Complex.com - 50 Most Racist Movies

Full disclosure: my homegirl sooey is on her hustle over at Complex mag's digital division, so I have a personal stake in this...

Still I am not gonna front like complex.com's commentary is anything but 50/50 (at best) in their track record... half of the time, they're profiling dope outfits, brands, personalities, etc.; and the other half of the time, it's puerile attempts at lowest-common-denominator frat boy comedy that blow up in their faces (sorry, "ironic" misogyny is still misogyny...).



And this time, it looks like they got one mostly right, calling out 50 flicks that (more or less) deserve to be called out for their B.S.: Complex.com's 50 Most Racist Movies.

I'm not all that crazy about some of their choices - Passion of the Christ, for one - but all in all, I'll shoot off some props (none) where they're deserved.

I Don't Want To Be Racist Against White People.

All my White friends, here's one to you.

Am I Being Racist Against White People?

There is a twofold concern for me as I explore ethnicity and the systematic, generational sin of oppression and cultural violence: (1) Am I demonizing and objectifying Whiteness, Western tradition/authority, and European culture? And even if I am not, (2) am I being perceived as doing so?

This question concerns me for several reasons: (A) if I am, I am being hypocritical. Hypocrisy is not only bad in itself, but it (B) leads to me, and other similar critics of power, being discredited or invalidated. This all contributes to (C) a widening divide of miscommunication or silence between those who are set to inherit the reins of traditional structures of power and contemporary voices who seek to point out the outstanding flaws in those systems.

If you'll bear with me - I'll try to be humble - let's examine these points:

The Natural Response to Violence or Assault

(1) A natural response to injustice is to render the unjust oppressor as inhuman. No one wants to think that someone who is in any way like me could do something so horrific to another; no, there must be something about a criminal, about a rapist, about a murderer, that makes them fundamentally different from me. This mental distance works both ways: slave masters, in order to justify the status of their slaves as property, dehumanized them along racial and cultural lines. If an African exists in a lesser form of being - whether a vastly inferior species of humanity, or not even as human at all - then, in a literal sense, it is not inhuman to claim possession over an African man or woman. Psychologists and historians who worked with post-war Nazi soldiers have noted that one of the ways that the German people coped with the horrific actions of the Holocaust was through a willing dismissal of the shared humanity between German Jews and German citizens of Germanic descent. [1]

Similarly, if, say, a close friend were to be murdered, I know that my temptation would be to see his murderer as a horrific, bloodthirsty, psycho bastard with no humanity, and nothing shared in common with myself. I think it's a general rule: we don't like to admit that we could share anything, even the slightest trace of fundamental humanity, with someone who could do such a thing. It is a natural coping mechanism, tinged with a trace of moral self-righteousness: how could anyone do such a thing? combined with well certainly, I would never be capable of such horrors.

This Is Wrong - What's Going On?

The problem here is twofold, both a problem of reality and effectiveness: first, the reality is that no entity or individual is blameless, and responding to evil by mentally distancing oneself from it is just wrongminded. Brokenness and perversity, when glimpsed in others, should not elicit my recoiling from them as diseased and inhuman, but rather my embracing them, knowing and acknowledging that I too have had my times of ugliness, hatred, anger, and violence. The reality is, as much as White, western cultural imperialism has hurt many people and cultures, I too, even in my short 23 years, have insulted, demeaned, and objectified many. To pretend that I am not also a participant in brokenness is to lie.

Secondly, by creating distance between myself and my oppressor, I lessen the possibility for her to reconcile herself with me and make amends to me, even if she desires to do so. As the saying goes, two wrongs don't make a right, and responding to a slight by slighting another only draws both parties further from reconciliation and mutual growth. Even if I were perfect, and my enemy were an incredibly spiteful person, distancing myself from him - while perhaps a useful coping mechanism, and a helpful step towards healing from the injury - ultimately does nothing to prevent the recurrence of the exact same slight, whether towards me or another.

Of course, the burden should be on the oppressor to make amends to the oppressed; even if the oppressed does not ask for apology, it is common human courtesy that if one has created a problem, one ought to fix it. If I kicked down your fence, appropriate apology is not to return bearing a hammer, hand it to you, and let you fix it; it lies on me to return, hammer in hand, and repair the broken fence.

But the simple and sad truth is that many people - myself included - are blind to the wounds we create for others. So to those of us who can be gracious - who have received grace from One who has been wounded by us, and are thus in turn in position to go to those whom we have wounded - it makes sense to do so. Just because I didn't create the problem, doesn't mean I can't be part of the solution.

