Earlier this week I went to see the movie Avatar. With all its hype about the new technology used for 3D images and what not, I wasn’t really going for the 3D part but moreso for the story. The previews I’ve seen made me wanna see this movie. As beautiful as the movie was, as dope as the 3D version was, something instantly annoyed me about the movie.

As soon as you hear Neytiri talk when she first appears in the movie, she sounds like some African native with her broken English. I’m sure I’m not the only one who heard that. Also when Jake is taken to the rest of the “tribe”, her mother is basically coming off as some African medicine woman. The way they are dressed, the way they hunt and use spears, it’s really no difference from a regular native tribe except for them being blue.

What I also feel is that the “white western modern man” (I guess western is not the definition here seeing we’re talking about another planet, but you catch my drift), is falling in his old ways by trying to colonize another area, for his own gain. We’ve seen it happen here on Earth in the past. Countries in Asia, Africa and South America were colonized for their raw materials. It’s all money oriented so the white man can profit from it. Same thing in this movie. The Na’Vi are living somewhere where stuff in the ground is valuable to the white man, so they take the shit, no matter who they hurt in the process.

Now I am sure most of the people who are going to see this movie, or went to see the movie, don’t care about this all and just wanna be entertained with some dope special effects and all. And that’s fine, yet I can’t help but feel somewhat insulted in my intelligence by James Cameron. Do you honestly think he doesn’t know that his movie is resembling all of this? Oh I am sure he knows. Hence me feeling a little insulted. Mind you, I am not black, but surely my ancestors were enslaved and robbed of the wealth and riches of their land for that white man’s profit. It’s how I ended up in the Western World in the first place. I am a direct product of this colonization.

Not to mention, they have put 300 million dollars in this movie? For pure entertainment. They could have fed Africa with this money. Now I am very aware of contributing to this, cause I have paid to go see this movie. But that doesn’t take away the fact that I feel this 300 million dollars could’ve been spent better. That’s just my opinion though with any huge Hollywood production. The reason I decided to write my thoughts on this down is because this movie is supposed to have some sort of message. That we need to stop and think about what we’re doing and all that blah blah change the world, make it a better place-crap. Well, if anything, I feel that those who’ve watched the movie should stop and think about how racist it really is. Not so much only to black people (or any other minority for that matter), but also to white people. They are the ones portrayed as the “bad guys”. That is, if we look at the bigger picture I’m sketching here. Funny how when I “imdb’d” the movie after seeing it, the blue actors are all really black actors. Made me go hmmm even more. Is this not subconsciously feeding into the racial barriers that already exist?

Anyway, just wanted to put down what thoughts this movie sparked inside my head. During the first scene with Neytiri, I whispered this to my friend next to me in the theater. As much as we all love great entertainment, sometimes I feel like we should not be taken for the ignorant audience Hollywood sees us as. We are money machines to them. But every now and then, there will be people that think for themselves and have their own interpretation of these million dollar productions.

Peace & Blessings.

Additional thought: I just watched an interview with Laz Alonso. He is saying the movie takes place in 2154 and the message of the movie is that what we do today is going to effect what we do in 2154. So how come in 2154, “humans” still act like they did in the 17th and 18th century? Shows how little “we” learn from our past and our mistakes. Pretty sad if that’s the message.