she is beholden to the human man

Wow; what a visually powerful and stimulating movie. The plot however, left me unimpressed: (spoiler alert)

It exuded what some call “white man’s guilt fantasy” pertaining to issues of imperialism / dominance – often bemoaning guilt over treatment of natives, American Indians. As such it was entirely unoriginal in it’s portrayal of the same lead character thus freeing and liberating the natives; why must it always be as such? As if the Last Samurai was not Japanese at all, but a white man who somehow learned the mastery of Japanese swordsmanship in one year. Or Dances With Wolves, he who gains entrance into the tribe, gains an Indian name and becomes the hero at the end. Or Gran Turino, where the embittered war vet somehow saves the day in the end, becoming a true ethnic native; which leads me to ask the question that surreptitiously and predictably pops up in these movies; “what is it that you hate about your own race so much?” which is the question that comes up in Avatar as well as Last Samurai.

I don’t mean to be offensive but find offensive already these cliched themes which if indeed James Cameron is so enlightened, perhaps he would have picked up on these but no; he followed the cliches, hook-line- and stinker. Sure it’s a political movie; no doubt – what bothered me was that it wasn’t socio-political enough; it wasn’t critical enough; it wasn’t thoughtful enough; it just pushed the self-accusatory envelope just far enough to give audiences the junk food they want and then to leave happy that complex social issues were solved because the white man became a native and wins the war for us in the end.

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