illuvium

i don't really watch movies, but i recently watched avatar (the one with all the blue aliens, not the animated one) and absolutely loathed it. i'm not a big cgi buff or whatever so i can't speak to the effects of the movie, but what i can speak about is the plot. you have jake sully, disabled and unable to use his legs, heading over to pandora in order to take over his brother's job as the pilot of an avatar suit. sure, that's an intriguing enough setup. however! when the colonel tells jake to work as his eyes with the native species, he doesn't even hesitate with it. i haven't served any time in the military so i'm not terribly experienced with what culture they have going on there, but i really believe that some vague military bond wouldn't be enough to convince someone to work for someone like the colonel? and jake had agreed even before the offer to restore his legs was put in. there's no way that he wasn't aware of what the colonel and co. were really seeking at that point, either: clearing out the natives to obtain unobtanium. in truly human fashion, might i add.

so, i mean, jake goes off on his grand adventures in the avatar suit and immediately messes everything up. he provokes a bunch of the native wildlife and ends up disrespecting the customs of the native people, and i mean, that's understandable if he didn't know (which he doesn't), but he makes zero effort to get to know them. he doesn't care about their goddess (hell, another researcher rebukes this, too), and yet he's somehow the "chosen one", which is such a ridiculous trope and horribly overused. we never get an explanation as to why this random man has been chosen by eywa and not someone like grace (who, i mean, i also raise an eyebrow at with the trying to school the natives thing), who at least has some modicum of understanding regarding the language and culture of the native people. no, a random white guy collaborating with the colonel that sees the native people as obstacles to endless profit is the chosen one instead. and sure, i like a good redemption arc, but the thing about that is that the arc has to be good for me to like it. there really was no redemption arc with jake. i'm of the impression that he wouldn't have ever given a shit about the native people had there not been neytiri (which also?? can we discuss his homewrecking behavior. she was literally stated before to be arranged to be the future chief's mate, and that conveniently gets tossed out of the window?). jake is a terrible protagonist since this is one of those movies where you're supposed to root for the main character fighting against the bad guys, and i'm sure there was an effort made to portray some ideological conflict inside jake between helping the natives and being essentially a colonizer. that effort does not pay off! jake is getting together for life with neytiri all the while he's feeding all the information about the na'vi to the colonel.

i'd honestly been seen rooting for the colonel before i would be seen rooting for jake since at least the colonel has a consistent set of values. jake wants to have both cakes and eat it and it's whatever if a character does, but what's really repulsive is how jake is uplifted as the good guy here. it reeks of white saviorism (see: grace). the stench is unbearable from miles away. jake is uplifted as some great guy for having the bright idea to hop off his mount onto a bigger mount. excellent! he absorbed the culture of the na'vi only after he first resulted in their tree being blown up! for joy. again, i hiiiiighly doubt he would've given a shit had neytiri not been a romantic interest for him. he doesn't show any respect for the native ecology or for the traditions until his literal life is on the line. it's so repulsive to me how the movie promotes him as someone we are meant to praise. he's literally not. he's swooping in to save a problem he directly facilitated by continuously choosing to feed information to the colonel knowing that at the end of the day, it is a corporation and they will do anything to chase those ridiculous profit margins. i don't think i've ever been so incensed by a character. it's a genuinely terrible movie aside from all of that. as the home tree burns, the arrows of the na'vi are shown to not do anything to the planes flying, yet at the final battle, suddenly the arrows are shattering all the glass? it's so inconsistent and promotes that classic idea of white saviorism and it's just so astounding to me that it garnered mostly positive reviews aside from that.

anyway, this isn't really anything new. racism, particularly anti-blackness, have been ingrained in society for forever, and matters aren't made any better by the current state of politics. environmental racism is, i think, one of those things that a great deal of people would scoff at nonetheless. i think lots of people where i'm from (i know for a fact my mother does, anyway) have this idea of racism in their head as simply just being hate crimes (and i guess if they're particularly open minded, microaggressions too) but it's really a lot worse than that. lots of the talking points regarding environmental racism have already been talked about (as with the flint water supply & other places across america with high poverty rates and high % of poc living there, though it's misleading to say that it's dealt with per se), but since i am who i am, i've been thinking a lot more about the impact ai exerts on this. rather recently, it's been made clear that elon musk's data center for xai have been disproportionately impacting black americans living in south memphis. it's just so repulsive to me, but under the capitalistic pursuit for endless profit and shareholder value, nobody really cares. people that would care, like literally anyone interested in anti-racism or the environment as a whole, aren't in places to speak up about it thanks to the current system. lack of funding and going against the preferred version of the model citizen seeking disgusting amounts of money have done real wonders for society. it's just really lovely all around that everyone's been overworked to death to try and stay afloat while the rich can indulge themselves to their rotten hearts' content at the expense of poor, black americans. tangentially, which deserves a post of its own, i really hate myths like that of the model minority. i really just don't know. i'm a single person at the end of the day and there's no feasible way for me to make any sort of real impact on ghoulish billonaires and the american value of "hard work". i just wished people cared more or had more empathy or whatever, but perhaps that's also something i'm crying about without doing much about.