Monday, May 3, 2010
Activism Log 10
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Activism Log 9
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Activism Log 8
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Avatar and The Environment
James Cameron’s “Avatar” was largely hailed as a momentous achievement with regard to the technological advancement involved in its production, and it happened to be the first movie that I ever saw in 3D. Given its status as a veritable cinematic feat of the future, it’s ironic that Avatar contains so very many of the tired tropes and stereotypes imbedded in our cultural consciousness with regard to gender and the environment. From the very beginning of the movie, even before we meet the Na’vi, the characters’ views about nature align stereotypically with their gender identity. Parker Selfridge is male, and the head of the mining operation on Pandora. He is clearly the human symbol of environmental destruction, and he shows almost no empathy for the Na’vi, even when it becomes clear that their efforts to mine will kill them. The other main antagonist of the movie is Colonel Miles Quaritch. Also male, he embodies stereotypical masculinity. He is scarred, scowling, and unapologetically brutal. In contrast to these two, Dr. Grace Augustine is a biologist, and she is devoted to growing and maintaining peaceful relationships with the Na’vi, even going so far as to live with them and learn their language. When we look to the two main character, Sam (a human who spends time in Na’vi form) and Neytiri (a Na’vi female), we find the same dynamics. Sam is an intruder and an imposter in the world of the Na’vi, and his original purpose there was to covertly further the destructive aims of the mining operation. Neytiri, however, is portrayed as having a unique connection to nature. Under her increasingly-flirtatious tutelage, Sam comes to a deep appreciation and understanding of the Pandora version of nature. By the time his double-agent role is exposed, Sam is in love with both Neytiri and her way of life, both of which are symbols of nature and a harmonious, symbiotic relationship with it. As we discussed in class on April 7th, 2010, these gendered relationships with nature echo an idea that women (and native peoples) have an intrinsic connection to nature, and especially more so than their male counterparts.
Elements of the avatar story also echo the ideas about the earth as a single, collective organism (Gaia Theory) that are expressed in the Gaia Girls series book, Enter the Earth, in which a ten year old girl named Elizabeth is designated by Gaia to fight for the wellbeing of the earth, beginning with her family’s farm. Gaia teaches Elizabeth to connect in a profound way with the rhythm and harmony of nature, in order to make it conform to her will. Similarly, the Na’vi use a deep and almost spiritual connection with nature in order to live in harmony with it. In both stories, this connection is portrayed as elemental and timeless. This is the same romanticizing of nature that we discussed in class on April 14th, 2010.
In these ways, Avatar does not deviate from traditional depictions of the relationship between colonizer and colonized, man and woman, manmade and natural.
Works Cited:
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Activism Log 7
Monday, April 5, 2010
Myths and Misinformation
Rachel Collins
Jeannina Perez
WST3015
5 April 2010
I read through much of Riverbend’s blog, most of it because of my own interest rather than for this assignment, since the entry that I chose to focus on appears near the beginning of the blog, dated August 28th, 2003. The theme that I focused on within this entry recurs throughout the years on the blog, and that theme is of the American misperception of what Iraqi people and life are like. We have constructed a myth about what life must be like in an “underdeveloped” country, in addition to myths about followers of Islam, and myths about the condition of women in such a society. In Women’s Lives, Multicultural Perspectives the authors detail the biased manner of thinking that many use when formulating opinions about countries that are deemed “underdeveloped” (375). It is often assumed that this process is natural, linear, a foregone conclusion- how could any country’s people want to be anything BUT developed? What about progress, technology, and freedom!? What we tend to disregard is the idea that economic and technological progress are not the only things that are valued in many societies. All nations and cultures, whether developed or undeveloped, hold a vast store of historical, cultural, and traditional knowledge- the worth of which is not subordinate to western ideals of progress. We can see the friction of these ideas played out in Riverbend’s writings. In the entry that I focused on, she writes that the myth of Iraqi people as backward, ignorant and primitive is a blatant untruth- Iraqi’s have electricity, running water, computers, VCR’s, bridges, universities, schools- all the trappings of “developed” nations such as ours. WLMP quotes Vandana Shiva, an environmentalist writer and scientist, in calling less wealthy nations “devastated” instead of “underdeveloped, to reflect that fact that much of the wealth of richer countries actually comes from dominating less wealthy ones (376). This idea, too, is demonstrated in this entry on the blog. Riverbend writes about the fact that after the destruction of American bombing, Iraqi contractors were not the ones to rebuild. Instead, American contractors, namely Halliburton, were given most of the work of reconstruction, and often at prices much inflated from the ones that Iraqi engineers like Riverbend’s cousin estimated. This dichotomy between violent conflict and the industrial sector is also discussed in WLMP, which states that “nation-states, militaries, and corporations are increasingly intertwined” (509). Riverbend emphasizes that the words "rebuild" and "reconstruct" necessarily imply that something existed before- an idea that firmly contradicts the commonly believed myths about Iraq and other middle-eastern countries. Riverbend’s blog transcends the false boundaries between the personal, political and educational: it is all three, and a great example of each. Her personal, like ours, is directly affected by the political, and vice versa, and her blog is clearly educational because it is a great tool for debunking the myths that surround this issue.
Works Cited:
Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. New
York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print.
Riverbend. "The Promise and the Threat." Web log post. Baghdad Burning. Blogspot, 28 Aug. 2003.
Web. 5 Apr. 2010.