The dangers of "its just a film"

In my previous post I spoke of Avatar,

I was reading typical racist white comments where they said blacks are racist, while the white person themselves were being racist.

Some of the white junk comments were "its just a movie"...

Political movies are hardly ever "just a movie", while one can look too much into a movie and start seeing things that either were not the original intent of the director or were just biproducts of the actual themes, one should still look and discuss the message(s) of the movie.

Cameron clearly stated his movie was alluding to race and culture, along with other political issues.

When you pass off critcisms too lightly, you run the risk of repeating Birth of a Nation, which is the driving force as the example of what happens when people look at it as "just a movie".

The Birth of a Nation, makes heroes of the KKK...this movie would later help cause the KKK to be revived again, as the KKK we know it til the end of the 1980s (the KKK is in its 3rd incarnation as a more political party like group now, though still cross burning).

When we don't question the movie, people become dumb enough and passive enough to emulate the racist themes of the film.

Ethically bad movies have more power of people than ethically good movies.

So far whites have shown their passive racism is heightening (and frightening! with their increasing Jim Crow style racism returning to America again) with their responses by insulting the minority groups who criticize the movie. At least minorities don't criticize movies as much as Christians do.

But when you look at a movie and say "its just a movie", you dismiss potential arguments and run the risk of being easily manipulated by the racism you claim is "nonexistent" by becoming the full on racist that is causing the problems to the minorities in the first place.

In fact, now that I think about it, no movie is ever truly "just a movie"....not even non-political movies.

I mean, think about movies with alot of sex, the more we see movies about sex, the less controversy comes with it because its becoming more and more socially acceptable, something that is reflected by society...people see it, act it out, and after a little while, its no longer a big deal.

Just look at some old movies from the 30s, it could stir a controversy if they had someone young french kissing (or for that matter anyone). Nowdays people would laugh over the fact that people would make such a fuss over those kind of things.

I guess what I am saying is, do not underestimate the power of movies, ethically bad movies are notorious for having a stronghold on society, and it takes generations to fix the problem.