The Idea of Orientalism Portrayed in James Cameron’s Avatar
Abstract
In brief, this study discusses about the representation of orientalism idea which is portrayed in the film Avatar. The film tells about the conflict between human and native people in Planet Pandora, where human exploits the land and oppresses the native. This study explores in what way the idea of orientalism is represented and how both narrative and non-narrative aspects of the film helped in delivering that representation.
Indeed, to explore the focus of analysis, the study will be completed by applying orientalism criticism proposed by Edward Said. Thereby, this research will be a qualitative research where the data is taken from the film Avatar, library…show more content… This review also supports the idea of orientalism since being white man wan an idea and reality which involved a reasoned position towards both the white and non-white world. Said further suggests that being a White Man, in short, was a very concrete manner of being in the world, a way of taking hold of reality, language, and thought (226).
However, Avatar is the new film production which contains the idea of orientalism. This film represents the story in a more advanced technology. Also, during the process of this research, there is no publication of other researches which is using this film and the idea of orientalism as their main subject. Thus, Avatar is worth to be analyzed in this study.
From the previous explanation about the issue which will be analyzed, this study will mainly focuses in analyzing how the idea of orientalism represented in the movie through the depiction of the human and the native relation and also how the narrative and non-narrative aspects of the film build that idea. Orientalism by Edward Said is believed to be the most appropriate theory approach of the study. The theory of narrative and non-narrative of film also will be used in this study since the subject of this study is a film, thus the analysis cannot just rely on the story or narrative of the film, but also the non-narrative aspect which plays the same important role in shaping the film.
The Idea of Orientalism Represented in Avatar
The analysis will be focuses on
