First Peoples: Guest Blogger: Daniel Heath Justice on Avatar

original source firstpeoplesnewdirections.org:

Amidst all the hype and excitement surrounding James Cameron’s new film, Avatar, many have critiqued its use of Indigenous imagery and innuendo and have charged that it is a thinly veiled colonialist fantasy that perpetuates damaging stereotypes. First Peoples New Directions asked First Peoples advisory board member, Daniel Heath Justice, to weigh in with his own thoughts on the film and its allusions to indigeneity, colonialism, and other pertinent issues.

Justice is a Colorado-born Canadian citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He is associate professor of Aboriginal literatures and Aboriginal Studies at the University of Toronto, and has written extensively on Indigenous North American literary expression. He also teaches a regular course in fantasy and horror literature and is the author of The Way of Thorn and Thunder, an Indigenous fantasy trilogy.

James Cameron’s Avatar: Missed Opportunities
By Daniel Heath Justice

Apologies for spoilers!  And thanks to Kent Dunn, Jim Cox, and Kirby Brown for their comments on early drafts of this blog.

In the past few weeks, I’ve chatted with a number of friends, colleagues, and students about the phenomenon that is Avatar. Certainly this particular community tends to be quite conversant about prominent themes in the film, such as Indigenous sovereignty and spirituality, colonization and decolonization, other-than-human kinship, traditional ecological knowledge and environmental destruction, so although we’re a diverse group we do have some values that align pretty closely across our differences. And given the fact that the film has already met with some pretty blistering critique online and in print from both the right and the left for its handling of many of these themes, I’d initially thought that the underlying perspective emerging from these conversations would be sweeping dismissal, or at least substantial indignation.

That’s not how it turned out, not even for me. Our responses ranged from guarded optimism (given that a huge international audience is clearly so engaged with a film that confronts the horrors of colonialism and resource exploitation) to thoughtful frustration (it’s powerful in so many ways, but why do we need yet another story about Indigenous struggle told through a non-Native’s voice and perspective?), but no one dismissed it. On the whole, the overwhelming sense was, “Well, it’s flawed, but at least it’s getting people talking.” That there’s so much commentary in the blogosphere on the film’s underlying current of “white guilt” indicates to me that something is happening with audiences and critics; it’s probably too early to tell yet what that is, but there’s probably a good opportunity here to engage an audience on Indigenous issues that might not otherwise have been interested or receptive.

To be honest, I went in expecting to hate the film....

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Guest Blogger, Popular Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

thank you, Zan! I think Daniel Heath Justice's critique from a First Nations perspective validates my first response. And after this post though, on to other works!

The PATH -Tale of Tales' retelling of Little Red Riding Hood

Belgium's Tale of Tales have a track-record of making gorgeous innovative narrative games and a great blog. And in the waiting to be approved category, they have just submitted an app, Vanitas, which they note was

"commissioned for The Art History of Games, a public symposium which is taking place February 4th-6th, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, at the High Museum of Art. Where we will be attending and speaking among good company. We are one of 3 developers selected to make something on occasion of the event. The other two being Jason Rohrer and Eric Zimmerman."

The Path can also be downloaded on their website:

source here: http://tale-of-tales.com/

"The Path is the latest offering by award-winning Belgium-based game developers Tale of Tales. A surreal twist on the classic fairytale Little Red Riding Hood, The Path is a Gothic horror tale that subverts traditional game mechanics in the same way that a dream subverts narrative. You are inevitably compelled to violate its only instruction—to go to grandmother’s house and stay on the path—and discover the rich and unexpected landscape of experience that awaits you. Each step you make in the unexplored territory of the woods contributes to constructing a different variation on grandmother’s house once you arrive at your destination."

source here: http://www.indiecade.com/index.php?/games/selected/the-path

iPhone Controlled Helicopter Offers Augmented Reality Views - PSFK

This is fascinating

hmm... very cool... now what can we do with it...

"The AR.Drone by Parrot is a toy helicopter that’s controlled by an iPhone or iPod. It was officially announced at CES this week. The helicopter is controlled via wifi, and two cameras show the world from the helicopter’s point of view on your iPhone/Pod screen. Included are two augmented reality games, where you can destroy enemies by yourself or challenge others in multiplayer mode."

"New Media Resistance: Machinima and the Avant-Garde" by Elijah Horwatt

 

“Somewhere between the video game and the CD-ROM there could be another way of making films….” - Jean-Luc Godard1

via cineaction.ca

Elijah Horwatt gives an excellent overview of avant-garde machinima works (films, often short, made within games such as Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Warcraft...

machinima.com is THE hub of the online community and Paul Marino's blog is also essential reading

http://blog.machinima.org/

Artist Kasia Molga - beautiful multi-media participatory installations

“Floresta” is an interactive installation to be shown in at least 2 Brazilian cities and in one city of UK, engaging people in planting virtual trees and flowers as a result of viewers’ connection and communication with each other. Members of communities of these cities can participate in co-creating the garden together and witness transformation of this virtual landscape in real time. “Floresta” becomes a meeting point for members of communities, who together are united in the experience of keeping this garden “alive” by interacting with it and with each other.

 

 

People participate by sending a text messages. The content of these text messages can inspire and teach, so that not only they contribute with new plants to a garden, but also to a pool of knowledge.


“Floresta” encourages social interaction, collaboration and audience participation linking together communities from different geographical locations in an effort to work together to keep this virtual garden prospering and becoming a rain forest. It promotes communities’ empowerment, social inclusion and knowledge exchange by giving viewers a power to directly influence a visual manifestation of this artwork. Most importantly it promotes concepts of togetherness, collective responsibility and interconnectedness helping to remember that just like in the virtual garden, our common welfare depends on all of us.

Floresta is the result of an ongoing research on endangered plants from the Amazonia region. There is a plan to collaborate with botanic research institution in Brazil and not only to plant the “virtual” species, but also contribute to a real Amazonian forest.


Source:  http://www.kasiamolga.net/

 

RIP: A Remix Manifesto

RiP!: A Remix Manifesto is now available online (pwyc) - this open source documentary features remix advocates Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis), Lawrence Lessig, and Cory Doctorow, blogger & co-editor of Boing Boing, amongst others

Lessig's 2008 book, Remix: Making Art & Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid
Economy, is available as a Creative Commons licensed download.

thanks Carlos!