I think I'm starting a series of posts from my other blog that kind of belong here with lengthy corrections to my stupid, decade plus shitty observations. So, once again, I'll be parenthetical and amend my bollocks.
This post comes off the back of my viewing of Avatar. This is not a review, more a statement I feel needs to be made in regards to its director, James Cameron. And whilst writing this, I felt I couldn't leave out Joss Whedon in my argument.
Jim has copped some flack recently over Avatar being too derivative. Matt and Trey labeled it Dances with Smurfs, my brother has found it too like Disney's Fern Gully. Watching it, I came to the realisation that everything is derivative now. Avatar is Native American spirituality 101. Or to be more blunt, Message from Gaia to American armed forces: you're on my list, mother fuckers. Let's face it, given the state of the planet now, we can all be called Earth Mother Fuckers. This is essentially the crux of Avatar as far as I was concerned. There was nothing pretentious about it. Very basic narrative structure. But one thing Jim has achieved once again in this epically long (my butt was hurting really bad towards the end) allegory is the depiction of a strong female archetype.
Before I go into any descriptions relating to Avatar, I'll ask you to cast your minds back to the iconic Sarah Connor. Her transformation from meek diner waitress to Green Beret trained soldier has not been something that has been replicated so readily of late. Monsieur Cameron has done more for the resurrection of the Athena archetype in film than I can say for our mutual friend, Little Miss Stephanie Meyer. {This was my year of hate for her} What saddens me is Sarah has done nothing to inspire women to take up arms against any oppressors much less cybernetic killing machines from the future, while Miss Meyer has caused thousands of young girls (and sadly their insipid mothers) to bare their wrists and hearts to an abusive, callous vampire who doesn't even fucking exist. (Before anyone accuses me of hypocrisy, yes, I was fully prepared to bare my neck for Brad Pitt and/or Tom Cruise - but at least Claudia had more balls than Bella Swan.)
Neytiri, the female lead of Avatar, mimics Artemis and Athena in her stance as huntress, and later warrior in the battle against the humans on Pandora. {This was me in post uni trying to get back into Greek mythology/archetype comparisons} Her fragility in opening to love to a stranger and human takes nothing from her reserve as a fighter. What the fear is (as we already know), like a woman cannot be spiritual and sexual at once, she cannot be powerful and frail at once either. Cameron has represented both aspects in near-unison in Neytiri and Sarah. Both characters express passion to the point of hysteria when they are betrayed or not believed in. Their intelligence and forward thinking is not suppressed in order to attract a mate, it is apparent in order to protect or avenge him. Another character Cameron has conceived is Max Guevara from the short run series Dark Angel. Genetically engineered for military purposes, Max is designed to be the perfect soldier, but cannot erase or diminish her emotional side. This in most parts acts as no hindrance to her ability to carry out missions with callous precision.
Meanwhile, another writer/director who doesn't get enough props for helping feminism is Joss Whedon. {Retract all of this. What he did to Charisma Carpenter was abysmal and I wish it'd come out way sooner since she seemed to be the only one suffering under his bullshit}. The Slayer. Enough said. River. No further discussion required. Zoe. I can shut up now, if you have no idea what I'm referring to, Google the shit out of Buffy and Firefly. The women in Joss's universe are as apt and as powerful as their male counterparts. Even his villianesses had a lot of moxy. Frail and emotional yet capable of fierce retribution, Joss's female characters are believable role models for young women, but yet again, Stephanie Meyer seems to be the only one having any influence over said demographic. I can't blame her in the entirety on this. For one thing, James Cameron doesn't really write for women as a whole. Joss has a huge underground following, but sadly I've known some of his fans, and Buffy failed to have any influence on them in the bravado department. {Buffy is overrated, to be honest, I like it but it's not brilliant.} I've taken courses that touched on feminism in cinema, and ate up the whole "vagina dentata" BS analogy, but it failed to illustrate where the strong female archetypes have risen in modern film and television. I would hope this would be rectified at some point, given there's a lot of fodder for study in both these artist's work, and the only fodder Ms Meyer can produce is for the unit "Why Feminism is Failing" 101. As Tori knows it's getting harder and harder to empower anyone, much less women. We're all being downtrodden. But if any of us bitches had a little Sarah Connor in us, shit could get serious. For the better.
Okay so there's nothing I need to really fix but this is badly written and so in line with me trying to get write essays rather than blog posts so my analytical mind didn't shut down. Oh, and James Cameron sucks too. The fact he thinks Avatar can still be a thing in four more sequels is laughable. He has an ego that knows no bounds.
So I have to reverse everything I said in this about Joss now it's come to light he really is the misogynistic bastard most sensible feminists saw him as. I'm only glad someone like Gal Gadot was actually taken seriously when she took her complaint about him to the higher-ups. I'm not her biggest fan, I genuinely didn't like Wonder Woman, I think it was overhyped and over-praised, and now in the sequel, there's some really questionable as fuck scenarios involving her character's treatment of a man (not her fault she can't be held accountable for shit writing), but I feel like Joss believed he had it over on her, decided because she wasn't a native speaker of English she was just another exotic bimbo and could put her in her place with a classic "ya career's on the line, toots" strategy only to be foiled by her publicly now. I believe everything that's been said of Joss because you can imagine the arrogance the praise got him for his shows, which also weren't the most brilliant, they were just clever, and back then, clever accounted for straight up genius. He didn't fix Justice League, he didn't fix bad portrayals of women in film and television. He's actually done nothing for humanity as a whole. Straight up asshole. Sorry. Also apparently he left some kid by a lake (when he was a kid) and they drowned. Don't know why you'd bring that up in an interview designed to set any records straight.
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