Final Draft

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Social 10-1 Avatar Essay

                             Final Draft                       

                                           Darius Savage

In all of history a few things have come together more often than anything else, ethnocentrism, imperialism and marginalization. James Cameron's avatar as terrible as it was did show some close similarities to our past.

            The reason these three things come together is that when the white man would conquer the African Americans, the first nations, the South Americans, etc. they would use the excuse that it is god's will for them to take over other places and expand themselves. Fueled by this belief, very few people would think different of it because they are in their minds just animals.

            Even though imperialism and ethnocentrism go together, marginalization also is a big element to not only our past but also avatar. Marginalization occurs when one culture pushes back another culture until they have very little left of their own culture, and go from having all the power to being in a position of lesser power. When the Europeans first got to North America, the Indians could have just slaughtered everyone who got off the boat, but they believed these people were sent by god to share the land with them. Then more and more started coming and settling the area until the Europeans outnumbered them.

            In the movie avatar, first they came in and built schools to attempt to change the natives so that they would learn English and they would be able to take advantage of them and trade for their highly valuable minerals. When the natives did not want to trade they moved in and decided to just take the easy way and scare them away, killing quite a few of them. They forced them to change and use weapons and human technology to defend themselves.

            In conclusion, the Na’vi are very easily compared to the first nations. The first nations were marginalized back until they had very, very land left. The Na’vi were pushed back from big tree as they saw a lot of their sacred ground and sacred burial grounds get destroyed from the humans. The humans/Europeans are a lot like Tom Brady. They are way over rated and fail when it matters most. Like avatar.