(Spoiler Warning)
It is the eternal discourse and the never-ending contrast between the colonists and the natives. The colonists are advanced, the natives are primitive. The colonists are practical, scientific and materialistic, the natives are spiritual. The colonists are also downright cruel, whereas the natives are loyal and brave.
This sharp contrast not only sums up the blockbuster Avatar but also the discourse on colonialism ever since it started hundreds of years ago. No doubt the movie presents a breathtaking make-believe world of what outer space might hold in the next century, vivid and exquisite scenery, powerful images as well as action and thrill. But you cannot turn a blind eye to the very obvious socio-political message of the film. I don't believe in the ars gratia artis philosophy (art for art's sake). Art always tells us who we are, provides alternate realities, or for that matter, alternate dreams.
The film presents both sides of a colonial discourse, which is fair, and attributes certain features to the natives which is unfair. It is a considerable break away from other silly US films produced in the 90s and early 2000s about the all-American hero who has absolute power of machinery and mind to subdue other territories which are not given voice (Independence Day, Armageddon). The muddle the US is facing now in the two countries it occupies (Afghanistan, Iraq...and Haiti?) clearly disillusioned many filmmakers including James Cameron. It is clear that no communities will get attacked and not resort to resistance, also as clear it is that the attack is never justified, successful or ethical, but blatantly materialistic, destructive and even short-sighted. Hopefully, it is now clear that you cannot crush a community with your machinery no matter how developped and advanced and "go home for dinner" as the commander says in the movie. A people's spiritual attachment to their deity, land, environment and continuity is more enduring than man's desire for earthly matters.
Two issues remain controversial though. The first is regarding the features of the Natives. Throughout colonial discourse, indigenous groups have been described, called and treated as the vilest of creations. The white man (US marine) is expected to "civilise the brutes", and it is "his burden". This racism serves both as a pretext for attack, and for the natives to deem themselves unworthy of living, having failed to rise above primitive. The Na'vi of the film have been called "savages" and "blue monkeys" but it's from the head of the mining operation, which comes as no surprise. However, the natives are really a merge between Africans and animals, or so it seemed to me. Their noses are distinctively flat, their facial bones are distinctive of negros, they live in tribes, they hunt down people or animals using arrows and swords, they are scantily clad....They are totally detached from urbanisation as it hasn't worked with them, as the snooty head of the operation remarks. At the same time, they have unmistakable animal features. They have cat-like ears, tails and they hiss like many animals to intimidate possible attackers. If it were a new form of "creatures" the writer has imagined, it would be understandable, but they have been clearly referred to as "people" by Dr. Grace Augustine. Truly though they are courageous and loyal, but why do people have tails, hiss and live like people in the dark ages?
The second point is, only an avatar having human genes has been able to assemble and mastermind the counterattacks on the US army. Only the hybrid Jake and Dr. Augustine take part in empowering the natives and reshaping their "army". In other words, the natives are still mainly dependent on the "civilised" nation for organising themseleves and desgining an attack, a strategy which any human brain can devise. Frustratingly enough, the "pure" natives are only followers. It is true that they used some machinery made by US troops, but they have been lead by Jake the avatar, the US ex-marine. Though of course in the final scene is compromising in that Jake chooses the Na'vi identity.
A new vision on colonialism the film provides and a vivid foresight of what may become of the US army if they continue exterminating people, destroying their land and taking away all they hold dear. However, the image of the colonised people, or the natives, remains distorted. It has progressed yes, in the sense that they at least have human features, but no filmmaker is obliged to "condescend" to make this move.
Showing posts with label Cinema. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cinema. Show all posts
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Friday, November 06, 2009
Where is my mind?
Generally speaking, Fight Club is a movie that will mess up your head big time. Although I love movies I am extremely slow. I have never seen Apocalypse Now nor The Godfather. I only take whatever MBC2 gives me, no matter how shitty.
But I digress. I started following the movie well into its middle, and I had to see it again and read the plot to come to grips with 'everything'. At the same time a FB friend posted the link of the soundtrack, no other than the Pixies' Where is my mind?
