Back to the Garden

Feeling a little down lately? Do you find your circumstances oddly unfulfilling? Do you have a strange restless urge to pack up and find a better place in a land far away?
It may be the new smaller paycheck. Or the drip, drip, drip of serial layoffs. Or the fact that you can't afford your insurance deductible.
Now there's a new suspect to round up when you're looking for the source of your longing.
You may be suffering from Avatar ennui.
Although it hasn't been given an official designation by the American Psychiatric Association, some fans are reporting a feeling of loss and depression after seeing the film. (Here's an article from CNN which, as my son pointed out, seems more like it came from the satirical paper The Onion.)
According to comments on fan sites, some Avatar viewers remain in the dumps after seeing the movie because real life on Earth is so much more disappointing than the beautiful planet Pandora.
I won't go into the whole plot here--because you've probably seen it anyway (but if you haven't, look for the summary on IMDB). So let's boil it down:
Earthlings have discovered an incredibly valuable substance (called, I believe, "youcan'tgetitium") on this planet and plan to relocate the indigenous peoples and destroy their land in order to mine it. If you saw it in 3D, as we did, you feel you are actually walking along with the natives.
Filmmaker James Cameron created an Eden, and you feel you can almost touch it. Hence, when some people leave the theater, it's just too much of a letdown to bear.
I totally get this. We walked out of the movie theater into a driving blizzard, an uncertain financial future and endless television footage of venal politicians protecting the health care industry. It is depressing.
Pandora has beautiful plants that light up as you walk on them. It has a community living in harmony with it's environment, animals you can mind-meld with when you ride, and a mother god and ancestors who talk to the Pandorans (through the trees).
And the Earthlings? We--and it's a peculiarly American-looking representation--have a weasly corporate guy called Parker Selfridge (Really? His name is Selfridge? Well, no one claimed Avatar was a subtle movie.) who just can't wait to destroy the beautiful countryside and people to get to that ore. We have a psychopathic Steve Canyon on steroids who wants, as Arlo Guthrie used to say, to "kill, kill, kill."


What comes back to me most, though is the village. When threatened, the natives got together and acted as one. No one complained about big government or ran a dirty tricks campaign. They understood that they were working for the survival of the community.
Which is why it's probably unrealistic to think that could ever happen on Earth.
But I can dream, can't I?