March 2025

S M T W T F S
      1
2345678
910 1112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031     

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

January 14th, 2010

sqbr: pretty purple pi (Default)
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 11:12 am
Various people have talked about the attitudes to disability in the movie "Avatar". Overall I thought it was middling, a mix of good and bad and much better at disability than it was at race omg. (EDIT: Though the moment the bad guy was introduced I thought "Oh, he has a scar. Well, I guess he must be the bad guy then"...)

But watching the movie I started wondering about whether or not the Na'vi were actually any better about disability than the military. Sure, Jake is treated a lot better by them, but his avatar is able-bodied. How would they have treated him if he was paraplegic in his Na'vi form too? (oh there's an interesting story idea)

During the dull patches of the movie I pondered how they might react to a Na'vi who lost their braid/queue and thus their ability to connect to the tree of souls. When I got home I was inspired to write a version of the story without Jake in it and in the process found the original script and in it is this deleted scene:
Lots of spoilery text )
sqbr: exploding train. This is fremantle station, this train terminates here. (train)
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 07:40 pm
I went into Avatar expecting the movie to have a creepy appropriative racist subtext. I was not expecting it from the ads. (Warning, it's pretty obnoxious)

Wicked Energy drink ad

Rough description of relevant parts:
A white man drinks some Wicked energy drink, and a drop falls on a geisha tattoo.
She rips off her kimono to reveal leopard print underwear. Her dragon tattoo turns into a real dragon which she rides. She rides a surfboard with a samurai who is eaten by a koi. She dances exuberantly in contrast to some less scantily dressed 50's style sailor girls. A japanese demon kills a lotus flower with a fart. She pole dances and then makes out with a western style skull. The drink bottle comes up and an asian style dragon comes out before the slogan "bring out your wicked side".

This is all in one minute. How..efficient.