AVATAR Report...

There are non-3D versions, if you know where to look. Check your local theatres.

Personally, I think the 3D is kinda cool, but it's just a gimmick; I'm used to adding 3D in my head. That's what imagination is for.

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We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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(I apologize in advance for the angry tone of this post, but having lived within a shamanistic community for years, the casual use of the word "savage," the way the word is so gleefully tossed around by white people on the Internet when discussing cultures they barely know anything about, let alone understand, really pisses me off.)

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Originally posted by pizmobeach:
Wow HK - so the message of "Only a white male can save the savages" didn't bug you just a lil' bit? My heart didn't exactly like that part.

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Wow right back at ya, pizmo!

That's quite a hostile gloss you bring to the table. That was the message you got from your experience in the theater? Really?

Y'know, sorry if this doesn't exactly pertain to your view, but I gotta call b.s. on this freakin' "noble savage" meme getting promoted around the Interwebs. When ya get right down to it, how the heck do y'all know they aren't noble? You ever met any? You ever spent any time with 'em, took the time to learn what their culture might have to teach? Or are y'all just so comfortable with your cultural supremacy--your "they don't even have a written language!"--that "noble savage" is a de facto oxymoron in your books, and the folk you imagine to hold indigenous culture in such high regard necessarily delusional?

But getting back to your post, pizmo, as Frem pointed out, something not in the story, which you bring to the story, must have blinded you to the simple facts of the story.

Select to view spoiler:

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"White male" was not alone, after all, could not have succeeded alone ("White male" was merely the protagonist, the story could have been told from any number of characters points of view, but not quite so efficiently, since Jake Sully was the common denominator in all their lives). And holy crap, he and his people brought astonishing generational misery to the folks you fancy he "saved!" How does that work, exactly? Why isn't your story, "White male, finally, takes responsibility for 'white' culture's horrendous destructive capacity and actually manages to stop the near-inevitable process in this single case by supplying the victims of said atrocity with the information they needed to recognize the true threat the invaders represented and stop them?"

And, btw, "white male" had to give up being "white male" in the bargain, didn't he?

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I'm sorry, but this really drives me up a wall. You go along with the story only up to the point when the metaphor no longer supports some cherished notion or other and then you stop paying attention.

Select to view spoiler:

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His story is about being betrayed, thoroughly betrayed, by one culture and being embraced by another. It's a story of a man waking up to find a purpose in a life he'd all but thrown away. It's a story about personal healing and bringing an end to a genocide. For cryin' out loud, "white male" was simply doing the right thing!

And even if you credit Jake and Grace with giving the Na'vi the information they needed to push back the invasion, thus "saving" them, it was the leader of the Na'vi who made the important decision to let Jake live among them with the explicit purpose of learning more about the danger Jake's species bring to his people. And, if you take the story on its own terms, it was Eywa Herself who gave Neytiri the signal not to kill Jake outright but to protect him. Seems to me "white male" didn't "save the savages," seems the "savages" saved li'l "white male."

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It is, perhaps, sad that the state of our dominant culture seems to require such proxy or bridge characters as Jake Sully to bring the audience to embrace an "alien" culture, but that's not racism, that's just training wheels.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Frem, rereading your post after the blast furnace has cooled down, and dayum! Well put, my friend!

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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For Folk that have been there , done that , and are still wanting the T-shirt :

http://www.stylinonline.com/avatar.html

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spoilers ahead

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
(I apologize in advance for the angry tone of this post...

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fwiw HK, you never need to apologize to me on any forum if you are being genuine.

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
... but having lived within a shamanistic community for years, the casual use of the word "savage," the way the word is so gleefully tossed around by white people on the Internet when discussing cultures they barely know anything about, let alone understand, really pisses me off.)

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So you think only you can know that? This seems incredibly presumptuous to me. And how do you know these "people on the Internet" are white people btw? Do you assume to know who/what each of us are?

