Comments | inversereality: Avatar: The Motion Picture Preview

inversereality

Avatar: The Motion Picture Preview

Feb 04, 2010 11:16

Mixed feelings about this. The world of the Four Nations is based on Asian and Inuit cultures and history, and for once, got a lot of it right. Yet here we have a movie that has been co-opted into a Western fantasy and is literally whitewashed with an all-white cast. And while I would dearly love to have more people's interest piqued in Asian ( Read more... )

Comments 8

I've never watched the show beyond a few episodes, that said... nivenus February 4 2010, 23:06:31 UTC

While I know this doesn't make it any better I get the impression that the whitewashing is soley for marketing purposes. After all, M. Night Shyamalan is a South Indian. He's hardly the ideal image of a blond Nordic.

Asian American Lit. 101 inversereality February 5 2010, 09:17:02 UTC

"While I know this doesn't make it any better I get the impression that the whitewashing is solely for marketing purposes."

I don't want to get all up in your face about Asian exploitation in Hollywood cinema, because the nitty gritty details of that are better confined to a college seminar. But there are *so* many things wrong with that sentence there.

Re: Asian American Lit. 101 nivenus February 5 2010, 17:07:36 UTC

Hey, I said it didn't make it any better.

inversereality February 5 2010, 18:20:23 UTC

No, you didn't, but I would recommend taking a couple "ethnic lit" classes anyway. Drives me bonkers, but good to know the vocabulary of the ongoing discourse, yada yada.

master_of_mad February 5 2010, 13:00:02 UTC

I agree with you, I think it would not be a good movie, and the choices made here are not the bst (take white to do inuit-like people...LOL)

inversereality February 5 2010, 18:19:17 UTC

Especially when all the other people look Inuit except the main characters!

banana_cave February 28 2010, 17:43:37 UTC

I decided I'm not going to watch this movie. It makes me mad in so many ways, and I'm as white as they come. Besides the obvious race issues, I think the changes will just piss me off more than anything else. Usually I find adaptations interesting, but in this case, I feel physically angry at the movie. I need to not watch it and let it go.

The prelim showings of the movie got horrible feedback, and that'll help keep me away from it.

inversereality March 1 2010, 07:22:51 UTC

I've decided that what I really want to do is to bootleg and seed it. I haven't used Bit Torrent in years, but I'm a-gonna download it and install the program, and then download the movie and share it for free on the interwebs with everyone else who won't need to pay to see it. That's my plan.