Does Blockbuster Flick "Avatar" Have a Racist Subtext?

Does the blockbuster movie "Avatar" have a racist subtext? Well, I came across an article written by Will Heaven of a U.K. Telegraph columnist and blogger, who seems to think so.

The premise of the movie is pretty simple: a white man goes and lives with the natives, or Na'vi on a faraway planet called Pandora, in this case, so that he can learn their ways and eventually become their leader and conquer their lands. Here's where this movie gets a little tricky. The Na'vi in this movie aren't your average extra-terrestrials. Besides being blue-skinned aliens, it seems an oddity that they are decked in Maasai-style necklaces and beaded jewelry, which seem to be borrowed from tribal East Africa. Their clothes appear Amerindian and their long hair looks like dreadlocks. They carry bows and poisoned arrows and their faces are painted, ready for battle. The main characters are played by four black actors -- Zoe Saldana, C. C. H. Pounder, Laz Alonso and Peter Mensah, along with Wes Studi, a Cherokee. Then, just when you think things are about to become really bad for the natives, a white man who was one of the oppressors miraculously changes sides, assimilates into the culture and saves the day. Sounds familiar? I am pretty sure you could think of several instances in history where that has happened.

Here's an excerpt from Will Heaven's column:

James Cameron has been very open about the politics behind Avatar. It’s about how “greed and imperialism tend to destroy the environment,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s a way of looking back on ourselves from this other world.”

If we look at his version of our planet, however, the view is overwhelmingly repellent. Pandora is to Cameron what Africa was to Joseph Conrad – it’s another, fictional ‘Heart of Darkness’, a place where a cruel imperial power subjects what is (perhaps unwittingly) depicted as a lesser race. Chinua Achebe, Conrad’s fiercest critic, wrote that “Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as ‘the other world,’ the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality.” Almost the exact same could be said of Avatar.

Take, for example, the relationship between the ethnic Na’vi and the animals which inhabit Pandora. Every interaction between them involves an act of quasi-consummation. The “natives” attach a spindly appendage to whatever raging animal they are trying to tame, resulting in a short struggle followed by an almost post-coital quiet. In another scene, one of the Na’vi is warned not to play with the same appendage or, he is told, “you’ll go blind.” The hint is heavy enough – it’s the same “triumphant bestiality” which Achebe criticised in Heart of Darkness. Source: Will Heaven

I took my kids to see the movie and I thought it was a great movie. It never really occurred to me to view this movie through the context of race. That's not how I want to view the movie and we shouldn't. Can't we just appreciate a movie because it is good? Why all the talk about racism? What are your thoughts on this blockbuster film? Does it have a racist subtext?