Caves of Kôr

Summer Hiatus

2008-05-29T09:13:00.003-04:00

I think I'm going to take a short hiatus on this blog for the next month or so. I'm trying to work on a couple of academic articles, as well as write my new novel, and I'm finding it nearly impossible to summon enough residual intellectual energy to find interesting things to say about popular culture. I'll try to post every couple of weeks if I encounter something particularly provocative, but I won't be posting regularly for a month or two. When I'm through with these dread articles, I'll be back to a more frequent posting schedule.

27 Dresses

2008-05-29T08:28:00.005-04:00

It has been a while since I've seen a new romantic comedy. I can only enjoy them when I'm in a very particular mood, and I was in that mood yesterday. So I watched 27 Dresses, a movie that nicely fits the bill of enjoyable romantic comedy without being overwhelmingly good.

27 Dresses tells the story of Jane, a woman obsessed with weddings who has been a bridesmaid twenty-seven times. She is always doing things for other people--her friends, the brides-to-be, and her outdoorsman boss (with whom she is also in love). When her flighty sister comes along and sweeps her boss off his feet, Jane is in the unenviable position of planning her dream wedding for her sister and the man she loves. This torment is compounded by Kevin, a newspaper wedding-writer whose cynicism about love is a mask for his disillusionment with marriage.

The movie has all of the typical devices of a romantic comedy: a wise-cracking best friend, embarrassing incidents, charming arguments, a public declaration of love, and even a wacky musical number. I found Jane (Katherine Heigl) to be basically sympathetic. I particularly felt for her when her sister swept in and took everything she'd ever wanted, and I found her struggle between her own needs and her characteristic selflessness to be moving. I also found Kevin (James Marsden) appealing, although I wish the movie had allowed us to get to know him a little more. Tess (Malin Akerman), Jane's sister, started out promising--pretty, flighty, self-absorbed, and affectionate--but as the story progressed she grew more and more selfish and heartless. So much so that at the end, when we're supposed to like her again, I couldn't be convinced by that aspect of the happy ending. Overall, though, the movie offers what a romantic comedy is supposed to offer--fun, romance, sentiment, and a happy ending. And I did like all of those bridesmaid dresses.

What bothered me about the movie was the way it treated selflessness and care for others. Jane was a very giving person--working behind the scenes to help things run smoothly, holding the brides' dresses as they pee, trying to take care of her sister. She certainly was portrayed as a doormat, never able to say no or make a stand for what she wanted or thought was right. But the movie went too far in allowing her to get her spine back. As is the trend in popular culture, selflessness itself was shown as a weakness. In one conversation, Tess tells Jane that it's time she stops taking care of other people--as if taking care of other people is wrong!

While I was happy to see Jane recover from her extreme doormat-ness, I had found many of the selfless aspects of her character laudable and appealing. And I was sorry to see her lose them so completely. I was also sorry to see another popular text show selflessness, care, and sacrifice as negative qualities. Apparently, we are all to be self-focused and look out only for our own needs. Because, of course, selfishness is what makes a community work.

Prince Caspian

2008-05-20T09:20:00.004-04:00

I went to see the second Narnia movie, Prince Caspian, this weekend. The adaptation was much less consistent with the book than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I still enjoyed the movie quite a lot.

The narrative of the book Prince Caspian is non-linear and unwieldy, so I was neither surprised nor upset that the makers of the film took a lot of liberties with the unfolding of the plot. They worked in chronological order--rather than using stories within stories as Lewis did--and they beefed up the visually or emotionally dramatic moments considerably. The film ruthlessly streamlines Caspian's flight from Miraz and his encounters with the Old Narnians, creates conflict between Peter and Caspian about who is in authority, and adds a substantial scene depicting an attempt by the Old Narnians to take the castle from Miraz that wasn't in the book at all. The movie unfolds in a much more traditional storytelling arc, but for the most part I didn't have a problem with the changes.

What the film did well and what satisfied me was the way it kept and effectively developed all of the main themes of the book. I read one review of the film last week that complained the film had too much battle and not enough of the "enchantment" of the first film (this was Owen Gleiberman's review in Entertainment Weekly). He is quite right in this observation but, of course, the film simply reflects the nature of the second book. Prince Caspian is much more about war and politics than about the simple joy and enchantment of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. While the description of the fights and battles in the book aren't nearly as length and graphic as what we see in the film, I think the way the film-makers emphasize combat is exactly on target with Lewis's purposes.

Michael Ward's Planet Narnia, a fascinating and convincing study of the Chronicles of Narnia, argues that Lewis uses the characteristics of one of the medieval "seven heavens" to shape each of the seven Narnia books. I heard Ward speak in Edinburgh and I think he's really onto something with his argument. I haven't yet finished reading his book, but I'm pretty nearly convinced he's right. Anyway, he says that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe reflects Jupiter and thus emphasizes "jovial" characteristics, and Prince Caspian reflects Mars, the warrior god, and appropriately highlights battle, war, and combat. I thought the battle scenes in the film were well-done. I also thought the visual incongruity of children participating in battle (a boy the age of Peter fighting a duel with the full-grown Miraz, Susan standing alone with her bow and arrows against oncoming knights on horseback) was quite powerful. And the visuals effectively portray the world Lewis created in the book.

I also think the film did well conveying the gradual appearance of Aslan and the way the characters related to him. The movie didn't neglect the theme of faith in Prince Caspian. The way Lucy's childlike faith allows her to see Aslan before the others, the other children's skepticism without tangible proof, Lucy's own failure to act on her knowledge when she should--all of these elements were well-done in the film. And this theme was further developed in the characterization of Peter, which wasn't in the book at all. Lewis's Peter is quite a flat character, but the film-makers showed him to be struggling with his role in Narnia, his leadership, and his trust in Aslan. While this isn't at all part of Lewis's story, I thought it was believable characterization and added interesting dramatic elements to the movie. I also thought it was in keeping with most of Lewis's themes, so the added content didn't bother me.

So in terms of thematic development, storytelling, and visual elements, I thought the movie was excellent. I did have a problem with a couple of issues--mostly those of characterization. Peter, Edmund, Lucy, Miraz, and Aslan were all portrayed well. But the film didn't do Caspian justice, and the characterization of Susan was all over the place.

In the book, Caspian flees from Miraz and encounters the Old Narnians at a much more leisurely pace than in the film. He has time to meet the Old Narnians, practice his leadership abilities, and earn their trust long before they blow the horn to summon the Pevensies. He never has this chance in the film. He's only just met the Old Narnians when Peter arrives to assert his own authority. This leads the conflict of leadership between the two young men. While I don't think the conflict itself is implausible, it gets in the way of the growth of Caspian as a potential king. Throughout the film, I couldn't help but think he was kind of a wimp--bristling at Peter's leadership, mooning stupidly over Susan, dropping the ball in the middle of battle in a silly attempt to kill his uncle, and overly tempted to resort to the White Witch to get his throne. The Caspian of the book is very young, but he does none of this foolish things. And, although we're supposed to see a maturing of his character in the movie, I wasn't entirely confident of his ability to handle the kingship effectively.

And, finally, I'm not sure what the film-makers were trying to do with Susan. In the book, she's a lot like she was in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe--with a few more hints that she doesn't have the faith the other children have. At times, in the book, she's kind of jerk. And, while she is brave in facing dangers, she doesn't have the spiritual or emotional strength that Lucy has. The movie made a gesture at portraying these characteristics of Susan. But, at the same time, it randomly put words of wisdom and sage advice in her mouth and gives her valiant qualities that don't belong to her character. My only guess is that the writers wanted to pursue the childish romance between her and Caspian, and they had to make her sympathetic enough for viewers to buy into Caspian's attraction to her. (In case you haven't figured it out yet, I thought the romance was absolutely absurd, unnecessary, and in conflict with anything Lewis was trying to do in the book.) Even had Susan's characterization not been contrary to that in the book, it still would have been inconsistent in the movie. She just doesn't work as the Pevensie child who eventually loses faith and as the romantic heroine.

Overall, I quite enjoyed the movie and I'd like to see it again to pick up some more details. And I'll end by saying that Georgie Henley, who plays Lucy, is a marvel. She's captured Lucy perfectly. The moment when she faces off against the troop of Miraz's soldiers on the bridge with just her knife is one of my favorite in the movie.

(By the way, have I imagined it, or did there used to be an early movie poster of Prince Caspian that featured Peter in his armor? I looked for it online but couldn't find it. I really liked that image better than Caspian with his windswept hair.)

Ocean's Thirteen

2008-05-14T09:31:00.003-04:00

I watched this movie for the first time last week. I've seen Ocean's Eleven several times, and it's one I really like. I saw Ocean's Twelve only once, and I'll probably see the third film in the series only once as well. It was enjoyable enough but, like the second film, it wasn't nearly as good as the first.

Ocean's Eleven is a good movie. It is well-written, effectively paced, visually appealing, and delightfully witty. While there isn't a lot of character development--which is what normally makes a movie work for me--in its place is the overall tone of the film. Slick, insouciant, and clever, the tone and mood compel the dominant impression. George Clooney and Brad Pitt are perfect actors for the film. I like Brad Pitt in movies even more rarely than I do Clooney, but his superficiality works perfectly in the film. Some of my favorite moments are those between Danny Ocean and Rusty. I love the one-sided conversation at a bar where Rusty sits with his head on his arms while Danny questions him and responds as if he actually answered. Its wit is understated in a way we seldom find in movies now. But what makes Ocean's Eleven work is its amorality. The characters of thieves, and they are unapologetically so. We can certainly question what it is about our culture that allows us to celebrate thieves in this way, but the film itself doesn't try to redeem them. It doesn't even raise the question of right and wrong. The characters want money, and while the guy they're stealing from is a jerk and Danny has a personal reason for the job connected to his ex-wife, their motives are still primarily mercenary. The glittering, shallow, witty world of the film would shatter completely did it ever make morality an issue to be considered.

