Of course, I’m not the first or only one to comment on Avatar’s racial dynamic. Sci-fi site io9 says it best:

[Movies like Avatar and District 9] are movies about white guilt. Our main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color – their cultures, their habitats, and their populations. The whites realize this when they begin to assimilate into the “alien” cultures and see things from a new perspective. To purge their overwhelming sense of guilt, they switch sides, become “race traitors,” and fight against their old comrades. But then they go beyond assimilation and become leaders of the people they once oppressed. This is the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare. It’s not just a wish to be absolved of the crimes whites have committed against people of color; it’s not just a wish to join the side of moral justice in battle. It’s a wish to lead people of color from the inside rather than from the (oppressive, white) outside.

Meanwhile, Avatar is yet another story of a male knight in shining armor running to the rescue of oppressed “savages.” Sure, they do much of the work themselves, and there are strong female supporting characters, but the movie is very clear that without Jack, the Na’vi would have been screwed. Likewise, from GlobalShift:

As preferred as the Na’vi culture obviously is, they still need the help of Jake to decide on allowing their women to have any say in marital arrangements. And, given that Neytiri is precise in addressing the final step of a warrior is to choose “his woman,” it becomes abundantly clear the film is likewise heterosexist. Cameron bragging about slapping prosthetic breasts on non-mammal females doesn’t help, either.

To be clear, I’m not trying to pretend I didn’t enjoy the movie. I liked watching it a lot, and would recommend it to anyone looking for an escapist fantasy. (And seeing it in 3D, for which we had to wait another hour past the non-3D showtime we intended to see, was worth it. This is a very pretty movie.) But I do think it’s unfortunate that a movie with such revolutionary technological storytelling power was a rehash of the same white-man-saves-noble-savage trope.

Finally, for some delightful fridge logic, isn’t the ‘victory’ at the end of the movie incredibly hollow? Sure, they kick the humans – “except for a special few” off-planet. But there must be another mining ship on its way, and sooner or later (within about 10 years, if the ~5 year transit time indicated in the movie is accurate) the humans will be back with much heavier firepower.

What, you didn’t think conquering the colonialists actually works, did you?

(Bonus links: Avatar at TVTropes and Cameron saying (paraphrased) “Yeah, it’s Dances with Wolves in space.”)

I’m quite sure that these women aren’t trying to trivialize lesbian relationships — I just think that’s the result. In order to have people I don’t know well take seriously my listing on FB as “in a relationship” with my girlfriend, I need to also list myself as “interested in women.” I find this annoying, because I’m not interested in anyone but my girlfriend. If the majority of female/female relationship pairings on FB weren’t jokes, no one would assume mine was a joke too.

While I hadn’t really considered the nature of Facebook relationships before, I agree that placing non-romantic same-sex relationships on Facebook on the same footing as romantic relationships has the ultimate effect of diluting those actual romantic relationships.

Earlier this week, I was at a bar with some friends and one of them had to go outside for a few minutes for a phone call. Someone asked who she’d been talking with and she said, “Oh, my wife.” She and I had talked about this a while ago, before Daisy’s post, because I noticed on Facebook that she and this friend were listed as “Married.”

She’d said that their relationship was really that close, that they were much more intimate than mere friends, and that – no – the weren’t actually romantically involved; they both identify as ‘straight.’

I didn’t really give it much thought at the time but, because of Daisy’s post, I’ve reconsidered. This friend and I are actually on pretty close footing in terms of how we view feminism and sexism in American culture, and have had good discussions about how to deal with sexist jokes made by friends (or friends of friends). I’d kind of like to bring this discussion up, and maybe I will when I see her this weekend, but I’m not sure how, or what specifically I’d hope to accomplish.