Immediately after, I really started to hate my job(s). Although my full-time job is far from tedious - teaching. Yes, teaching isn't boring. You do not stare at a dumb screen all day till your eyes burn, you are not directly monitored and scrutinised by your boss. The students change, they sometimes drop funny lines, they are sometimes so aggravating they push you to new and smart ways to contain your anger and/or come up with ideas to get through to them. In fact, teaching is one of the few jobs in which you can bring about real, and sometimes immediate change. This could also mean that they have been so horrible and psychopatic that you promise yourself upon your father's life that you will never, ever, turn out to be like them. You probably have the freedom to change your material every few months (course), change your attitude, change your method...etc.
However, it sometimes takes me the last 15 minutes before a lecture to 'prepare' it. Correcting assignments kills your soul. Trying to explain, for the hundredth time, that single nouns require an additional s to present simple verbs, is not always fun. It is not always rewarding to find bricks increasing slowly and forming a huge wall between you and your audience. You stare at blank faces and try to tell them, in as realistic terms as you can impossibly find, why education is beneficial for them. Above all, since I am in the academic field, I start to wonder why it is of any use, giving the present circumstances, to waste years writing a thesis, and spending 60% of your salary on this process, only to leave it in the university library to gather dust. I keep telling myself that God gave us the gift of mind to exercise it. If you don't use your mind, you will lose it. And writing theses is not such a bad way of doing so.
And now to my other job, a white-collar job, an office job, a private sector job. I spend all day trying to work out puzzles using technology that has completely got the better of me. You have to be there from 8 to 5, which of course I never do. Why 8? Why not just feel that we're in tandem with the world, and be there from 9 to 5? Because we're allowed a one-hour break for a snack and for praying. Of course the 9 hours are not just the 9 hours. If you take public transportation, they jump to 13. So, in the words of Tyler Durden, you spend more than half of your life working a job you hate to buy shit you don't need. You know, City Stars could have been one of the reasons why I decided to take another job, to be able to buy all of these trendy clothes that some worker in China has been squeezed into making for a meagre wage, for hours on end. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs to hate to buy shit we don't need.
We don't need.
Instead, the anonymous main character decided to create an underground movement. But he has his job, he has long bills to pay. He has social appearances to keep. He can't do that himself, so he created another person to do so, someone to do all of the dirty work, to face trouble and make possible subconscious desires. Someone to hurt him because he would feel guilty about hurting himself - and by this I mean physical damage. The movie goes far beyond the abstract, and reaches the physical. Crazy huh? We always dread 'inconcrete' pain and do our best to avoid it, and we never realise how physical pain is as strong, if not stronger.
In the final moment of awareness, the main character finds a means to bring about the fragments of his mind again. What a selfish act. He shoots himself without fatally wounding himself. He is selfish because he did not give me any other alternative.
Since I saw the movie, I have felt my mind disintegrating. I do not know how serious this is, or whether it is serious at all. This is the only way I can explain it, disintegrating. I briefly reviewed other careers, other lives I could live, but everything, any other alternative, requires taking fatal risks, and I am not exactly a risk taker. Of course the movie is not the main reasons, but it sure did set off these symptoms. My thoughts are racing in wildly different directions. I do not know if I am too good for these jobs, or good enough for these jobs. I am questioning my abilities. I am putting my life on halt in a time when I should be writing a life-or-death proposal for my MA. People talk and I cannot listen to them for more than half a minute. They said it would get better but it didn't.
I am loving one person for something, and eschweing another for the very same reason. I keep sending people wrong signals only to realise this too late. I try to leave my parents' wings and probe into the real world, but never really settling in either places.
Just as if it can get worse, someone who is very dear to me, whom I feel responsible for, started underage smoking. As a former smoker I know what kind of crap that gets you to grab some cigarettes and blow your life away when your parents don't know it. I know the loneliness, the pain, the sheer pressure involved. He promised me he would reduce them until he quits. But if he smokes them where I can't see him, how can I ever be sure?
Where is my mind?
I listened for the song during the past week for I don't know how many zillion times. I keep wondering whether the background voices are screaming.
"You wonder a lot, don't you?"
A family member hasn't died. I was not diagnosed with cancer. I have not ended a thirty-year long marriage. I am not a homeless child getting raped by every pedophile on the move. I am not an Afghan mother of three expecting to be blown up any minute now. Why is this happening to me?