I think you completely missed the meaning of my post. I mean completely. If so then pay no mind to the argumentative stuff that follows and we'll just chalk it up to the limits of forum communications.

Otherwise, perhaps you had a message you couldn't wait to bring up and decided what I was saying was in the way?

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Y'know, sorry if this doesn't exactly pertain to your view, but I gotta call b.s. on this freakin' "noble savage" meme getting promoted around the Interwebs. When ya get right down to it, how the heck do y'all know they aren't noble? You ever met any? You ever spent any time with 'em, took the time to learn what their culture might have to teach? Or are y'all just so comfortable with your cultural supremacy--your "they don't even have a written language!"--that "noble savage" is a de facto oxymoron in your books, and the folk you imagine to hold indigenous culture in such high regard necessarily delusional?

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That's actually my point. They don't need saving from us, as in WHO THE F*CK DO WE THINK WE ARE (white male)? The same white male arrogance that led us into Iraq, the same, "They need our saving," the subtext of which is the blindingly stupid, "Since we don't understand them they must be wrong, they don't *blank* like us so they must be savages. They must be made to be like us and then they will be saved."

Quote:

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Why isn't your story, "White male, finally, takes responsibility for 'white' culture's horrendous destructive capacity and actually manages to stop the near-inevitable process in this single case by supplying the victims of said atrocity with the information they needed to recognize the true threat the invaders represented.

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Hello, my point! Again it's the myth of the white male saviour.

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
And even if you credit Jake and Grace with giving the Na'vi the information they needed to push back the invasion, thus "saving" them, it was the leader of the Na'vi who made the important decision to let Jake live among them with the explicit purpose of learning more about the danger Jake's species bring to his people. And, if you take the story on its own terms, it was Eywa Herself who gave Neytiri the signal not to kill Jake outright but to protect him. Seems to me "white male" didn't "save the savages," seems the "savages" saved li'l "white male." It is, perhaps, sad that the state of our dominant culture seems to require such proxy or bridge characters as Jake Sully to bring the audience to embrace an "alien" culture, but that's not racism, that's just training wheels.

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Of course their God loves the white man! And not just likes him, but chooses him (and not a Na'vi of course). And look at the rapid ascendancy of the white man as he easily grasps their culture and physical challenges, so easy for a white dude!

And while Jake makes pleads the case for them to stand and fight and risk their lives instead of leaving to live and fight another day, all he risked was the life of his avatar (kind of like a remote control drone).

Funny, I feel like a reverse Wulf arguing against the stereo-type of the dominant white

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(General warning: if you're following this back and forth between me and pizmobeach, you've already encountered many spoilers--read this post and you will encounter still more.)

Well, pizmo,

I don't know, I certainly don't disagree with you in principle about racism, imperialism, white-man's-burden and the like, I just don't think the movie disagrees with you either! lol

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Originally posted by pizmobeach:
fwiw HK, you never need to apologize to me on any forum if you are being genuine.

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I appreciate that.

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So you think only you can know that?

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No. But I think that knowledge is rare on the Internet.

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This seems incredibly presumptuous to me.

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That makes two of us.

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And how do you know these "people on the Internet" are white people btw? Do you assume to know who/what each of us are?

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Now see, now, now, now. I know for a fact some of these people on the Internet ARE white--I'm talking about a phenomenon I have come across throughout my stay here in cyberspace. I thought I'd made it clear that I was speaking of the Internet as a whole--not the denizens of this forum only. I do not know the cultural background of every person in this forum. I do not, off hand, know yours--nor did I make assumptions about yours. On the contrary, that's why I say things like "...sorry if this doesn't exactly pertain to your view, but..." and "this freakin' "noble savage" meme getting promoted around the Interwebs..." I was speaking generally. The term "savage" used in this way has mostly been used by ignorant people--a lot of 'em, I have noticed, culturally "white" (I would go so far as to say that the use of "savage" in this context is culturally "white")--who know next to nothing of the cultures they're disrespecting with the term. I'm sorry, there's no okay context for this word for me. To me, you might as well be saying the "n" word--I don't care if you're being ironic or putting the word in someone else's mouth, it's ugly.