In the Eye of the Beholder

(2) Tragically, even if I am just telling the truth - or, at least, the truth insofar as I understand it based on fact, evidence, and reasonable inference - I can be perceived as demonizing others. This is difficult.

One thing that I have learned, through reading accounts like Tim Wise's incredible White Like Me, is the unforeseen degree to which people coming from different backgrounds actually possess vastly different experiences. I am not talking about simple social distinctions, like a family only being able to afford bus passes vs. a family being able to afford an SUV. I am talking about completely different perceptions of social order. For example, I grew up with the explicit understanding that police exist to protect me and my friends: I was constantly instructed, in school, at home, and at church, to go to a police officer if I was scared, on my own, in trouble, or lost.

How far is this from the experience of an undocumented immigrant child growing up in, say, downtown Los Angeles! Disregarding the legality of her immigration, an undocumented immigrant girl not only cannot trust the police, but will likely actively distrust them - after all, the legacy of the LAPD is rife with scandal, corruption, abuse, blatant brutality, and more.

Imagine if eight-year-old middle-class suburban Chinese-American me could talk to that Los Angelena. When told about her view of the police, I would have considered her ill-informed, crazy, making up stories, and worse. And while, perhaps, her view of the police would be no more true than mine, I hesitate, now, to say that it is less worthy of consideration.

This is something that often concerns me when I disseminate information into the aether, as it were. I have no way to tell whether my audience is receptive or dismissive; and, while the information that I have uncovered is damning and even sickening to see, it is most terrifying to think that my desire to share the truth could be easily read as simple reverse racism. You can't handle the truth!(?)

After all, it is easiest to respond to an unpleasant message by disengaging from it: writing it off as fallacious, exaggerated, or irrelevant. Whether because a voice is too uncomfortable, too hypocritical, or personally offensive, it is very easy to be discredited, especially in circles into which you are speaking as a critic.

Vision for Reconciliation

But this is distinctly not what I want to do. I do not think that it is the time - at least, in the arena of racial reconciliation - for voices to only be present in the wilderness, crying out to those few who are attracted to them and who are willing to put up with their personal quirks. In this age, I think that the call is to go before not just those who want to listen, or are willing to listen, but especially to those who do not want to listen, and to convince, persuade, or somehow beg them to lend an open ear.

If the persecuted speak only to the persecuted, they cannot proclaim on behalf of the hurt and those crying out for justice. Proclamation comes into a community, and prophetic [2] voices and communities do not retain or hold in prophecy, but share it and spread a message of truth. The difficult, sad, and exhilarating mission for those of us who want to speak truth in love is that communication requires speaking to others, not merely at them.



[1] This is usually how it goes in war crimes: the object of one's transgression is seen as not human and, therefore, not possessing value on par with the subject's humanity. An alternative occurs in the case of child soldiers in Africa: there, instead of being taught that the targets of their violence are subhuman, the humanity of victims is often acknowledged, but simply devalued. Child soldiers are forced to rape, kill, and maim friends and family members, resulting in a general devaluation of all human life, rather than a specifically targeted dehumanization.

[2] Here I use "prophecy" in the general and original sense of "a true proclamation or statement," rather than the more contemporarily common sense of "a true statement about the future".

Repurposed words: Context and Content

[In the hopes of continued agility of thought, and to spite mental atrophy, a present hope is to dedicate myself to writing of a substantial character. Once a week, generally on Thursdays, I will be sitting down to hash out some brief comments of varying rigor. Your mileage may vary.]

Words are undoubtedly powerful. Biblically speaking, the Word - Hebrew Dabar (), or Greek Logos (λόγος) - is centrally located. One could reasonably say, in fact, that the very essence of Christianity (and the Judaism from which it springs) lies in a theology of words: divine words given to humans from God (Inspiration/Revelation), words used by men to represent to themselves those divine words (Scripture), and words used to systematize, explore, share, and find application for those divine words (philosophical theology, mystical texts, etc.).

Socially speaking, as well, words bear power. Creating terms for systems of oppression and dismissal can serve to reinforce and legitimize them through lexical acceptance, as labels guide identity both overtly (i.e., "Illegal" vs. "Undocumented" immigrants) and subtly (i.e., the normative-neutral "White" versus the marginal and umbrella term "Colored").

