Avatar: The American Apology
As I’ve told you before, I don’t get to the movies very often, and less so than ever lately (I did get to take the kids to “Toy Story 3,” or as I like to think of it, “Schindler’s Toy Story”). As such, I only got around to seeing “Avatar,” late 2009’s super-movie, just now.
First thought, continually, as the rapacious mining conglomerate destroyed the planet’s wondrous ecosystem: Damn BP guys, they’re not satisfied to screw up our planet, they have to go a thousand light years away and bleep up another one.
Second thought, also continually: I saw this picture 20 years ago, only that time it was called “Dances with Wolves” and the oppressed group was the Sioux, not blue cartoon zebra-cats.
Third thought, simultaneous with the second thought: I didn’t like “Dances with Wolves” any better than I like “Avatar.” And yet, the former film was more affecting, because it starred actual people as opposed to escapees from video game cut-scenes. From “Snow White” to Jar-Jar Binks to “Avatar,” there’s just something about animating images of human beings that doesn’t quite work.
More than any aesthetic complaint, what bothered me about the picture was that we have to dress up what is essentially a story out of American history as science fiction to get anyone to pay attention. In “Avatar,” natives are moved off their land. In 1831, far more acculturated Indian groups were punted out of the South because we coveted their land. In Georgia their land was thought to hold gold, and suddenly the Cherokee, who were doing their best to assimilate, found themselves living in Oklahoma. The human toll, not just for the Cherokee but for all the relocated tribes of the time, was real, felt not in pixels but in blood. The Trail of Tears is not an event that is likely to make your standard Texas history text book, nor perhaps the massacre at Wounded Knee, but both are a real and important part of who we are as Americans, and are of a piece with other American initiatives, from sea to shining sea and from the Philippines to Iraq to, in a very different way, the lax supervision of the oil companies that led to the environmental and economic disaster in the Gulf. If there is one great lesson to American history, is that freedom can be another word for “I don’t give a damn because I don’t have to.” And yes, I’m paraphrasing Janis Joplin/Kris Kristofferson, but what the heck, it fits. Americans: we don’t think things through, letting all kinds of crazy dogmas, from Manifest Destiny to Preemptive War override our thinking.
It would help to know this, help to understand our history, but you have to know about it to get it, not have it spoon-fed to you as science-fiction pablum. And hey, let’s be honest about one other thing: the Native Americans were human beings. In our culture, they’ve been alternately been depicted as bloodthirsty savages and nature’s gentle priests. They were neither. They were just people, different at different times and different places, good and bad, warlike and peaceful, and most likely, just like the rest of us the world over, largely populated by disinterested people who just want to be left alone to live their lives in peace but hardly ever get what they want.
Oh, and they were in 3-D, though not blue or stripey or eight feet tall. I guess I should be grateful that this story of our civilization got some play, but I’d rather see that huge silver canvas lavished on the real story, one that could still make you say, “Oooh,” but also cry. And think.
July 3rd, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Glad to hear the good news about your Dad, Steven.
I admire this post. It makes a lot of sense. I’d quibble with one point. Steven wrote, “In 1831, far more acculturated Indian groups were punted out of the South because we coveted their land.”
I don’t buy the word “we”. I wasn’t there. I didn’t commit those acts. Nor did my ancestors. Even if they had done so, I don’t believe that guilt moves from generation to generation. Whatever worldly goods I have in this country came from discipline and work by my parents and by my wife and myself, not from robbing Native Americans.
July 6th, 2010 at 11:50 am
It is not too oftent hat I disagree with David in Cal, but this is one.
I do feel that Stephen gave as even-handed assessment as he is capable, but that is as far as I can go with a compliment. The post is still replete with haughty and unsubstantiated assertions based upon a bent history.
He takes a swipe at Texas without a shred of knowledge (I suspect) regarding what is actually in the new standards. He pre-judged them through the lense of the Progressive echo chamber to which he belongs. Be honest Stephen, have you read the standards?
From those standards:
“G) analyze federal and state Indian policies and the reasons for the removal and resettlement of Cherokee Indians during the Jacksonian era, including the Indian Removal Act, Worcester v. Georgia, and the Trail of Tears.”
