July 20: When Sitting Bull laid down his rifle
On July 20, 1881, Sitting Bull surrendered to the US Army at Fort Buford. Tonight's film: Avatar (2009)
There is a thought that always catches me when I open the almanac to a day like this. The bad news always arrives, only the uniform changes. Tonight the date and the film lined up in a way I did not expect, because the film flips the ending.
On July 20, 1881, a Hunkpapa Sioux chief the world knows as Sitting Bull arrived at Fort Buford, in what was then Dakota Territory, with about 180 followers, and laid down his rifle. It was a Winchester repeater, more than wood and metal. It was the sign of who would keep the land on the North American plains. Five years earlier, at the end of June 1876, at the Little Bighorn, his spiritual weight had held his people together when they crushed Custer and 264 of his soldiers. After that came the pursuit, the exile in Canada, and then hunger. He came back because his people could not hold out any longer. With that rifle went, for all practical purposes, the armed resistance of the plains nations.
Here, in the real history, the side with the better technology and the bigger appetite wins. More ammunition, the railroad, the telegraph, a bureaucracy that would not blink. And that is exactly why Avatar (2009) still itches in my hand.
Because James Cameron writes this story again, and only changes the ending. On the moon Pandora, a company called RDA mines a mineral called unobtanium, and the local Na’vi people are simply in the way. Marines march into the forest wearing armored bodies. Jake Sully, a Marine paralyzed from the waist down, gets downloaded into a Na’vi body so he can infiltrate them, and ends up switching sides. And the blue-skinned archers, who fight our machine guns with bow and arrow, win the battle.
Let me be honest. Avatar is not a flawless film. The story reads as if someone threw Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves into a blender, added the 3D era, and multiplied the budget by fifty. The dialogue is wooden in places, and the villain, Colonel Quaritch, could have stepped out of a cartoon. Cameron originally aimed to release it in 1999, but the technology he wanted was so expensive that he waited a decade for the machines to catch up with his head. By the time it was done it cost roughly $237 million, and it brought in $2.92 billion. For a long stretch it was the highest-grossing film ever made, first overtaking Titanic and then climbing back to the top a few years later.
But for all its faults, something in it still lands. That raw, specific feeling of a people, outgunned and outmatched, refusing to disappear because the ground they stand on is theirs. The real Sitting Bull never got a Hollywood turn. On December 15, 1890, during the Ghost Dance panic, he was shot dead inside his own reservation when officers came to take him away. In Cameron’s film, the arrows go through the helicopter glass. That is the gap between the record and the screen.
And maybe that is the reason to put it on when you are tired. Not because it is perfect. Because for a little while, 162 minutes, the weaker side wins. Then you switch it off, and your own bills and your own bad news are waiting for you again. But those two and a half hours were earned.
Tonight, press play.
What else could have been tonight
Apollo 11 lands on the Moon (1969) and Contact (1997). On this same day, eighty-eight years after Sitting Bull, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent 21 hours and 36 minutes on the lunar surface. It was the first time humanity physically left its own planet. Robert Zemeckis’s Contact feeds straight off that hunger. Jodie Foster plays Ellie Arroway, a SETI researcher who listens to the sky for years, until one night an answer comes back from Vega, and through a wormhole humanity gets its first brush with the unknown. It is built on Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel, and if Avatar is the counterstrike, Contact is the outstretched hand.
Truman institutes the peacetime draft (1948) and Starship Troopers (1997). On July 20, 1948, President Harry S. Truman issued a proclamation calling close to 10 million men to register for military service within two months, as Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union hardened. The state declared a claim on the bodies of its citizens. Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers takes that pact to its limit: a society where full citizenship can only be earned through federal military service. If you do not serve, you do not vote. In 1997 the satire sailed past a lot of viewers. Today it is a cult film and one of the sharpest critiques of fascism on celluloid, even as the bug-blasting keeps a cheerful grin on its face.
Sources
Main event, Sitting Bull:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-20/sitting-bull-surrenders (Fort Buford, July 20, 1881, about 180 followers, Little Bighorn, 264 dead)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting_Bull (killed December 15, 1890, Ghost Dance)
Film, Avatar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film) (budget about $237 million, gross $2.92 billion, originally planned for 1999)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/ (directed by James Cameron, starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang)
Side events:
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/explorers-on-the-moon-apollo-11-landing/ (Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21 hours 36 minutes on the Moon)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film) (Zemeckis, Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel, Jodie Foster as SETI scientist)
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-20/truman-issues-peacetime-draft (Truman, close to 10 million men called up)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers_(film) (Verhoeven, citizenship earned through service, fascism satire)