And there I was chased by a pack of feral dogs on the dock, and the lead dog bit me on the ass, requiring me to go to a strange Portuguese clinic and receive an ass shot.

The British media have been described as feral (a word used by Tony Blair, among others). The questions asked of politicians by journalists are often so aggressive or implicitly insulting that one wonders why their recipients don t walk out of interviews in a huff, or wither on the spot from humiliation.

In the Hollywood tradition, of course, the American hero fighting an indigenous enemy is innocent and moral, a reluctant warrior bringing democracy, or at least justice, to feral savages. In Avatar , the core themes highlight everything that has gone wrong with Americans view of themselves in relation to their country s foreign policy.