So yes, the Trail of Tears will still be taught in Texas. For heaven’s sake, Stephen, do you even have a clue? What is so bad about inserting the FACTS that we are not a democracy, that McCarthey’s fear of communist infiltration was well-founded despite what you think about his tactics, and that FDR relied on teachings of a Socialist “economist?” What scares you so much about going back to teaching the DoI, the US Constitution, and the Federalist papers other than the hopelessness of the Progressive agenda if Americans knew what was in them?
Why do Progressives have to hide behind faux history instead of debating in the light of day?
No country has held such power and wielded it more responsibly, yet we are under the constant barrage of absolutely insane criticisms that we are somehow the festering tumor on the world’s behind. There is much for this country to be ashamed of but many times more reasons to be proud.
There is not a country/culture/ethnic group that has not enslaved and been enslaved, been the perpetrator of murder and been the victim, invaded or been invaded. None of these make a country noble or wicked. The deciding factor in that equation is the willingness and ability to learn from these successes and failures in a march towards equality and freedom.
In that regard, very few if any country/culture can even be mentioned in the same conversation.
July 6th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Sorry David, but this same argument is often used to blame black Americans for continuing to be poor. Studies have shown (my source is the The Atlantic, though it was a few years ago, so I don’t have a link) that poor groups of people generally stay poor precisely because their ancestors were poor. Wealthier families pass on a foundation of something like $20-30,000 on average to their children, whether by paying for college, or a car, or a house, or wedding presents. That initial cushion makes all the difference over the course of a lifetime. Now I don’t know that you’re white, David, and in any case what you say might be true in your particular case. In general, though, white Americans’ “worldy goods” are in some sense the dividends of their ancestors’ robbery of Native Americans, Africans, Chinese, and, more recently, Latinos. It’s not a level playing field.
It’s not a question of guilt. It’s a question of fairness.
PS–I loved Avatar as a movie. I didn’t bother to think deeply about the plot, though–it’s James Cameron, a bad script it to be expected.
July 6th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Mike,
Your findings from a “study” you cannot cite makes little logical sense. Many groups (some white, some not), have immigrated to this country with as little or less generational wealth as the groups you have mentioned and prospered greatly, many in the last couple of generations.
Tell the Irish, Italians, Jews, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Koreans, and Bosnians that they cannot succeed in this country because of a lack of generational wealth. And I failed to mention Mexicans, who come into this country illegally by the truckload despite having none of the generational wealth you imply is necessary for success.
And two, questions:
1) Could you define “fairness” in relation to, how would you make it fair?
2) Does fairness have an expiration date?
July 8th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
Mike K — studies looking at so-called groups of people are bogus. People are individual human beings, not someone else’s arbitrarily defined groups.
Studies of actual individual persons show that most of us experience substantial changes in economic circumstances durinng our lifetime, both upward and downward.
July 21st, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Studies looking at groups of people are called statistics.
I don’t disagree about “changes in economic circumstances”–my argument is that we start from different baselines in an identifiable way.
July 21st, 2010 at 2:54 pm
CNR, I think the spamfighter ate my earlier reply. Short version: allow me to turn the question around: what would your statute of limitations for fairness be?
July 23rd, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Well, I asked first but will respond anyway.
“Fairness” should likely be defined by what the law has historically limited it to, to those directly impacted by an action.
I cannot sue someone who wronged my great-great grandfather 120 years ago. Likewise, I cannot be sued for something my great-great grandfather had done.
The concept of legacy damages is ridiculous. I am approximately half Polish, a people that was systematically abused over many centuries by Russians, Germans, and even Mongols. Do I file the lawsuit in The Hague or Ulan Bator?
I am part Irish. Do I get recompense from London, Rome, and any decendent of a store owner in America with an “Irish Need Not Apply” sign in the window?
I am also part Native-American. Do I receive funds from the American government, European countries, or all of the above? Do I sue myself as well because there were Scotch-Irish pushing Native-Americans out of Appalachia?
Now, I acknowledge that you have not explicitly called for damages, but you certainly seem to imply it.
ALL people belong to cultures, nations, races that have both perpetrated awful crimes and been the victims. Yet, I have heard of no Poles asking Mongolia for compensation or using it as an excuse for personal failure.
As I stated prior, there are many people of humble beginnings from all over the world that come here and prosper. They do this despite looking different, speaking different languages, having little pre-knowledge of our culture, and having absolutely no generational wealth.