Last night, my partner and I took our 9 year old son to see "Avatar" in 3D. All three of us thoroughly enjoyed it.
I would not have mentioned this, but it continues from the theme of my previous post, because one of the main subjects the film deals with is racial violence. The Na'vi (the goodies) seemed to be a kind of pastiche of various indigenous peoples from Africa, Australia and America (plus whatever influence caused them to be blue, have tails, and be ten feet tall).
The baddies are the security division of an American mining company. Don't let this put you off: the film does contain a lot of explosions, but it is by no means just explosions. I have an inherent dislike of films which rely entirely on special effects, but this is not one of them. The effects are used to create scenes of beauty and contemplation as well as to depict conflagration.
I think the film would have been much more interesting if it had derived from British Imperialism rather than American Imperialism. The Na'vi are divided into clans, which is an arrangement that the British Empire's representatives would have recognised and latched onto immediately. Rather than sending in hundreds of helicopter gunships, they would have taken steps to find out what the structure of these clans was and which of them was the strongest. Some pretext would then have been found to incite violence between this one and some of the others, armaments would have been shipped in, and eventually a deal struck whereby the strong tribe would police the others, and they would all be left in relative peace as long as the mineral shipments were delivered on time.
I am not suggesting that British Imperialism was more humane than its American offspring - just more efficient.
Comments
New comment
Hi Will,
'Hello again' I think you're right to pick up on the imperialist sub text of Avatar but I would only say that the British form of imperialism you mentioned worked very well in India but I'm not sure that Britain practiced the same efficiency in Africa. This is one of the reasons, I believe, that it's in the mess it is in now.
By the way, this seems to be one of the interesting facts of science fiction that however far away in time, space and the imagination it travels it cannot help commenting on contemporary issues.
Live long and prosper
Phil
British Imperialism in Africa
Thank you for another interesting comment.
I think the model I described does apply to West Africa. My understanding is that, when the British arrived in what eventually became Ghana and Nigeria, they found a power structure already in place, with the Ashanti at its apex. They began to cultivate the Ashanti, introduced muskets (and eventually rifles) and (as far as our previous discussion is concerned) away they went.
It is interesting to note how little difference the abolition of slavery made to the economics and practice of Imperialism in, for example, Ghana. Unilever's fore-runners and subsidiaries did just as good a job of extracting under-priced commodities and labour as any concern had done under slavery.
Ghana and Malaysia became independent in the same year and, when they did, their economies were about the same size. Ghana's economy has hardly grown at all. Malaysia's has taken off like a rocket. Some Ghanaian intellectuals are still trying to work out why this is, and how it might be altered.
To return to the subject of the film, I think it was particularly appropriate that the activity which the baddies wanted to pursue on the indigenous people's land was mining. Mining (especially of precious metals) is notorious for bringing about economic growth in areas which are very remote from the sites of the mines themselves. It also tends to have an appalling effect on the local environment.