[When I first saw the movie Crash, I remember all the rave reviews it got for tackling race. And though I liked it well enough, something just didnt' sit right. Wasn't until I read Jeff Chang and Sylvia Chan's scathing deconstruction of the flick that I put my finger on it. Same can be said for District 9, which I found odious when it came to race, despite claims it was actually *addressing* race. Seemed like only Nnedi Okorafor (at least early on) was feeling my gripes. Not telling people what to think--cuz hey, everybody can be their own judge. But given this track record, refreshing to find a review on Hollywood's latest attempt to get "deep" (about race, culture, colonialism, etc) that diverged from mainstream consensus.] See below.When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"?By Annalee Newitzhttp://io9.com/5422666/when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar?skyline=true&s=xCritics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy. Spoilers...Whether Avatar is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it's undeniable that the film - like alien apartheid flick District 9, released earlier this year - is emphatically a fantasy about race. Specifically, it's a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. Avatar and scifi films like it give us the opportunity to answer the question: What do white people fantasize about when they fantasize about racial identity?Avatar imaginatively revisits the crime scene of white America's foundational act of genocide, in which entire native tribes and civilizations were wiped out by European immigrants to the American continent. In the film, a group of soldiers and scientists have set up shop on the verdant moon Pandora, whose landscapes look like a cross between Northern California's redwood cathedrals and Brazil's tropical rainforest. The moon's inhabitants, the Na'vi, are blue, catlike versions of native people: They wear feathers in their hair, worship nature gods, paint their faces for war, use bows and arrows, and live in tribes. Watching the movie, there is really no mistake that these are alien versions of stereotypical native peoples that we've seen in Hollywood movies for decades.Read full review here.
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