this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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[–] ICastFist 7 points 6 hours ago

That comic also represents 100% of all survival crafting games, plus Factorio

[–] [email protected] 10 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Avatar is just recycled CGI Fern Gully anyway

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago

It's a motif as old as time. Foreign invader getting Stockholm Syndrome with the natives. Another famous example is Dances With Wolves. That film called The Great Wall as well. Some versions of Robin Hood has it. Anthropologists call it Going Native, which is what Carlos Castañeda did.

But they're not all about economic expansionism

[–] [email protected] 5 points 14 hours ago

That was not a subtle theme...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 17 hours ago

I saw the film in a theater with someone who wanted to impress upon me that someone pointed out to her how alike it was to what happened to indigenous peoples in the Americas (someone else had pointed that out to her, so she assumed I wouldn't get it on my own). I was like, if you think that's a novel observation, you really need to be hit in the face with concepts to understand things. It couldn't have been more obvious.

But maybe that highlights how much some people just aren't observant or introspective or whatever else. It would explain a lot.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah man, we all understood that the first time around when it was called Fern Gully.

Like Avatar if you want but like.... it is not a deep piece of media with hard-to-discern messaging. Shit is pretty clear.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

One time I unmatched someone from a dating app because the second avatar movie was coming out and they said that it was weird of me to say that the alien people were supposed to represent Native Americans because "they're just blue aliens why would you compare them to real life?"

Apparently media literacy makes you a weirdo?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 17 hours ago

Yes it definitely makes you weird. Turn the brain off and consume the media like a good little sheep (/s if it wasn't obvious)

[–] [email protected] 21 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Fucking Tarzan was fighting evil white exploiters of pristine Africa in books back in the early 1900s.

A good white saviour from the evil white people, because the indigenous can't do it for themselves. Just like in Ferngully and Avatar.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Are there even any indigenous people in Tarzan? I haven't read the book, but from the movie I only remember his gorilla buddy and the little elephant. I think Tarzan is more about rebelling against civilization in general, instead of colonization in specific (which James Cameron's Avatar is). It's very post-industrialization in that sense.

Edit: Whoops, just read the synopsis on Wikipedia. I don't think Tarzan is the white saviour you're looking for...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Which Tarzan book did you read the synopsis for? Burroughs wrote 24 of them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

Sorry, it wasn't as much a synopsis as it was the criticism section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarzan#Themes_of_gender_and_race

Looking at it now, I see citations for the essays, but not for the factual claims made by those essays, so I hope the editor who wrote it didn't take their word for it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 22 hours ago

I can't decide if I should post the "wait, it's all the failures of capitalism?" or "wait, it's all systemic racism?" meme, cuz it's wait it's all both (always has been).

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago

Explore, exploit, exterminate.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Satisfactory music starts playing

[–] [email protected] 3 points 20 hours ago

Paved paradise, put up a parking lot.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

It is also about settler colonialism. There are natural gas fields off the coast of Gaza.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago

Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Avatr is about capitalism

That wasn't glaringly obvious to everyone?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Well it's literally Pocahontas in space so more obvious comparison is to the colonialism. They could grow gardens and farms while destroying the natives, the movie would have been the same.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
  1. Colonialism was driven by capitalism

  2. They weren't settling land - they were setting up a mining operation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

It was just one line of dialog, but the sequel did mention that the company is expanding from just resource extraction to selling settlements to the wealthiest who are fleeing a dying earth

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

the sequel

So not the original then. The one being discussed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago

Thx. Thought I missed something

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