Avatar and the Noble Savage

I saw the movie Avatar last weekend and wanted to comment on its “noble savage” theme. The movie is set on Pandora, a moon over 4 light years from Earth. The movie is about the conflict between human colonists on Pandora and the native inhabitants, known as “Na’vi.” The protagonist is a paraplegic human named Jake Sully, whose mission is to gain intelligence on the Na’vi. Jake infiltrates the Na’vi by utilizing an “avatar,” a Na’vi body with a human consciousness. The Na’vi are “tree people,” whose home rests on a large deposit of a valuable mineral. The humans want the Na’vi to relocate; the Na’vi resist. Jake, as a combination human and Na’vi, is caught in the middle of the conflict.

The movie portrays the Na’vi in a sympathetic light compared to the humans. The Na’vi, similar in many ways to Native Americans and other primitive tribes, are seen as “noble savages,” whose idyllic way of life is threatened by greedy, mechanized humans. They are one with nature, able to communicate with animal and plant life on Pandora. Writer/director James Cameron (whose previous credits include the Terminator series and Titanic) isn’t trying for a balanced viewpoint here—everything about the Na’vi is good, while everything about the humans (with the possible exception of scientific research) is bad. This black-and-white viewpoint is similar to Star Wars, except that the conflict in Star Wars was more abstract.

Are actual savages as noble as the ones portrayed in the film? Is there something worthwhile about their way of life that was lost in the era of European/American expansion and colonization? While modern life has many advantages and material comforts, it seems to be missing something spiritually. This spiritual malaise is connected with severe psychological problems in artistic and other sensitive people. As I say in my Triumph of Dullness post, certain central aspects of modern life have caused major problems in sensitive people. These things include artificial magnetic fields in the bedroom, the transportation revolution, and artificial time. Primitive man didn’t have to worry about those things.

I want to focus on one aspect of primitive people that is also emphasized in Avatar, their sense of place. Tribal people have a sense of connectedness to their immediate environment, their home, in a way that modern people can’t understand. The Na’vi have a spiritual connection with their home tree, and abandoning their home is not an option.

Our modern world, replete with casual relationships between humans and their environment, has encouraged a stream of migration and relocation that has gone on for centuries. We took away the Native Americans’ land and pushed them onto reservations. People have emigrated from their homelands to American and other places, and have further relocated within their adopted countries. Many jobs require relocation. We do what we have to do in order to improve our material well being. But does all this migration have a price?

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy says “there’s no place like home,” and longs to get back to Kansas, her home. This indicates that even among modern people there’s some connection to, and longing for, home. No matter how often we have to move, we still long for a place to call home, for a stable location where one can always return to. My human magnetoreception hypothesis provides another argument for remaining at home. People who are sensitive to the geomagnetic field feel best when at (magnetic) home. North of home they feel negative symptoms, and south of home they feel positive symptoms. If they move too far from home, they’ll have severe symptoms, and have difficulty functioning without the aid of drugs.

While we can sympathize with those who are forced out of their homes, it’s also important to look at the other side. Whatever the motivation, whether it be the desire for more living space, or building roads, train tracks, structures, or any other kind of development, growth sometimes requires that some people move out to make way for "progress." If centuries ago we had accepted the currently fashionable idea that Native Americans had a right to their homeland, there would have been no United States. We would never have been able to expand our country, to farm the land, to build railroads and cities, i.e. to build a nation. While there are some people who would rather that the U.S. never have existed, I’m not one of them. While James Cameron can extol the virtues of primitive people, much of the technology he uses in his movie rests on inventions made in the U.S. These inventions would never have come into existence if Americans in the seventeenth through nineteenth century had believed, along with Cameron, that savages were noble, and that the Indians had a right to their land.

In conclusion, let’s give the savages their due, but let’s also give civilized man credit for building a post-industrial world that, while imperfect, has led to advanced technology that many of us would be loath to part from.

