Avatar: everybody’s got an opinion

Avatar has been inspiring all kinds of political and cultural commentary, and not just in the comments on my post comparing it to Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. It’s been described as an “apologia for pantheism” and the “Worst Lefty” movie of the year, as well as James Cameron’s middle-class “white guilt fantasy.” The New York Times Arts Beat rounds up some of the most strident commentary and the L.A. Times explains why it makes some conservative commentators cranky.

Unsurprisingly, unhappy commentators see in Avatar what they want to see — and hate. I’m not going to debate them all. But I am going to take issue with a few lines of critique that particularly annoy me.

And hey, what do you know, today I have plenty of time to do it, because I won’t start tackling copyedits on my novel until later in the week. So let’s start 2010 with a rant. Yay!

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

Annoying critique number one: that Avatar is “really” a retelling of the U.S. government’s destruction of Native America – but that it deviates from the “actual” ending. According to these annoying commentators, at the climax of Avatar the bad guys should have slaughtered the indigenous population; and because that ending is averted, the story is “false.”

Avatar is fiction. It takes place in 2154 on a moon in another solar system. It’s metaphor. Of course it has echoes of American history. Science fiction is always an allegory. But stop trying to slot it into your singularly narrow interpretation. Stop moaning that it didn’t tell the story you would have written. And if you want to learn about Native American history, stop complaining about Avatar, go to the library, and check out Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Annoying critique number two: that Avatar’s hero, Jake Sully – this according to Ross Douthat in the New York Times – is a “turncoat Marine.” What? “Turncoat” implies treachery, implies that Jake commits treason by deserting from military duty and defecting to an enemy during wartime. Wrong.

Jake isn’t an active duty marine. He isn’t serving in the military. On Pandora, he works for RDA, a mining corporation. He travels to Pandora not to fight, but to take part in the science division’s Avatar program. The paramilitary presence on Pandora is in fact the corporation’s private security force. They’re not the USMC; they’re Blackwater. So when Jake opposes RDA’s destruction of Pandora, he isn’t a turncoat. He violates no oath or orders. He’s fighting against an immoral corporate outfit, trying to stop it from raping the moon and destroying its people. Likewise, when pilot Trudy Chacon refuses to fire on the Na’vi Hometree, she doesn’t disobey military orders. She refuses her employer’s instruction to murder a village for the sake of profit. Some commenters find this a stomach-churning dereliction of duty. I think they’re the ones with the skewed perspective.

And come on: before making casual slurs, pay attention to the actual story. Especially when you’re writing for the editorial page of the Times.

Annoying critique number three: that the story in Avatar is just like every other movie I’ve ever seen. Granted, the plot is linear. It develops from beginning to end. It’s not avant garde, it’s not minimalist or picaresque. It’s archetypal.

I traffic in story. It’s my bread and butter. So I recognize that of course the Avatar story isn’t completely new. The big secret, for anybody who doesn’t know, is that there are only a few basic plots. (Some say 22; others say seven. John Gardner said there were three: Young man sets out on a journey; A stranger rides into town; and Boy Meets Girl.) They’ve been told again and again, in infinite variation, since antiquity. Avatar has elements of two classic plots: The Quest, and Rebirth.

At the start of the film, Jake says: “I became a Marine for the hardship. I told myself I could pass any test a man could pass. All I ever wanted was a single thing worth fighting for.”

If that’s not the mission statement for a quest, nothing is. But even though Avatar’s story relies on classic elements of plot and character development, to say it’s just like everything else we’ve ever seen is simply wrong.

How many movies have you watched where this is among the scenes?

That’s Jake leading an escape from RDA, taking point and protecting Sigourney Weaver (yes, the fierce Sigourney Weaver, don’t tell me she doesn’t intimidate you). And he’s doing it from a wheelchair.

You can count the times you’ve seen that scene on one hand, and have four or five fingers left over.

But there’s more. By this point in the movie, the fact that Jake physically takes the lead doesn’t seem remarkable. And that, flat out, is nearly unique in Hollywood movie-making.

Avatar isn’t merely singular in having a hero with a disability. It’s singular because the story isn’t about Jake’s struggle with disability. Avatar features none of the awful cliches that plague so many bad stories about disability – there’s no maudlin section where Jake wallows in self-pity, no explanation of the “stages of grief,” no scene where Jake cruelly tells his girlfriend he doesn’t love her anymore (a lie, for her own good, to free her from being burdened with a paraplegic lover). Certainly his disability is an issue; he’s a warrior, and being catastrophically wounded has, he says, “blown a hole in the middle of my life.” But he views it as part of being a Marine – it’s a hardship, and to a Marine, the harder something is, the more it defines him. Disability is a test he never expected to face, but one he’s determined to pass. And on Pandora he’s found something worth fighting for.

And in this screen grab, he’s doing what he needs to do, capably, without being congratulated for it; we don’t even notice that his actions are exceptional. We’re so caught up in the intensity of the drama that we don’t pause to applaud Jake as a very special guy, clap clap. Thank God.

This point undoubtedly struck me because, in the Evan Delaney novels, I write about a major character with the same disability as Jake. And over the years a persistent, nasty minority of people who read the books have told me that

1. I’m “brave” for writing about a paraplegic. Jesus, no; maybe I’m stubborn, or nuts, but brave? Give me a break.
2. I’m stupid because Jesse “can’t do anything.” Really. Jesse? Blackburn? Give me a freaking break.
3. Nobody wants to read about a character with a disability because nobody “normal” knows anybody with a disability. You have gotta be f***ing kidding me.
4. Even seeing Jesse’s name on the page makes them want to scratch their skin off, because disability is so creepy, and therefore:
5. I should cure Jesse or kill him.

Sorry, folks. I consider you wrong on all, and I mean all, counts. Such blinkered, fearful thinking doesn’t jibe with what I know of the lives of friends, colleagues, and relatives who have disabilities, and I refuse to pander to it. But, surprise, surprise, not only the vast majority of readers – both ablebodied and disabled – but the folks who give out Edgar awards don’t seem to mind at all. So I can only celebrate James Cameron’s decision to write a disabled hero. And a billion dollars later, the viewers of Avatar seem to agree.

Okay, that’ll satisfy my urge to rant for the moment.

Maybe the next time I get in a mood to write about Avatar I’ll talk about James Cameron’s penchant for writing uncommon marines (Jake; Private Vasquez in Aliens), or self-sacrificing Latina warriors (Private Vasquez; helicopter pilot Trudy Chacon) or for casting Sigourney Weaver as the tough, reluctant madonna in films where motherhood is a strong subtext. Or maybe we can just talk about how Sam Worthington is hot, or about how wildly cool it would be to ride our own dragon in the floating mountains of Pandora. After all, it’s just a movie. Right?

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