POST 1 : The myth of the noble/good savage

A noble savage is a literary stock character who embodies the concept of the indigene, outsider, wild human, an "other" who has not been "corrupted" by civilization, and therefore symbolizes humanity's innate goodness. Besides appearing in many works of fiction and philosophy, the stereotype was also heavily employed in early anthropological* works.

The idea that humans are essentially good is often attributed to the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury. In his Inquiry Concerning Virtue (1699), Shaftesbury had postulated that the moral sense in humans is natural and innate and based on feelings, rather than resulting from the indoctrination of a particular religion.

In English, the phrase Noble Savage first appeared in poet John Dryden's heroic play, The Conquest of Granada (1672) :

I am as free as nature first made man,

Ere the base laws of servitude began,

When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

*Anthropology is the scientific study of humans, human behavior and societies in the past and present.

Olive Oatman was kidnapped by a tribe of Native Americans on a trip to California in 1850. She was only 14 years old. While a large part of her family was murdered, the girl and her seven-year-old sister were taken prisoner.Their became slaves and were eventually sold to a Mojave tribe. After being adopted by the chief of the tribe, they each received a blue tattoo on the bottom of the figure. During a great drought that decimated part of the tribe, Olive's little sister lost her life, leaving her alone.

After a few years, the presence of a white woman among the Mojave Indians reached the ears of the pioneers, who sent a messenger to demand the release of Olive Oatman. After intense talks, she was finally taken to Fort Yuma to reintegrate the white society. When she arrived there, Olive, who had become a young woman, asked to barter her traditional Mojave clothes, which revealed her upper body, against a more Western outfit and discovered that her brother Lorenzo, the only survivor of the Indian attack life to his family had been tirelessly searching for him.

Back among her family, the young woman who had lived with the Mojaves became a celebrity. His tattoo contributed in particular to his notoriety. If Olive claimed that it was meant to brand her like a slave, it would seem that tattoos of this type were commonplace in the Mojave. The life of the young woman inspired a book about her existence among the Indians. Became a bestseller, this book funded the studies of Olive and his brother Lorenzo. The young woman even agreed to participate in conferences during which she recounted her five years in the Amerindian tribe.

Avatar seems to stand out from the mass of Hollywood blockbusters. Its explicitly antimilitarist, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist message is indeed rare in productions of this scale. In the war between the Na'vis and the Terrans, the film is always positioned on the side of the first, who only defend themselves against the imperialist forces seeking to appropriate their planet and its resources. The collusion between military power and capitalist is clearly denounced, and all the characters choosing to serve this camp to the end are portrayed without any concession. As many critics have already noted, the film refers to many milestones of the past and present imperialist of the West in general and of the United States in particular (American Indian genocide, colonization and neo-colonialism , Vietnam War, Iraq War, etc.) by placing themselves on the side of the oppressed peoples and not the oppressors. A film that seems rather progressive from a political point of view.