Avatar essay

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Avatar Essay

The following essay will show the connection to the fictional movie, Avatar, with real-life, historical globalization. The Na’vi and human contact show a great deal of similarity with the European­-Native contact. If you compare any of the major events in the movie to history, the settling of North America and enslavement of African’s, both show ethnocentrism, marginalization, and assimilation. James Cameron and his writing team undoubtedly planned these things when he came up with the plot and story. By the end of this essay I hope to prove that history can and will repeat if given a chance.

I’m going to start with assimilation as my first topic of discussion; namely the Avatar Program. The Avatar program was made so that the scientist’s could interact with the Na’vi on a personal level, but the program was funded by the company, whose intention was to as Parker Selfridge, the Head administrator for the RDA on Pandora, says paraphrased, “…If you walk like them, you talk like them; they'll trust you.” This is basically is saying that the Avatar Program was made to show the Na’vi how they were supposed to act.

Marginalization is shown throughout the movie. It is most prevalent with the people that haven’t actually interacted and talked to the Na’vi. I’m sure that Jake Sully was feeling this when he first arrived on Pandora and accepted Mile’s Quatrich’s offer and in-return he could get his real legs back once he got back to earth. In this instance he is showing that he thinks that the many Na’vi living in the Hometree, for who knows how long, are no were near as important than his legs. The other best example I can think of is with what Parker Selfridge tells Jake that he needs to make the Na’vi move from their Hometree, “Killing the indigenous looks bad, but there’s one thing that shareholders hate more than bad press...and that’s a bad quarterly statement. I don't make up the rules….”

Ethnocentrism, in its definition, is the belief that your culture is superior to every other culture, and this is very true with the humans on Pandora. It is shown when the human’s go around calling the Na’vi blue monkeys, and savages. The fact is the Na’vi are just as sapient as human just not advanced as the humans.