The only thing I'd add to this critique of Avatar...

...is a piece about compulsory heterosexuality. Funny, that it doesn't matter which planet a humaaan goes to, the creatures it encounters are always heterosexual and the most highly placed wimmin with the most status and most social influence are always interested in cross species breeding with the hero.

But even without a critique of sex and/sexuality...hmmm there was also nothing to complicate our pathetically limited collective understanding of gender or male rule, either...I appreciated this review of Avatar.

I could have written this, would have written something akin to this. By why re-invent the wheel when someone else is willing to take me on such an insightful and well researched journey. :)

It begins...

When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"?
By Annalee Newitz
December 18, 2009

Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy. Spoilers...

Whether Avatar is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it's undeniable that the film - like alien apartheid flick District 9, released earlier this year - is emphatically a fantasy about race. Specifically, it's a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. Avatar and scifi films like it give us the opportunity to answer the question: What do white people fantasize about when they fantasize about racial identity?

Avatar imaginatively revisits the crime scene of white America's foundational act of genocide, in which entire native tribes and civilizations were wiped out by European immigrants to the American continent. In the film, a group of soldiers and scientists have set up shop on the verdant moon Pandora, whose landscapes look like a cross between Northern California's redwood cathedrals and Brazil's tropical rainforest. The moon's inhabitants, the Na'vi, are blue, catlike versions of native people: They wear feathers in their hair, worship nature gods, paint their faces for war, use bows and arrows, and live in tribes. Watching the movie, there is really no mistake that these are alien versions of stereotypical native peoples that we've seen in Hollywood movies for decades.

And Pandora is clearly supposed to be the rich, beautiful land America could still be if white people hadn't paved it over with concrete and strip malls. In Avatar, our white hero Jake Sully (sully - get it?) explains that Earth is basically a war-torn wasteland with no greenery or natural resources left.

more here...