An internet meme has been building around the blockbuster movie Avatar, starting with the countless reviews and critics pointing out the striking plot similarities to Disney’s 1998 animated feature Pocahontas. By now there are literally dozens of re-cut trailers online making the comparison but beyond just pointing out the parallels, these mashups also demonstrate how prevalent the racist “Mighty Whitey” trope really is in Hollywood.

First up is Randy Szuch’s version which takes the audio from the official Avatar trailer and replaces the visuals with footage from Disney’s Pocahontas, amazing it works perfectly.

Next we have Dan Oles’s take which does the opposite and uses the audio from the Pocahontas trailer juxtaposed with footage from Avatar.

Those are two of our favorites but you can also check out many similar trailer mashup on youtube (and another one) as well as a Disney song version and a side by side comparison. There is even a Dances with Wolves mashup. And let’s not forget the inspired revised summery of Pocahontas with the names and locations crossed out and replaced with those from Avatar by Matt Batemen posted shortly after James Cameron’s film was released.

UPDATE: Josh commented and brought to our attention a remix that combines the Avatar trailer and footage from the animated film Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. There are dozens more on youtube mashing these two films together.

If you know of other Avatar mashups please post them in the comments.

Category: movie trailer
Topic Tags: disney, environment, hollywood, race, violence

A political mash-up created by cutting together clips from various well known Disney animated features to illustrate the deeply embedded racism in those films. This is an example of fair use remix in a more educational video style.

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Category: educational
Topic Tags: disney, racism

An enlightening mash-up video project on the portrayal of masculinity in Disney animated movies by Sanjay Newton that appropriates footage from those films to illustrate narrated audio criticisms on the issue. This mash-up would fall into the category of educational remix so it has a very different feel than many of the other videos posted on this blog so far.

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Category: educational
Topic Tags: disney, gender, sexism

A brilliant mash-up describing copy right law and fair use principles made entirely from appropriated animated Disney movies.

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Category: short film
Topic Tags: copyright, disney, fair use

A remix by video and sound collage group Negativland using, among other things, Disney’s The Little Mermaid. The audio track was cut by Negativland as an audio document of their problems with copyright/trademark issues surrounding their “U2″ album.

Category: short film
Topic Tags: copyright, disney, negativland