In The New York Review of Books (March 25, 2010), Daniel Mendelson draws parallels between Avatar and The Wizard of Oz and points out some other, less charitable, comparisons that have been made with Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves. Hmmm... What is it about Avatar that invites us to harp on the derivative side?
I saw Avatar with my neat 3D glasses, and I enjoyed being transported to a different world; that is, the visual impact was fantastic. I was surprised by its openly anti-war/corporate interests in the midst of our war in Iraq... (Halliburton, Exxon, and Shell, Oh my!). Then, as soon as I walked out of the theater, I began to pick holes in the plot or subtext, the same holes that David Brooks made in a New York Times Op-Ed column (cited in the Mendelson piece).
“It rests on the assumption that non-whites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors...”
I probably had my own ideas of parallels with equally patronizing movies about invaders and innocent natives – What about The Road to El Dorado (2000)? (Wait, the natives weren’t quite as one dimensional in that movie). What about the Starwars movie where the humans save the e-woks from the terrible Death Star??? OK, it just so happens that I can’t think of any more examples, but still, when I walked out of the theater I’m pretty sure I remembered a couple more.
A few weeks after my Avatar journey, I saw The Mission (1986), directed by Roland Joffé and starring Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons. Naturally, I was completely primed to begin to make comparisons.
I’m warning you – there are going to be spoilers here. So, stop reading this, imaginary reader, and go watch The Mission. If you shell out for the two disc version, the hour-long documentary on disc 2 isn’t riveting, but it is incredibly relevant to this whole discussion.
Here, just as in Avatar, we have an indigenous tribe which is portrayed as primitive, happy and somehow pure and innocent group. In The Mission, however, there are at least hints that this tribe may not be so easily conquered early in the film when we see a priest tied to a cross (dead or unconscious?) and sent floating on this makeshift raft until he goes tumbling off a spectacular waterfall. Come to think of it... wouldn’t he have rolled over and floated face down?
But I digress; the Spanish and Portuguese slave traders have been capturing the indigenous, but there are good Europeans too. The Jesuit priests and our favorite, the white hero (De Niro), who we see transformed from an evil slave trader, handy with a gun or sword, to a committed defender of the indigenous à la Jake in Avatar. Like Jake, De Niro gets a few minutes of peace in the movie where he is the gentle teacher (and learner) willing to give up all worldly/earthly goods to live with the Jesuits and Guaraní Indians in an isolated mission. In the end, both of these heroes take up arms again – for the sake of the natives.
When the church orders the Jesuits to turn the land over to the Portuguese (Church = evil company)... well, the Indians’ only hope is surely this former warrior who knows the ways of the white men as well as those of the Indians.
In spite of the surface similarities, these are two very different films... The most revealing clue is a look at the soldiers brought by the Europeans to attack the Guaraní on the Jesuit missions. The Europeans bring their own “loyal” natives who are very effective in the battle.
If the American Indians had seen themselves as “Indians” (you know, rather than as Guaraní or Tupi-Guaraní, Incas, Aztecs, Maya or thousands of other tribes or sub-tribes) they wouldn’t have really needed the European savior. And, anyway, in Joffé’s movie, the European savior isn’t. I mean, he doesn’t.
He cannot save them – He dies, and almost all of the Indians are cruelly massacred. Insofar as the movie bows to Hollywood standards, the only “hero” to survive is a young Guarani boy who we see paddle off – deeper into the jungle – after the carnage ends. But, that hardly qualifies as saving anyone or as a happy ending.
By the way, the movie is very loosely based on history. There certainly were very brave Jesuits who were prepared to martyr themselves (and some who did become martyrs) to try to stop incredible cruelty toward the Indians. Of course, they also made beaucoup $$ when they had their missions running and protecting the Indians who then worked the land, some for the Guaraní families, and some for God... It is a bit much to explain in this short space. Were the Guaraní saved? Well, their language survives to this day in Paraguay – something survived. On the other hand, Jaffé said that his encounters with Guaraní tribes were depressing because he met none which had a sense of self worth. Instead he vetted and chose a tribe from Colombia. Here, you have to watch the documentary to see some of the soul searching that went on... "What are we doing to this tribe hired to act in this movie?" Fascinating. Relax, watching the documentary won’t leave you with an excessively bad taste in your mouth. In fact, you’ll probably enjoy The Mission more after watching it. That isn’t to say that the documentary doesn’t raise some troubling questions.
In the end, as much as Jaffé tries to do something different, the film still leaves us with a vision of Guaraní experience that revolves around what the white man can or cannot do – and whose “earnest, ... anticolonial... message” relies on a vision of the Guaraní “sentimentally modeled on popular notions of Native American[s]...” (I'm using Mendelson’s words regarding Avatar). Still, it’s so many light years closer than Cameron’s blockbuster to exploring the real conflict between conquistador and native.
Those guys (and Baryshnikov for that matter) have nothing on this dancing machine. He has a mullet now, but refuses to cut his hair because he can refuse. He likes to say that if the mullet ever comes back in style, he's set and all the other poor fools will have to wait months before the hair grows out. (So, at least he's not taking this all too seriously). 
