Volatile Tropes in Avatar

[Clarke]

(Split off from this thread)

Originally Posted by Human No More

Considering it's fiction, there isn't a problem there.

It's a massive problem; we generally want to avoid racism-laden images and tropes in our media.

Because any school is automatically bad?

Well, since schools funded by technologically advanced groups in untechnonological regions have invoked certain problems in the past, it's pretty hard to avoid.

Archetypes work, and actually, he's far more developed than most.

Good writers don't need to resort to them, though. Almost everyone (bar possibly Tom Bombadil, but his nature exempts him) in Middle-Earth has their own lives and their own motivations, for instance. Obviously, that is somewhat excessive, but the writer gets no points for characters who are barely pass the Turing Test.

...and it actually wasn't. That's called ignorance.

I could probably find some examples if I looked, but if you could find some works that portray the west as "safe" or "civilised," that'd be useful. Also, if you mean that the West in reality wasn't; that doesn't matter, since the image is what has the impact, even if the image isn't accurate to history.

And that is crap. Obviously details are relevant, and queues are NOT monopolised by any specific group. Read my post again without unquoting the relevant part.
Oh, as for queues being 'mystic' they aren't.

They're not monpolised, but the only groups I can think of who actually use them are the Native Americans and the Ancient Chinese. Both of these are heavily associated with "mysticism" for Religion-Is-Magic reasons.

Considering the fact that it's not a native american instrument, more associated with folk music than anything else in a modern context, then no.
She's probably never heard real native american music. Oh, and drums are ancient and non-specific too.

Reality and history aren't relavent; it doesn't matter whether or not the Native Americans actually did play that instrument, or have that style of music. What matters is the popular perception, and the popular perception (again for R-i-M reasons) is that Native Americans are more in tune with nature, have mystic chants, and are capable of something us materialistic, stupid Westerns would call "magic." (This last one especially seems true in the context of the Na'vi. Mind transfers?!)

...and that is why the author is not that intelligent, when they could have done so afterwards. But then again, it's a sense of entitlement.

Again, reality isn't actually relavent here. The stereotypical image is for Native Americans to ride horses, and it's that image that has associations attached to it. Real history has no such associations.

It's a stereotype that they even do it in the first place, and IIRC, the stereotype is different.
The Na'vi have never had any exposure to hat, so it's not copying anything.

...What relavence does the Na'vi's exposure have? The discussion is outside the context of Avatar, and this time we are allowed to say it works that way because JC wants it to.

And since there are many sterotypes, there are lot of things that match at least one. Matching any of them is quite unfortunate.

1. They're all answered (by me)
2. Anyone can start one for any page . ANY moderately popular film has one.
3. Most of them are people who do not understand something, and have had it answered.

1) Fair enough. I'd like to see if anyone responded to your answers though.
2) Yes, I know that. However, the clearest works have shorter pages, (since, y'know, a work with little fridge logic doesn't prompt someone to ask anything) and there are few pages that have enough to merit making categories.

No, I mean she's clearly never watched it and has some ridiculous sense of entitlement that even referencing ideas is wrong (while somehow believing native americans had horses prior to being sold them (WTF?!))

I would say that playing racism-laden, bigotry-implying ideas straight is wrong, yes.

Yet if you read the aforementioned tvtropes page, you'll see that 50% of its population was composed of such people. I couldn't stereotype them even if I wanted to.

You're doing a pretty good job of me.

[Icu]

Great, now we'll have two of these. You guys should just PM.

And if you don't want to PM, then maybe that should tell you something about this discussion.

[iron_jones]

Originally Posted by Icu

Great, now we'll have two of these. You guys should just PM.

And if you don't want to PM, then maybe that should tell you something about this discussion.

This.

[Tsyal Makto]

Mountained molehill much?

This whole this was interesting at first, now it just seems like a war of egos.

[Advent]

Avatar does indeed have some flaws, and we are well aware of that. So leave it as it is, and the two of you stop scoring points against each other.

[Moco Loco]

Originally Posted by Clarke

It's a massive problem; we generally want to avoid racism-laden images and tropes in our media.

What racist tropes are there in Avatar exactly? There are certainly parallels one can draw between them and ethnic groups here, but I fail to see how they can be called "racism-laden".

[Human No More]

I agree. Clarke is jumping from position to position to attack Avatar as each previous one is proved completely untenable.

[Eltu]

Locking the thread putting all the blame on him, without giving him any chance to defend himself is hardly going to solve anything. If you hadn't noticed, people have complained about you both arguing, not just Clarke.

Not unlocking the thread since this is a highly personal matter and should be taken up in private, but I feel it's important to point the above out.