That's the main problem I found with Ocean's Thirteen. (To be honest, I can't even remember Ocean's Twelve, so I can't recall where it falls in this regard.) In Ocean's Thirteen, the characters are engaged in a kind of moral quest--to seek justice for their fallen comrade who has been taken advantage of by another heartless casino owner (Al Pacino, hamming it up big-time). The characters fight for their friend; they sacrifice for their friend. They even give Pacino's character the chance to do the right thing before they rip him off. Viewers are clearly set up to read Danny and company's actions as noble, the right thing to do. As soon as morality is brought to the table, the whole world of the film falls apart. Because these characters are thieves and con-artists, and we are made to take delicious joy in the brilliant ways they steal and decieve. The semblance of honor only deconstructs the shiny, artificial world the first movie created so well.

I don't think characters have to be moral to be interesting. And sometimes explorations of how characters are pulled into immoral action for noble reasons can be fascinating and thoughtful. But in this case it seems to be a cheap way of justifying the theft of millions of dollars (the characters are even giving the money away--look, they're really Robin Hoods!) One thing I think this series of films shows us is how fragile this superficial, amoral world really is. As soon as the characters face real human dilemmas, they come out as looking like nothing but common criminals.

I also miss the perfect pacing of the first film. Ocean's Eleven moved at a leisurely pace, lingering over the clever moments and relishing the glitzy surface of the scenes. The third one moves too quickly, trying to pack as much punch into each scene as possible and thus amping the tone up so much it no longer works. There were some fun moments in the film, but it wasn't anywhere near as effective a film as the first one.

Sacred Objects

2008-05-05T09:36:00.006-04:00

This weekend, I encountered an odd pairing of texts. Unexpectedly, they worked really well together. Neither the novel Dracula nor the film Raiders of the Lost Ark were new to me but, in reading and watching them over the last few days, I recognized an interesting similarity. Both texts center on sacred objects, and both of them explore the power of those objects in a particular way. I'm an American Protestant in the Reformed tradition--thus I've never spent much effort into thinking about or appreciating holy objects. But I thought a lot about them this weekend through these two texts, and it has brought up a lot of interesting ideas.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is, of course, about the search for the Ark of the Covenant--and about the dreadful consequences to those who don't believe in the holy power of it. The face melting scene at the climax, after the opening of the ark, is still effective twenty-seven years after the film was released. Indiana Jones is not a Christian--in fact, he claims to be a skeptical scientist. But, in encountering the supernatural, he recognizes the need to hide his eyes from the glory of God. The contents of the ark have turned to dust, but the object itself is still infused with the God's power, and thus only in recognizing its holiness can the characters live.

Dracula is a familiar figure in our culture, and he suffers from overuse and campy characterization. But I'd encourage you to read the 1897 novel by Bram Stoker if you haven't before. It's a fascinating, compelling read, and this late Victorian novel is grounded in the Christian tradition. Vampires as they're portrayed today (in film, television, and innumerable fantasy and romance books), have been pretty well paganized, but the roots of their development in the Western world are quite Christian. To fight vampires, in Stoker and most vampire stories that follow, one needs sacried objects--the crucifix, holy water, the Host from Eucharist. There's a great scene in Dracula when Mina, a good character who has been bitten by Dracula, is touched in the forehead by a holy wafer and it burns a mark onto her skin. Of course, there are other traditions, going far back into folklore, that are connected to fighting vampires as well--represented in the use of garlic and branches of wild roses--so the vampire myth is certainly not fully Christian. But Dracula as a text is founded on Christian faith.

The main characters are Christians, doing their best to fight evil. At one point, Van Helsing says in his imperfect English, "This must not be! We have sworn together that it must not. Thus are we ministers of God's own wish: that the world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him" (Stoker 316). In spite of this belief in their roles in relation to God, the sacred objects in the novel are effective in and of themselves, regardless of the faith of the bearer. Thus, like Raiders, the sacred objects have a power that's distinct, and both texts explore the power of them.

There is a trend, I think, in our culture to take these objects out of their original contexts and portray the power as part of the nature of the object itself rather than in the presence of God. We can see this in most contemporary vampire stories--like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If totally removed from context, the holy objects aren't all that interesting to me--they basically just become magic talismans. But both Dracula and Raiders walk the line between decontextualizing and acknowledging the reality of God's presence within or surrounding the object. Is it truly God's presence melting the faces of the Nazis in Raiders? Theologically, of course, there are some major problems with this premise, but the film leaves the question open. Is God working with the small band of vampire-hunters in Dracula, who are able to destroy the Master Un-Dead through love and sacrifice? Or is it all in the isolated power of the objects themselves? It's really hard to say, which make them fascinating to me. The treatment of the objects in both texts sustains the idea that the objects are holy, sacred--rather than merely magical.

An object can only be holy if a real Power makes it so. Our culture likes the imaginative force of such objects but doesn't want to accept the significance and consequences of the foundational belief. Thus traditionally sacred objects often become magical rather than holy--a necessary distinction that I think a lot of our contemporary storytellers need to further explore.

Mary Higgins Clark's Where Are You Now?

2008-05-01T10:26:00.004-04:00

I read Where Are You Now? yesterday and concluded it's the best book Clark has written in a while. Several years ago, I picked up one of her books from my mother's bookshelf. I basically enjoyed it, so I read another. Then another. I had to go to the library to complete my reading of Clark's books. I didn't love all of them, but they were basically enjoyable. I've kept up with most of the novels she's written since. She writes stories that are somewhere in between mysteries and romantic suspense. I'm actually not sure how she's generally classified, but all of her books sell really well.

All in all, she's written a couple dozen novels, I'd say, but the ones from the last few years haven't been as well written as the previous ones. Her prose style is still crisp and clean--definitely readable--and the premise of her stories are always interesting. But lately she seems to be chopping off the climax of her plots,l building suspense effectively but then dropping off and hurriedly resolving things instead of letting the reader enjoy the culmination of the story. In this book, she didn't chop things off as much as she has in the last few books. So the end was basically satisfying, although I thought the climax was still a little rushed.

What I really enjoyed in this book was the storyline. Where Are You Now is about Carolyn, whose brother Mack disappeared ten years ago without explanation but still calls every year on Mother's Day to let his family know he's all right. The psychological scenario fascinated me, and I think Clark did a good job of capturing the family's realistic responses to such a situation. The novel follows Carolyn as she tries to discover what happened to Mack all those years ago and, of course, her investigation stirs up all kinds of trouble--including a media storm and police suspicion that Mack is responsible for the disappearance of three young women. Carolyn is basically a sympathetic character, and she's surrounded by a host of other characters--some likable but most of them dubious.

In keeping with the genre, we don't find out what happened to Mack and who the real villain is until the last few chapters. I'd figured out the bad guy (although not the motive) about a fourth of the way through the book, but that's not because Clark made it obvious. After reading so many of her books, I recognize patterns in characters. And the bad guy fit a pattern I'd seen in a couple of her earlier books. So I suspected it was him early on and then easily picked up the various clues she'd left. I was still surprised at the end, as I hadn't figured out his partner or the entire situation. Thus the resolution of the mystery was still quite satisfying.

I didn't like how she handled the point of view. I don't understand this trend I've noticed lately of alternating between first-person and third-person within the same book. Since the third-person scenes are limited ominiscient and we eventually get into all the characters' minds, the first-person chapters seem out of place and artificial. Clark isn't the only writer I've seen use the strategy recently, and I really don't like it. Pick a point-of-view and stick with it.

The main thing I want to say about this book is a fairly minor one in the scope of the book. But one thing I always notice when I'm reading Clark is that her characters invariably live an affluent, "classy" lifestyle that creates an odd kind of envy in the reading experience. Her central female characters often have trust funds, large inheritances, or other sources of money. They've been raised with nice things and have cultivated high-class tastes. Clark always includes great details about their lifestyles--the brands of clothes they wear, the kind of food they eat, their addresses in New York, etc. This isn't unique in popular fiction, but something about the way Clark develops them creates a distance between me (the reader) and the character. In other books, I can read about affluent characters and find them completely sympathetic--and, despite the difference in our bank accounts, feel they're not much different than me. But in Clark's books the characters' lifestyles move them out of reach in a strange way. I've tried to locate what makes the difference, and I still can't figure it out. But I often finish the books thinking the characters live lifestyles I never could. And that I kind of wish I could (instinctively, if not rationally). And thus I feel guiltily jealous of fictional characters.

It might be a purely personal reaction based on my own experiences. But I do know that Clark has a recurring motif of characters from the lower-classes who put all their effort into emulating a high-class life (often they're the villains, although not always). It's ironic that she's creating a similar effect in the reading experience. To me, this class consciousness seems like very old-fashioned sentiment--something you'd see in a nineteenth-century British novel. We rarely consider social class as a strong drive in the modern American consciousness (we think about money and power, of course, but not traditional social class). But maybe Clark is tapping into something that's still at work in our modern sensibility, although we rarely admit to it.

My last comment has to do with the romance in the novel. It's not a romance novel, but Clark always pairs the main character up with someone in the end. In this book, I found it very disappointing. The man Carolyn ended up with seemed to have a lot of issues he needed to work through and I didn't find him very likable. I had an entirely different man picked out for her, but sadly the two of them never even met!

West Wing - "We Killed Yamamoto"

2008-04-28T11:33:00.003-04:00

The West Wing was one of my favorite television shows, at least for the first three seasons. The fourth season was a little inconsistent (although the episodes about Zoey's kidnapping were fabulous), and the later seasons were mostly disappointing. Recently, I watched through the third season again on DVD, and I've been thinking for the last two weeks about how I can possibly capture everything I have to say about it in one post.

I've come to the conclusion that I can't. So I gave up trying to be complete in any way, and right now I'm just going to focus a couple of scenes from one episode.

