by Eva van Loon

Avatar: My usually tough-minded daughter cried twice. The film made Townsite parking difficult for the first time since I’ve been here and put a smile on theater-proprietress Ann Nelson’s face quite possibly never seen before. Even an old fart like me plans to see it again…seeing this film in three-D would almost be worth a trip to the Big Smoke.

Seems like one helluva movie…until you hear people playing Film Critic: “It’s racist—the Noble Savage all over again.”

“It’s just a stupid fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. It reinforces the whole white Messiah thing.”
 “Dances with Wolves in space. Another white guy has to save the natives from the bad guys.”

Wo! It may be just a movie, but it sure brings out the sneer in some people. Protest too much?

The Wolf at Twilight: This thick but easy-flowing book I received for Christmas from someone who knew me for a wolf nut but hadn’t apparently spent so much as a micro-second between its covers. There’s not a paw print in this book. It’s about a white guy, author Nerburn, who’s been exceptionally close to the “Indians” (as Americans still say), getting wisdom from a First Nations elder (the wolf). Been there; done that,I thought, unwrapping it, but it’s the thought that counts. Was I mistaken! Every morning over coffee I reached for that dratted book and two weeks later was reading as slow as possible so it wouldn’t end. One helluva book.

I was lucky to read this book and see the film so close in time. What the elder sets out before he dies is the unadorned story of what has happened in North America to the people who were living here when the Europeans came, and it’s pretty hard to take. On the one hand, I couldn’t stop reading the book; on the other, I didn’t want to re-enter that world of bruises and blight, of bologna sandwiches, beer, and cigarettes, and worst of all of the memory and effects of stolen lives, stolen children.

Nerburn tells that story so plain and clean, you can taste the North Dakota air along with the fried bread, and, as the Wolf says, you know this is the horrible truth and you might as well face it, that you were spawned by the Bad Guys who stole this land and gang-raped it; then maybe you can get past the horror of your history and join up with whoever’s left standing who still gives a damn about saving something from this catastrophe we live in.

Sounds like the Avatar story line?

It didn’t surprise me to hear that the actors and others who worked on Avatar suffered from post-partum depression once the film was done—and so do audiences. They miss the planet Pandora! Particularly affected was the chief Bad Guy actor, Stephen Lang, who says, “Pandora is a pristine world and there is the synergy between all of the creatures of the planet and I think that strikes a deep chord within people that has a wishfulness and a wistfulness to it.”

Online groups have sprung up to deal with depression like that of a Swedish teen who contemplated suicide after seeing Avatar. “I live in a dying world,” he said. Counsellors of all stripes rush to put out a simplistic explanation for viewers’ depression, equivalent to, “They’re unhappy because they can’t have their fantasy world, because they can’t accept that Pandora’s not real.”

The truth is, of course, that Pandora, whose name means “all gifts”, is all too real. Pandora stands for our ruined Earth, The film holds up a mirror for us until we say, and weep, “What have we done?” Upon admitting the awful truth of the last few centuries of history, I think we’re entitled to a little depression, don’t you? I mean, that wasn’t exactly easy!

Remember that old saying, “I’m having a nervous breakdown. I worked hard for it; I’m entitled to it, and nobody’s going to talk me out of it.” True racism consists of closing one’s mind to what is really going on—who is dying, who is hurting, what is being irrevocably destroyed. Real racism is the persistence in thinking that every story is about Us, not the Other. The magic of Avatar is that it allows us to experience being the Other.

The film’s writer and director, James Cameron, says the real theme is about respecting others’ differences. That is exactly what the hero of Avatar does—humble himself, accepting that he is part of a terrible, destructive history. Wonderfully, he takes responsibility for the only life he has and gives up his entire past—all the being and body he was—to ensure a future. He doesn’t save the Other—he must become the Other.

Perhaps we should ponder this idea in our hearts.

And give Cameron another Oscar.