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Kirk Cameron’s—wait, no—James Cameron’s latest epic Avatar is now playing, and if you’re like me, you’re thinking to yourself “big fucking deal.” I can’t see myself watching it anytime soon. Cameron’s work generally bores me to tears, and Avatar looks like no exception. I don’t care about his fancy-pants VFX; the trailer simply bored me. People I know who have seen it in 3D rave about its epic visuals, but from what I hear about the basic storyline my initial reaction to the trailer is being confirmed.

When I watch the trailer, I see absolutely no emotion in the CGI characters’ face. None, and that’s the dealbreaker. Looking into the CG characters’ eyes, I see the same dull expressionlessness I saw in the characters of

Robert Zemeckis’ 2007 atrocity Beowulf (which had to be stopped less than 20 minutes in). In 2009, if you spend 10 years making a film and you can’t even match the emotional quality of Gollum in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), then you did something horribly wrong.

Other than the ostensible style-over-substance quality of the film, something about the story itself makes me loath to give both time and money to this movie. One review online has convinced me that I am right to not waste either: When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar”? by Annalee Newitz. Newitz sums up Avatar as a film where “a white man who was one of the oppressors [of those fancy blue creatures that are thinly veiled stand-ins for North American indigenous people] switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior.” In other words, it’s Dances with Wolves, but in space!

Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege. Jake never really knows what it’s like to be a Na’vi because he always has the option to switch back into human mode.

Sound a little heavy for an analysis of a sci-fi movie? If you think that movies are just movies and that their sole contribution to our social schema is entertainment and therefor critiquing their treatment of race is absurd, then I’m guessing you are both white and really need to read this from the comment section to Newitz’s piece (comment posted by Moff):

Of all the varieties of irritating comment out there, the absolute most annoying has to be “Why can’t you just watch the movie for what it is??? Why can’t you just enjoy it? Why do you have to analyze it???”

If you have posted such a comment, or if you are about to post such a comment, here or anywhere else, let me just advise you: Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Shut your goddamn fucking mouth. SHUT. UP.

First of all, when we analyze art, when we look for deeper meaning in it, we are enjoying it for what it is. Because that is one of the things about art, be it highbrow, lowbrow, mainstream, or avant-garde: Some sort of thought went into its making — even if the thought was, “I’m going to do this as thoughtlessly as possible”! — and as a result, some sort of thought can be gotten from its reception. That is why, among other things, artists (including, for instance, James Cameron) really like to talk about their work.

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to think about a work of art. I don’t know anyone who thinks every work they encounter ought to only be enjoyed through conscious, active analysis — or if I do, they’re pretty annoying themselves. And I know many people who prefer not to think about much of what they consume, and with them I have no argument. I also have no argument with people who disagree with another person’s thoughts about a work of art. That should go without saying. Finally, this should also go without saying, but since it apparently doesn’t: Believe me, the person who is annoying you so much by thinking about the art? They have already considered your revolutionary “just enjoy it” strategy, because it is not actually revolutionary at all. It is the default state for most of humanity.

So when you go out of your way to suggest that people should be thinking less — that not using one’s capacity for reason is an admirable position to take, and one that should be actively advocated — you are not saying anything particularly intelligent. And unless you live on a parallel version of Earth where too manypeople are thinking too deeply and critically about the world around them and what’s going on in their own heads, you’re not helping anything; on the contrary, you’re acting as an advocate for entropy.

And most annoyingly of all, you’re contributing to the fucking conversation yourselves when you make your stupid, stupid comments. You are basically saying, “I think people shouldn’t think so much and share their thoughts, that’s my thought that I have to share.” If you really think people should just enjoy the movie without thinking about it, then why the fuck did you (1) click on the post in the first place, and (2) bother to leave a comment? If it bugs you so much, GO WATCH A GODDAMN FUNNY CAT VIDEO

However about a year ago I got hip to a few trending topics for people working in the film and television post-production world: #editingandpost and #postproduction. These quickly proved to be useful tools in relation to my day gig as an editor at a visual effects company. As I started to enter into initial production (the phase I am calling my gathering of interview material) I decided to not only set up this site/blog, but also use Twitter as a means to spread awareness. Through this I started to engage other people on Twitter who post on social justice issues, especially those pertaining to #racism.

