AVATAR

Starn wrote, "As innovative as Avatar may be in some ways, it proves altogether predictable in others. Many commentators have noted how the film recycles a set of shopworn tropes about indigeneity in general, and American Indians in particular. Here we have the usual presumed radical divide between us and them, with whites, the Sky People, linked to technology, individualism, and reason and the indigenous Navi— Plains Indians in sci-fi drag with a dash of World Beat spice—tied to community, spirituality, connection to the ancestors, and, needless to say, harmony with nature.  In the old westerns, the Indians were the predatory savages, and Anglos wore the white hats; but, as expected in these would-be enlightened multicultural times, Avatar flips the signs. It’s the Sky People, creepily corporate and militarized in their designs on a precious fictitious mineral, unobtainium, who are the villains of the piece."  When I watched Avatar, I kind of got the same idea, that the movie was a recycled type of story about Indigenous people and struggle however, I do agree with Starn when he says that Avatar "turns the lens back onto whites and, among other things, scrutinizes the schizophrenic U.S. feelings toward Indians that juxtapose horror and enchantment, repulsion and desire, the wish to assimilate or even exterminate native peoples or to be just like them." Rather than the normal Western films of cowboys and Aliens, Avatar  played out in a way where the Natives actually win and are seen as the innocent people. 

I also think that the film highlighted a lot of things that were not really brought up in past movies- like the relationship between the anthropologists and the Natives. Starn also mentions that, "it can be easy to forget just how central Native Americans once were to U.S." We know that in relation to the development and travel to the West, Native Americans were essential in showing the colonizers the land and the people of those lands. This is similarly shown in the film when the Navi people take in Jake and his fellow anthropologists and show them their land and how certain things work as well as the significance of certain areas. This relationship was ultimately used to learn where the Navi peoples source was and how to best attain it (like how in the West, Native Americans showed the colonizers the fertile land that they were ready to use for development). However, in the movie, the anthropologists wanted to be the Native people, which isn't necessarily true in American history. Also, James Clifford says that, "Avatar invites the imagination of indigenous resistance leading to definitive anti-colonial victory...He leaves us, nonetheless, with a compelling vision: anthropologists and Indians, in a new historical moment, working their way out of a bad marriage toward some other kind of kinship." This is  seen when the anthropologists decide to disobey orders and help the Navi people fight. I like this idea because it can show that although they are not Natives, whites have the opportunity and ability to support the Natives by fighting. I wonder if this was done in order to make the Navi people seem more significant and ideal in the film or to reject the idea that Native people are undesirable? 

 Lastly, Starn says this (which Aaron also points out in his comment), "Indigeneity is a matter of becoming, not a fixed state of being, a historically contingent and sometimes very powerful form of cultural identification and political organizing."I feel like this comment refers to Jakes "becoming" into a Navi. However, I don't necessarily believe this, mainly because I feel that it was too fast for him to "become" Native. And, it furthermore suggests to others that anyone can become a Native-which is problematic when we look at settler colonialism. Audria Simpson mentions in her response to Starn that, "Settler colonialism is predicated on a territorial possession by some and, thus, a dispossession of others. In this model of colonialism, “the settler never leaves,” so the possession of territory requires the disappearance of “the native”." In the film, although the majority of the Sky people leave, there still remains a few-not to mention one of them becomes the new chief of the people. Simpson also says that, "The central protagonist—a white, injured (and disabled) American veteran—is offered the possibility of becoming in bodily form, the very people and culture under siege. When he assumes this new, improved self and bodily form (that of a Native) he no longer occupies Indigenous territory unjustly, and in this new form, leads the “Na’vi” in their resistance to dispossession, removal, and ecocide." I however, have another manaʻo about this. Although the film lays out a nice romantic and ideal ending (of people working together), it still underlines the idea of settler colonialism. The fact that Jake becomes the chief means that a Native was eliminated form that position. Furthermore, because he is chief, he can enforce his beliefs (whether in alinement or not with the Navi perspective) on the other Natives because of his title as chief. 

The only question I really have is what other people thought about the film and if they think that this film is the best white vs. native film yet?