Ethnocentrism in the Movie "Avatar"

The 1987 film documentary Ethnic Notions directed by Marlon Riggs, identifies the evolution of African American cultural depictions through ethnic stereotypes and caricatures in American culture. I feel Ethnic Notions exposes the roots of false generalization from the beginning and presents a series of classifications for racial depictions that still are noticeable in today's society. These racial depictions identified with in this film begin in the mid 1800's and continue thought to the 1960's. I now after viewing Ethnic notions agree that there are generalizations and depictions that are exaggerated in American popular culture and entertainment.

Describe the ACCULTURATION level of at least 2 main/lead film characters. Elaborate as to which factors led you to make these determinations for each character (14.28 Possible Points). 100 word minimum between the two

Many people think that the idea of human cloning is merely a thing of science fiction but that could not be farther from the truth. Many places around the world there are that the scientific research of some sort of cloning. whether on animals or on human embryos for therapeutic reasons. everyday we get closer to being able to clone human beings. An online article from the United Kingdom talks about how China is ahead of the game because they have cloned a “super” dog, “The dogs, which are test tube bred in a lab, have twice the muscle mass of their natural counterparts and are considerably stronger and faster.”(Flood, 2017) and how “The beagle puppy, one of 27, was genetically engineered by ‘deleting’ a

Avatar uses a variety of film genres and styles. One of the styles is the Cowboys versus Indians theme. It is clear that Avatar is a product of post-colonialism: it shows the Na'vi as the relatively harmless yet environmentally respectful and spiritually in tuned indigenous population, while the humans are a corporate military whose only goal is mine the resources of Pandora. The film presents an anti-military narrative. The soldiers are portrayed as cruel, violent, and brainless brutes, with only mercenary intentions. They are the stereotype of the ultimate warrior. They perpetuate the “might is right” myth. All of them are males, except for a female helicopter pilot, who ultimately defects to the

The 2009 film Avatar directed by James Cameron is a stunning visual masterpiece that required state of the art animation technology. Avatar was officially budgeted at $237 million and became the highest grossing film of all time bringing in more than two billion at the box office. The film used a new form of stereoscopic filmmaking that was touted as a breakthrough in cinematic technology. Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three, for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. Avatar can be analyzed from various new historicist perspectives and effectively makes provocative statements about social issues such as race relations, imperialism, environmentalism, and the tactics of the military industrial complex.

The movie 'Ethnic Notions' describes different ways in which African-Americans were presented during the 19th and 20th centuries. It traces and presents the evolution of the rooted stereotypes which have created prejudice towards African-Americans. This documentary movie is narrated to take the spectator back to the antebellum roots of African-American stereotypical names such as boy, girl, auntie, uncle, Sprinkling Sambo, Mammy Yams, the Salt and Pepper Shakers, etc. It does so by presenting us with multiple dehumanized characters and cartons portraying African-Americans as carefree Sambos, faithful Mammies, savage Brutes, and wide-eyed Pickaninnies. These representations of African-Americans roll

In James Cameron’s critically acclaimed Avatar, there are many issues/disputes that are represented, but there is only one that especially stands out; cultural assimilation. Cameron’s purpose for this is to better represent and portray the possibility of assimilation to today’s modern audience. He adopts a visually stimulating tone to better impact and leave his viewers with a lasting impression of his portrayal, that will better convey the feelings of transgression in the supremacist audience he is trying to reach. This is known by the type of subject he is tackling and by showing a similar situation, unrelated to the ‘textbook cover’ of Native assimilation, but leaves the same impact.

1. Avatars are creatures grown from human DNA mixed with the DNA of the natives from the Pandora planet. 2. Humans are colonizing Pandora because of the mineral Unobtanium. It pays 20 million a kilo.

One scientific advancement our world has begun studying and mastering, that brings us closer to realizing a B N W reality, is cloning. This process is very much like the Bokanovsky process in "Brave New World." In the B N W The Director of

According to the United Nations, the world population was estimated to have reached 7.6 billion as of October, 2017 and it will continue to increase to 11.2 billion by the year 2100. The rapid increase in population requires more food, more lands and other demands. Because of the higher demands, some companies have been exploiting natural resources to serve people’s needs and create profits as well. With the current population pressure and overexploitation of natural resources, a question has been raised: “What if natural resources run out?”. In 2009, Avatar, a science fiction film directed by James Cameron, which tells us a story about an exploration of a group of people on Pandora to look for new natural resources; because of their greed, the indigenous people and nature on Pandora suffered many casualties, damages.

There are several critics towards Avatar which states that this movie contains racist themes in which the white hero once again saving the primitive natives. The editor in chief sci-fi magazines Jesse Washington writes that Avatar reminds her of Pocahontas story which also tells about how the main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens or people of color, and then go beyond assimilation and become leaders of the people they once oppressed.

Science today is developing at warp speed. We have the capability to do many things, which include the cloning of actual humans! First you may ask what a clone is? A clone is a group of cells or organisms, which are genetically identical, and have all been produced from the same original cell. There are three main types of cloning, two of which aim to produce live cloned offspring and one, which simply aims to produce stem cells and then human organs. These three are: reproductive cloning, embryo cloning and therapeutic cloning. The goal of therapeutic cloning is to produce a healthy copy of a sick person's tissue or organ for transplant, and the goal of both reproductive cloning and embryo cloning is to

Cultural relativism suggests that whatever any culture does is acceptable and we must positively judge other cultures’ practices—it is “right” for them. Who am I to judge differently? Cultural relativism arises out of a concern not to impose our cultural values on other cultures. The problem with believing that all values are

There are two segments from the film that I found particularly relevant to the concept of ethnocentrism. In the first segment (S1), when Xi saw Kate Thompson in the bush and he thought she was the ugliest god he’d ever come across from Kalahari Desert, because her skin was white, and she was covering her body with skins that looked like it was made of cobweb. The second segment (S2) is when Xi got arrested for shooting a goat. In fact, Xi didn’t know he did something wrong and was getting in trouble, he shot the goat because he was hungry and he observed the goat as food which he would like to share, but the people who arrested him thought he was stealing the goat.

The first problem that human cloning encounter is it is one of unethical processes because it involves the alteration of the human genetic and human may be harmed, either during experimentation or by expectations after birth. “Cloning, like all science, must be used responsibly. Cloning human is not desirable. But cloning sheep has its uses.”, as quoted by Mary Seller, a member of the Church of England’s Board of Social Responsibility (Amy Logston, 1999). Meaning behind this word are showing us that cloning have both advantages and disadvantages. The concept of cloning is hurting many human sentiments and human believes. “Given the high rates of morbidity and mortality in the cloning of other mammals, we believe that cloning-to-produce-children would be extremely unsafe, and that attempts to produce a cloned child would be highly unethical”, as quoted by the President’s Council on Bioethics. Since human cloning deals with human life, it said to be unethical if people are willing to killed embryo or infant to produce a cloned human and advancing on it. The probability of this process is successful is also small because the technology that being used in this process is still new and risky.