Avatar Remix – AVATAR (Anglos Valiantly Aiding Tragic Awe-inspiring Races)
AVATAR (Anglos Valiantly Aiding Tragic Awe-inspiring Races) is a fast‐paced media mashup that highlights the overplayed racial tropes of Hollywood cinema using James Cameron’s multimillion‐dollar epic Avatar as its visual anchor. The hilarious visual juxtapositions and accompanying soundtrack of baffling one‐liners spliced together from seventeen films are both a humorous jab at racism in our supposedly liberal popular culture, as well as a media literacy tool for deconstructing how whiteness and Other-ness is portrayed in mainstream films about humanitarian crises. This piece builds on our previous work, 300 Epithets, that analyzes the archetypes used in the nationalist right-wing film, 300.
This is what I call culture imperialism!
@sunyuh00 thanks!
@lewistonvideomaker Gran Torino is totally appropriate. If you missed the white savior complex then…I’m not sure how this particular film makes sense to you. Great great work! loved it.
@theshow2k8 LOL at your life.
you should’ve put freedom writers in here too.
@theshow2k8 history would not debase itself by reflecting anything of the sort
The “It is our destiny to save these people” dude at 3:11 looks a lot like Stephen Harper
@theshow2k8 And as with anyone in that kind of situation, power given can be abused.
@theshow2k8
Colonialism is not responsible for the exchange of the ideas and techniques. That’s the goddamn printing press, which you should be thanking the Chinese for by the way. Colonialism is responsible the systemic exploitation of developing countries, the byproduct being short term growth. In it’s nature a unsustainable affair, the colonialist hightailed it out when they weren’t making ends meet. That left a lopsided system to fail and the people who relied on it to suffer.
@McQuade007
History reflects the fact that whites were looked upon as gods to most poor races and in most cases,were asked to help.
@LordMunchkin
Colonialism was very good for the most part.It helped many people and freed them from their primitive ways where many would die because of the lack of understanding of the world around them.
Most of the third world would not be where it is now and almost all would be dead if it were not for the Western world.
i love this movie..
@sxeptomaniac thanks for your comments. i appreciate the feedback.
Including The Last King of Scotland doesn’t make any sense, as that movie is more about the meddling of a misguided outsider, and Gran Torino not so much either, as, IMO, it’s much more about a mentorship relationship that happens despite race issues, IMO.
OTOH, Tears of the Sun is dead on, especially since it came out near Hotel Rwanda, making the contrast very obvious.
Hollywood attempts to justify colonialism at every turn. Even so called “pro-native” films end up merely putting forward the same contrivances. Instead of “we have to control the natives to help them” it’s “their predicament is entirely their own fault, nevermind how we violently exploited them.” In the end, it is the sad attempt of western society to live with itself after having fucked over the world for centuries. It’s goddamn destructive.
Very interesting stuff! I hope there’s more to come.
You guys did a wonderful job! Hope you have some more videos like these up your sleeves.
The title to this video always makes me chuckle.
@mewtiny We tried to emphasize imagery, not story line (though that’s certainly important). The images, perspective through which a story is told, and assignment of agency is consistent in these movies. Your summary of Gran Torino is valid but also does not refute the analysis presented. The white protagonist (Clint) finds himself surrounded by exotic other (Hmong families) and is awe-struck by their tragedy and beauty. He adopts the cute kids as his own and sacrifices himself to save them.
Congrats on the socimages link!
GREAT JOB!!!!
Wow congrats on this video, it perfectly showed the underlining ideology of all the movies involved. Great job!!!
I don’t quite understand why Gran Torino has been spliced in, it doesn’t seem to fit the mold of the Avatar storyline for me, that’s more about a very solitary man reconnecting with those around him and passing on a legacy to someone who appreciated and listened to him.
@thoreauberon thank you for the feedback. for a film deconstruction with narration (inter-titles), i suggest “300 this is revisionism”, which is the first video i made of this genre. for this AVATAR Remix, i didn’t want to intervene with anything more than edits of the original content. no extra sound, titles, or voice-over. the commentary would remain strictly in the edits and require more work on the viewer’s part to make meaning of the repetitions.
I agree that the editing distracted from the point of the video. I would love some narration or a narrative a little more coherent. Otherwise it is a good point to recognize.