avatar reaction paper on racism

Bailee Mclachlan

Honor English III

Coach Morrell

9/12/12

Avatar Reaction Paper

            I agree with Annalee Newitz when she says that this movie consists of racism. The first part I would like to point out in the movie where the guy on the ship, the one that’s only there for the unobtainium, calls the Na’vi “the blue monkeys”. I find this racist to the Na’vi because the guy knows what they are called so I don’t understand why he can’t just call them by the names they go by. Today I realized while watching the movie, the part in the article where it says “In addition to Native Americans, I saw some cat people as black people in disguise.” I read this article the night before I read this article so I was looking for this in the movie. I realized when they go to find Jake’s dragon type creature that he will fly, and the guy that’s going to be the next leader after the one dies that’s the guy leader now says that Jake will go first across the ledge, and when he says it, he sounds like the African people that we all heard talk on the Olympics when they got interviewed. I don’t find this super racist, but why cannot they just use the same accent for the people throughout the movie? If they are all from the same tribe, they should mostly have the same type of accents because they all learn from their elders. One thing I find hard to understand is that the white people are always afraid of the “Native American people” in the myths we have read and in this movie, but the Native Americans always end up being super nice to the white people and care for them. In this movie the Na’vi people take Jake in as one of their own after he completes multiple tasks to be able to get into the tribe. They finally accept him as one of them, and then the white people just go in and destroy everything the Na’vi own. In the movie when they first start tearing down everything with the giant machines one guy driving the biggest machine says “there is one standing in front of my blade” and then the guy that just wants the unobtainium says “so, keep going, they will move.” This shows that the white people don’t even care for the Na’vi and they Na’vi don’t even get a say in anything that happens to them in this movie.