The penultimate episode of Season 3 is "We Killed Yamamoto." Shareef, a member of the royal family in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Qumar whom the Bartlet administration recently learned is a terrorist leader who has killed American citizens, is coming to the United States. The President Bartlet has to decide how to handle it. When it's discovered that the chain of evidence that leads to his guilt has been compromised by the methods of interrogation used on their informant, an arrest and trial are no longer options. So the president has to decide whether or not to break international law and deal with Shareef in a more direct and violent way.

One of the things I like about the West Wing is that the show generally deals with moral choices in a thoughtful and complex way. The writers don't divorce politics from morality--despite the fact that the characters are Democrats and moderately liberal, and conservative Republicans often think that they have the main claim on morality. That's not to say that I agree with all of the political or moral views expressed on the show. But the West Wing takes morality seriously--not dealing with it in a simplistic, Seventh-Heaven way but deeply and with the acknowledgement of the various layers involved in real moral choice.

In this episode, Jed Bartlet has to decide whether or not to order the covert assasination of Shareef. His advisors support this course of action. Fitzwallace says he can't tell if it's peacetime or wartime anymore, and that a lot of international law was developed when war was something completely different than it is now. His is the compelling, straight-line thinking of a soldier. Leo tries to persuade the president using practicality and politics. Both are sympathetic and intelligent men. The stakes are high. Shareef is a terrorist who is guilty of killing innocent Americans and he will continue to be a threat to American safety. And the only conclusion anyone can come to is that assasination is the only way to stop Shareef. But none of this convinces Bartlet.

The action is wrong. He knows it's wrong. And he does it anyway.

In one conversation with the president, Leo says, "This is the most horrifying part of your liberalism. You think there are moral absolutes." One possibility in texts that try to deal with the complexity of moral choice is to conclude that morality is too complex, too conflicting--and thus there can be no right answer. That is not what this episode does. It realizes that, however complex the issues, however unbearable the pressures Bartlet is under, and however understandable his ultimate choice, it was still wrong. Bartlet ends the episode by claiming "There are moral absolutes." And he just did what he knew to be wrong. He now has to live with the consequences.

Regardless of one's views on this particular choice (and certainly people will disagree), this episode is a powerful, true exploration of what moral choice looks like and how we often have to live it. I wish more television shows would tackle the nuances of morality in this way, instead of relying on the easy answers of relativism or of simplistic right-or-wrong thinking.

The Kingdom

2008-04-22T14:21:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, I watched The Kingdom, a movie about an FBI team who goes over to Saudi Arabia to investigate a terrorist attack. Directed by Peter Berg (who I still remember from Chicago Hope), it explores all the dangers and complexities of such a task in that region and features a climax made up of a long stretch of very intense action scenes.

The movie wasn't bad--it held my interest on both a storytelling and an intellectual level. It also gave the woman (Jennifer Garner's character) the most gritty, in-your-face fight sequence--which I thought was an interesting and unpredictable choice.

The movie wasn't all that good, either. I found something very uncomfortable and disjointed about the way the film paired the characteristics and attitude of action-adventure films (which generally use violence for entertainment) with an almost preachy message about our attitudes toward war. If a film is going to get on a soapbox and tell us that all the people we think of as enemies aren't necessarily so and that we shouldn't want to kill them, it seems a little awkward for the same film to give us sequence after frenetic sequence that take visceral pleasure in our doing just that.

That's not to say that stories can't include fight scenes and, at the same time, explore the emotional toll war takes on its participants and the fundamental tragedy at the core of such violence. I think that's what The Kingdom was trying to accomplish--I just don't think the two sides of its storytelling integrated effectively. It is definitely possible, though. If I want a powerful exploration of holy war and the way conflicting ideologies rip apart individuals, I could read Kay's Lions of Al-Rassan. Or, now that I think about it, I think there are some moments in the movie Gladiator that manage to graphically depict violence and simultaneously mourn the need for such violence.

Can you think of other books, movies, or television shows that do something similar and do it well?

(Anne, I'll get to The West Wing soon, I promise.)

Michael Clayton

2008-04-15T13:22:00.003-04:00

The film Michael Clayton begins with a fascinating voiceover monologue by Arthur Edens, a lawyer played by Tom Wilkinson. The monologue recounts a moment of epiphany Arthur experiences as he’s rushing to the airport, dictating to a “panicked associate” as he leaves his building. When the associate screams, he realizes they’re in the middle of a street, faced with an oncoming “wall of traffic.” In that instant, Arthur tells us, he’s “consumed” with the feeling of being covered with a “film,” a “glaze,” a “coating.” He first sees it as amniotic fluid and feels like he’s being reborn. Then he thinks it’s “some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death.” He finally concludes it’s excrement, and he has "been coated in this patina of shit for the best part of [his] life.”

The final image is apt, as both Arthur and Michael are lawyers working for a huge law firm that represents an unscrupulous manufacturer of fertilizer. But the first two images are what interest me the most—this confusion between the sensations of birth and of death.

A few minutes later in the film, Michael Clayton (George Clooney) leaves his car on the side of a road to get out and walk over to three horses on a hill. His car blows ups. As the storyline jumps back four day and unfolds from there, we find out why and how Michael ended up on that hillside, narrowly escaping the exploding car. When we return to the scene at the end, he runs down the hill and throws his wallet, watch, and other personal effects into the burning car. This is his moment of epiphany. And he has to “die” to begin again.

Michael is a “janitor” for this big law firm. He’s no longer a litigator. Instead, he cleans up messes—which seems to include manipulation, bribery, deception and any number of other dubious activities. The main plot is built on his being called in the fix the problem of Arthur Edens—one of the firm’s top attorneys who is going through some sort of breakdown (manifested in his stripping in the middle of a deposition and then chasing a plaintiff through a parking lot). Arthur’s behavior endangers the lawsuit the firm is handling for the fertilizer company, so Michael needs to take care of him. Gradually, Michael comes to see that Arthur isn’t losing his mind—he’s finally seeing the truth.

I don’t always like George Clooney, but when I like him I really like him. I thought he was great in this movie. Although he’s always attractive, he didn’t trade on his good looks here. He appears exhausted, beaten down—increasingly so in every scene. The movie wasn’t action-packed or showy, but it was intelligent, thoughtful, and really well-done. It also didn’t unpack every detail for the audience. It took me a long time to figure out the significance of the horses (they’re connected to the book his son keeps talking to him about). And the murder scene in the movie, while not violent or gory, was so quiet and matter-of-fact it was horrifying. And I particularly like the relative subtlety of the birth/death theme.

After being saturated for so long with the wrongness, the filth of their behavior, the only way to begin again, to make a change, to do something right is to be “born” again. Their old selves have to be stripped away completely—it’s not insignificant that Arthur literally strips off his clothes. Their old identities have to be physically burned away. And their new starts have to be from scratch—holding onto nothing of who they used to be.

The movie is obviously not a Christian movie, but I think it’s saying something true in this. We are slaves to sin. And the only way to be freed from sin is to shed our old selves completely and to be made alive anew in Christ. The biblical images of this transition are radical, violent, and not pretty. And I think Michael Clayton captures this idea effectively. It's about new starts, choosing the right thing rather than the easy thing, and the messiness of leaving behind our sin. In this, at least, I think the film is showing us something true.

Janet Evanovich

2008-04-13T15:04:00.004-04:00

I've been out of town for three of the last four weekends--which is just too much time on the road for my taste. I just got back from an academic conference in North Carolina, and to make it through the drive I listened to Janet Evanovich's Twelve Sharp on CD. I'd read the book before---I've read all the Stephanie Plum books--and it was certainly enjoyable enough to pass the time. But I think it's time for Evanovich to bring this series to an end.

The first few books were really good. Evanovich is a good writer, and the plot and characters were fresh and engaging. Stephanie Plum is a Jersey girl who falls into a job as a bounty hunter. I liked her eccentric family and the unpredictable characters she encountered in her line of work. Evanovich has a great sense of humor, and the plots balanced humor and suspense to good effect. Stephanie's character was funny, genuine, and easy to relate to--she stumbles through life, makes a lot of mistakes, and delights in junk food and dessert. In the early books, the narrative voice and the main character had a sharp edge--just enough to move the novels beyond fluff without getting too heavy or uncomfortable. I started reading the books when four of them were out, and I eagerly awaited the new books until around book eight.

After the eighth book, I stopped buying the hardbacks. I'd either steal my mother's copy or wait for a paperback. I got behind after book 11, and read 11, 12 and 13 in sequence. The books are still good enough for me to read. They're never not enjoyable. But the series has long past its prime.

The problem is there's no longer any character development. All of the characters (except maybe Ranger) are stuck in stasis. Stephanie isn't getting older. She isn't getting smarter. She isn't making any of the important decisions the unfolding events in her life would lead her to. I happen to like romantic triangles, so the Joe/Stephanie/Ranger triangle is a plot device I've enjoyed. But, despite Stephanie's moving closer to one or the other of the men in every book, each new title has them return to their holding pattern. The lack of development is becoming frustrating, and it's causing the characters to be less human.

The eccentric characters Evanovich developed so effectively are now barely more than caricatures. Stephanie's grandmother was one of my favorites, but I think once she puts on leather hot pants to sing in a band, as she does in Twelve Sharp (and then passes gas), she's more cartoon than believable character. And I'm sorry to say, Stephanie's boyfriend Joe Morelli, who I really liked in the first few books, is now pretty boring--only good for putting on his sexy act and wishing Stephanie had a more normal job. Because we're still learning new things about Ranger--the bounty hunter who trained Stephanie and who has morphed into a blend of James Bond and Batman--I still find him interesting. In Twelve Sharp, for instance, we see new sides to him as his daughter is kidnapped. I still basically like Stephanie, but I wish she would grow a little. After thirteen books (plus the shorter, between-the-numbers books) and any number of life-or-death encounters, even slowest of souls would start to mature a little.

To be fair, I can hardly blame Evanovich for putting her characters into stasis in order to continue churning out books. Every book she writes is a best-seller. If I had a formula that made me that much money, I'd probably keep repeating it too.