This latter point may be unfamiliar to some of my readers, and - though initially I was hoping to cover this in a footnote - it is interesting to explore. You see, beyond the obvious connotations in Western societies - snow, purity, cleanness, and light - White is a generic default, aesthetically a "blank canvas". By creating Whiteness and identifying it with people of Anglo-Saxon European descent as White (rather than, say, Pink, Tan, etc.), the connotative implication is that non-Anglo/non-European persons are less of a blank slate.

I would like stress here that this is not a uniquely White, American, European, or even Western pattern, either. The same is present in modern Chinese: Anglo people are White (白人, bai + ren = white + person) [1], people of African descent are Black (黑人, hei + ren = black + person), but Chinese are 中国人, people of the middle kingdom. And humility is far from a trait of dominant cultures (Consider also the other common term for the Chinese diaspora, 华人, hua + ren = magnificent/splendid + person).

Whether identifying ourselves at the center of all things, or as White (and hence pure/unsullied/adaptable), so long as we have the power to do so, we nearly always ascribe normativity to ourselves. This is a fair move to make internally; after all, processing external input would be highly confusing were it not for the normative presumption of our own internal processes. However, to ascribe normativity to our own points of view in a broader sense overwrites and overrides the experience and authentic reflections of others, creating dissonant systems for those who are not-Us but subscribe (willingly or through coercion) to that prescription. For a majority member [2], most such suppositions pass unquestioned; but, for a minority member, it raises significant existential - even ontological - questions that express themselves as internal anguish and confusion.

Of course, words can also be recontextualized, forcefully and defiantly if need be. The homosexual community (and, increasingly, other communities as well), in accepting, embracing, and finally repurposing the label "Queer", has demonstrated, it seems, a praiseworthy amount of perseverance and deliberate, systematic, activism. It is also one of the rare examples of a community embracing marginalization, for the very etymology of the identifier names its referent as on the fringe.

The N word (as if you're going to get me to spell it out for you... get outta here) is an example of a slur with a far more controversial present usage. While some advocates of the word claim that the same process of acceptance-embrace-repurposing has been undertaken successfully, it is hard to successfully argue that the word has been rehabilitated in the same fashion as the Q word (if you would). To nudge this intuition, let me point to two pieces of evidence: first, that I am myself hesitant to type out in full "the N word", while having no such qualms about "queer" [3]. Second, the ongoing dialect debate over "the N word with a -a" and "the N word with a -er" suggests that the process of linguistic evolution and drift away from offensiveness towards repurposing is far from complete [4].

What separates the two? Without entering into a rigorous discussion, the apparent answer seems to be that "Queer" is a word that preceded its use as a slur, while the N word - though possessing a historied and not entirely negative etymology - springs up in its proximal form as a slur. When those who self-identify as Queer (or queer-allied) do so, they are actually not re-defining the word, but instead actually maintain the definition of the word while re-defining the moral landscape within which it is situated, shifting from normativity to a non-normative field. Not being queer is therefore descriptive, rather than normative, and so queerness becomes as normal as non-queerness.

My (self-)allotted time is drawing to a close and is, indeed, even now nigh. Interestingly, all the above was initially only to be a brief footnote to a larger discussion; at this point, I will turn to a summary of my intended discussion, and pick up on it when next we speak.

So, why all the thought about Words? A natural response would be: the author's hubris leads to an egotistical confluence of form and content, wherein his verbosity is buoyed by the ostensible topic of exploring the power of words.

But no.

Actually, the choice of topic upon which to spend my meagre reserves is prompted by some reflections on the recent Malaysian religious scandal. In short, Malaysian courts recently ruled that it was within the civil rights of non-Muslim organizations (read: Christian churches) and individuals to freely use the Arabic term "Allah" to refer to God - God the concept and God the being. As far as I understand, certain elements within society - pre-radicalized, and definitely not all of Muslim Malaysia [5] - seized upon this ruling as a foothold from which to launch an extremist agenda, including vigilante attacks on various Christian churches and schools.

Malaysia is, of course, a country with a complex history of diversity along ethnic, economic, and religious lines. I am ill prepared to speak on it in such fields, and thus reticent.

While the proximally inciting incident of word usage seems to be more a case of finding excuses than of actual outrage, I am still interested in the idea that word usage can be made into an excuse for action; an excuse that is, at the very least, not horrendously implausible. And even if, in this case, the implausibility of gross offense through word usage is very high, there are definitely cases - slander, defamation, and libel - in which words alone are legally acknowledged to have the power to harm and damage.

To be continued.

