White Mans Burden

The scene I would like to analyze is the scene in 49:52 in the movie. In this scene the “onsite boss” who is after the unobtanium is talking to Jake. In this scene he is discussing the need for Jake to find out what the blue monkeys want. He discusses how they have tried giving them medicine, education, roads but they would rather have mud. He says this wouldn’t bother him except for the fact that their damn village is on the richest unobtanium deposit. They then go on to discuss that they need to get them to move. He says killing the indigenous doesn’t look good but neither does lacking in the income, if they can’t get them to move they will force them to move.

I felt that this scene tried to make me feel hatred for the white man invading these peoples land. It makes them seem heartless. It also made the avatars seem less human then they already did by actually calling them blue monkeys. I also think this accusation of blue monkeys indicates what are society thinks of as a less evolved version of humans, so although this scene may be comparing them to humans it remains that they are lesser. The man goes on to portray the “white mans burden” by discussing how he has tried everything to better this population but they don’t want it. This is showing how the “white men” expect that other populations should want things such as education and paved roads and that they are being so overly generous to assist them with these things. Since the avatars don't want these things they want to find out what they do to kind of buy them off their land with all the superior things they have (or think they have and think the avatars want). All that I can think of with this scene is the land of North America being taken over by the Europeans and pushing the Indians off the land by providing them with there superior goods and services. The scene then associates the white man with being greedy never stopping until they get what they want by saying that although they don’t want to kill the avatars they are willing to for the profits they will be making. This scene overall really makes the white man seem like an overtaking, intrusive, group of people who are willing to take advantage of the lesser avatars to get what they need. The effect this had on me as a viewer is it planted the seed and caused me to think about which side I would be on in this movie and it really swayed me to sympathize with the avatars and be on their side, although generally speaking I as a white viewer would have come into it on the other side.

This scene allows you to humanize the avatar while all the while they are being dehumanized. It allows you to bridge the gap between the avatar fantasy and real life. In this scene this isn’t only done with the discussion around the avatar making it seem like reality but also with technology. The technology is used to show the immense land that the avatars inhabit. It allows us to personally bridge the gap between reality and fantasy and allows us to think that this land could exist. Showing the land on the screen somewhat like a map lets us actually envision Pandora is a place that we could go/ be a part of.