But still . . . I wish she'd resolve the various issues she keeps stringing along in her Stephanie Plum books so she could find something that creatively challenges her again. She's a good writer. And I'd like to see what she could do if she was really trying again.

Taco Bell: "How are you?"

2008-04-10T17:39:00.003-04:00

I don't have much time today, but I just went through the drive-through at Taco Bell and I have to ask this. Why has Taco Bell decided it's a good idea to greet customers with "How are you?"

It shouldn't be a big deal. "How are you?" is a typical piece of small talk. But when drivers are waiting to give their orders, they expect to hear, "May I take your order," or "Welcome to Taco Bell. What can I get for you?" or something that prompts them to give their order. It seems, however, to have become standard at Taco Bell now to have "How are you?" blurted out at customers, without preamble or introduction and rarely followed with a transition into ordering.

When I first encountered it a year or so ago, I thought it was just one worker at my local Taco Bell in Sioux Falls who had decided (unwisely) it was a way of being nice. Since I usually came through at the time this worker was at the window, I assumed it was just her. But apparently it's not. I've heard it at almost every Taco Bell I've been to recently, and I just encountered it in North Carolina.

I suppose it's intended to be friendly and distinct. But instead it's unnerving and unexpected. You can hardly say anything but "Fine," so it's a pointless trading of words rather than a lead in to further conversation (which is usually how it's used in small talk). And, what's more, people don't know what to do afterwards. They say, "Fine," and then wait for the person to follow up. Invariably, there is no follow-up. I've sat for a full minute in silence before I finally ask, "Are you ready for my order?" I always watch the cars in front of me and recognize when the customer knows the routine. They'll often just ignore the "How are you?" and toss out their order as if they'd been greeted with a more normal phrase. But enough people get confused that it leads to long lag times, which surely defeats the purpose of customer service at a fast food.

I used to get annoyed and frustrated (patience doesn't always come easy to me), but now I try to just laugh. And sometimes, just for fun, I'll say, "I'm fine," and then wait to see how long it will take for the person on the other end to finally say, "Order when you're ready."

Excuses

2008-04-07T12:55:00.004-04:00

I know I only updated the blog once last week, even though I try to post at least twice. I was busy with work and then I drove across the state last Thursday. My sister and I threw a party for our parents' 40th anniversary, which was a lot of fun and quite exhausting. I drove back yesterday, and this morning was greeted to a cold, rainy day, a lot of adminstrative duties at work to take care of, and a paper that needs work before I present it at a conference this weekend. (The paper is on theological issues in The Monk, which is a late 18th century Gothic novel. The novel is fantastic--both bizarre and compelling--and you should really read if you haven't.)

All this to say I still don't have anything worthwhile to blog about. But I've been rewatching the third season of the West Wing on DVD over the last few weeks. It's really good television, and I should have some interesting things to talk about soon.

Since my parents' wouldn't appreciate my posting a picture of them in honor of their anniversary, I'm posting a picture of my dog instead. Leila injured herself a couple of weeks ago--she tore a ligament in her right rear leg. The vet was afraid she would need surgery to fix it (a surgery where they break the dog's leg and then manipulate it back into place). But, praise God, she seems to be getting better without surgery. She could barely walk two weeks ago today, and now she's just barely limping.

MonsterQuest

2008-03-31T17:49:00.006-04:00

The History Channel has been running a show called MonsterQuest--usually shown on Wednesday nights. It goes into various monster mysteries with the intention of bringing light to the questions surrounding them. I've watched the show from time to time, usually when I need something on in the background while I'm doing something else. I've seen one episode on Bigfoot, one on Birdzilla (enormous birds), and one on monster fish. There are a number of these kinds of documentaries on television--of varying quality and with varying levels of melodrama. MonsterQuest is usually pretty interesting--entertaining without defying all sense of logic. While I don't watch the show regularly, I've basically enjoyed it when I watched it. And, even more, I like the consider the kinds of questions it raises.

I'm not particularly persuaded by the sensibility of most cryptozoology, but I do find the lore surrounding Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and other cryptids (I recently learned that's what these creatures are called) quite fascinating. This particular show uses science and solid investigative techniques to explore alleged sightings and clues. As I watch the show, I'm usually torn between skepticism and genuine curiosity. On the Bigfoot episode, while the woman who claimed to have been raised with a community of Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) was obviously not persuasive, the scientist who talked about the convincing nature of some of the footprints--which include ridge patterns and scars--was rather compelling. When they built a bird-shaped kite to prove that people can't accurately judge size or distance in the sky, thereby calling into question a lot of the eyewitness testimony about gigantic birds, I was impressed. While I haven't watched a single episode and changed my opinion about the existence of the various animals, I have been absorbed by the different aspects of the investigation.

I'm not at all surprised that this show and others like it are popular. There are reasons why the legends of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster won't die. The recurring mysteries tap into something very human about us--our need to discover, to explore, to find answers. to shed light into darkness. With a world as known and accessible as technology and science has made ours, we have to find our new frontiers wherever we can. And there's something stimulating (and true) about the idea that there are questions that science hasn't been able to effectively probe. I've heard a few cryptozoologists speak eloquently on the need for people to move beyond the limitations of mainstream science. I've also heard some speak like lunatics, but that's beside the point at the moment.

Ultimately, I find the series humbling. Not just personally humbling, but humbling for humankind. How can it not be astounding that--despite all of our technological capabilities--we can't fully explore Loch Ness? It's simply too deep and too muddy for us to see clearly--even with submersibles. The same is true for the Amazon River, in which an extraordinary number of species live. And how can we definitively disprove the existence of Bigfoot when it hides in woods as dense and vast as those in the U.S. northwest? Did you know there were six-hundred pound catfish in the Mekong basin of southeast Asia? I find catfish a little icky to being with, and this fact completely freaked me out. It was the twentieth-century before the existence of the giant squid and the Komodo dragon was confirmed by Western science. We'll never know everything about the world God created, and we're unbelievably arrogant when we assume we do.

That's not to say Bigfoot exists. But I hope the lore, the questions, and the imaginative energy surrounding him doesn't die any time soon.

Guy Gavriel Kay's Ysabel

2008-03-26T14:50:00.004-04:00

Guy Gavriel Kay is my favorite contemporary writer. He writes historically-based fantasy and releases a book every couple of years. Ysabel is his most recent novel. I bought it in February but held onto it for more than a month. Reading Kay takes a certain amount of emotional energy for me, and I was stressed with other things and couldn’t work up the energy.

I finally read it on my trip to the UK a few weeks ago and, as it happens, I didn’t need the amount of emotional preparation I'd expected. It sounds odd, I suppose, if you haven’t read some of Kay’s previous novels. But I found novels like Tigana and Lions of Al-Rassan absolutely gut-wrenching and wanted to make sure I was ready for whatever Ysabel had to offer.

Ysabel is lovely—highly enjoyable and emotionally compelling—but without the reading trauma of Kay’s other novels.

The story is much less dense and more streamlined than his other books. Instead of delving into the minds of numerous characters, Kay primarily sticks to the perspective of Ysabel’s main character, Ned. The storyline is more linear and the events less violent and tragic. The stakes here are also less world-shaping. Most of the conflict is driven by a mythic love-triangle, and the main thing at risk is the life of one woman. Quite different from the national and/or cosmic stakes of Kay's previous stories.

Despite these differences, reading Ysabel was like encountering an old friend. Most of my favorite Kay-themes are present: the rippling effects of historical moments on the present, clashing cultures and the impact of these conflicts on individual lives, the way our personal stories are so often defined or transformed by the larger stories of history and religion, the complicated interpersonal relationships imposed by power at the deepest level. Kay explores all of these complex themes in Ysabel, as he has in earlier books.

In addition to familiar themes, I also found familiar characters in Ysabel. (And I don’t just mean characters we’ve seen before, although the inclusion of Kim and Dave from Fionavar was delightful.) There are certain character-types present in many of Kay’s novels. As I began reading, I found myself holding my breath, waiting for the gray-eyed man (usually of "middling height"). He shows up in nearly every one of Kay’s books, and I always adore him. I’ve always assumed Kay has some personal inclination toward those characters as well. I was delighted to find the gray-eyed man on page 17 (even though I didn’t learn his eye color until page 33). I also found the red-haired beauty – another staple of Kay’s fiction and one I don’t enjoy nearly so much. But more on that later.

Ysabel is about about Ned, a very likable modern teenager whose life changes irrevocably after an apparently chance encounter in a cathedral in Aix-en-Provence, where he’s staying for six weeks with his photographer father. Ned’s decisions and his own gifts lead him to “blunder into a corner of a very old story,” as the aforesaid gray-eyed man puts it (32). As history comes to life around Ned—stories embedded in the landscape, architecture and spirit of Provence--he learns he’s actually at the center of this particular story.

I love Kay for many reasons. While this novel didn’t emotionally reshape me the way Tigana and Lions of Al-Rassan do every time I read them, it has all the elements I love about Kay. In addition to elegant writing, he creates deeply human characters—who are complex, nuanced, and real. Ned is no exception. It was a difficult shift for me to read a very contemporary character in a Kay novel – not since Fionavar has he written them. Occasionally, the modern lingo felt a bit off—but that might be because of the distinctions in colloquialisms between the U.S. and Canada. This issue disappeared, however, once I got into the story and characters. I really liked Kate, the geeky teenaged girl Ned befriends. In fact, all of the characters worked for me except the title character, and that’s probably because she is one of Kay’s redheads.

I haven’t liked any of Kay’s red-haired women. They all share particular characteristics—beauty, “fire,” defensiveness, quick-temper, an annoying tendency to pout. They are all also alluring to men despite their prickly natures. Maybe it takes a man to find these characters appealing. I certainly don’t. I don’t mean to suggest they are all exactly the same, but they are all of a type. A type I don’t like. Catriana in Tigana is by far the worst. One of my very few lingering resentments in reading Kay is that he married Catriana off so blithely to one of my favorite characters, a man who deserved so much better. Ysabel didn’t rub me the wrong way nearly as much as Catriana, but I had to seriously suspend my disbelief for the love triangle to work for me. Other than her physical beauty, I wasn’t sure why these very impressive men were so obsessed with her. Because the triangle was mythic, it didn’t seriously distract me from the story, however. The character of Ysabel worked on a structural and mythic level quite well. I just didn’t end up caring at all about her as a person and was kind of glad when she finally departed.