[1] It is undeniable that other societies also associate people of Anglo descent with the color white. An interesting study would be a linguistic excavation of Whiteness in other cultures: for example, modern Chinese refer to Anglos as White People. Was this phrase introduced by cultural transmission along with the concept of Whiteness during the opening of Sino-American relations, or does it stem from a natural response to skin tone? Consider also the association of white with death in Chinese cultures (hence, red wedding dresses and white in funeral rituals): in this case, arguments for the nonpreferential nature of white-connotative language seem to obtain more readily.

[2] Majority here, of course, does not necessarily connotate numerical majority, but instead a majority of power. As examples, the racial politics of South Africa and the religious politics of Hussein-era Iraq come to mind.

[3] This does beg the question: ought I be so free with my diction? So far as I understand, queer-sensitive allies are allowed to use this word in such contexts. I may be wrong.

[4] Naturally, as a straight Asian-American male, I am an outsider to both these debates, and I may be reading social cues entirely wrong. This raises another question: do Asian-Americans have a repurposed label? I suspect not. Why not? Interesting.

[5] I hope not to evoke a sense of the Muslim Panic all too familiar in Western rhetoric.

on lies

"the Men of the Mark do not lie, and therefore they are not easily deceived" - Eomer, The Two Towers (44).

Over the past few days, I've been re-stepping through Tolkien's epic, inspired by my weathered but ever-fond memories of youthful journeys through its pages. Having just finished the first volume, I picked up The Two Towers tonight, to begin thumbing through its pages before slumber.

In doing so, I came across the comment made here by Eomer, and thought it an interesting one. Specifically, it seems to reflect a belief about Honesty - or Deception - that opposes what I often see as the default assumption.

There is a tendency, I think, for us to think that ears too accustomed to true tales will quickly assume the truth of falsehoods - that is, that hearing only the truth will make us more gullible, and susceptible to being misled.

But I rather like the point of view that Tolkien presents here: to him (or, at least, to Eomer), hearing truth doesn't dull one's ears to lies, but rather sharpens them to the scent of what is true. The innocent, in this case, are not gullible; rather, their very innocence preserves an innate and disarmingly natural propensity towards the true and lovely over the false and sham.

That my own ears might be filled with the truth, so that the darkness of lies might recede into unfamiliarity.

Avatar thoughts: 2nd pass, post-viewing

This morning, after a round of in-house (literally) family celebration, my sister, father, and I went to see Avatar.

As you may have gathered from my previous post, I had some serious reservations about the film's narrative arc.

To simplify a host of fairly irreducible ruminations is difficult; long story short, the film is problematic, but still quite a good film. I would say that most of my concerns were found to have reasonable warrant within the film: some of them aren't so bad, but some - one in particular - are still troubling.

Just a few of the thoughts that I was having while I watched the film, and in discussion afterwards [spoilers to follow]:

1) The film's casting directors acquitted themselves well in presenting often-marginalized faces & bodies.
-While much of the primary cast is Anglo, at the same time, the protagonist is disabled (paralyzed), which is the first time that I can recall, off-hand, a film which has a - the - lead character handicapped throughout the entire film. Big thumbs up to that.
-Non-Anglo characters were present throughout the background and foreground. In my previous post, I was concerned that, of all the primary cast human characters, only two were people of color. This is true; but both had substantive roles, and Michelle Rodriguez' fighter pilot actually had my favorite character arc. There were also several minority faces throughout the background, weakening any charges that Dileep Rao and Rodriguez were token casting choices.
-Female characters were, similarly, represented well in both primary roles of intelligence, strength, and authority, as well as throughout the background.
-In short: Cameron's casting director(s) did a very good job of presenting a wide gender and ethnic spectrum, didn't shy away from presenting a handicapped protagonist, and managed to do so in a way that seemed to bypass typecasting boundaries (except poor Michelle Rodriguez, who just cannot shake the tough-girl image she's born since The Fast & The Furious).

2) I'm still unhappy with the story of Jake Sully's rise to prominence within the native tribe.
-He gets the girl, lives to see the future, rides the bad-shut-yo-mouth flying reptile-bird, and so on.
-Maybe this is more just my general concern with how Hollywood films treat their protagonists: with the universe-on-film revolving around them, every action, person, and event, whether past, present , or future. conveniently happening with them in the center of the action. If this is true, which it seems like it is, then I can't specifically cite this as a shortcoming of either Cameron or Avatar.

