Kathia Woods, a Rotten Tomatoes film critic, faced fierce backlash on Twitter after claiming the “Avatar” sequel was guilty of “cultural appropriation” of “people of color.” Woods’ comments sparked a wave of criticism from social media users, who challenged her assertion.
Writer Aja Woods called out James Cameron’s upcoming “Avatar: The Way of Water” for casting white actors to play the fictional native alien race of the Na’vi.
“At some point we gotta talk about the cultural appropriation of Avatar and white actors are cos playing (sic) as poc [people of color],” Woods tweeted
“It’s just a mess and so not necessary & no amount of visual effects/GCI is gonna erase that,” she added. “Bad Lace fronts/ Dry synthetic braids. Jesus fix it.”
The Film and TV critic was heavily criticized after equating the blue aliens in a fictional film to “people of color.” This prompted the critic to lock her Twitter account and make it private; however, the remarks had already been picked up by a number of media outlets before responses to her account were restricted.
“James Cameron didn’t even try to find native blue people to play these roles smh,” one reporter jokingly tweeted, along with a link to Woods’s tweet.
Another user posted this in response.
“When you’re so woke you start grouping made up aliens in with actual people of color,” another writer wrote. “Like this is so offensive, what the heck.”
“At some point we gotta talk about how wokeness and people like Kathia Woods are ruining the entertainment industry with takes like this,” one person wrote. “People so bitter they cannot enjoy a fantasy film and it’s (sic) message. Americans and their rabid race politics infecting the western world.”
“Come on you must know this is ridiculous, right? It’s a sci-fi movie,” a user said. “We know the inspiration behind it, but it doesn’t represent them. These are supposed to be blue aliens; nothing more, nothing less.”