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Themes In The Movie Avatar

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Introduction The following report is a review of the movie called Avatar which is a scientifical fiction movie (Sci-Fi). The review will look at the themes that are visible in the movie and how they relate to anthropology as a whole. The point of this report is to show how movies sometimes are not created to win awards but subliminally convey a hidden message. First, the review will look at the themes that the movie reveals, then the review will look at the conceptual structure of the movie in this part the movie will be linked to the broader debate of anthropology. Then the review will critique the movie and the last part will be the conclusion. THEMES Ethnography (Fieldwork) The movie shows the theme of ethnography which is based on fieldwork …show more content…

The general idea of Orientalism is that the West which is more civilized oppresses the East which is regarded as being in a state of barbaric because they do not know how to control themselves and also to operate the environment in which they live in, and they will not survive without the help of the West. In the movie, Orientalism is visible when the so called scientist goes to the land of the Navi and when they arrive there they take control of everything, and they also decide what is good and bad for the local people. The other thing is visible in the movie is the theory of evolutionism whereby within the features of evolutionism there is a unilinear scheme within this scheme there are three stages of social evolution which is the savagery, barbarism, and civilization. Now in this movie the scientist who study the Na’vi people have this idea that the Na’vi are not civilized they do not act as normal people which mean that the Na’vi people either are savage or barbaric according to these scientists. What is interesting in this movie is the visibility of Cultural Ecology theory, and within it, there is a feature which is known as the impact of the environment in which Barret (2013: 86) argues that "culture is shaped by the environmental conditions". This is clear in the movie because the culture of the Na’vi largely depends on their environment. But when looking at this movie with other anthropological lesnse, one can see the overall idea of cultural ecology which is more about the interaction between humans/culture with their surrounding environment. The movie is so dense with the anthropological

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