culture is so popular with white people
and that's because white culture just isn't very interesting and really hard to pin down.
This is because when white immigrants were coming over to the U.S they had to give up their culture
in order to assimilate to whiteness in order to oppose Blackness. They had to give of their
traditions in order to gain power and in the end that resulted in a lot of traditions being lost
and a white amalgamation of nothingness. To me, white culture to me in the U.S is very Protestant,
very conservative, and very nationalistic. When it comes to white food we've all seen and heard
the jokes about how white people's food is unseasoned and bland. Not to mention that most
holidays in the US Focus around consumption the Macy's day parade, Pepsi's super bowl, Black Friday
etc. White mainstream U.S culture is built on capitalist ideals. "Make a buck, make a buck." This of course
doesn't mean that all white people have forgotten their roots entirely of course. For example Irish
and Italian Americans are very outspoken about their roots specifically because they weren't
initially seen as white when they came to the U.S. "I'm just a Italian girl from New York. I'm an
Italian girl from New York. I'm just an Italian girl from New York. The young Italian-American girl
from New York. I'm Italian I'm from New York." There's also white Southern Culture like Cotillion
balls and State pride as they were the states who seceded from the Union in order to preserve
slavery and the sort of "romantic" way of life with Southern Belles and their white Knights, and boy
they sure do love their flag. There's also square dancing but that also has its roots in racism. In
short a lot of white cultures rooted in racism so in order to not deal with that white culture
hasn't really developed. Instead white people have been clinging on to the cultural work of Black,
Indigenous, Asian, and other non-white peoples in order to find a sense of identity. But even ethnic
cultures in the U.S have been whitewashed to fit white people's expectations and palettes just in
order to survive in a capitalistic system. In the end I think this is why Avatar and other movies
with white saviors exist because white people want to feel closeness to some semblance of a culture
where they don't have to deal with their own privilege and when they can fully eat the other.
So returning back to Brazil as James Cameron's quote that I started this video with was inspired
by his trip to Brazil, I thought I'd had my own thoughts. For those of you who don't know
I live in Brazil specifically in the Northeast and have been living here since 2017. And unlike U.S
culture which is hard to point to considering how divided the various ethnic groups are, Brazilian
culture is very readily accessible and Brazil has a very strong national identity. There's
a national culture but also regional and state cultures. There's specific dishes to certain areas
certain dances, certain vocabulary etc. There's also a really strong state culture. Like it's
common to see people bring their state flags to soccer matches for example. Imagine if I went to
the World Cup or a Giants game with a New Jersey state flag that would be ridiculous, but in Brazil
it makes total sense. And it is really nice living in a place where cultural elements are so easy to
pinpoint where everything isn't so monolithic but it's important to note that this mixing of
Indigenous, African, Asian and European influences is a consequence of genocide, colonialism and
slavery. Racial mixing and its cultural mixing in Brazil has a very different history from the US
and though there are many positive aspects to it there are also many negative aspects, and racism
in classism is still a thing here don't get me wrong, but I will say that having State, Regional
and a national culture does help to make people feel a little less alienated from one another.
Of course I say this after a very big and dividing moment in Brazilian politics but what can you do?
These are just some things I like to touch on that I didn't know where else to put them
in the video so here they are in a numbered list. Firstly I haven't seen the sequel and don't plan
to anytime soon. Secondly again I'm not trying to cancel James Cameron. I think he's doing his best
like he said but he still just comes off as very odd to me. Thirdly it was really unclear to me in
the first movie of Neytiri knew Jake was an avatar. Like at the climax she's carrying around his limp
body does she know that it's because he woke up in his human form and that his consciousness is
elsewhere or does she think that he's just a heavy sleeper? In the end she finds out but is
that supposed to be a reveal? It was very unclear to me. Fourthly as someone who was adopted by white
people and whose name is of a Native American tribe that I have nothing to do with I just
wanted to say that I'm aware of that and I know that naming someone after a tribe is really awful.
Lastly everyone makes that they have ___ with their tails joke but in the version I saw on this Disney plus
that wasn't the case and they cut the scene before any of that happened so my question is do
they really do that with their tails? And honestly them having their privates on their tails is so
weird to me and makes me question James Cameron even more. So that's it for the video. In the end
Avatar is so bad and I have no idea why or how it got so popular especially since even if you
don't care about the offensive parts it's just really boring and unimaginative. I'm going to
link a thread of indigenous-led sci-fi movies to watch instead in the description so check those
out and I'll also link the sources to this video down below. So that's it for this one and thank
you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you in the next one bye!
[techno scifi music plays - music is from the youtube audio library in the description]