But I digress. I started following the movie well into its middle, and I had to see it again and read the plot to come to grips with 'everything'. At the same time a FB friend posted the link of the soundtrack, no other than the Pixies' Where is my mind?
Immediately after, I really started to hate my job(s). Although my full-time job is far from tedious - teaching. Yes, teaching isn't boring. You do not stare at a dumb screen all day till your eyes burn, you are not directly monitored and scrutinised by your boss. The students change, they sometimes drop funny lines, they are sometimes so aggravating they push you to new and smart ways to contain your anger and/or come up with ideas to get through to them. In fact, teaching is one of the few jobs in which you can bring about real, and sometimes immediate change. This could also mean that they have been so horrible and psychopatic that you promise yourself upon your father's life that you will never, ever, turn out to be like them. You probably have the freedom to change your material every few months (course), change your attitude, change your method...etc.
However, it sometimes takes me the last 15 minutes before a lecture to 'prepare' it. Correcting assignments kills your soul. Trying to explain, for the hundredth time, that single nouns require an additional s to present simple verbs, is not always fun. It is not always rewarding to find bricks increasing slowly and forming a huge wall between you and your audience. You stare at blank faces and try to tell them, in as realistic terms as you can impossibly find, why education is beneficial for them. Above all, since I am in the academic field, I start to wonder why it is of any use, giving the present circumstances, to waste years writing a thesis, and spending 60% of your salary on this process, only to leave it in the university library to gather dust. I keep telling myself that God gave us the gift of mind to exercise it. If you don't use your mind, you will lose it. And writing theses is not such a bad way of doing so.
And now to my other job, a white-collar job, an office job, a private sector job. I spend all day trying to work out puzzles using technology that has completely got the better of me. You have to be there from 8 to 5, which of course I never do. Why 8? Why not just feel that we're in tandem with the world, and be there from 9 to 5? Because we're allowed a one-hour break for a snack and for praying. Of course the 9 hours are not just the 9 hours. If you take public transportation, they jump to 13. So, in the words of Tyler Durden, you spend more than half of your life working a job you hate to buy shit you don't need. You know, City Stars could have been one of the reasons why I decided to take another job, to be able to buy all of these trendy clothes that some worker in China has been squeezed into making for a meagre wage, for hours on end. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs to hate to buy shit we don't need.
We don't need.
Instead, the anonymous main character decided to create an underground movement. But he has his job, he has long bills to pay. He has social appearances to keep. He can't do that himself, so he created another person to do so, someone to do all of the dirty work, to face trouble and make possible subconscious desires. Someone to hurt him because he would feel guilty about hurting himself - and by this I mean physical damage. The movie goes far beyond the abstract, and reaches the physical. Crazy huh? We always dread 'inconcrete' pain and do our best to avoid it, and we never realise how physical pain is as strong, if not stronger.
In the final moment of awareness, the main character finds a means to bring about the fragments of his mind again. What a selfish act. He shoots himself without fatally wounding himself. He is selfish because he did not give me any other alternative.
Since I saw the movie, I have felt my mind disintegrating. I do not know how serious this is, or whether it is serious at all. This is the only way I can explain it, disintegrating. I briefly reviewed other careers, other lives I could live, but everything, any other alternative, requires taking fatal risks, and I am not exactly a risk taker. Of course the movie is not the main reasons, but it sure did set off these symptoms. My thoughts are racing in wildly different directions. I do not know if I am too good for these jobs, or good enough for these jobs. I am questioning my abilities. I am putting my life on halt in a time when I should be writing a life-or-death proposal for my MA. People talk and I cannot listen to them for more than half a minute. They said it would get better but it didn't.
I am loving one person for something, and eschweing another for the very same reason. I keep sending people wrong signals only to realise this too late. I try to leave my parents' wings and probe into the real world, but never really settling in either places.
Just as if it can get worse, someone who is very dear to me, whom I feel responsible for, started underage smoking. As a former smoker I know what kind of crap that gets you to grab some cigarettes and blow your life away when your parents don't know it. I know the loneliness, the pain, the sheer pressure involved. He promised me he would reduce them until he quits. But if he smokes them where I can't see him, how can I ever be sure?
Where is my mind?
