Blah blah Avatar, 3D sucks blue cat people DAE no cultural impact?? Can you remember any character names??
but seriously it was bold as fuck for someone like James Cameron to make something so blatantly anti-US-military at a time when literally the entirety of Hollywood was united in jerking off American imperialism. It was not the least bit subtle and that makes it all the more impressive that Cameron was able to make a pointed takedown of Iraq-era militarism on such a scale.
The Chapo Trap House podcast had an episode in 2020 or maybe early 2021 about how based Avatar was, and they admitted it was weird it took that long for people to come to that conclusion
At the time I remember a bunch of nerd reviewer types complaining about the movie’s stereotypical portrayal of… US Marines as a bunch of violent rednecks :michael-laugh: They were also angry because they felt James Cameron was trying to make his white audience feel guilty over the genocide of the Native Americans. The Avatar Plinkett review did this too and even went “uhhh ackshually the Native Americans sometimes killed each other too so who’s to say who the real bad guy is”
The overtly political right-wing reactionary YouTube guy did not exist at the time, and most of those people went on to become bog standard anti-Trump liberals with the associated baseline wokeness, which just goes on to show how reactionary nerd and broader culture were at the late 00s and early 10s and how it remained kind of unexamined until stuff like GamerGate
The Avatar Plinkett review did this too and even went “uhhh ackshually the Native Americans sometimes killed each other too so who’s to say who the real bad guy is”
Jesus, I’m generally fine with the RLM guys but that’s just bad.
RLM pretty wisely keeps political topics out of their videos (unless you include their analyses of Hollywood rainbow washing), but occasionally something like this slips through and reveals that there are a lot of politically charged “non-political” things Americans are taught to believe.
RLM got pretty bad in one of the later Plinkett Star Wars reviews. Mike was pontificating about “forced diversity” without using that term exactly and his argument boiled down to something like: “This is a movie for kids, and when I was a kid, me and my friends never noticed or talked about race.”
They just don’t get it
The thing is, they constantly mention in their videos that they resent being dismissed as “flyover” midwesterners by coastal elites. Fine, I understand that lib stereotype of middle America isn’t helping things. Yet from time to time the RLM crew does reveal they do hold some backwards or questionable views
I don’t think they try to be reactionary. Politics isn’t a big part of their content. They’re certainly not ideologues or part of the right wing grifter media sphere, and I don’t think people should go after them
But do think twice before recommending their videos. Wouldn’t recommend anyone Asian watch the video where Rich, upon seeing Leo Fong, laughs and bellows out, “Why’s his face so flat?” and a big “racist” label ironically pops up
Flyover country is so real and whining about being treated as an empty cultural backwater when you live in an empty cultural backwater that has been utterly devastated and hollowed out by neoliberalism is extremely provincial and cringe. The Midwest sucks, and it’s few bright spots just reinforce how shitty everything else there is, and if you think that’s somehow unfair you’re pathetic.
I totally agree that Avatar is pretty based, but I think Hollywood at the time was actually moving away from being pro-military. This is because people were pretty sick of the Iraq war and it had been revealed to be predicated on lies. Two years earlier Shooter was released, and that was all about how corrupt the government and the military were (the Chapo episode about it is great). Obviously that didn’t last, perhaps not even up to the release of Avatar, but considering the script was written in 2006, it would make sense for the film to get caught up in the anti-imperialist tide.
I mean… it’s also basically just dances with wolves with blue body paint, and an extremely white saviour story. so I wouldn’t go around calling it ‘based’
It may be white savior, but I can’t help but love that the message of the movie is “frag your commanding officer”.
Because people are really bad at reading into media
Even when it isn’t subtle, they just go “This is entertainment and has no bearing on my actual life or beliefs”
That’s why most of the discussion about the movie was that it retread the same ground as Pocahontas (which aside from the colonialism angle, isn’t that similar) and not the actual themes of the film
The Starship Troopers paradox. When confronted with the image of Neil Patrick Harris in SS garb at a Nazi funeral, the average American media consumer blurts out, “wow, the good guys in this space bug killing movie sure are snappy dressers.”
all but stating out loud humans started the war
deliberate fascist propaganda about how weak and stupid the enemy is
countless lives lost to achieve a relatively minor victory
Americans: “Hahaha, it’s afraid!”
One of my favorite parts about Starship Troopers is that the movie starts chronologically after the ending, showing people dying horrifically. Even when the movie ends on a relative high note, it outright tells you (via the beginning) that it doesn’t matter and everyone’s fucked.
Ya, that’s also Bong Joon-ho’s eternal struggle with American audiences. Like his movies aren’t subtle at all, but all Americans see is cold train go zoom.
“Boy howdy, that was fucked up how that rich family had their lives ruined because of their own actions and inability to show compassion for others. I’m glad the poor family got what was coming to them”
remember all those lib celebrity tweets after Parasite won Best Picture about how Parasite showed the importance of coming together in the time of Trump
The average American probably doesn’t read political themes in media unless it’s directly spelled out for them. They will however scan something as politically motivated if the protagonist is a woman, LGBTQ, or black.
When Americans do scan fictional media as political in its content, they will invariably read it as supporting their particular ideology. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear chuds have an understanding of Avatar as expressing right wing ideology. They think The Matrix is right wing for God’s sake.
Instead I think most Americans try to scan media as political outside its specific content, like they know actors express direct liberal values, so they assume the media itself presents liberal values because the actor is in it. Politics in America can’t be expressed through the symbolic, because that entire field of expression has already been subverted to act in the interests of status quo capitalism. Things only seem political if they’re expressed directly, in a clear voice, and literally.
They think The Matrix is right wing for God’s sake.
Oh I know that one, that’s the movie where the main character takes a red pill and realizes women are stupid