It was through this medium that I met Jamaal Ra’Shon Bell from the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. He invited me to be a guest contributor for Race-Talk.org, a new online magazine/blog which aims to “revolutionize thought, communication and activism related to race and equality.” It is very new, having officially launched just this past week, but already has a swath of great articles that I encourage you to go read… NOW!

I am honoured and feel privileged to be offered an opportunity to contribute to such a project.

Don’t be passive. Go tell McDonald’s what you think of this ignorance.

UPDATE (9/12/09): I have asked McDonald’s UK corporate office to comment on the policy outlined in the above notice. I’ll post their response when/if they issue one.

UPDATE (9/13/09): I’m starting to wonder if this is actually a clever hoax. First, there is no date on the document. Second, is a the use of the word “decent” when they really mean “descent”. Possibly just a typo, either way it is worth noting.

So my attempt to create the page has failed three times now. After each failure, I followed the “Customer Support team” link because I did, in fact, believe that they were in error to automatically bar my efforts to create a legitimate Page to promote a legitimate film. Twice before this have I filled out their little form, which includes little space for comment. I never heard from the Facebook support team before, and I seriously doubt I will this time.

You may be thinking, “if the word ’slavery’ is causing the issue, why not shorten the Page title to just ‘A Past, Denied’?” It’s a simple and fair question to ask. My answer is also fair and simple: I shouldn’t have to.

Whatever Facebook’s issue is with the title of my film, they should speak up and say what it is.

Brandon Huntley

Last week the story emerged that a white man from South Africa was granted refugee status by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board. The claimant is Brandon Huntley, a 31 year-old former carnival worker who now lives in Ottawa. Huntly alleges that “whites are targeted by black criminals in South Africa and that the government does nothing to protect them.” He said he was “attacked six or seven times by black South Africans and that those beatings left him with scars on his stomach, right eye, right side of the body and hands.”

William Davis, the chair of the tribunal—which operates independently at an arm’s length from the federal government—says that he believes Huntley would “stand out like a ’sore thumb’ due to his colour in any part of (South Africa)” and that he finds “the claimant was a victim because of his race (white South African) rather than a victim of criminality.” The African National Congress, the current majority party in the South African government, has denounced the ruling as a “racist move.”

I had been holding off on commenting on the situation because I don’t really know enough about the situation in South Africa to make a competent, informed comment and wanted to wait until some other South African citizens (white and black) weighed in to give their perspectives on life in SA and the claims made by Brandon Huntley. The general consensus among the Tweets, blogs and news interviews is that Hurley’s claims are nothing more than race baiting rubbish. To wit:

If white and black South Africans can share prison cells without us hearing reports that whites are being attacked because of their colour, then what makes this guy think he is being targeted because of his skin colour? – Mathapelo Mgodini, 24

One thing aside from the racial issue is that Huntley was in Canada illegally for more than a year before he made his refugee claim. That alone makes the veracity of his claim of persecution a bit suspect in my mind. If he truly felt that persecuted, wouldn’t he have made his claim as soon as he hit Canadian soil?

Invoking the Black “Boogieman”

There is no shortage of incidences where white “victims” have made false allegations against black men (some of which are made up). In the US media, the generic African-American male is the standard go-to fall guy.

Bonnie Sweeten

Take the recent case of Bonnie Sweeten: a 38-year-old white paralegal from Feasterville, a town north-east of Philadelphia, who claimed she and her 9-year-old daughter Julia had been kidnapped by two black men. 100% of the story was a fabrication. A few hours after making her cell phone calls to 9-1-1, claiming she was locked in the trunk of a Cadillac, both were captured on security cameras at Philadelphia International Airport en route to Florida (where she was later arrested). Sweeten was apparently under investigation for stealing $300,000 (USD) from her former employer, an attorney in suburban Philadelphia.