Gone with the Wind

I just watched the 70th anniversary DVD edition of Gone with the Wind. Earlier this year, I had read the novel for the first time. I loved both the novel and the film. Since the story is probably familiar to most of my readers, I won’t try to summarize or review it. I want to use it as an example of a standard by which I evaluate contemporary culture. In my Triumph of Dullness blog post, I said that we don’t have any contemporary geniuses. We have people writing novels, and people making movies, but these novels and movies aren’t in the same universe as Gone with the Wind. A great historical novel requires a combination of engaging story, interesting characters, plot, vivid historical details, and clear style. There may be some contemporary novels that have some of these elements, but none have all the elements that Gone with the Wind had. Many contemporary novels try to substitute sex, violence, foul language, and other gimmicks to make up for their lack of literary quality. A great epic movie requires a great story, great acting, cinematography, music, direction, and all the other elements that made Gone with the Wind so fantastic. Contemporary movies have access to better technology, which makes for gee-whiz special effects, but these effects cannot hide the movies’ lack of quality storytelling, direction, and cinematography.

Ironically, Gone with the Wind was about how a once-great civilization (antebellum South) was destroyed in just four years of war. The creative fecundity that characterized what was otherwise an awful time (the 1930’s) helped engender the novel and movie Gone with the Wind. Creative achievement of this high order is, like the antebellum South, gone with the wind.

In my Triumph of Dullness blog post, I mention how there’s a lack of ambition among potential creative geniuses. There’s also a lack of mentoring, role models, inspiration, and any other social aspect of creative accomplishment. I want to focus on these social aspects, because it’s directly relevant to the publication of Gone with the Wind. Margaret Mitchell, the book’s author, was a Southern journalist who wrote a rough draft of the novel between 1925 and 1930. She had no desire to seek publication, however, and stashed away the manuscript in her apartment.

In 1935, Mitchell met MacMillan editor Harold Latham, who was in Atlanta to scout for promising writers. Her duty was to show him around the area. She gave him her manuscript, which he read on the train back. He recognized the book’s potential, and arranged for her to get an advance, in order to finish the novel. The rest is history.

Contemporary fiction writers can recognize just how much has changed since then. Major publishers don’t send editors around the country looking for new talent. They don’t give out advances to first-time authors with unfinished manuscripts. They, in fact, do everything possible to discourage wannabe authors. They make them finish the novel before even trying to get a publisher. They then force writers to get an agent, a difficult and arduous process that most people don’t want to go through. Even after getting an agent, there’s no guarantee that the agent can sell the book to a publisher.

Publishers will say that economic conditions have changed, that they can’t afford to publish books by unknown authors, most of which fail commercially. It’s true that traditional publishers are losing money and that they can’t conduct business the way they used to. My point is not to blame publishers but to comment on how things have changed in the last 70 years. It’s doubtful that Margaret Mitchell had the ambition to do the things that writers need to do today to get published. There are probably many talented contemporary writers who have started a novel, perhaps a very good novel, who would have been published in an earlier era, but are never going to be published today.

There are other social aspects of creative achievement that are relevant. Gone with the Wind (the book and movie) inspired thousands of writers, directors, actors, and other creative people to write books and create movies. The lack of any contemporary Gone with the Winds has resulted in the lack of inspiration for potential writers, directors, and actors to achieve anything.

There’s a painting that visually represents this transmission from genius to lesser creative people:

I like this painting, entitled “Genius Calling Forth the Fine Arts to Adorn Manufactures and Commerce,” by Anglo-American painter Benjamin West (1738-1820). The painting shows the winged male genius inspiring his female devotees. These devotees are engaged in various creative pursuits, the most prominent being the painter. In reality, a genius doesn’t have to directly interact with people he influences. For example, Mozart strongly influenced Beethoven, although they were together only for a short time, if at all.

What we need are one or two Margaret Mitchells who can inspire thousands of others to begin a rebirth of a glorious literary tradition that is, today, gone with the wind.