Paper long abstract:

With the incredible success of Avatar and District 9 behind us there are new questions that must be addressed: how do we assess recent media adventures celebrating conflicts between humans and 'aliens', citizens and foreigners, residents and 'illegal' residents? What do these recent cinematic adventures represent in light of our colonialist heritage and the ways in which we understand post-colonial and liberation theories in general and anthropological theory in specific? In this presentation I will analyze these two films and will present some of the more problematic aspects of these neo-colonialist enterprises and suggest possibilities how we might deconstruct them.