Avatar and the noble savage

Remember that guy who did the 70 minute Phantom Menace review that set the ‘sphere abuzz a month or two ago? Well, he’s back with a (far shorter) review of Avatar this week. It’s the same shtick, so if you don’t like his previous efforts, you won’t like this. But I do want to highlight one portion of his review:

I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: Savage races without technology and money can be just as fucking brutal to each other as we can. Plus, they don’t got things like antibiotics, indoor plumbing, or Taco Bell.

This is true, but there’s a reason you don’t see that brutality and that backwardness portrayed all that often at the movie theater: People lose their freaking minds when you show it. I’m reminded of the hubbub surrounding Mel Gibson’s (terribly underrated) Apocalypto. It was denounced by some because it didn’t explore Mayan advances like developing a calendar* while others complained that it was horribly racist.

I did my best to debunk some of the sillier criticisms back in 2006, drawing from both primary and secondary sources** but you can never really hope to win against these kind of complaints due to the way that native people have been portrayed over the years: everyone knows they were peace loving and in tune with the Earth and dedicated to using every part of the buffalo and the subject of savage oppression/genocide without ever dishing out any savagery of their own. I mean, c’mon. We’ve all seen Dances with Wolves, right?

*I always found that to be an exceptionally odd criticism, kind of like complaining that Training Day didn’t focus enough on urban youth outreach programs run by L.A.’s finest.

**See kids, this is why you always keep your college textbooks instead of selling them back to the bookstore for pennies on the dollar.