Episode 200 - Summer Blockbusters: Avatar

To wrap up our inaugural Summer Blockbuster series, Amber leads us on a mission to Pandora with Avatar (2009). Rather than exploration of the culture of the indigenous Na’vi population (or maybe in addition to), we’ll examine some of the philosophical underpinnings of the franchise and discuss the book that completely changed Amber's intellectual trajectory.

Links

• “Avatar” Advertising Invades “Bones” Episode “The Gamer in the Grease” (Wall Street Journal)

• Do You Speak Na'vi? Giving Voice To 'Avatar' Aliens (NPR)

• An interview with Paul Frommer, Alien Language Creator for Avatar (Unidentified Sound Object)

• Some highlights of Na’vi (University of Pennsylvania Language Log)

• Avatar: an all-purpose allegory (Foreign Policy)

• Avatar (Rotten Tomatoes)

• Avatar: A Marxist Saga on the Far Distant Planet (Communication, Capitalism, and Critique)

• Orientalism (via Bookshop.org)

• An Introduction to Edward Said, Orientalism, and Postcolonial Literary Studies (Amardeep Singh)

• Orientalism and power: When will we stop stereotyping people? (BBC Ideas, via YouTube)

• Watching Avatar through a Postcolonial and Orientalist Lens (via Academia.edu)

• Jairo Funez on Twitter

• Edward Said - Framed: The Politics of Stereotypes in News (Al Jazeera English, via YouTube)
  

Image: The “uh oh, Orientalism, time to call Edward Saïd” meme mentioned in this episode.