Comprendo?

It is easy to see America’s forceful nature in the movie Avatar. We try to dominate and “fix” everything that isn’t the same as us because the “American Way” is the right way. We killed and conquered to get our land here, so why not do the same on a foreign planet? Avatar shows us, as Americans, that we are not as dominant as we would like to believe; and that our ways are not always the right ways.

I chose to analyze the one part of this film that really pissed me off. It was near the beginning of Avatar when Parker was talking about how we would attain the desired material for our own selfish desires. He talked about how we were building the natives schools and roads and teaching them English and still they didn’t want anything from us. We were trying to assimilate their culture into being more like ours because being in touch with nature is not civilized. After he finished talking about his goal and how to attain it he said to Grace “Comprendo?” as a question. This again shows how ignorant so many Americans are. Even taking one day of an intro to Spanish class you would know that that is not how you would ask someone if they understand something; you would say Comprendes? You need to conjugate the verb, by saying that he was asking if he himself understood what he was saying which makes him look like even more ignorant and oblivious to anything other than him. So many people from other countries (and even a few natives from Pandora) take the time to learn English and it’s not uncommon for people to be bi-or trilingual; yet we as Americans hardly take the time or effort to learn foreign languages because we just assume that everyone else will have already learned ours.

Caitlyn Beck