Avatar is yet another sci-fi movie on Hollywood's long list of fictional sci-fi's to stereotype either the U.S., capitalism, military, usually white males, or a combination of these as the "bad guys". -Avatar of course stereotypes white-male capitalist American types as ruthless "Mother-Earth" destroyers. -In the sci-fi moviesAlien 1,2,3, "evil" U.S.? corporations are the bad guys exploiting people to gather aliens for developing powerful weapons. -In the sci-fi movie Andromeda Strain(1971), the "evil" U.S. military messes with nature and brings back a deadly organism to Earth. -In the sci-fi movie Godzilla(1998), the "evil" French military (not seen in the movie) tests nukes that cause a mutation creating Godzilla. The "evil" U.S. military ruthlessly finishes off this poor creature thats just trying to survive... -In the sci-fi Terminator series, the "evil" U.S. military and corporations develop machines that end up turning on mankind. -In the sci-fi The Core (2003), the "evil" U.S. military/govt. work to develop a weapon that causes the problem. -In the sci-fi Cloverfield (2008), one of the character's lines in the film was that monster was probably created by the U.S. govt/military. -In the sci-fi E.T. (1982), the "evil" U.S. military/govt. hunt down a cute peaceful alien. -In the sci-fi District-9 (2009), "evil" multinational corporations are the bad guys. And there's probably many many more; feel free to add a few if you like. Do you think there's a bias against either the U.S. and/or corporations in Sci-Fi movies ? (As a side note, a friend from Mexico visited me a few years ago that truely thought JFK was assasinated by the CIA !. I asked her why she thought that, and she said she saw it in the fictional movie "JFK"..... so sci-fi and fictional movies can affect viewer opinions and stereotypes.)
I saw Avatar as a way to show people what is being done and has been done to the environment as well as humanity.
Movies, like all fiction, (and to some extent real life) rely on tropes and stereotypes to speed the story along. Evil government/ corporation is easily understood and provides a "background" that doesn't require lengthy exposition. Thus the story can be unfolded without lots of backstory/ explanation. Science fiction movies probably require the accepted (or at least widely-understood) tropes more than, say, a political thriller since they, by their very nature, take the audience away from the familiar. Leaving in such stereotypes will alienate the audience less than providing a tale that eschews such stereotyping altogether while at the same time going off into "uncharted territory". I suspect that rather than being "anti-government/ corporation" bias it's more a case of a combination of catering to the lowest common denominator (i.e. the "thick people" in the audience Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) and a dash of laziness on the part of the writers.
Stereotypes they created to begin with..... China, Russia, and others have space programs. Imagine if a different nationality was used for the characters of Avatar, like Chinese or Russians, how do you think they would have reacted ?
By just about EVERY nation, not just the Americans. America was stereotypically picked as the scapegoat in this film.
Hardly. Anti-government feeling predates Hollywood. They maybe reinforce the stereotypes but they didn't create them. These two tie together: quite, how would China (as a nation) have reacted if they'd been the "bad guys"? What would that have done for sales abroad? Hollywood has to think of sales - bums on seats, darling - and *cough* alienating foreigners wouldn't do that. American film-goers like to see films about America(ns) (whether good or bad*) because they can relate to it. Traditionally US audiences don't go for stories centred around non-US participants - look at the number of re-makes that Hollywood has made of "foreign" movies where the main (if not only) difference has been re-setting the location/ cast as America(n). * The predilection for using Brits as the bad guy in certain films notwithstanding. Edit: I suspect that there's also a considerable element of the (stereotypical) US view that the USA is the world.
I saw it as any corporation from any country that could have been doing this. Just happened he used Americans for the protagonist in this one.
If the bad guy is an individual, it's often a Brit; or at least someone with an accent. As exhibit A, the infamous Hans Gruber! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!"I wanted this to be professional, efficient, adult, cooperative. Not a lot to ask. Alas, your Mr. Takagi did not see it that way... so he won't be joining us for the rest of his life."
