It’s racist to say ‘Avatar’ is racist

The theory that billion-dollar blockbuster “Avatar” is racist has quickly spread. Whether this film is racist is up to opinion, but in reality people looking for racism will see it anywhere. If you look hard enough, you’ll find it anywhere. You could probably find it in a faxless payday loans application if you look hard enough. People will see whatever they want to see.

I don’t think James Cameron or the writers of “Avatar” intended to be racist. The racism argument goes, as far as I can tell, something like this: Because the hero is white and he ends up helping and leading people of a different, non-white, race, “Avatar” is racist. Many people call “Avatar” a “white male savior” movie.

Argument: ‘Avatar’ is not racist

So, a white guy plays the main character, the protagonist, the “hero.” Is that to infer that every movie with a white protagonist cast in the lead is racist? Some have even said it is sexist because the main character is a man.

The character Princess Neytiri, could also be argued as being a hero, or heroine. She’s an alien in the film, and by virtue of the adjective “she,” a female. I’m not giving away the plot, but she isn’t exactly the ingénue in complete distress.

So who’s actually the racist? ‘Avatar’ or the audience?

Part of the argument is that the actors cast as blue people are all of color in real life. However, if the casting directors told me that they simply chose the best people for the parts, I’d believe them.

Though the protagonist is white, the honkies in ‘Avatar’ are all sort of bad. The blue aliens are peaceful and nature-loving, and the white guys are destructive and evil. That would make it reverse racist, but that’s a bit of a leap as well.

‘Avatar’ sales reach the sky

We all saw it coming, but it’s still impressive that it happened so quickly. Only six weeks after release, “Avatar” is now the highest grossing film ever. It took “Titanic” 10 months to reach that spot. But hey, James Cameron is still the money-makingest director pretty much of all time, so he isn’t going to be needing same day payday loans any time soon,

As of yesterday,  “Avatar” had made $ 1.86 billion, compared with “Titanic’s” $ 1.84 billion all told. At the moment, “Avatar” still is making almost $ 2 million a day on weekends, so it still has time to add to it’s lead.

Revisionist history

Though “Avatar”is easily in the position of making the most money, the not-so-impressive part is that there is simply more money to be made nowadays because of ticket prices. “Gone with the Wind” has the record for most tickets sold, and it completely blows “Avatar” out of the water.

“Gone with the Wind” sold a ridiculous 202 million tickets, while “Avatar” has only sold 76 million. Of course, the fact that “Gone with the Wind” has been around for 70 years and re-shown in theaters periodically helps pad its number quite a bit. Also, when “Gone with the Wind” came out, people didn’t have nearly the selection to choose from that we have now.

Runners-up

The third highest-grossing film after “Avatar” and “Titanic” is “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” with $ 1.12 billion. Fourth is “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” with $ 1.07 billion, and fifth is “The Dark Knight” with $ 1 billion.

There’s one more hurdle Avatar has to pass, though. Though it doesn’t hold the worldwide record for grosses, “Titanic” still holds the record in the U.S. sales, grossing about $ 600 million. “Avatar” would need to sell another $ 45 million to catch up.