Ashley Todd

Then there is Ashley Todd, a 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas. While working as a McCain-Palin campaign volunteer, Todd cooked up a politically motivated (not to mention racist) hoax about being robbed by a 6-foot black man, pinned to the ground and having the letter “B” (for Barack) scratched on her face with a knife. The fact that the “B” was backwards was a dead give-away and she soon admitted to making the entire ordeal up.

Charles Stuart of Boston shot and killed his wife, blamed a fictitious black man. Susan Smith drowned her kids, blamed a fictitious black man. The list goes on.

The generic African-American male is the default red herring when someone wants to redirect attention from their own mischief. What Brandon Huntley  is doing here is the moral equivalent: he is invoking the specter of the Black Boogieman in the form of a nation. It is a cynical ploy to exploit the misconceptions (at best) or racial bias (at worst) of the members of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board’s tribunal. The really sad thing about this is that it appears to have worked! But then again, perhaps not.

On Thursday, September 3, the Canadian federal government said that they will challenge the ruling in the Federal Court. What good this will do is uncertain. No new evidence will be presented. All that will go before the court is what evidence was presented in the initial tribunal, which means additional facts and context will not be introduced. Is anyone else feeling skeptical?

No one is going to claim that South Africa is without problems. It certainly has issues with violence and crime, but as the South African Institute of Race Relations says, “the vast majority of victims of crime are black.” Furthermore, they find “no evidence that there is a general pattern of racial attacks” where violent crime is concerned. White South Africans are speaking out saying that Huntly’s allegations are false and baseless. Clearly, I’m not the only one that smells a rat.

A History Lesson, Forgotten

The previous examples of race baiting are occurrences within recent history; one more example, from the 1930’s, demands to be brought up.

Scottsboro Boys and Samuel Leibowitz, 1932

1931 Scottsboro, Alabama: nine African-American boys (ages ranging 12-19) were falsely accused of raping two white women. Eight of the nine were convicted and sentenced to death by electrocution, their sentences later commuted by the Supreme Court. The dire lessons of the case of the Scottsboro Boys is obviously lost on those who would callously engage in race baiting, but the injustice and consequences should be remembered by the judicial system when it comes to dealing with those who would so easily perpetrate it.

When we hear stories about it in the media, it is usually surrounding the issues of women suffering eating disorders vis-a-vis the daily bombardment of images and messages in the media and popular culture espousing a certain aesthetic standard for women. The message they receive is that “beauty looks like this; and if you don’t look like this, then you are not beautiful.”

North American culture being predominantly white-oriented, the stories we hear in the media are typically about young white women who believe they are overweight, that their breasts are too small, that their lips are too thin, etc. This distorted self view is so deeply ingrained that it drives them to obsessively work to alter (or “correct”) their appearance, sometimes putting their health at risk.

There is another dimension to the issue that often does not come up in mainstream discussion, and that is race. This heartbreaking—if not eye opening, at the very least—montage popped up on my radar today by way of Twitter thanks to Kwame Zulu Shabazz and his blog, Thoughts of a Ghetto Intellectual, where he brings up yet another often overlooked dimension.

For a great read on the subject of internalized racism, head on over to Alas, a blog to read Karynthia’s post. If you have any personal stories on the subject of internalized racism, please share in the comments below!

Two things all three of these pieces have in common are 1) that emphasis is paid more to the shoddy attention to detail in the creation of the ad (using an Apple MacBook, mediocre Photoshopping) rather than racist implications; and 2) they all missed a very important detail about the black man’s hand.

I’ve already gone over the racism implied by the action of replacing the black man’s head with that of a white man, so I’ll focus on what no one else has: the hand. The same statement keeps coming up all over the place, basically that “they forgot to Photoshop out the black guy’s hand!” But did they? Take a look again…

Look closer.

His hand has been visibly (and may I say, quite obviously) lightened from about the wrist up. There is still a part of the man’s arm sticking out of the sleeve that indicates his true complexion. The hand has been lightened in both versions.

Don't let the MacBook, wrong lighting and mediocre compositing job distract you. The real story is still the racist implication.

Thanks to Bill from Attention 101 for the YouTube link.