Yes, the strange case of employing a Brit to play a German...Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
How many corporations have you worked for? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTbdnNgqfs8 Maybe the perspective presented in the movies is more accurate than yours. Check out The Killer Thing (1967) by Kate Wilhelm. psik
Many of the things on your list are a huge stretch. Avatar also features white/USA/military people as the HEROES who save everyone. If the heroes of Avatar had been pacifist Eskimo lesbians, you might have a point. As it is, not so much... I don't think there's anything in the movie to indicate that anyone was doing anything "evil" with the space probe - it was just a freakish accident that no one could have foreseen. And did the space project actually have anything to do with the military? I don't recall anything about that. I believe it was a NASA project to capture space dust or something. I don't recall the US military being portrayed as "evil" in that movie. As for the French, it was again just a freakish accident that no one could have foreseen. See above. Cyberdine isn't an evil company, they're just a company that makes really good robots and computer systems. In fact, part of the point of T2 was that Sarah Connor was misguided when she wanted to blame Dyson for creating Skynet. She wanted him to personify everything evil about the machines, but in fact he was a nice guy who just liked building robots. Once he realizes where his work is headed, hes sacrifices his own life to try to prevent it. I didn't get the impression that this line was meant to be taken seriously - it was intended to make the speaker look like a bit of a nut.
George Romero's Land of the Dead plays off a great many stereotypes about the aristocracy and corruption in corporate America. Not to say there's no basis to those stereotypes, though-- the look and feel of it reminds me a lot of American corporate culture from the 80's.
I've been wondering about this. I have a feeling there is a reason behind alot of the sci-fi movies coming out these days, 2012 being one of them... I watched the above YouTube video and I think there is definitely something here. Any thoughts?:huh:
Well, he's a particularly evil-looking Brit. He was Severus Snape, for fuck's sake! I could believe an eeevil Brit as a Gahrman. Keine Bewegung!
Avatar's centered around what happened to the Native Americans... They're just using aspects of history that we've come to understand as truths about history to tell a story... But if you remember at any time before the 70's everything was propaganda. If you grew up in the 50's and 60's you would believe that everything to do with America was great and wonderful. Or so says Richard Dreyfuss, and it's true if you look at movies made before 1970.
Outside of the US Hollywood's output can be considered as cultural imperialism and should always be viewed with this in mind.
"Avatar" is virtually a line-by-line transcription of the legend of Pocahontas, retold for modern audiences. (Pocahontas is a well-documented historical figure, but the stories that have grown up around her life are loaded with accretions and so qualify as "legends.") I think you have to push that date back a few years. The Counterculture arose during the 1960s and by the end of the decade its school of filmmaking was energetically whittling away at the American legend. Clint Eastwood's iconoclastic "Fistful of Dollars" series, for example, demolished the romantic, righteous image of the American Frontier. "Easy Rider" confronted the still-rampant hostility toward "Yankees" in the South. And don't forget music, which in the era of high-fidelity stereo became arguably a more important reflection of culture than film. The folk-rockers like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, the acid-rockers like Quicksilver and the Grateful Dead, and even country-rockers like Kris Kristofferson were airing America's dirty laundry on the radio 24/7. BLAME IT ON THE STONES by Kris Kristofferson Mister Marvin Middleclass is really in a stew, Wondering what the younger generation's coming to. And the taste of his martini doesn't ease his weary bones. Blame it on those Rolling Stones. Blame it on the Stones, blame it on the Stones. You'll feel so much better knowing you don't stand alone. Join the aggravation, save the bleedin' nation. Get it off your shoulders: Blame it on the Stones! Mother's with the bridge club ladies, talking every day About the rising price of tranquilizers she must pay. And it bothers her to read about so many broken homes. Blame it on those Rolling Stones. Father's at the office nightly, working overtime, Trying to make his secretary change her little mind. And he wonders why the children never seem to be at home. Blame it on those Rolling Stones.