I listened for the song during the past week for I don't know how many zillion times. I keep wondering whether the background voices are screaming.
"You wonder a lot, don't you?"
A family member hasn't died. I was not diagnosed with cancer. I have not ended a thirty-year long marriage. I am not a homeless child getting raped by every pedophile on the move. I am not an Afghan mother of three expecting to be blown up any minute now. Why is this happening to me?
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
I can't get no sex education
We unmarried (and married?) Egyptian youth are wretched ugly ducklings. Under the pretence of religion and customs and traditions and 3eb ( unacceptable) and haram (religiously condemned) nobody gives us any piece of information, let alone right or wrong, on sexual intercourse. Nobody actually teaches us how to have sex...they're afraid we do it before marriage!
And who is supposed to teach us anyway? School and/or our parents. Right? Well...the only part on sexual education is taught in 3rd prep (when we're like 14) and frankly, the only thing I learned was that I have a reproductive system and that guys have penises. Oh and that we grow hair and our hips widen when we hit puberty. Part of the problem was that I was absent in one of the two or three classes it took to teach 'sexual intercourse and the reproductive system' and the teacher refused -rudely- to repeat what I didn't understand. And in the other class I fainted at the end of the classroom and no one noticed. LOL.
But as for the rest of the students...it wasn't just bad luck. This lesson was like any other lesson we had to study at school-it was to be MEMORISED! Just memorise every single word and there...you're done. You passed. You got you fair share of sex education. Congratulations!
Usually,or often, or rarely(I don't know, I began doubting that) Egyptian mothers have a once-in-a-lifetime conversation with their daughters before they get married (a week before the Dokhla? Dokhla is the night of the wedding) . They teach them what to do...what whom the Prohet's name is guarding and preserving aka her future husband would do...etc
Alas, even THAT doesn't always happen! "Al Naama wal Tawoos" or "The Ostrich and the Peacock", an Egyptian movie produced a few years ago, tackled the issue of 'sexual ignorance' openly. When the girl asks her mom about sex before she gets married, her mother is just too ashamed and tells her, "He knows". The thing is, it turned out later that he didn't know.
I realised the weight of the crisis just yesterday. My friends and I gathered in a cafe and we noticed that two of us, let's call them Mona and Sally, were whispering and somehow abandonned the rest of us. We kept teasing them coz we kinda guessed what they were talking about; Mona's getting married by winter and Sally in 11 days' time. Remember the 11 days' time. Ok?
I asked Sally if there was anything she wanted to know...and she answered..."I don't know anything". We were puzzled and asked her hadn't her mother talked with her yet? She hadn't. I just tried to comfort her and told her that sure her mother was intending to talk to her the next couple of days...and that maybe she's shy...so why not start the conversation with her..."Mummy I needed to know a few stuff" kind of lines. All the poor girl knew was licking and sucking-from her work mates.
To avoid disasters, I started explaining to them the four stages of the human sexual response cycle in a rather scientific way. Sally started to nod so I knew she read some book...but Mona kept her eyes wide open and her face was pale. Anything I said about orgasm, erection or the vagina was totally knew to her! I realised I've been speaking in English, so I translated some terms, but language wasn't the problem. It was the first time EVER Mona knew about sex. Those girls didn't know that we've got three holes, and I guess they still don't know which one is used for sex. A hideous thought ripped through my head: what if their husbands didn't know either? Talk about high divorce rates!
I kept thinking...didn't they even get curious some day and logged on to the internet, read some book or asked their mothers? I knew what their mothers would have told them anyway..."mesh wa2toh delwa2ty ya 7abebty...7ab2a a2ollek lamma teegy tetgawezy" "It's not time now dear...I will tell you when you get married" Hopefully before the Dokhla!
After some discussion,debates and laughs in which the rest of our group joined and listened to me intently...Sally dropped the bombshell.
"So what brings about the babies? My water or his?"
"His," I answered quickly, trying not to embarrass or laugh at her whereas in fact I was truly mad at them. Really, really mad at them. And at their mothers. And at mine (but I'm not getting married any time soon so I shouldn't worry now right?) At least I had my share of independent reading on the topic,but Mona and Sally aren't readers...how could they know?! I didn't lash out at them because I realised they are victims of negligence and ignorance.