There are no happy endings in Kay’s books without a significant amount of sacrifice. Sometimes the sacrifice is so painful it’s emotionally traumatizing—as is the case in the Fionavar Tapestry, Tigana and Lions. While sacrifice is necessary in Ysabel (Ned’s climb up Mont Sainte-Victoire is incredibly powerful), it’s not nearly as scarring as in most of his other books. In fact, there’s more grace involved in the outcome here than is present in Kay’s previous novels. Success, victory, doesn’t have to be bought quite so dearly. There might be an interesting argument to make about the distinctions, but I have to think about it some more before I make any coherent claims.

The main thing I want to say about Ysabel, reading it as a Christian, is that Kay exemplifies the beauty of the liberal arts in a way that a lot of Christians have forgotten. I teach in the Christian liberal arts tradition, so perhaps I’m biased in this regard. But our culture has become so entranced with specialization that we’ve lost sight of what makes us human—those gifts God has given us that distinguish us from animals. According to Arthur Holmes, in The Idea of a Christian College, the liberal arts are those disciplines “which are appropriate to persons as persons, rather than to the specific function of a worker or a professional or even a scholar” (27), and a liberal arts education seeks to cultivate those aspects of persons. Art, science, literature, history, political science, music . . . all of these things develop in us our ability to think critically, to express ourselves effectively, to empathize with other people, to experience the world spiritually, and to appreciate grace, beauty, nature, and works of human creation. Even students in liberal arts colleges don’t always understand the significance of their education. They still think college only prepares them for a job, rather than making them better, more thoughtful, more compassionate human beings.

So, off my soapbox and back to Kay . . . Ysabel, like the rest of Kay’s novels, is a great example of the liberal arts at work. Kay uses Provence not just as a physical setting for the events of the story. Rather, the novel is characterized by the region’s natural landscape, art, architecture, and complex history. These elements aren’t just background; the story couldn’t exist without them. Other displines—like music and photography—enter into the narrative in fundamental ways. All of these different fields are carefully researched and integrated seamlessly into a well-told story, grounded by a sophisticated understanding of their relationships to human nature.

The result is not a mish-mash of different ideas and disciplines, all related in some way to the south of France and imposed artificially on the story. They work together to shape a story that is full, rich, and complete. Whole. And truly human. This is what the liberal arts should look like. Humans are more human when they engage with the blessings of the world and our intellectual heritage in this way. Of all people, Christians should embrace the outgrowths of God’s image in us—many of which are seen in the various fields of the liberal arts. But Christians often “specialize” as much or more than everyone else. And thus we limit our potential to grow as humans and in our relationships with God.

If you’ve never read Kay before, I’m not sure I’d suggest starting with Ysabel. It’s a standalone read, but I think it would be more enjoyable if you’ve read the Fionavar Tapestry first. Try starting with The Summer Tree. And check out Bright Weavings, his authorized website.

Easter

2008-03-23T10:46:00.005-04:00

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter, celebrating Christ's resurrection and the life we have in him.

I was thinking last night about a song I used to sing with my sisters at the approach of Easter. We loved the rousing Easter hymns from church, but the Easter song we sang most often was partly of our own composition, and it clearly reflects the way we inevitably shift focus from the most essential things. I'll share our little song, although my sister (who was the chief lyricist) may never forgive me. It's most effective if you know the old Easter television special Peter Cottontail, since the song is to be sung to that tune the first part is from that song. If you don't know Peter Cottontail, you can check out this site to hear it. It's also helpful to know that, around Easter time, one of the TV networks would run Wizard of Oz--and we were children before the time when movies could easily be seen at will on videos.

Here was our Easter anthem:

Here comes Peter Cottontail,

Hopping down the bunny trail.

Hippety-Hoppety, Easter's on its way!

Oh, I can't wait 'til Easter,

'Cause Wizard of Oz and Peter Cottontail . . .
Hopping down the bunny trail . . . (repeat, and repeat, and repeat)

I'm not sure, as adults, we're any better at keeping what's important at the center of our attention.

As an antidote to our childhood ditty, I'll just include a reflection on the resurrection with rather more substance, written by one of my favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection

CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ' ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest’s creases; in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed ' dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks ' treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, ' nature’s bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest ' to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, ' his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig ' nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, ' death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time ' beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, ' joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. ' Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; ' world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.

(The image, by the way, is Rembrandt's The Resurrection of Christ (c. 1635-39))

Smurfs

2008-03-20T19:38:00.005-04:00

One of the problems I'm facing in writing this blog is having to admit what I watch on TV. Yes, I watched the Smurfs yesterday.

I always liked the Smurfs. My sisters and I watched the cartoon on Saturday mornings during the eighties, and I still remember a lot of the episodes. The fairy-tale nature of the stories appealed to me. And who could resist the allure of a village of mushroom houses. My favorite episodes were always those with Johan and Peewit and thus featuring castles, knights, and princesses. After I did a quick Google search this evening, I learned that the Smurfs are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary this year, and that they were originally created by Peyo, a Belgian comic strip artist, as side characters in the story of Johan and Peewit. They were so popular they got spun off in their own comic, and later Hanna-Barbera developed into them into the cartoon we're all familiar with. This year, some of the episodes are available on DVD for the first time.

The stories in the television episodes are simplistic, of course, and the moral lessons fairly straightforward. The Smurfs teach us to obey authority (Papa Smurf always knows best), work as a community rather than as isolated individuals, and to care for other people and nature. There's nothing morally complex going on here--the narratives don't even use irony. So I remember being baffled when, sometime in middle school, one of my friends soberly informed me that the Smurfs were evil. According to my friend's father, the Smurf's use of magic was proof of an occult involvement, and their blue color had a pagan inspiration. Druids were blue, I was informed. At that point, I was older than the Smurf's intended audience, and I was intuitive enough to understand the source and motivation of this claim. My fondness for the Smurfs remained unsullied. Rather, this might have been the first time I argued that the presence of magic in fiction doesn't automatically mean it's the work of Satan.

I actually have no idea what the inspirations were for the Smurfs. For all I know, they might have been pagan. Now that I think about it, the Great Oak was a fixture in Smurf mythology. After I did the Google search just now, I learned that Smurfs are also accused of promoting Communism (because Papa Smurf wears red?). All I can do is testifying that, having been raised on weekly viewings of the Smurfs, I have had no desire to participate in pagan ritual or sorcery. Nor have I been inclined to turn my back on my capitalist lifestyle.

I do have a real question though. I remember being frustrated as a child that the Smurfs never learned anything from their mistakes or changed in any way. Greedy Smurf was always greedy. Lazy Smurf was always lazy. And Brainy Smurf was always obnoxious and egotistical. In the episode I saw yesterday, Brainy disobeyed Papa Smurf and read a spell that turned the entire village into stone. They were barely saved in time. Brainy could have destroyed the entire Smurf village and the forest as well. You would think, after having nearly killed himself and his community, Brainy might have changed his behavior a little. But he does the same things over and over again. It's a cartoon--I know--and this is characteristic of cartoons. But my question is why.

Why do children's cartoons have no development of character? The characters don't even remember what happens from one episode to another. This always bugged me as a child, so I'm not convinced that children necessarily prefer it this way. Of course, Brainy always needs to be annoying and full of himself--that's part of the fun, after all--but can't he occasionally recall the lessons he learned in previous episodes? I think children would recognize that this reflects more of real life. Yes, we often repeat the same mistakes, the same sins, but we don't always. And, even when we do, our experience in making choices alters with past behavior. I'm not expecting complex characterization in a cartoon--only a little recognition of what has come before.

I can't think of a single cartoon that has real character continuity and development, even in a simplistic way. I don't watch new cartoons, although I have seen Fairly OddParents a few times and, while it's narratively more sophisticated than the old-school cartoons, Timmy doesn't appear to grow or remember what he did before. Is there something obvious I'm missing about why this is? Do we genuinely think, because they're children, they don't want something as basic as this in storytelling? Are there any cartoons out there that don't cripple their characters with static personalities? Those are the questions I'm mulling over today.

Revelation: The End of the World?

2008-03-17T15:14:00.005-04:00

Last night, I watched a documentary on the Discovery Channel, inanely entitled, "Revelation: The End of the World?" I've watched several such documentaries in the last few months, programs in which the creators get together some scholars and historians (usually one with a radical theory) and posit some sort of new reading of biblical text. I watched one on the "true" story of Noah's ark and one on the plagues of Egypt, where they conjectured the plagues could have been caused by a volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean. Last weekend I watched one on Adam and Eve where a scholar interpreted the creation and fall stories as narrative representations of a cultural transition from hunter-gatherers to an agricultural society. These kinds of documentaries seem to be on all the time, and I'm fascinated with hearing the various ways our culture wants to deal with Scripture. My reaction to them ranges from genuine interest to baffled hilarity, depending on the quality of the program and the quality of the scholars they interview.

The one last night was rather boring, actually. The narrator had a bland delivery, and they didn't put together a particularly creative group of images to depict the content. Even if this weren't the case, the substance of the documentary wasn't too exciting--offering nothing hilariously radical or thoughtfully provoking. Within the first three minutes, we were told that the disciple John didn't write the book of Revelations--this based on a word study of one scholar. It was some other John, we're informed, who--*gasp*--was well-known and respected by the Christian churches of his time. This particular piece of profundity gave me hope at the beginning that the documentary would get into some crazy, entertaining theory regarding the author and composition of the book.

Not so.

