kristof

*spoiler alert*

So I just saw Avatar (2009), and came back to write a post, but it seems Ariel is one step ahead of me! Great job, Ariel. I completely agree with the creepy sexualization stuff, and I think your racial analysis is dead-on. This film is basically a Pocahontas re-make with blue “savages” instead of red ones, yet the color of the Cunning Savior is eerily the same…

I’ll start by saying that I was actually pretty entertained throughout the movie (I admit, I got goosebumps when the ENTIRE PLANET collectively attacked the invading humans). But I wanted to write this post to highlight some of the problematic assumptions surrounding binary gender and heteronormativity in the film. Before I launch into this, I’d like to explain that I do not believe that binary gender is natural or fundamental to our biological existence as humans, or even as animals. By binary gender, I mean the idea that Male and Female are the only legitimate sex categories (in our species and others), that males and females each have a set of personality and anatomical traits that are mutually exclusive from one another, that social gender necessarily follows from anatomy, and that anything outside the binary is defective, inferior, or freakish. I’m not going to completely open this can of androgynous worms right now, but I’ll just direct your attention to Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble , Thomas Laquer’s Making Sex , Ann Fausto-Sterling’s Sexing the ...