Creatively Uncreative

So, I wanted to take this opportunity to share some thoughts on a recent, deeply symbolic movie about a protagonist who goes into an alien environment and, through an odd set of circumstances, finds himself becoming more sympathetic towards the aliens before finally becoming one himself.  Oh, and he then finds himself taking up arms against his previous allies, greedy, violent humans.  That’s right, I’m talking about District Avatar.  Err, I mean District 9.  I mean Avatar.  Oh, wait.  Both actually.  But these two movies have just a wee bit more in common that plotlines.  These two are being picked for top 10 movies of 2009 lists, but I walked out of the theater both times feeling mixed at best, put-off at worst.  It’s something I’ve given a lot of thought to in the wake of Avatar being proclaimed the next Star Wars and I think I’ve finally begun to put my finger on it.

Okay, here’s the thing about both of these movies: they’re both allegories.  That prompted me to remember the old argument of the Inklings: J. R. R. Tolkein and C. S. Lewis disagreed strongly over the allegory with J. R. against and Lewis very much for.  As I understand it, Tolkein argued that the allegory is a sort of tyranny over the audience.  A in the movie stands for B in the real world and C in the novel stands for D in the newspaper.  That sort of thing.  Imagine it like those tests in school where you have two lists and you have to match the answer to the column in the right with the question on the left.  It’s essentially a closed system because once the consumer of the media in question has connected all the dots, that’s all there is left. There’s very little work for the imagination of the consumer to do as he or she has been led by hand into real world meaning or significance.  So maybe what I was experiencing after these movies was inner revolt at being told what to think (that’s at least the conclusion that my wife and mother came to).

On the other side of the coin is what Tolkein did: create stories in which characters embody certain values, both good and bad, wind them up, and then let them loose in a situation with dire consequences afoot.  The One Ring of Lord of the Rings doesn’t stand for anything at all, no matter how much you try to read into it.  But the quiet perseverance of Frodo or the course correction of Boromir stand as examples of how Tolkein thinks we should act when faced with trial or temptation.  Now there’s an open system that leads the audience, should they choose to engage fully, into a reevaluation of the world around them and the life they lead.  Every person who reads or watches or hears can pick and choose what is worth remembering and what is worth applying to their life.  I may not ever have to carry a magical ring across the country and throw it into a volcano, but there is always the temptation to steal when no one is looking or fudge my taxes because I most likely won’t be audited.  And that’s the way that Star Wars works.  Harry Potter too.  I have a feeling that if you look at the great works throughout history, the legendary epic works that shape societies and socialize the younger generations, they’re probably this form of storytelling too.

This is all what was running through my head as I left Avatar and I was pretty sure that I had come to a point where allegory and I should start seeing other people.  But I realized, I really do like allegory still and The Chronicles of Narnia are just too good to give up and a lot of the movies I’ve made with the youth group are allegory and really good.  So I decided to give it another shot with allegory and that’s when I remembered what had made our relationship so special in the past: defamiliarization.

Defamiliarization is the process where one purposefully introduces allegory as a way of side-stepping over-familiarity with a subject or story or theme.  This is what Lewis does so masterfully in the Chronicles of Narnia.  The characters, stories, and themes of the Bible are re-drawn so completely that Narnia can be enjoyed entirely on the surface as a fantasy tale but the real richness lies in the 90% that’s below the waterline.  Those who have sat through dozens of Christmas Eve and Easter Morning services could see through Narnia that there is an immediacy and excitement to the Gospels when considered in this new light.  There is a thrill of discovery there, but it’s more archaeology than exploration; an uncovering of what has been previously known rather than the thrill of something entirely new.

It was through this re-evaluation of defamiliarization that I realized what is missing from District 9 and Avatar: creativity.  Yes, creativity.  Sure, both movies have amazingly creative visuals and alien design and all that, but if creativity is a game of tag, then these two movies are those wieners who would stand one foot away from base and would then tag up if “it” came within 10 feet of them.  There’s no real extension in the metaphors here.  Let’s look at the facts here: D9 takes place in South Africa. In Johannesburg.  In a slum.  Is there any question that we’re talking about apartheid here?  Honestly, this movie could have saved itself millions and just been about apartheid.  I mean, the metaphor is that paper thin.  While Avatar isn’t quite so narrow in scope, you have aliens who are essentially Native Americans, from bows and arrows right down to prayer over animals they have killed.  And in both cases, who are the antagonists?  White humans.  Okay, so you kind of disguised the heroes but then the villains are really just the grandchildren of their 21st or 20th century counterparts.  How is that unfamiliar?

The next logical question is why it even matters that they’re not creative “enough.”  It matters because these are message movies.  They clearly had something to say about relationships between humans currently living on the planet.  Yes, racism and idiocy still abound in the world today, but I’d like to think that most people seeing these movies agree that we need to treat all races equally and we need to be diligent and careful in our consumption of the earth’s resources.  But what about the Marines or other military personnel or their families who see Avatar and agree with the messages but find themselves or their loved ones resembling the bad guys for no other reason than the writers couldn’t be bothered to stretch themselves a little bit more?  I have a feeling you lost some folks there.  Same with the government officials being lampooned in District 9.  If you’re going to make art and not just entertainment, try to be inclusive, don’t alienate (get it?).  By not going far enough to create the distance between the fiction and non-fiction, by using the chainsaw rather than the scalpel, the filmmakers lost the opportunity to really reach out and instead end up preaching to the choir.

Before going to see Avatar, I was wondering if it would truly be the new Star Wars.  SW was a cultural event because it combined visual storytelling that was unlike anything ever seen before with the myths that dwell in our souls at a time of distrust towards the government, fear of the future, and rampant cynicism.  Avatar definitely had the timing right (even kids’ movies are cynical these days), but I think SW is safe for now.  Say what you will about the rivalry between George Lucas and James Cameron, District Avatar has done nothing for me other than to reaffirm that Lucas is up there with Tolkein and Lewis.  These are the storytellers who were able to stand on the shoulders of giants and tell us about new worlds, not just hand us a CGIed version of reality.