Adventures in Cultural Competence

splinterend:

As some of you may know, Paramount commissioned (in)famous director M. Night Shyamalan to adapt the popular Nickelodian series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” into a movie trilogy. The TV series revolves a fantasical, Hayao Miyazaki-inspired universe that deals with individuals capable of controlling and manipulating (aka “bending”) one or several of the earth’s elements – Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire – and how the main protagonist, Aang, the Last Airbender, is destined to bring back balance when the Fire nation’s imperialistic and war-mongering desires get out of hand. The movie is slated for release July 1st this year, and its production has led to a lot of controversy specifically with regards to its casting. 

Though I’m not a particular fan of the show (nor do I dislike it) and am simply neutral overall, I feel that it is necessary to state for several reasons why I will not support this movie for professional, philosophical and personal reasons. 

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xjustsmokemycigaretteandhush:

another excerpt from disturbing the universe:

00:19:49    Emily: I never knew whether or not to believe his war stories, but there was one about a japanese soldier that always resonated for me.
00:19:58    Weinglass: Out of a damaged building, a young japanese soldier charged at bill and the bayonet went through bill’s arm and the sergeant who was standing next to bill drew his gun and shot the young japanese soldier dead.
00:20:19    And, months later, bill was assigned to japan and he looked up the address of this young soldier and he went to visit his mother and father and told them that their son had died as a hero and described what had happened.
00:20:40    Emily: Dad was face-to-face with another young man, who died so he could live.
00:20:50    He never supported another war, AND, BY THE LATE 1960s, He was representing activists protesting the war in vietnam.

And:

00:17:50    Dad taught us that all white people are racist and to question prejudice in ourselves and others.

00:29:21    Hampton: And I just want to tell you that the chairman of the black panther party is going to be ungagged and they’re going to have to take those chains off of him, but they’re only going to have to do that if there’s enough organization — Emily: Four weeks later, black panther leader fred hampton was shot to death in his bed by the chicago police.
00:29:43    And dad realized that the government would stop at nothing to destroy people it viewed as its enemy.
00:29:53    Man: That was completely a setup by the fbi, and I found out later.
00:29:59    An agent had confessed to mewho was supervisor of that squad in chicago,said that the fbi had set up the policefor the raid, hoping that the police would kill maybe a couple of dozen panthers.
00:30:20    Kunstler: I killed him, I killed him.
00:30:23    And when I say “i,” I mean all the white people in the united states killed fred hampton, just as we’ve killed every black man, because we’ve stood by, racists, all of us, and watched a society continue a slavery that was supposed to have died a hundred years ago.
00:30:41    In particular, he was killed by the system that is resisting every voice of dissent and every wind of change.

Lastly:

01:18:10    Emily: I remember my father telling us that all white people are racist, including me and sarah, but I didn’t understand what he meant at the time.
01:18:23    He meant that we are blind to the depth of our own prejudice and that, as long as there is prejudice, there can be no such thing as a fair trial.
01:18:35    And that’s the terrible myth of organized society, that everything that’s done through the established system is legal.
01:18:44    And that word has a powerful psychological impact.
01:18:48    It makes people believe that there is an order to life and an order to a system, and that a person that goes through this order and is convicted has gotten all that is due him, and therefore society can turn its conscience off and look to other things and other times.
01:19:14    And that’s the terrible thing about these past trials, is that they have this aura of legitimacy, this aura of legality.
01:19:25    I suspect that better men than the world has known, and more of them, have gone to their deaths through a legal system than through all the illegalities in the history of man.
01:19:42    Six million people in europe during the third reich?
01:19:47    Legal.
01:19:49    Sacco-vanzetti? quite legal.
01:19:51    The haymarket defendants? legal.
01:19:54    The hundreds of rape trials throughout the south where black men were condemned to death?
01:20:05    All legal.
01:20:10    Jesus? legal.
01:20:13    Socrates? legal.
01:20:14    And that is the kaleidoscopic nature of what we live through, here and in other places, because all tyrants learn that it is far better to do this thing through some semblance of legality than to do it without that pretense.