The gist of the show was that the book of Revelations is not really about the end of the world, as we've always thought. Rather, the writer had a timely and historically-compelled purpose in writing the text. The "key" to the book, we're told, is anxiety about the Imperial cult and the reactions of the early Christians to Rome. The show used an annoying series of leading questions, which were supposed to be provoking, I believe, but were nearly always obvious or irrelevant. A good example, intended to stir us to rousing thought, was something like, "Is John of Revelations angry at the Romans for what they're doing to Christians?"

Most of the show went through a few basic symbols from John's visions, connecting them to Rome. They discussed the 666 - Nero connection through the number game, which I'd heard before. (The numeric values of the letters in Nero's name and title add up to 666.) And, just to confuse matters and make their findings sound even edgier, they discuss a scrap of one copy of Revelations where the number was 616 instead of 666. So we're told perhaps the real beast is Caligula rather than Nero, since 616 would be his number. And on and on it went, offering nothing new or interesting--at least not to me. Several years ago, my then pastor gave one of the best sermon series I've ever heard. It was on Revelations (although sadly we only got halfway through), and I'd learned about most of the connections to Rome then, offered with real insight, historical context, and theological perspective.

So I have to just shake my head. My reaction to the arguments put forward on this show are similar to my reaction to Christians who read Revelations with absolute literalness. We've lost sight of genre somewhere along the way, and we don't understand how to read visionary and symbolic narrative. The point of symbolism is to allow for layered readings. Perhaps Rome was a relevant historical context to the book of Revelations and John was also saying something about the end of the world. And maybe, just maybe, he was making other theological points at the same time. That possibility never seemed to occur to anyone on this documentary. Too bad.

The underlying agenda of most of these documentaries seems to be to de-theologize the biblical text. They tell us we can find the "key," the real message of the stories, and they're always something merely historical or cultural. I think about it as the Da-Vinci-Code compulsion--this desire to solve the Bible the way we would solve a puzzle. I suppose, in doing so, we strip the Bible of its real power to speak to us, and we therefore absolve ourselves of any responsibility to take it seriously.

At least, in the Adam and Eve documentary I watched, one scholar offered the following shocking claim: the first chapters of Genesis are theological and they tell us something about who God is, who we are as humans, and what our relationship is with God. I'd say the same thing is true about Revelations. Perhaps that's the most radical theory of all.

10,000 BC

2008-03-14T17:30:00.003-04:00

I went to see 10,000 BC yesterday. Call me crazy, but I actually went out of my way to see it. I found the premise intriguing, I’ve watch numerous documentaries about prehistoric animals, and I sometimes like “big” movies of this kind. I hadn’t read any reviews, except some grumblings about the film’s historical inaccuracies. I would never go into a movie like this expecting any sort of historical accuracy, so I’d planned to take it all as fantasy and try to enjoy it anyway.

I couldn’t. Not really. Or not enough.

The movie is badly written, but that’s not always a make-or-break thing for me. I’ve enjoyed movies that are badly written before. I’m not ashamed to admit I liked Independence Day, and I thought Titanic had a cringe-worthy screenplay. But the storytelling of 10,000 BC got in the way of my enjoying this film, even as I tried to take it only for what it offered.

The whole first half-hour is choppy and frustrating, moving rapidly from scene to scene with only an annoying voice-over narration to string the story together. Every time I tried to like or understand the characters (centered on a tribe of mammoth-hunters who are facing starvation and then get attacked and enslaved by invaders), my focus got jerked away or someone did or said something implausible. It wasn’t until halfway into the movie that I could actually find a thread of an interesting story (more on that later), but even that wasn’t enough to save the movie for me.

Some of the visuals 10,000 BC offers are compelling. The fight with the terror birds was visually arresting, and I thought the mammoths were really well done. But movies should be about stories more than images, and I wished there had been more for me to work with here. I can’t even offer a particularly in-depth Christian reading of the film, since the story and characters are so flimsy.

As I said earlier, the historical inaccuracies don’t bother me in this film. Who cares if the creators put sabretooth cats and mammoths in the same time period as an Egyptian-like city? (By the way, I don’t think the city is literally supposed to be Egypt, although most of the online grumblers seem to assume it is.) Of course, that’s anthropologically impossible. If it was a good epic story, I wouldn’t care. But what does bother me is that the characters think and act more like modern men than primitive humans. If you’re going to make a film about primitive cultures, you should at least try to capture a believable primitive spirit.

The worst anachronism for me was the very modern, clichéd love story that was supposed to be the emotional heart of this movie. By no stretch of my imagination could I believe that a man and woman from a tribe of mammoth-hunters could play out the kind of shallow, selfish romantic fantasy that only a culture as safe and comfortable as we are could substitute for real love. D’Leh, our sometimes intrepid hero, pursues his love for Evolet (who, incidentally, I thought was played by a very pretty actress who might have more potential than she was given here), even when common sense and a larger social conscience would have him focus on more essential tasks. For a moment, in the final scenes, I thought I was vindicated in my disgust of the romantic coupling, but even that brief hope was quickly (and abhorrently) dashed in what was surely the worst moment of the movie from a storytelling perspective. It would have been a far better movie if they hadn’t tried to impose an epic love story on a world where it was completely implausible.

And perhaps that leads to the one thread I thought could have saved the movie from being a complete waste of time. For the first hour of the movie, I was confused about the character of D’Leh. I know his character growth is ostensibly defined by his refusal to accept the white staff of leadership in the beginning because he didn’t accomplish the appropriate act of courage (never mind the details—they’re irrelevant). Through the events of the plot, he learns how to truly be courageous and a leader and to deserve the white staff he finally takes on. All this is fairly simple and straightforward, but I couldn’t get a handle on how we are supposed to feel about him as he starts his hero’s journey. Is he a coward? Is he a romantic wimp? Is he a modern individualist in a caveman world?

For instance, near the beginning, he and some companions are following the invaders to rescue their enslaved tribespeople. D’Leh’s only apparent motivation is to reclaim Evolet. At one point, instead of using sense and strategy, he rushes over to free her, even though his action endangers the other tribespeople and his companions. Was I supposed to be thrilled by this as an act of romantic chivalry? Or was I supposed to feel what I actually felt—intensely annoyed by his selfishness and stupidity? I genuinely didn’t know.

Then I got to the one scene that made me wonder if I’d been judging the story too harshly. At the point of giving up, D’Leh has a conversation with his mentor (implausibly named Tic’Tic). Tic’Tic tells him that some men draw a circle around themselves and their family and vow to protect those within it. (He actually says their women and children, but the movie uses a modern notion of family, even for cultures where that notion wouldn’t exist.) Other men, Tic’Tic says, draw a larger circle, taking in all of their tribe. But a few men draw the largest circle, around a great many people. And those men fight and sacrifice in service to community in the largest sense. D’Leh must acknowledge that he is one of the men who must draw that largest circle.

For a while, I was taken aback, wondering if all of the selfishness I’d noticed at the beginning, including the nauseating love-story, was supposed to be viewed as selfishness as D’Leh learns that true leadership does not mean fulfilling his own desires but means sacrifice and service to a larger community. And I actually liked the scenes that followed, convinced that a real piece of wisdom was holding this story together. Despite some bad dialogue and flaws in logic, I basically enjoyed the second hour of the movie, all the way through the slave revolt. Maybe I’m easy, but I even liked the charging mammoths.

Ultimately, however, this thread of a storyline wasn’t enough to save the whole film. The end of the story was frustrating and stupid, set into motion by the crazy characterization of one of the villains. One of the slavers takes a liking to Evolet. He’s a rather accommodating chap, who strokes her hand while she sleeps, doesn’t rape her despite his swooning attraction, keeps other men from raping her, and even saves another slave at her request. I found his improbable behavior annoying at first. Then, for a while, I had the vague hope that the story would do something interesting and make him a slightly sympathetic bad guy. No such luck. The bizarre contortions of his characterization only highlight to absurdity of the entire climax. And it leaves me wondering if the thread of a good storyline I picked up earlier was merely an accident.

I do like the message in the circle speech—about what real leadership should look like and about how we all make a decision about who to love, who to sacrifice for, who to protect. Jesus, of course, tells us to draw the widest circle of all, encompassing even our enemies. I think the speech's affirmation of community is much more believable for a primitive culture, where people needed other people to survive from day to day, than a sappy, self-seeking romance. If the movie had truly explored this concept, in addition to including the cool scenes of mammoths and sabretooth cats, 10,000 BC could have been a good movie.

Sliding Doors

2008-03-12T18:24:00.002-04:00

One of the recurring themes in literature I like to explore in my classes is the relationship between free will and sovereignty—the question of who or what controls the fates of individuals. While not as obvious as universal themes like death and love, the theme consistently shows up in literature, regardless of time period or culture. For obvious reasons, we often see it in literature written within a Christian worldview—like Hamlet, Paradise Lost or Lord of the Rings. But we can also see it in pre-Christian texts that portray a force like Fate, and the theme shows up in popular culture a lot.

The other night, I was flipping the channels, looking for something to watch on TV. I stumbled across the 1998 romantic comedy Sliding Doors. The film was never terribly popular, but I remember quite clearly when it was released. I thought it looked interesting, and I’ve liked John Hannah ever since Four Weddings and a Funeral, so I made a point of seeing it.

The film stars Gwyneth Paltrow as Helen, a sympathetic but not very memorable London woman who loses her job as the story begins. As she goes home, the narrative splits into two different realities. In one, she catches the subway, meets upbeat, clever James (John Hannah), catches her boyfriend cheating on her, dumps him, and starts a new, fulfilling life in which she falls in love with James. In the other reality, she misses the subway, doesn’t meet James, doesn’t catch her boyfriend cheating, ends up working two miserable jobs to support the loser, and doesn’t find a life that fulfills her.

