Blue Skin Does Not Replace People of Color

I watched the movie, Avatar, last week and I must say I was only slightly impressed. Yes, the movie has great special effects, but for a movie that is filled with blue people, it sorely lacks colored people. In fact, there is not one person of color in the whole, very long, movie. To me, the movie's plot seemed insulting without a single person of color involved. The Na'vi people seemed a lot like the stories about Native Americans and yet the connection was never made. You see this a lot in science fiction-that science fiction writers can dream up new worlds, but they often cannot dream up a world that is without the patriarchy, racism, and homophobia. If you are going to dream up a new world, why not go all the way and dream of a new way of life also? Since the Na'vi are so obviously based upon Native Americans, I cannot say that the writer of Avatar was very original at all. Perhaps James Cameron thought that if the movie was filled with blue people, then there was no need to include brown, yellow, or red ones, but he would be wrong. Thinking that having blue aliens in a movie replaces people of color is at the very least, negatively racially motivated. Please, if you ever write science fiction, be more creative than the people who wrote Avatar!