3) I'm more displeased than I thought I would be by the conclusiveness of the film's ending.
-The film concludes, seemingly, on a high note: the outsiders are banished from the edenic world of Pandora (an incredibly silly name for a developmentally high-priority planet, by the way: who in the universe would want to "open up Pandora"?), and the tribes, united, stand behind Jake Sully.
-First off, internally, this ending doesn't make much sense. If "unobtainium" (another incredibly silly placeholderish name) is actually so valuable ($20M/kg... although, with inflation in 2154, who knows how valuable that actually is?), then history - economics - and sociology all seem to point towards this not being a permanent victory, but rather an incredibly fleeting respite. But this is neither here nor there; it's more of a technical concern than critical commentary.
-Second, more importantly, this ending is a happy one. This is my major concern remaining after a first viewing:

-The film ends on a happy note: in a literal deus ex machina (or, more properly, ex natura), Eywa, the Gaia-figure of the film, unites the power of the planet (Earth! Wind! Fire! Water! Heart!) to save the indigenous peoples and herself from the plundering, pillaging earth-humans with their murderous technology. Even if the future is indeterminate, at least, for the moment, the victory has conclusively been won.
-This simply is not the way that things have always turned out: for most native peoples, facing encroaching empire or exploitative harvesting, there is no end to the story, and certainly no end that has turned out well. For the Australian aboriginal peoples, the North American first nations, and African native tribes, the story still continues. In some cases, progress has been made; for other peoples, however, the story is simply one of unvarying neglect, social marginalization, economic oppression, and widespread apathy towards their plight.
-This is why Cameron's Avatar is still, for me, so strongly redolent of White Guilt. To tell a story about native peoples is one thing; to mirror the true story of native peoples, as awkward, uncomfortable, or embarrassing as it may be, is quite another.

-I can understand that this film is a fantasy. But I hope that it is a fantasy that stirs us to action, rather than a fantasy that provides all-too-easy catharsis: after three hours in the movie theater, we leave feeling sympathetic toward native peoples, guilty about our own exploitative/imperialistic ways, but satisfied knowing that the Na'vi got their measure of justice - even while native and aboriginal people the world over have yet to see their reparations in kind.


But still, on this day, I celebrate with family and friends, rejoicing in - remembering - and hoping for - the presence of one among us who did not just come to save, but to suffer.
And, having suffered to the point of death, and having died, and having been given life again, he was not content that only he might have life, but did not see his work as complete until all poor, heavy-burdened, and unvalued people could come to share in that life. This is true.

Avatar: James Cameron's colonial - racist - fantasy

This is an important one.

If you read no other entry that I ever write, please read this.

Why?

I'm sure that some - many - of you are used to me talking about racism by this point. You may have wondered:

Why is race such an issue for Jason? Does he see racism in everything?

Well, no. Not everything. But almost everything.

Can't he just get over it?

Maybe I could; but I won't.

I want to share how I see racism manifest in places that others don't; and why I am not willing to "get over it". Regardless of whether or not you agree with me: please hear me out.

What Are You Talking About, And Why?

What prompts this? Well, over the past couple days, I've been reading various commentaries [warning: both links have spoilers] on the current 20th Century Fox blockbuster, James Cameron's Avatar, and I thought that it might serve as an excellent example of how racial - racist - beliefs are interwoven into our daily lives, and exactly why I think it's so important to call them out when we see them.

Disclaimer: I haven't seen Avatar yet. I was, for a while, eagerly anticipating it, especially as I saw advance reviews - from reputable sources like Roger Ebert - excitedly calling it the best new sci-fi property in decades. But in the course of reading through various blogs and reviews, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the film's themes, and sought out more information, hoping to be proved wrong, or at least have doubts allayed. This did not happen.

Just what are these troubling themes? Well, let's take a quick look at the narrative arc: it doesn't ruin the story to say that the film is about a race of peace- and nature-loving alien natives, who come under attack from menacing, technologically-advanced humans wanting to plunder their world. But, just as all seems lost, salvation for the natives comes from the most unlikely quarter: a human soldier who switches sides because, get this, he realizes how awesome the natives are. [Slight spoiler:] He woos their princess, out-competes their best warrior - her fiance - and takes headship of their tribes to lead them in battle against the evil imperialistic humans.

This lone hero, savior of the colored (literally) folk, is, of course, a Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon man.

