Blog 6

Blog #6

Avatar dichotomizes gender in many ways. There are many strong male roles in the movie. Especially in the stereotype of strong harsh military men. I know lots of men in the military who are not scary and yell and demand things like the sergeant in the movie. The film is made up of mostly all men portraying them as adventurous and curious, but the women are portrayed submissive and weak. This in turn makes the men cutters and the women non-cutters. Sigourney Weaver in an interview about the movie said that James Cameron has many “dominating female roles.” However, in watching the film Grace is the only female who actually stands her ground with the dominating male roles. I feel like Neytiri was more of a tomboy, however when the male Navi people would tell her something she would do it without question proving a often overused stereotype of housewives and the roles of women.

Jake Sully was an ex marine who was confined to a wheelchair in his human body being paralyzed from the waist down. When he was in his Avatar body, he could enjoy running and frolicking in the jungle, when he could not do that otherwise. Avatar differs from personal web pages in the sense that a web page is designed how you want it to be and can be altered. Web pages put a wall up to hide who you are from the cyber world. An Avatar has DNA mixed with yours so it makes it difficult to hide. Yes the both have a sense of personalization, but maybe you don’t want the whole world to see who you really are. They are controlled by commands, they do what they are told to do. If you are in an Avatar body and you look at a tree to climb it, the Avatar itself will not say “No, I don’t really feel like it.” Same with a personal webpage, if you click refresh will it say to you “No, I don’t think I need to”? No because you are the controller.