I’ve been reading a lot lately on how racial this movie was. Really? Because it didn’t have any humans of color? Big deal… how many white people do you see on BET?

As far as the plot goes, and how the Na’vi are “black”… get off it. The world doesn’t revolve around the idea that blacks are being oppressed all the time. If anything, this movie was a retelling of “Dances With Wolves”; it even shared characters, plot, and dialog.

It was a good movie, a stunning movie. Original? No, not by far. Racial? Not even close.

For me, that leaves us with the need to pick at SOMETHING. The way the plot was delivered left something to be desired and given the casting of the ‘bad guys’, can see where one could be left with a feeling that ‘whitey bad’ everyone else good. Not a single prominent non-white on the corporation’s side. Even the pilot – the hispanic hottie – ends up defecting to the side of the na’vi. I don’t think that the movie was racist in any deliberate sense and I don’t think that is what the reviewer was stating. I think that it was the easy way to split good verses evil and not particularly fair. I’m sure it was done on purpose just to create this kind of converstation.

I didn’t know who Eytiri was played by, and I thought that it was a Hispanic woman (I actually thought Penelope Cruz!) becaue of her accent.

From the horse-like creatures to the calling signs, from the symbiotic relatuionship with the planet to the adulthood rites, even the speech sounding and them calling themselves “the People” (what the Sioux call themselves), all I saw and heard, including the story itself, made me think solely of Native Americans. Not one Black in sight, sorry.

What I thought throughout the film was, because of the powerfully evoked Indian imagery, was “Dances with Wolves” set in outer space. But racism? Nah. If anything, it is a telling example of what human beings will do to one another when greed gets in the way, regardless of colour or creed. Accuse the Templars of heresy and burn them all after appropriating their wealth. The Holocaust. Every colonial war. Come on, we have a nasty history as a species to take what we want when we want and justify it under any pretext.

So let’s drop the “racist” tag, please. Yes, the plot is simple. So is Die Hard’s, 2012’s, and indeed the vast majority of movies ever made. But it is beautifully made and grabs us throughout, and I don’t now of anyone coming out disappointed… Isn’t that what great cinema is all about?

The first is the same old boring story. undreds of thousands of movies have been made since the invention of the “video camera” ( I use this term very loosely) and there really are no new ideas. What James Cameron did was simply present this one in a new and quite stunning way.

The second is racism. It’s everywhere as long as you’re looking for it. As a junior in high school my class’s pep rally theme was the nick show “Rocket Power” in which a white character named “Squid” had a “N” on his shirt because he was from Nebraska. The principal forced the class designer to remove the “N” because he felt it was racial. Take that Nickelodeon, you racist people. And I guess Disney should be sued for “The Princess and the Frog” as the original plot line (which has been used a thousand times) was “Historical” in having the protagonist (black girl) as a maid to a white Louisianan family. But don’t worry,they made sure that after complaints they took away her job and living quarters as a maid and made her a waitress. Serving white people. So much better.

Ok, sorry for the rant. But I must agree with both Lance and Karen, “Avatar’s” teachings were quite in depth and I saw it as an extended metaphor for most of history.

It’s interesting how we all can interpret films differently. I connected it to the Iraqi War at times, but do realize that the symbolism stretches far beyond that.

I found the movie’s teachings, so to speak, to be very complex and multidimensional. For example, I didn’t find it narrowing in to one single message – if there even was one at all.