In fact, all the primary Human roles are cast White, except for Latina Michelle Rodriguez, typecast as a scrappy soldier, and a single Indian-American, Dileep Rao, cast as - shocker - a scientist. The primary speaking Na'vi roles, on the other hand - the native people - are all filled by people of color, including Black, African, and Cherokee actors.

I've Heard This Story Before...

Avatar's story is, at heart, familiar. From the innocuous (Superman) to the insidious (The White Man's Burden), this metanarrative underlies much of Western thought: a community's salvation coming in the personal form of an outsider savior. Nothing is wrong with this version of the story and, in fact, it can be argued that it is derived from the Christian story, a narrative I cherish with great regard [1]. But what happens to the concept of a savior-from-outside when we write ourselves into the role of the savior? This is the root of Colonialist thought: when we begin to see ourselves as that outsider-savior figure, and see native peoples as fundamentally noble but backwards. These good-hearted but incapable (whether technologically, morally, socially, etc.) natives need someone else to map out their progress, and we do so by setting them on the path of integration into Us-ness.

This is the Colonialist story: they advance if we force ourselves on them. The twisted logic echoes the rationalizations of the overbearing boss, the abusive spouse, and even serial rapists.

Hold on, though. What I'm describing doesn't quite match what Cameron plots out in Avatar, does it? In fact, he is writing precisely the opposite kind of story: in Avatar, the literal colonizers - humans toting Science, Technology, and magnificently-rendered spaceships - are the bad guys. How is it a colonialist narrative if the protagonist turns his back on the oppressive ways of mankind and leads the Na'vi natives to victory?

Re-read that last phrase: the protagonist (who is, we are reminded, Human just like us) becomes the salvation of the native peoples.

Here, the story's thrust becomes clear: Cameron's Na'vi natives may be an exotic and attractive people, but they are still ultimately incapable, doomed without the leadership and capability of the Human outsider. And this is precisely the colonialist narrative, advanced to its next logical step. These more sophisticated works acknowledge the overt shortcomings of forced cultural conversion. But, in such cases, the reassurance that "we did it to them for their own good" is instead replaced by the more subtle triumph of seeing a character that we know is supposed to be dominant - a White, Male figure - rising to his natural place of leadership. As these stories draw near the end of their arcs, we can breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that the guy who was supposed to be the good guy, is; even if he or his people were the ones who caused the ruckus, in the end, he fixed it, atoning for his own transgressions in the process.

This is the story of white guilt, and it is a story told with increasing volume and insistence as the Eurocentric world has been brought face-to-face with the terrible legacy of the "Age of Exploration": genocide, pestilence (more), forced relocation, massive-scale theft, and more. Unable to deny the horrors inflicted by their forebears, the descendants of colonizers had to convince themselves that they could be the exception to the ancestral rule: as their fathers had destroyed lives and cultures, they would save and value them.

But What's So Wrong With That?

The problem with this is that, regardless of what the theme or internal plot rationale may be, in the end, the movie presents a White Man romancing the exotic princess and proving himself superior to the best warrior in her tribe. If we are White Men, this makes us feel good about ourselves; and if we are not, we either put ourselves in his shoes, or are forced to cast ourselves as a romantic object or inferior competitor.

In the end, Avatar still places "me" - if I understand myself to be Anglo, and Male - at the center of the story. And, in it, the oppressed native is valuable not because he is, but because I tell him that he is. If the sins of my ancestors have harmed others, whatever the damage, I am the one who has the power to set it right. Parallel arcs are traced out in a few sets of identical films: Fern Gully & The Jungle Book, where the White Male saves an exotic, magical Nature from his society's aggressive industrialization. Freedom Writers, The Blind Side, Radio, and Hardball - among many others - where an experienced, open-hearted, caring White authority figure mentors a minority kid or kids to success [2] . Films like Australia, Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, and The Last of the Mohicans, that all share two aspects: a White Male protagonist, and a dying, endangered culture whose future depends on him [3].

Of course, in our media, there are many stories of a person or culture in need, and not all can be traced to White Guilt. Films like The Patriot, Gladiator, Dirty Dancing, and Braveheart all share key aspects with the films listed above: a community in need, and a man who rises to the occasion. But notice two things about them: while heroes arise from within those cultures, the communities being portrayed in these films and others like them are exclusively Eurocentric, Western communities. Apparently, when the culture being portrayed is White, a cultural insider serves as a satisfactory hero. But, when the culture is not White - and instead Urban, Aboriginal, Native, or Japanese - then an outsider is needed to step in as savior. A White outsider.

