Afghanistan, with its "little savages," is one place the message of Avatar hits home

KABUL — You can take the girl out of Afghanistan, but Afghanistan will never release its grip on the girl. I realized this as I sat in those ridiculous Buddy Holly glasses watching “Avatar” for the second time.

I cannot be the only person on the planet who saw the film as a parable of our engagement in this part of the world. Afghans are not blue, of course, and not many of them are eleven feet tall. Nor do they have tails that I am aware of. But those are minor quibbles.

I may be accused of having “gone native” — it won’t be the first time — but I could easily put the foolishly brave, hopelessly hot-headed and ultimately noble Na’vi in the place of the Afghans, trying to defend their way of life against a superior force that they do not understand. In the film, the Na’vi culture is despised and ridiculed — shown clearly as a roomful of Blackwater-style mercenaries guffaws when told that the “blue monkeys” consider their Home Tree to be “sacred.”

I myself have heard Afghans referred to by contractors in Helmand as “little savages.” And who could forget the mindless jokes in circulation when the United States was contemplating the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

“We’re gonna nuke ‘em back to the Stone Age!” began an especially offensive riff. “Oops! Too late, they’re already there!” went the punch line. Ha, ha.

The parallels in “Avatar” were quite intentional, I am sure. Ham-fisted, even. Why else would the dweeby scientist be waffling on about “winning local hearts and minds” or the soldiers talk about a “shock and awe” campaign to dislodge the stubborn natives from their prime real estate? The evil colonel even talks about “fighting terror with terror.”

I almost threw my popcorn at the screen at that one.

The military side was spot on. I would wager that the training briefing given by the battle-scarred colonel has been echoed in dozens of military tents in southern Afghanistan:

“You are not in Kansas anymore. You’re on Pandora (or Khost, Helmand, Kandahar). Out there beyond the fence every living thing that crawls, flies or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes for jujubes.”

What, in fact, were the Avatars but a much more sophisticated take on the Human Terrain Teams sent out by the U.S. military to penetrate the terrifyingly opaque world of the local population?

Our hero, Jake Sully, the erstwhile Marine, starts out sympathizing with the “company.” He’s in it for the money, proud of his past, going so far as to introduce himself to the Na’vi chief as “a warrior from the jar-head tribe.”

He is sent as a poison arrow into the heart of the Na’vi — to learn their ways and then betray them. The beautiful Neytiri is having none of it: “You Sky People cannot learn,” she spits at him during their first meeting. “It is hard to pour water into a glass that is full.”

I was uncomfortably reminded of many self-important journalists, consultants, and diplomats I’ve encountered in Kabul, many of whom have their minds already made up before they step off the plane.

I know I am being wildly short-sighted in my interpretation here. The beautiful shining Na’vi have little in common, character-wise, with the brutal Taliban, the power-hungry warlords, and the inefficient and corrupt Afghan government. And very few of the money-grubbing grunts on Pandora were under any illusions that they were bringing peace, freedom and democracy to a war-torn nation.

I do not mean to suggest that the U.S. military is in it for some self-serving monetary interest — the “unobtanium” of Pandora. I am convinced that most of our officers and soldiers truly believe that they are trying to make things better in Afghanistan.

But at its core, “Avatar” is a film about an arrogant uber-entity that seeks to impose it will and its vision on a reluctant world.

It is a cautionary tale, and one that we might do well to bear in mind.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/afghanistan/100114/afghanistan-one-place-the-message-avatar-hits-home