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[-] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 145 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

As an Indigenous Canadian, I think the whole Avatar series is sickening

An invading colonizing force of foreign people invading a native people ... but the natives are incapable of helping themselves so they need a white saviour to lead them in the fight against their oppressors

It's basically cultural appropriation masked as a space opera

The worst part of it is how wealthy European people are still able in the most imaginative ways possible are able to monetize the misery and memory of oppressed people. Not only did they destroy entire cultures, they spend a good part of their time making money off of that memory and history.

The only thing I enjoy about the films is the AI, CGI and special effects ... beyond that, the writing is just another continuation of white people fantasizing about what it would be like to be a heroic Indigenous person who wins over colonizers ... a fantasy that has never been allowed to exist in reality.

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 77 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

As opposed to the other Avatar, which explicitly features Inuit and mesoamerican cultures resisting literal fascist, genocidal regimes. And deconstructs the “chosen one” trope while they’re at it. And (as of now) uses culturally appropriate VAs.

[-] argarath@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

Which avatar? The only one I can think of is the last air bender but I don't know how they deconstruct the chosen one trope

[-] otacon239@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago

I would say one of the key points is that Aang gets constant support from everyone around him. Like any individual, he’s nearly powerless without that support. Most other “chosen one” stories I’ve seen, the character is saving everyone else.

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Sort of. Per TVTropes:

He deconstructs the Kid Hero. Each Avatar is supposed to learn of their identity at the age of sixteen, which is the age of maturity in the World of Avatar. However, when the leaders of the Air Nomads sensed that a war was brewing, they made the decision to reveal Aang as the Avatar four years early so he could finish mastering his airbending and start mastering the other three elements to nip the threat in the bud. This decision might have made things even worse for everybody involved at the time because it forced a huge responsibility onto Aang that the 12-year-old wasn't ready for, and alienated him from his pre-series friends who were themselves too young to know how to treat him post-revelation. After overhearing he was to be separated from Gyatso, his guardian and the only one left who treated Aang as the kid he was and as an actual person, he ran away, and then got trapped in a storm that forced the Avatar State to freeze Aang and Appa inside an iceberg for a hundred years in order to save both of their lives. He subsequently blamed himself for the genocide of his people and the subsequent century of war because he wasn't there, even after he's told he would've been too inexperienced to make a difference back then and that his running away then is probably the only reason there's hope for the surviving world now. His childish personality and cheerfulness is sometimes an act to try avoiding the burdens placed on him which proves to be a problem several times when he has to face a problem head on to solve it (like learning Earth-bending or spending almost the whole series avoiding the problem his morals might conflict with what he'll have to do to actually defeat the Big Bad).

They were going somewhere with the pacifism too, though ran out of time.


Korra straight up deconstructs it, which is more what I meant. She was born to fight, she basically never got to be a child/regular human, but being a 'Chosen One' doesn't fix anything. She's targeted and hated by the antagonists for being such a singular figure of authority, and beat up to a pulp over it.

[-] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago

I strongly recommend you watch it. It's very good.

[-] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 32 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

My favorite movie about an Indigenous person taking on an invading and/or colonizing force is Prey. No white savior there.

[-] LaserTurboShark69@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 week ago

Prey was fucking awesome

[-] watson387@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 week ago

Good shit there for sure.

[-] Malgas@beehaw.org 2 points 1 week ago

It's kind of messed up how many pieces of media share that title. The 2006 video game is also about an indigenous person fighting aliens, but otherwise completely unrelated..

[-] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 1 points 1 week ago
[-] Jhuskindle@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago

It's a white saviour rehash. Classic movie trope in the USA and yes it is incredibly insulting.

[-] Ilandar@lemmy.today 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I completely agree with you. Cameron always gets so triggered whenever he's faced with this criticism as well, like all rich white American liberals. He doesn't even try to hide these views because he's so incredibly clueless:

In an interview with The Guardian in 2010, Cameron said the Lakota Sioux Nation was a "hopeless" and "dead-end society".

The interview was prompted by Cameron's visit to the Xingu tribe, located in the Amazon, who were fighting against the development of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam.

During his time there he witnessed cultural ceremonies.

"I felt like I was 130 years back in time, watching what the Lakota Sioux might have been saying at a point when they were being pushed and they were being killed and they were being asked to displace," he said.

He noted that 'this was the driving force' in creating Avatar.

"I couldn't help but think that if [the Lakota Sioux] had had a time-window and they could see the future… and they could see their kids committing suicide at the highest suicide rate in the nation... because they were hopeless and they were a dead-end society – which is what is happening now – they would have fought a lot harder." Source

[-] TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Wow, that is a disgusting thing to say about ANY culture, especially one that you admit is facing its own issues. Also, comparing a tribe from the Amazon to one from the Great Plains is kinda like saying 'Wow, those people suffering in Estonia really reminds me of the people suffering in Ethiopia'. Not my best analogy but you get my point

[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 8 points 1 week ago

There's a reason it's commonly known as "dances with smurfs"

He thinks he's worldbuilding. It's fucking Propaganda

this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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