At this point, I can well imagine someone saying: you're talking about the media, and the media is simply in the business of providing what sells. Since most people in the country are White, it is profitable to provide protagonists to whom a White consumer base can relate [4] . It's not about actively being a racist, but simply good business.

This objection is wrong. Is it not about race? Then name me a single film where the opposite happens, where a non-White character assimilates into a clearly White society and winds up in a position of power or leadership.

I can't think of a single one * **.

So, then, apparently the interests of the White consumer demographic are so strong that they completely drown out the interests of consumers of color. This is a problem for two reasons: first, if it were to be true, it is a textbook case of tyranny of the majority, where the dominant group exercises such complete power that the interests and even well-being of the minority are completely disregarded. Second, it suggests that the media believes that White audiences are incapable of doing exactly what they demand of their minority audiences: to relate to a protagonist who is not like them.

This may be good business; but it is immoral, unethical, and dangerous. It is not racist to the level of a hate crime or muttered slur, but negative public perception nurtures bias, and bias leads, in its own inexorable way, to violence.

In the end, for whatever reason, the message being communicated is that a White person - usually a man - will be a hero, regardless of whether he finds himself in his own culture or outside it. But rarely a woman; and never a person of color.

You're Thinking Too Much.

"Come on, Jason. They're aliens, not minorities. Why can't you just watch it for what it is: fun, entertaining, light action?"

Online humor site Something Awful has an article (note: about halfway through, it gets silly. But I points 1-9 are suitably insightful) pointing out how obviously Cameron cribbed bits and pieces of native peoples for the "invented" Na'vi culture, from their "primitive" weapons to piercings, tattoos, and more. And the phonetic proximity of the two terms (Na'vi + "ti" = native) makes for either an odd coincidence, or a clever - and damning - subliminal. And if it weren't already clear enough, Cameron himself has repeatedly drawn explicit connections between Avatar and White cultural fantasies like Dances with Wolves. He obviously wants desperately to be an auteur, producing work read as political, social, and ethnic commentary.

And, you know what, it's almost worse if this narrative has come about unintentionally. If Cameron set out to simply make the freshest, most interesting, most entertaining work that he could, and the themes of White Guilt just happened to manifest themselves in that work, this is immense justification for the post-colonialist critic. Such a scenario signals that the co-opting of other cultures has gone so far that it has ingrained itself into the grand narrative of Western culture, deeply enough that even the production of a new mythos (and there is reason to believe that Cameron hopes for an extended universe) has the fingerprints of eurocentrism and White Guilt all over it.

In Closing,

Avatar is a problem. It seems like a great piece of entertainment: eye-popping special effects (or at least, so my sister and Roger Ebert both claim), a fun ride, the event movie of the season. But, at the same time, to buy into Avatar is to perpetuate a harmful, oppressive story that silences many in favor of further empowering those who already hold power. White Men bed the alien princesses, and defeat colored alien warriors related to her (how novel), while anyone who is not a White Man... doesn't do anything, really, unless it's pertinent to the actions and viewpoint of the White Man.

And make no mistake: 20th Century Fox, James Cameron, and many others have a vested interest in our literally buying into the film. With a release not more than a week ago, the film (with a shooting & promotional budget of over 500 million $USD, the most expensive in Fox's history) has already been used to sell video games, a toy line, apparel, cross-promotional schemes, novels, and a budding franchise.

[Please comment, discuss, and share as appropriate. I am actively interested in feedback & critique.]

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[1] Even if the Christian story is the original source of this trend, it has not itself been immune to whitewashing, with a White (if tanned) Jesus saving the colored Jews from their ignorance. The most recent and aggressively popularized portrayals of Jesus - Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ and The Jesus Film - have seen the role of Jesus go to a Slovak-Irish American and Oxford-educated Englishman, not to mention the proliferation of decidedly Anglo, non-Semitic images of Christ. Such depictions raise few eyebrows, while portrayals of Christ as a colored man - usually Black - are still highly controversial in many Christian circles, despite African cultures and races being no more (and even perhaps less) distinct from early 1st-centruy Middle Eastern societies than European analogues.

I also feel compelled, as a Christian, to mention that Jesus, in utter contrast to the narrative of cultural subversion, became (a) an insider in order to (b) redeem culture, rather than removing a fetishized culture from its context as an outsider.