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Otherwise, perhaps you had a message you couldn't wait to bring up and decided what I was saying was in the way?

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I'm sorry, I tried to be clear when I was addressing you specifically and when I was generalizing. I did have a message clambering to be brought up about the "noble savage" meme that I've had to deal with for weeks now as people try to pigeonhole this movie AVATAR and dismiss metaphysical traditions of which they manifestly have no understanding. Your flippant summation of the movie's message was the touchstone for my remarks.

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They don't need saving from us, as in WHO THE F*CK DO WE THINK WE ARE (white male)? The same white male arrogance that led us into Iraq, the same, "They need our saving," the subtext of which is the blindingly stupid, "Since we don't understand them they must be wrong, they don't *blank* like us so they must be savages. They must be made to be like us and then they will be saved."

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Okay, see, now you've lost me. The movie is entirely congruent with this statement. Where in Jake's actions in service of the native people's cause do you see his "arrogance?" In what way was he "making them like us" in order to save them? At every turn in his personal story I see him moving toward humility and far from making the natives like "us," it is Jake who is going through an absolute transition in the opposite direction!

Y'know, there's the whole backstory around the school the humans started to "help" the natives in just the ways you decry. But the movie bears out what you know to be true: it was a bad thing, destroyed the humans' credibility with the natives and Sigourney Weaver's character was clearly ashamed of her involvement with that and had by the time the movie started, changed her attitude extensively. The experience had obviously afforded her the opportunity to learn a good deal of respect for the natives, to the point where she was pretty committed to undermining the mining operation and manipulating Sully to that

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Ah, I do see your point there and it was a weak part of the story, but the tale itself kinda required such a character to connect the two worlds for us in a fashion that would carry meaning to a broader audience - although it's been done without it, although not very effectively.

Still, given the quality of the rest of it overall, I think I can forgive that, and I generally ain't the forgiving type... especially when it comes to hollywood, but the story as-told could have been improved upon, the military and corp characters came across a little flat and one dimensional as well, which is perhaps even more of a flaw, but so little time is spent focused there that there wasn't a lot of room for characterisation.

I still think it's overall pretty awesome though.

-F

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Yanno, some things about it keep coming back to me, but most vivid is the tremendous cultural differences, in that "We have nothing they would want" was such a stumbling block there, hmm.

But I still think the whole mess was unnecessary, cause I was thinkin how that one conversation might have gone had someone like me been privy to it.
(imma spoiler tag it though)

Select to view spoiler:

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I see she isn't quite getting it across to you on a level you understand, allow me.

Imagine, if you will, a supercomputer with more processing power than we have on this entire site, no larger than that pretty chunk of rock in your hand.

Even better, control systems an order of magnitude beyond anything commercially available today, with the ability to render training obsolete since the pilot is directly connected to the craft itself, what would that be worth ?

Oh but let's not stop there, if her theories about a planetary consciousness are correct, and I suspect they are, then how about THIS for you.

Imagine being able to upload everything she knows about this pretty little planet to a disk no bigger than a soda cracker, and download it even into YOUR pin head, how about that ?

Or of more immediate value, how about everything HE knows about weapons, tactics and military operations, on a chip that size, which can be downloaded into recruits straight off the street, making them immediately effective instead of investing all that time and resources training them ?

And let's save the best for last, shall we - if there *IS* a planetary consciousness, and we develop this tech, we would be able to connect with it and perhaps convince it to GIVE us the damned unobtainium, since you want it so much, or even *MANUFACTURE* it for us, and all we'd have to do is just reach out *takes the rock*, and pick it up...

And your company would be the sole patent holder and provider of that technology, what would THAT be worth ?

So hows the quarter looking now, mister company man ?

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That mighta prevented the whole mess, in a way that benefitted all involved.

-F

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