I hereby declare from this blog that we Egyptian youth can't get no sex education whatsoever and we don't know what to do! The only sex we're getting anywhere in the air is some supposedly hot scenes and innuendos in Egyptian movies, 'medical' magazines and books with eye-catching titles and awfully-drawn pictures.
For God's sake, people, sex education is not innate. It is to be TAUGHT!
And who is supposed to teach us anyway? School and/or our parents. Right? Well...the only part on sexual education is taught in 3rd prep (when we're like 14) and frankly, the only thing I learned was that I have a reproductive system and that guys have penises. Oh and that we grow hair and our hips widen when we hit puberty. Part of the problem was that I was absent in one of the two or three classes it took to teach 'sexual intercourse and the reproductive system' and the teacher refused -rudely- to repeat what I didn't understand. And in the other class I fainted at the end of the classroom and no one noticed. LOL.
But as for the rest of the students...it wasn't just bad luck. This lesson was like any other lesson we had to study at school-it was to be MEMORISED! Just memorise every single word and there...you're done. You passed. You got you fair share of sex education. Congratulations!
Usually,or often, or rarely(I don't know, I began doubting that) Egyptian mothers have a once-in-a-lifetime conversation with their daughters before they get married (a week before the Dokhla? Dokhla is the night of the wedding) . They teach them what to do...what whom the Prohet's name is guarding and preserving aka her future husband would do...etc
Alas, even THAT doesn't always happen! "Al Naama wal Tawoos" or "The Ostrich and the Peacock", an Egyptian movie produced a few years ago, tackled the issue of 'sexual ignorance' openly. When the girl asks her mom about sex before she gets married, her mother is just too ashamed and tells her, "He knows". The thing is, it turned out later that he didn't know.
I realised the weight of the crisis just yesterday. My friends and I gathered in a cafe and we noticed that two of us, let's call them Mona and Sally, were whispering and somehow abandonned the rest of us. We kept teasing them coz we kinda guessed what they were talking about; Mona's getting married by winter and Sally in 11 days' time. Remember the 11 days' time. Ok?
I asked Sally if there was anything she wanted to know...and she answered..."I don't know anything". We were puzzled and asked her hadn't her mother talked with her yet? She hadn't. I just tried to comfort her and told her that sure her mother was intending to talk to her the next couple of days...and that maybe she's shy...so why not start the conversation with her..."Mummy I needed to know a few stuff" kind of lines. All the poor girl knew was licking and sucking-from her work mates.
To avoid disasters, I started explaining to them the four stages of the human sexual response cycle in a rather scientific way. Sally started to nod so I knew she read some book...but Mona kept her eyes wide open and her face was pale. Anything I said about orgasm, erection or the vagina was totally knew to her! I realised I've been speaking in English, so I translated some terms, but language wasn't the problem. It was the first time EVER Mona knew about sex. Those girls didn't know that we've got three holes, and I guess they still don't know which one is used for sex. A hideous thought ripped through my head: what if their husbands didn't know either? Talk about high divorce rates!
I kept thinking...didn't they even get curious some day and logged on to the internet, read some book or asked their mothers? I knew what their mothers would have told them anyway..."mesh wa2toh delwa2ty ya 7abebty...7ab2a a2ollek lamma teegy tetgawezy" "It's not time now dear...I will tell you when you get married" Hopefully before the Dokhla!
After some discussion,debates and laughs in which the rest of our group joined and listened to me intently...Sally dropped the bombshell.
"So what brings about the babies? My water or his?"
"His," I answered quickly, trying not to embarrass or laugh at her whereas in fact I was truly mad at them. Really, really mad at them. And at their mothers. And at mine (but I'm not getting married any time soon so I shouldn't worry now right?) At least I had my share of independent reading on the topic,but Mona and Sally aren't readers...how could they know?! I didn't lash out at them because I realised they are victims of negligence and ignorance.
I hereby declare from this blog that we Egyptian youth can't get no sex education whatsoever and we don't know what to do! The only sex we're getting anywhere in the air is some supposedly hot scenes and innuendos in Egyptian movies, 'medical' magazines and books with eye-catching titles and awfully-drawn pictures.
For God's sake, people, sex education is not innate. It is to be TAUGHT!
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