[2] In this genre, there have been a few films - Akeelah and the Bee and Stand and Deliver come come to mind - that provide hope, where mentors are cast with actors of color (Laurence Fishburne and Edward James Olmos, respectively). Still problematic is the proliferation of White women in this setting; initially, it may seem to be giving prominence to a female, but ultimately it winds up simply furthering another common Western trope, that of the nurturing, caring, emotional woman in opposition to the strong, aggressive, physical man.

[3] In all of these works, I notice a strong emphasis on the uniformly White outsider protagonist being termed the Last or the Best. This hints at a quasi-Hegelian progression, where a raw and basic culture (Native tribes, Samurai ways, Nature itself) gives birth to an advanced, more-evolved organism: the White man.

[4] This is, by the way, not a justifiable argument. Increasing amounts of data are available that may indicate (has this work been done?) that upper-class White consumers, while having more disposable income, actually spend less of their available leisure resources on purchasing entertainment than other demographics.

* I have thought of one: Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis. Take that for what you will.
**After Dallas kindly reposted this piece on his site, commenter 6 100 pointed out that Blade may stand in opposition to this trend - I think he's right, and Blade is actually, the more I think about it, a pretty great film in terms of racial statements.

An honest inquiry

In short: why do so many people who say that we shouldn't force people to "do good", say we should punish people who "do bad"?

Some musings, hastily thrown together, on a subject that I've been wondering about since the summer, provoked largely by my readings on educational and income disparity. The following is neither exhaustive nor particularly cogent, and is barely logically coherent; it is not intended to be any of the above, but rather merely to verbalize musings, provoke thought, and request further input:

One of the more convincing arguments against positive social welfare policies* that I have been presented, is that the enactment of such policies equates, essentially, to the litigation of morality: making good action compulsory for a society - as a whole and, by extension, as individuals - removes the potential for individual moral action. The argument presumes that it is valuable, if not inherently necessary, to allow individuals room for real moral choice; take, for instance, the case of welfare**.

In such a case, I've heard it argued, the government should not act to provide for unemployed or unemployable individuals, because it should lie on the conscience of every moral actor within the state to do so. For the government to dictate that state funds should be used for the provision of aid to such persons is suboptimal, because, in such a case, the government is now overstepping its bounds: instead of providing its people with a stable framework within which to make ethical decisions, the state is now making those decisions on behalf of the people. Essentially, the argument seems to run, legislating morality reduces the ability of people to make moral choices.

OK, I can ride with that, at least to a certain degree.

My question arises from the fact that, as far as I can tell, there exists a sizable population of those who would use an argument similar to that presented above to argue against positive social welfare policies, but, when confronted with a negative social welfare policy***, seem to believe that thusly legislating morality is unproblematic. For example, I believe (with little evidence beyond the personally anecdotal) that there are many people for whom generous welfare policies are repellent because they compel agents into action without moral choice, who, at the same time, oppose gay marriage, precisely because it is morally wrong.

This seems contradictory to me.

Is it? Is there some fundamental difference between positive legislation of morality and negative legislation? Perhaps gay marriage - or strict gun control, the death penalty, harsh enforcement of Reagan-era drug laws, etc. - presents a threat to the very structure of the rule of law in a way that large numbers of unsupported, unemployed citizens (or, to touch on a hornet's nest: "illegal immigrants") do not; and, as such, should be legislated against in a distinct way, being that one of the necessary components for a stable state be a code of law that supports its own enforcement, rather than being self-undermining. In such a case, I would grudgingly agree that, while suboptimal, the necessity of such negative moral legislation is manifest.

But I don't see this argument for negative moral legislation obtaining, at least not in a way that is clearly distinguished from the argument for the necessity of positive moral legislation.

To sum up: There are people who say that certain aid policies (welfare, Affirmative Action, etc.) are wrong, as giving people support decreases the need for individual agents to take morally praiseworthy action. Of those people, however, many argue that morally proscriptive policies (anti-abortion, outlawing gay marriage, etc.) are necessary. This seems contradictory.

I'm sure that I have friends & readers who have put in thought, and have well-considered insight on this particular issue. Please, your thoughts?



*i.e., those policies that actively work to provide recompense for the unduly disadvantaged, rather than to eliminate the conditions which lead to social inequality (in broad terms: think affirmative action, as opposed to abolishing slavery).

**Note: this is not the only, or even the best, argument against welfare. My intent isn't to pronounce a stance on Welfare-in-concept or the current welfare system, simply to outline a single stance I have seen articulated.

***"Negative," in this case not meaning "bad", but meaning "preventative", as opposed to "positive" meaning "constructive"