go see it--trust me, you'll get your five hundred million dollars' worth. then come back and read this.
* * * * *
like most everybody else in the theater that night, by the final third of mr. cameron's extravagantly gorgeous movie i totally found myself rooting for the primitive-yet-soulful blue people to rise up and crush the soulless, technologically-advanced white people [i.e., mr. cameron and me].
unlike most everybody else in the theater that night, i even got the irony: mr. cameron utilizing hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of cutting-edge technology to demonstrate to us, the unwashed, the evils of technology.
to take it a step further: while watching this film i easily managed to transcend a lifetime of indoctrination about our heroic taming of the american west to suddenly and vividly imagine how many horrifying, heartbreaking variations of avatar must've played out as the white man forged inexorably westward across the great plains, casually and wantonly destroying every native american culture that then existed.
yeah, mr. cameron, i get it.
and of course, he's right. we caucasians are a cold, clever, ambitious lot; from that dark day back in the dark ages when we retreated to our separate corners of europe, built our cultures and subsequently spread our pale, greedy tentacles across all corners of the globe, the world has never been the same.
* * * * *
there's a little game i sometimes trot out at gatherings when i find myself the odd man out (a not-unusual circumstance).
i'll smile in a non-threatening way and ask everyone if they were forced to live the rest of their lives in a country other than the U.S.--anywhere they wanted--what would their top five choices be?
[you can play this game at home--in fact, before continuing, pause for a moment, close your eyes and think about your own answers, ok?]
they'll make their lists, read 'em, compare notes; an interesting and illuminating discussion of the various alternatives will ensue.
it's not until i point out that almost all their choices are countries created and/or run by white people that i'm decried as a racist.
* * * * *
bad as we are, mr. cameron, i bet the world will miss us when we're gone.
