Sale 'Avatar 2' and feminism
Although we continue to buy clothes, we know that large textile companies use dialectics to stimulate the need for people to buy. They use a lot of traps, especially on sales. It is usual that in a perch of twenty perches a single shirt is halfway in price and on the store portal put “50% discount shirts!” in capital letters. They don't lie, but that one shirt will cost you the legitimacy to change the idiosyncrasy of all trade.
I started thinking about all this after seeing Avatar 2 movies. As I saw the film in a large shopping center (in 3D hypertrophic format) and in many shop windows to the car park I could see discounts in clothing stores.
Before going to the movies, I read in a magazine that Avatar 2 was a feminist movie. In James Cameron’s words “because a pregnant woman can see herself going to war”, and she was right at that point, it is true that a Na’vi woman struggles while she is pregnant, but taking this scene away, Pandora’s women show different behaviors, entrenched on our planet long ago: the struggle between women, the expression of emotions and the imposition of concrete gender roles, among others.
In the film, a family from the Na’vi forest must abandon their village when soldiers try to end their father. They ask for help from Pandora and go to other Na’vitar who live on the reef. The queen of Na’vitar from Arrecife, a pregnant woman who goes to war later, faces the Na’vien from the forest for help and refuses to accept them at home. The king asks him, but he does not. This attitude puts Queen Na´vi of the forest on fire and between these two women there is a game of hatred while their husbands try to bring peace.
Avatar 2 is, to a large extent, a clear example of the deployment of symbolic violence, as millions of people will receive such messages.
Men, on the contrary, act in moderation and have clear objectives. Those who know how to steer over obstacles are male characters who ultimately move the entire plot of the film. The protagonist, the king of the forest Na’vien, has in mind a plan to eliminate the problems of his family, and as the accidents happen his wife asks him again and again what the next step is.
The second part of the film also presents the story of the children of the protagonist couple of the Na’vitar forest. They're in adolescence and they're trying to build their identity. The script focuses on Na’vi, a child of the forest, who suffers the contempt of his father and his people and how he faces all this. In this process he fights with the young people of the Na’vi reef, uses weapons and maintains risky behaviors, such as going from reef to hunting with other boys. Meanwhile, her sister remains in the background developing spirituality, seeking contact with nature, silently and alone.
Avatar 2 is a film dotted with gender stereotypes, but there is one that structures the whole plot. There is a phrase that says the protagonist, both at the beginning and at the end, and that is the initiator of all the events of the film: “A father protects his family, that makes sense.”
Avatar 2 is, to a large extent, a clear example of the deployment of symbolic violence, as millions of people will receive such messages. Symbolic violence is, let us say, the reality of a dominant system, in which, using various resources (cultural production, for example), imposes upon each sector of society a series of values, obligations, rights and concrete ways of being, so that they remain crushed but without perceiving them. That is, in all films, in all books, in all series, women show concrete behaviors, creating a “normality”.
I left behind the stores that were on sale circling all these ideas and went to the car. When I closed the door, I experienced the effect of landscapes, sounds and lisérical colors enjoyed in 3D and suddenly I remembered the novel Gatopardo and I stuck a read phrase: We voted che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna tutche to cambi, “everything has to change if we want to keep things as they are.”
Since then, I have not been able to get the phrase out of my head.
Endika Biota Piñeiro
Bidali zure iritzi artikuluak iritzia@argia.eus helbide elektronikora
ARGIAk ez du zertan bat etorri artikuluen edukiarekin. Idatzien gehienezko luzera 4.500 karakterekoa da (espazioak barne). Idazkera aldetik gutxieneko zuzentasun bat beharrezkoa da: batetik, ARGIAk ezin du hartu zuzenketa sakona egiteko lanik; bestetik, egitekotan edukia nahi gabe aldatzeko arriskua dago. ARGIAk azaleko zuzenketak edo moldaketak egingo dizkie artikuluei, behar izanez gero.
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