VIRTUAL TIBET: Searching for Shangri-la from the Himalayas to Hollywood
By ORVILLE SCHELL
New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000. 328 pages, $26
Greg Alling
Which brings us to Orville Schell. After writing a string of insightful, lively books on ever-changing modern China, including the bestselling Discos and Democracy, he has moved on to Tibet. In Virtual Tibet, Schell lays bare his boyhood fantasies about the world's most altitudinous country, dreams that were precipitated by Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrar's account of Tibet's final years of twentieth-century medieval splendor. In his 1995 PBS Frontline documentary Red Flag over Tibet, Schell had all but converted from dedicated Sinophile to Tibet sympathizer (politically and emotionally, an extremely difficult thing to do). In Virtual Tibet, he writes of his recent conversion: "I now found myself in the odd position of serving as a conduit of sorts for some of America's most recent infatuation with things Tibetan." When he learns about a bevy of Tibet-oriented films hanging on the Hollywood to-do list, he packs up his tattered travel book and appoints himself tour guide on a nostalgic, silver-screened ride to some sort of enlightenment.
Virtual Tibet is also a personal quest to answer an enduring question: What is Tibet's power over us? The answer seemingly lies somewhere between the seventeenth century, when the first Western priests in Lhasa failed to awe the Tibetan disciples of Buddha, and modern Hollywood's current fascination with Tibet. Schell eloquently retells the trials of seven centuries of seekers bent on reaching Lhasa, often only to find the city "dirty" or "backward." At the same time, Schell, himself, is a seeker; he conjures up his own journey to meet both the real Heinrich Harrar and his Hollywood imposter, Brad Pitt.
In Austria, the real Harrar turns out to be a venerated yet veneer-covered ex-Nazi in denial. Too bad. But it is Schell's obsession with Brad Pitt-who plays Harrar in the film adaptation of Seven Years in Tibet-that is even more fantastic. A meeting with Pitt becomes as important for Schell as an audience with the Dalai Lama is for Tibetans. He travels to Argentina to visit the set of a reconstructed Lhasa during the shooting of the film: ". . . as I drink in the wonder of the scene unfolding all around, it occurs to me that at last I really have reached the true goal of my quest: the ultimate Hollywood illusion of Tibet . . . with me inside it." And when he finally meets Pitt, the disappointment we've been waiting for arrives: "When I left [the long-sought meeting] an hour and a half later, I knew that there was nothing on my tape recorder that was really relevant to what I was writing."
As the title suggests, Virtual Tibet is as much about Tibet as perhaps a book titled Real Hollywood would be about Hollywood. It is entertaining. It summarizes well the changing orientalist notions about "mysterious" Tibet which continue to contribute to Tibet's political demise, and it echoes the calls of Tibetan intellectuals to dispel romantic notions. But amidst a number of irksome linguistic and factual inaccuracies, we don't learn enough about how Tibetans confront and deal with the issues-political, historical, religious or otherwise-they face as a people. When Schell does interview Tibetans, their voices come through clearly, and one wants to see them take back their Tibet. Perhaps this is why the book holds together-Tibetans are a compelling people going through a rapid, forced transition to modernity, and as altruists we can't help but be sympathetic to their plight. Schell's ultimate message, however, is that we in the West must dispose of our fantasies. The solution to real Tibet's real problems rests firmly in the grip of its neighbor. Enlightenment about Tibet is perhaps still many lifetimes away, but Schell, unfortunately hasn't taken us any closer.
Greg Alling speaks Tibetan and has lived, studied, and traveled extensively among Tibetan communities in Tibet, Nepal, India, and the West.