The film is enjoyable enough—not brilliant or profound, but the characters and storyline held my interest. One thing I found myself thinking about after I rewatched the film this week is the way it deals with this common theme of free will and fate/sovereignty. I won’t give away all of the details of how the film ended, in case you happen to see it sometime, but the “good” reality concludes in a way that makes it impossible for Helen and James to be together. But, in the end of the other reality, the two of them run into each other in a way that suggests they will meet and fall in love in this reality as well. I kind of like that ending, from a narrative perspective as well as a thematic one.

Regardless of the characters’ individual choices in the two different realities, the ultimate outcome will be the same. When Christians discuss how our free will works with God’s sovereignty, they will often say things like, “We’re responsible for our individual choices. God is responsible for the outcome.” This film, in its own simplistic way, might reflect one way to visualize this very complex truth. We make choices using the free will God has given us, and we’re responsible for our decisions and actions. But God’s will is carried out no matter what we decide.

This film, of course, implies a romantic conception of an impersonal fate rather than a sovereign God at work in the universe, but I found the way it dealt with the concept rather interesting.

Unlike literary texts, most of the popular culture that deals with these issues put them in the context of romantic love. There are a lot of movies that explore how romantic love is destined or meant to be, and Sliding Doors is only one example. But I’m trying to think of examples of popular culture (particularly movies or television) that deal with free will and fate/sovereignty in a context other than romance. The M. Night Shyamalan film Signs does very clearly, but I’m having trouble thinking of other examples. Can anyone else think of another example? I'm probably overlooking something obvious.

Back again

2008-03-10T13:24:00.004-04:00

Sorry about the long delay in updating. I was out of the country for the last week and a half, visiting some friends in the UK. I went to London, Haworth in Yorkshire (the Brontes' village--that's the picture) and Edinburgh. But I'm back again now, ready to start updating regularly--every other day or so--again.

On the train from Edinburgh to London last week, I was sitting near three British college students. Despite their accents, they were quite familiar as students--laughing loudly at their jokes and discoursing with supposed wisdom, even when they knew little about the topic. They talked about all kinds of things, from local English politics to the varied careers of one's sister. But the most interesting part to me of the overheard conversation was their views on Americans.

They brought up all of the cliches about Americans. We're lazy and fat, and everything here is way too big (our cars, our houses, even our Coke bottles). Like all stereotypes, this one is based in a kernel of truth. Our Coke bottles are, indeed, larger than those in the UK. Our houses, rooms, cars, roads, and bathtubs are too. And a lot of us eat too much. We have a lot of space in the US, and we make use of it. Spending a week or two in Europe really drives home the space issue.

I had a grand time on my trip, but I must admit I was very happy to get in my (big) car and drive on our (wide) interstates without the fear of being crunched between a Yorkshire stone wall and a truck. I was also glad go grocery shopping to fill up my (large) refrigerator and take a shower in my own (big) tub. I love travelling. And one of the best things about travelling is how happy I always am to be home.

I'll be blogging about popular culture again soon.

Random thoughts about Seinfeld

2008-02-25T17:47:00.004-05:00

I finally started reading The Kite Runner. Obviously, I’m years behind on my bestseller reading. But between that and keeping up with work, I don’t have any real analysis for today.

I do have a few random thoughts that struck me as I rewatched a Seinfeld rerun today on TBS. Seinfeld holds up really well under repeat viewings—the quality of the writing and the intelligence underlying the irony don’t get old or particularly dated. Today, though, I wasn’t paying much attention to the storyline of “The Lip Reader,” but I was hit with a couple of distinct images.

In his sermon yesterday, my preacher talked about how we have faulty images of ourselves. We see ourselves through our self-constructed lenses, prettifying and sanitizing our sin. It’s obviously true. We don’t want to admit how dirty our sins really make us. And I thought of this as I saw the scene in this episode when George is eating a sundae at the tennis match. A news camera catches him with his face mouth smeared with chocolate and with melted ice cream dripping down his chin. It’s a hilarious image—George blissfully gorging on his snack, completely unaware that he’s being mocked on air by the commentators.

I couldn’t help but think how fitting the image was for this spiritual truth about ourselves. We laugh at George and think about how embarrassed we’d be if something like that happened to us. All the while, we indulge in our own sins and never realize how smeared with them we are.

The other image from the episode that struck me is when Jerry is watching an attractive, “deaf lineswoman” (Marlee Matlin’s character) at the tennis match. While everyone else turns their heads right and left, right and left, to follow the tennis game, Jerry stares fixedly at one spot—the beautiful woman. I wonder if that’s what we as Christians should be like. Our eyes fixed on one spot—on Christ—while the rest of the world looks alternately in different directions to find something to satisfy their needs.

Anyway, obviously these are not reflections prompted by the Seinfeld storyline. But the show often uses resonant images, and this is what they made me think about today.

Planet Earth: From Pole to Pole

2008-02-23T11:51:00.005-05:00

Last week I splurged and bought the complete series of Planet Earth on DVD. I’d watched the series on the Discovery Channel last year and knew I’d eventually end up buying it. I love wildlife documentaries and watch them all the time, but Planet Earth is one of the most astounding, emotionally compelling documentaries I’ve ever seen.

I bought the BBC version, narrated by David Attenborough. Sigorney Weaver did the narration for the U.S. version I watched on television, and I thought she did a good job. But I think Attenborough’s voice-over is even richer. The only thing I miss on the BBC version is the U.S. opening sequence. The music of the opening, in combination with the incredible images from the show, is absolutely mesmerizing, and they don’t have it on the version I bought.

I’ve encounter a certain kind of skepticism among some Christians about issues connected to the environment. They’ll sometimes skirt around environmental issues, as if acknowledging them means grouping themselves with the amorphous threat of “liberalism.” But the natural world is one of the great blessings and responsibilities given to us by God. And we can get a whole new appreciation of it through shows like Planet Earth.

There is far too much in the series to cover in one post, so today I’ll just go over the first episode, “From Pole to Pole.” Sometime later I might discuss other episodes. “From Pole to Pole” hits highlights of the series and moves throughout the various regions and habitats of the earth by tracing the cycle of seasons.

I would defy anyone not to be moved by the images we’re shown of our earth—achieved through the skill of the filming and uniqueness of the shots the creators were able to get. We see the extraordinary power of the strike of a Great White shark on a seal in slow motion, and the beauty of cherry blossoms blooming in Japan, sped up so we can see the trees bloom in a few seconds. We aren’t able to witness these kinds of images without the help of technology, and I think it gives us even more at which to marvel about the world God created.

But the emotional power of the series is not just found in the way it’s filmed. It’s found in nature itself. God’s creation calls on the whole range of human emotions, and I think that’s easy for us to forget.

There’s nothing to feel but awe at the vast scope of the migrations we see in this episode. Three million caribou on the move in the arctic tundra, traveling 2000 miles in the longest overland migration on earth. The entire earth’s population of Baikal teals—300,000 birds—in one flock, moving from Siberia down to Korea. Endless herds of animals in southern Africa moving through deserts to the swamps of the Okavango to find water. Groups of elephants, buffalo, zebra—all heading for the same place, the only way for them to survive. The complex order we see in the migration of animals and God’s provision for them in the newly running water is a testimony of the Creator.

Other shots are absolutely delightful, like baboons tiptoeing prissily through the swamps, or a bird-of-paradise dancing urgently (like a desperate adolescent) to attract a mate, or elephants frolicking joyfully in hip-deep water after walking hundreds of miles through the desert to get there. And some are heartbreaking. We are shown two Amur Leopards, which live in eastern Russia and are the rarest cats in the world. The entire species rests on the forty or so individuals remaining in the wild. To see shots of the leopards up close, watch them scavenge desperately for food in a cruel and disappearing habitat should break your heart. They’re beautiful. And there are only forty of them left. Forty.

My favorite scenes are the polar bears. A mother and two brand new cubs emerge from their den for the first time after the long arctic winter. The mother slides down a slope, rubbing herself blissfully in the snow. And the cubs stumble and slip along after her. The magnificence of the animals and the urgency of the mother’s search for food while she cares devotedly for her cubs compel conflicting feelings. And the fact that the narrow line the bears have always walked—between oppressive winters and melting ice—is gradually dissolving into a doomed future makes the images all the more poignant.

I think all Christians should watch Planet Earth. Not only is it immensely enjoyable, but it is a great opportunity to reflect on God’s creation—to glory in God’s creative power and his care for the world, and to recognize the vast responsibility we’ve been given as stewards of it.

Comedy and Credit Woes

2008-02-19T14:11:00.001-05:00

I’ve been sick and I’m still trying to recover, so I don’t have much inspiration for a lengthy analysis today. I wanted to write something about the series of FreeCreditReport.com commercials—the ones with the guy and his band singing his credit woes. They’re my favorite commercials running at the moment, and I was sure there must be something enlightening to analyze about the worldview presented.

When I saw the first commercial (the one where his identity was stolen and he’s stuck working in a seafood restaurant dressed as a pirate), I was skeptical. It struck me as more silly than clever. But the second one (where he married his dream girl and now lives in the basement of her parents’ house because her credit was bad) made me snicker a little. And I think the third one—buying the car—is hilarious. So I now have a favorable impression of the whole series of commercials.

My problem is that I laugh whenever I watch or think about the commercials. I start trying to thoughtfully analyze them, but by the time I get to the part of the third commercial when the guy’s “posse” is getting laughed at in the “used sub-compact,” humor has beaten down insight. I know there are things to say about the ads, regarding our credit-driven culture and the way our greatest goal seems to be our own comfort, but mostly I just giggle.

It does bring up an interesting issue about genre, though. Sometimes I ask my classes which genre they think is most effective for getting across a message. Invariably, they will say serious drama. They like comedy, but they don’t take it seriously. When I show them clips of, say, The Princess Bride and Schindler’s List, they will always say Schindler’s List is more successful at presenting its message. But I wonder.

Because we never think about comedy the way we do serious drama, we’re more likely to take in the worldview without questioning it. If we’re laughing, we believe that nothing is getting through to us. But, of course, it is. It’s just getting through unfiltered.

