httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3elKofS43xM&feature=player_embedded
Three things strike me about this. The first is that it looks gorgeous. The second is that it’s interesting that this “last outpost of humanity that doesn’t know that outside is OK” theme is so resilient — Logan’s Run, The Island (which, OK, was more or less a remake of Logan’s Run), Paranoia, Moon’s busted antenna, THX-1138, and even Planet of the Apes’ Forbidden Zone. It says something about systems of societal control, that we could be exploring the world were it not for the fears we’re fed.
The third is, holy shit, this could be a picture of an Academic:
I wonder if Pumzi interacts with the audience’s knowledge of its ancestors the way Moon interacted with the audience’s assumptions borne of 2001 and a bazillion “OMG IM A CLOEN” stories. It’s probably not fair to judge every indie science fiction movie by the bar Moon set, but shit, if filmmakers are looking at that bar at all, I’m awfully excited.
Looks fantastic! I love that there’s science fiction coming out of Africa and getting international attention. As Mike Reznick wrote in his intro to the collection _Under African Skies_, Africa has been a *site* of a very fat swathe of SF for years among anglophone writers at least.
I’ve never heard of that, but Gardner Dozois has never steered me wrong! Plus, Vinge, Sterling, and Robinson!
Interesting article. I’ve had long discussions with friends regarding the movie Avatar and whether or not it was another “Mighty Whitey” movie and in some ways it was, though that’s not the only way of looking at it.
Someone said after watching the movie, “Y’know, just once I’d like to see the forces of science and capitalism triumph over the forces of mysticism and supersticion”.
In the end I think both arguments against the movie are flawed and I personally thought it was a fantastic movie that Cameron deserves to be credited for.
Back to the article. I was reminded of how whenever we remake movies of old, or even set movies in a different time period, the makers do have to walk on eggshells.
For example, I remember when they came out with the animated version of Tarzan, the movie makers decided not to have any black people in the movie, not even as porters which didn’t seem very logical(after all what safari wouldn’t have employed porters). Around the same time there was a terribly underrated movie called Congo which featured a Great White Hunter played by Ernie Hudson with some terrific scenes involving the porters which depending on one’s views either subverted or confirmed racial stereotypes.
I was also reminded how the movie the Ghost and the Darkness and The Piano were both accused of being apologists for colonialism for having what struck me as fairly accurate portrayals of the way white settlers in both New Zealand and Kenya behaved.
While reading the article I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the filmakers of the cartoon Tarzan had made the smart choice and decided that the best way to avoid charges of racism was to avoid having any black people at all. That seems to be the way Favreau is leaning.
Wow. Eerie. I was just about to call you.
I imagine this post of yours is in response to the pulp article, not the Pumzi one. If there’s a connection to Pumzi that I’m not seeing, fill me in, but I’m going to continue as though we’re talking about that one.
Yeah, sure. But just to fuck with things, imagine that there are 16th century Europeans (or analogs) who get to a land filled with brown people who live in peace, harmony, reason, and science. The Europeanoids want their gold and to convert them to their god. The brown people want to learn about them and adjust their paradigm so that the Europeanoids fit into it.
I’ve sure never seen that movie. Science is always portrayed as the domain of the White Man.
Note that, while Weyland-Yutani (I find myself wondering if that’s actually Cameron’s intent — that it’s actually the corporation from Alien) has many of the trappings of science, they hold it in contempt. There are no forces of science. Frankly, I don’t think Cameron would recognize science if it bit him in the eye.
As for the forces of capitalism succeeding, that’s hardly a story that needs to be told. That’s like saying, “Boy, I sure would like to see the white guys win for once.” The forces of capitalism win all the time. Every movie about the Vietnam War, or the Wild West, or, fuck, Iron Man, is about Capitalism winning, for better or for worse. Your friend can’t see it because he’s soaking in it.
Avatar was undeniably a movie about the white guy’s perspective on race and colonialism. Cameron himself said so when he said that it’s inspired by Dances With Wolves, and thinks he’s enlightened because of it.
Well, that’s called “whitewashing”. It’s a clumsy, one might say Disneyesque way of confronting racism. It’s usually considered a racist way of confronting the issue: it completely eliminates non-whites from the world of the story. That’s pretty effective colonialism there. You have the white guy become king of the jungle because, hey, no one was living there anyway.
Tarzan is a story about colonialism that is notoriously racist. If you take out the colonized people and the racism, you’re left with a movie that’s not about anything.
I don’t know Ghost in the Darkness, but my take of The Piano was that the characters were racist and colonialist. I don’t think the movie was. But I saw it at the Jane Pickens when it first came out 20 years ago or whatever and I might see more in it now.