Avatar: Rambo in Reverse

James Cameron’s new film, Avatar, is a stunning piece of visual art containing more than just dazzling special effects. Pantheism undergirds the script and guides the plot as the characters of this fantasy hunger for oneness with creation. On today’s program, guest host Dr. Russell Moore along with columnist Ross Douthat, analyze the message behind the movie and what it reveals about American culture. As they point out, people are hungry to believe the pantheistic worldview, as they seek for something to fill their heart’s desire for worship, which has been left empty by the fall and sin. Christians should learn from movies like Avatar that culture is not moving towards secularism. As this movie indicates, running from the truth only leaves people hungry to find cheap substitutes for the worship they were created to give.

I took my kids to it ‘cause they both really wanted to see it. They (teenage boys) figured it would be a good action flick. It had that, but also a very stupid, negative story line. I would say it was a waste of time and money but it actually generated a pretty good dialogue with my boys over the lack of morality in Hollywood and just how far from real America and Americans the self-important fools out there have become. My one son in particular, who is planning a military career, was extremely offended at the idea of a traitor being held up as the supposed hero. Far from admiring him, we all felt he should be shot on sight.

Why was Rambo a jerk?

The end of Rambo, with his emotional outpouring about the experience of vets in America in the 1970's, and then the closing song is one of the best movie scenes and movie endings ever. Its hard to believe Hollywierd let this out of the stuido cutting floor and lets it still play on TV frequently.

Col Trautman: You helped cause this private war. You've done enough damage! The mission is over, understood? The mission is over! Look at them outside. Look at them! End it, or they'll kill you. Do you want that? It's over, Johnny. It's over!
Rambo: Nothing is over! Nothing! You can't just switch it off! It wasn't my war. You asked me, I didn't ask you! I did everything to win, but someone didn't let us win. And at home at the airport those maggots were protesting. They spat at me, called me a baby murderer and shit like that! Why protest against me, when they weren't there, didn't experience it?
Col. Trautman: It was hard, but it's in the past.
Rambo: For you! Civilian life means nothing to me. There we had a code of honor. You watch my back, I watch yours. Here there's nothing!
Col. Trautman: You're the last of an elite troop, don't end it like this.
Rambo: There I flew helicopters, drove tanks, had equipment worth millions. Here I can't even work parking!
Rambo: Where is everybody? I had a friend who was there for us. There were all these guys. There were all these great guys! My friends! Here there's nothing! D'you remember Dan Forest? He wore a black headband. He had found magic markers, that he sent to Las Vegas, because we'd always talked about that. About the Chevy Convertible we wanted to drive until the tires fell off. In one of these barns a kid came to us with a kind of shoe cleaning box.
Rambo: "Shine?" He kept on asking. Joe said yes. I went to get a couple of beers. The box was wired. He opened it ... There were body parts flying everywhere. He lay there and screamed ... I have all these pieces of him on me! Just like that. I try to get him off me, my friend! I'm covered with him! Blood everywhere and so... I try to hold him together, but the entrails keep coming out! And nobody would help!
Rambo: He just said: "I want to go home!" And called my name. "I want to go home, Johnny! l want to drive my Chevy!"
Rambo: But I couldn't find his legs. "I can't find your legs!" I can't get it out of my head. It's seven years ago. I see it every day. Sometimes I wake up and don't know where I am. I don't talk to anyone. Sometimes all day long. Sometimes a week. I can't get it out of my head.

As a Vietnam combat veteran I say, that was there and this is here; that was then and this is now.

When Rambo is questioned by the cop he essentially doesn’t give any answers. He’s basically a clam. When the cop drives him out of town, Rambo just turns around and heads back without bothering to give the cop any explanation. I think at this point it’s fair of the cop to feel that he’s got a mental case of some sort on his hands. If Rambo had simply been more communicative within the normal scope of human reason he would have had a lot fewer problems with this cop.

This sets Rambo up as some sort of mental case from the beginning (Hollywood again) which has been typical of the way Vietnam veterans have always been viewed by the public at large.

Numerous times my own experience has been, “You’re a Vietnam veteran? Gee, you seem so normal.” This attitude has come to define the Vietnam veteran so completely that I’m sorry to sy that some actual vets actually fall for it to the extent that it becomes their definiton of themselves too.

And thus the stereotype: “And at home at the airport those maggots were protesting. They spat at me, called me a baby murderer and shit like that! Why protest against me, when they weren’t there, didn’t experience it?”

No one, from then to now has ever “spat at me, called me a baby murderer and shit like that!”

Sorry, Rambo, as so constructed, was a jerk.

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