Totally agree with you about Hollywood's one track mind on this stuff.
And this: "If you took a bunch of humans from all over the world and wiped their minds of their memories and all their inculcated ideas of race and gender, and plopped them down onto an island in the middle of nowhere, after a while, they will pick a chief. Pack dominance is encoded into our DNA from back before Homo Sapiens was a glint in some mutant monkey's eye. And their chief will behave as I've outlined, as leaders have throughout history: they will be smart, they will be canny, and they will be trying their best to prevail, for themselves and their children.
Hell yes and fuck yes. humans are. full stuff. we do this crap repeatedly that's why we talk about needing to learn from history if we are going to change the frakkin' future. *double sigh*
We also seem to delight in stripping anyone and/or any situation down to single digit variables as close to one as possible. Someone is Evil or Good. Right or Wrong. This or That. we are never one thing. We are always always always a product of all the parts of our life and our growth. And we are thing we - well most people at least - seem to hate the most - a paradox. we are good and evil at once (*though given that I have a debate in my head about the nature of evil... ) Wrong and right. weak and strong. all of the above. The real question, as I see it is, how do we face those facts, how we balance those bits that we like with the bits we dont? And how do we honor the same in other people.
Mind you I have a blazing white "oh shoot me now" uniform hiding in my closet, so that probably colors a lot of how I see the world as well.
But yes. I would LOVE to see all the beauty and glory of Avatar with all the impossible REAL complexity that is a true native peoples going up against a colonialist corporation - ideally without recourse to the WISE and Handsome turncoat.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 03:52 am (UTC)Totally agree with you about Hollywood's one track mind on this stuff.
And this:
"If you took a bunch of humans from all over the world and wiped their minds of their memories and all their inculcated ideas of race and gender, and plopped them down onto an island in the middle of nowhere, after a while, they will pick a chief. Pack dominance is encoded into our DNA from back before Homo Sapiens was a glint in some mutant monkey's eye. And their chief will behave as I've outlined, as leaders have throughout history: they will be smart, they will be canny, and they will be trying their best to prevail, for themselves and their children.
Hell yes and fuck yes. humans are. full stuff. we do this crap repeatedly that's why we talk about needing to learn from history if we are going to change the frakkin' future. *double sigh*
We also seem to delight in stripping anyone and/or any situation down to single digit variables as close to one as possible. Someone is Evil or Good. Right or Wrong. This or That. we are never one thing. We are always always always a product of all the parts of our life and our growth. And we are thing we - well most people at least - seem to hate the most - a paradox. we are good and evil at once (*though given that I have a debate in my head about the nature of evil... ) Wrong and right. weak and strong. all of the above. The real question, as I see it is, how do we face those facts, how we balance those bits that we like with the bits we dont? And how do we honor the same in other people.
Mind you I have a blazing white "oh shoot me now" uniform hiding in my closet, so that probably colors a lot of how I see the world as well.
But yes. I would LOVE to see all the beauty and glory of Avatar with all the impossible REAL complexity that is a true native peoples going up against a colonialist corporation - ideally without recourse to the WISE and Handsome turncoat.