Images Matter

If the right-wing complaints against Avatar are true, that the film makes an explicit statement against colonial militarism and wanton, conspicuous consumption of natural resources while attempting to violently dominate a native culture, then the implicit statement made within the film– that the native culture is best served by a white military man who not only speaks for the culture but becomes its de facto saviour and is rewarded for such with the sexual favors of it’s first daughter–belies a problematic left-wing position that seems to be unaware of its own xenophobia which keeps “the other” at an objectified and safe distance through an unmistakable process of exoticization. However, I must recuse myself from commenting further on the above, owing to my complete absorption during the film with my own post-colonialist desire to cop a peek at the barely and yet tantalizingly obscured and exoticized “nipples of color”.

Avatar - Official Trailer

Are the flight attendants stationed in the front of the aircraft more attractive than the ones in the back?

Is the aircraft choreographed the way one might imagine a stage would be in a corporate “theater in the cylinder”, with the physically gorgeous actors performing in what would be considered “downstage”, visible to the highest paying spectators and embodying the corporate narrative with allure, while the Plain Jane with unfortunate skin slums it back in the “cheap seats” and is watched by significantly less spectators secondary to a seating design that mimicks the forward facing array found in classrooms, churches, and courtrooms where there is always a singular performer occupying a central locus of agency?

If so, the person in power is at the head of the class, seated on the bench, or behind the altar, displaying her body like a seductively kinetic corporate pamphlet; and she’s an airborne knockout available only by upgrading to first class.