Ultimately, I think comedy has the potential to be more effective—and thus more dangerous—than serious drama does. I believe that intellectually, at least. But I’m still having trouble not laughing whenever I that guy bemoaning his credit with jaunty song in those commercials.

CSI

2008-02-15T15:52:00.001-05:00

It seems like CSI is on all the time now. In addition to the episodes on CBS, Spike airs it several hours a day. Yesterday, I counted up eight times I could have watched the show if I wanted. I only watched one.

I like CSI, for the most part. Sometimes I think it glories in the gruesome merely for the sake of gruesomeness, and any episode featuring Catherine in weepy melodrama is bound to annoy me. But often I enjoy it. And occasionally an episode will wow me.

Not long ago I rewatched “The Hunger Artist,” which was the season finale of the second season and one of the memorable episodes of CSI for me. The team investigates the death of a model who was found in a shopping cart in a downtown alley. They discover that the model suffered from extreme cases of both anorexia and bulimia (she minutely measured everything that was put in or came out of her body), and they also find the model’s sister is a homeless schizophrenic. The case itself is both interesting and horrifying, but the episode struck me mostly because of the way it developed its themes.

The teaser ends with a revolting sight. Grissom and Brass are looking at the dead body of the model, and a rat squirms its way out of the victim’s mouth. Normally, I would chalk this up to the ick factor the show likes to cultivate, but in this case the shot emphasizes one of the main themes of the episodes. This theme is laid out explicitly a few minutes later, when Dr. Robbins tells Grissom the model was injected with pig botulism—“Botox”—and Grissom says something about how, with all the advances in science, we still manage to put them to the most primitive of uses.

Dr. Robbins then says, “People are still animals.”

The episode shows how humans reduce themselves to the basest and most animalistic of beings, the way they can become defined by the purely physical. Their bodies. The model at the center of the episode fell into physical self-destruction because her emotional pain was too much for her. She transformed her pain into excessive control over her body, which eventually took the form of self-mutilation. She became nothing more than her body, and she couldn’t help but (literally) deface even that.

Over and over again in the episode, we’re shown ways in which humans are their bodies—from the shallowness of fashion shoots, to Sara announcing out of the blue, “I’ve got crabs,” to Grissom’s attempts to adjust to the possible loss of his hearing, the way his own body is defeating him. Humans are animals, are flesh, are nothing more than the physical. So it’s fitting a rat would crawl out of the mouth of a corpse. That’s what we are.

These conclusions would be horribly depressing—and, indeed, there’s nothing cheerful about this episode. But there’s another current of meaning underlying the storyline. Something resembling hope. It’s never defined, and it’s never achieved by the characters. But we see hints of the possibility of something beyond the basely physical.

The model’s sister at the end of the episode is still homeless and still suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. In a final conversation with Grissom, she rambles on in her disorganized fashion, but she says several things that point toward some sort of larger truth. Her final claim is this: “You never know what you need until you find it, and the next thing I find might be the thing that changes everything.” That’s the glimmer of hope at the end of the story. And, to me, it elevates the sense of humanity portrayed in the episode. There exists the possibility of finding something that can truly meet our needs—needs that are so much more than just physical.

Humans are spiritual creatures as much as physical. And our deepest needs are spiritual. God took on a physical body in order to meet that need. The episode certainly doesn’t suggest Christ is the answer. But it points toward a larger spiritual need in a world made up of bodies.

The recurring mantra of CSI is to look to the evidence, to the physical clues left behind in a scene that will lead the investigators to the truth. The truth they’re searching for most of the time is scientific. It’s not Truth. But I really like how the show sometimes—not always, but sometimes—acknowledges that there are some things science just cannot answer.

In Defense of Romance

2008-02-13T07:45:00.009-05:00

As it's almost Valentine’s Day, I’d like to ramble a bit on the romance genre.

A round-up of articles about the romance genre on Dear Author, led me to this article on the Today’s Christian Woman’s website. In it, Elizabeth Marvin talks about her addiction to romance novels and how she worked to overcome it. I certainly have no intentions of questioning her experiences or her spiritual decisions. I’m quite sure she is not the only woman who has allowed reading material to get in the way of her relationship with God or her family, and I think it’s extremely valuable to talk about the issue. We all need to admit to and address those things that we use unhealthily or that we allow to interfere with our relationships with God. As such, I applaud her for overcoming this particular addiction and for writing about it.

But I’m always worried that stories like this might affirm a tendency in our culture—particularly among Christians—to lump all romance novels together as shallow, pointless, or sordid. Romance as a genre sells better than any other genre of adult fiction, so perhaps it seems strange that it would require a defense. But I think it does, since those outside of the genre don't often consider the value of the romance genre. Just as I think every fictional genre offers something worthwhile to our experiences, so our lives and our literature wouldn’t be the same without romance novels.

To be clear, I’m discussing here the potential of romance as a genre. Certainly, there are a lot of bad romance novels in print, just as there are in every other genre. But to dismiss an entire genre because of particular examples or vague generalizations strikes me as ludicrous. There’s a lot to be said on this topic. But I’ll try to limit myself to three main points: romances reflect an important aspect of women’s experience, they point toward the value of social unity, and they mirror the universal narrative that shapes human existence.

First, and perhaps most obviously, romance novels from their outset have reflected women’s experience. I want to be careful here and not suggest that the pursuit of marriage is part of every woman’s life. A lot of women have the experience of discovering someone to love and share her life with, but a lot of women don’t. And I will be the first to encourage both women and men to not overly-privilege the idea of romance or prioritize romantic relationships (even one’s marriage) over the most essential relationship (with God) and the core human community God has provided us with—the church. But issues surrounding romantic relationships, however they work themselves out, are nearly universal ones. And we can see a lot of ourselves in seeing them played out in fiction.

Whenever I teach British literature of the appropriate time period, I assign students to read a Jane Austen novel. Invariably, I will have a group of complainers in the class, and they won’t always be male. They’ll claim that Austen novels are trite, silly, and shallow. That they don’t deal with truly important issues. And that they're irrelevant to our lives. This is the same criticism Austen has received from the beginning. Because Austen made a choice to portray the relatively sheltered lives of middle-class women in England, she’s been critiqued for not exploring the "big issues" of the day.

I’ve always thought this criticism is absurd. Austen wanted to portray the lives of the women in her social circle, and so she wrote novels about the most vital decision those women would make in their lives. That decision was who to marry. If they chose poorly, they would suffer the consequences until they died. Each of her heroines uses her intellect, her moral conscience, her feelings (always tempered by her reason), and her sense of social duty to choose the best man for her marry. There is nothing trite or shallow about it. This was the experience of women in the time and social situation in which Austen lived. To reflect women’s experiences, she wrote romance novels. While choices for women’s lives aren’t as limited now, romance novels can still speak to us loudly about the experiences of women, and not just in the central romantic relationship. Romance novels, historically and still today, often involve a much broader depiction of a woman’s life. (Obviously, romance novels aren’t exclusively female. Men have written them, and men read them. But the genre itself has generally been about women’s experiences.)

I’ve always believed that good literature in any genre is that which expresses, with quality of craft, something true and meaningful about human experience. Romance novels aren’t, and shouldn’t be, the only form of literature in which we can read about women’s lives. But it’s a prominent one. In Western culture, whose development was often dominated by male voices, we cannot dismiss a genre that has always given voice to women.

My second point is that romance novels point toward the value of social unity. From the very earliest of Western literary texts, a happy ending was often envisioned as marriage, which reflected a return to social unity. We see this in classical drama. We can see it in Shakespeare’s comedies, which usually showcase several romantic couples. And we can see this in romance novels too. The successful union of man and woman in marriage as the resolution to the conflict of the plot reflects a larger sort of social unity—the ability to overcome conflict and difference and to connect to another in a constructive way.

Conflict in most romance novels is both external and internal. They have to resolve difficulties caused by outside forces and by their own characters. The romance novels I like the most are when the conflicts aren’t easy to overcome. For me, it makes the emotional payoff at the end more meaningful. My tastes are not necessarily those of the majority of romance readers. I saw that very clearly many years ago in a discussion with my mother about one of my favorite romance writers, Patricia Veryan. Veryan is rather old-school now. She wrote Georgian and Regency-set historical romances, and her characters and dialogue are delightful. My mother said to me in this conversation that she liked Veryan novels, “But the heroes always have to suffer so pitifully.” It’s true. Veryan’s heroes are always put through the wringer—physically and emotionally—before they achieve their happy endings. And the heroines are always forced to act with courage, integrity, and strength to save those they love. That’s part of why I love the novels so much.

There is no easy resolution of the conflict in Veryan's romances. And so the happy ending, for me, feels so much more real. Both the hero and the heroine have to change for the better in order to achieve the happy ending. And sometimes that change can be painful. But it’s worth it in the end. That’s how unity is worked out. And the way it works in strong romance novels is a microcosm of the way it works in larger society. To live with other people—as part of community—means understand, empathy, sacrifice, and selflessness. All of these characteristics are part of the developing relationship in a good romance novel.

And, finally, I’ll make a claim I actually have little evidence for. I’ve always believed it to be true, but it’s more intuitive than anything else. I think romance novels—in a small and imperfect way—mirror the universal narrative of human existence. The Christian story begins with separation (with the fall into sin), and moves through conflict to union with God, and then to a final culmination with Christ’s return. All of this happens through God’s love and Christ’s sacrifice. A similar dynamic—from separation and conflict to union through love and sacrifice—can be seen in the framework of the romance novel.

I certainly don’t think that makes all romance novels “Christian,” or good, or worthwhile. But I think the narrative of the genre taps into something embedded in our makeup—an instinctive knowledge of the cosmic narrative God has designed for us. I think that's one reason so many people like them so much.

There are hundreds of Christian romances published every year, but I don't think romances have to be "Christian" to display these positive attributes of the genre. Christian romances have the potential to be just as shallow and superficial as secular romances. But the genre itself offers something distinct and valuable to literature and to human expression, and I hope all Christians can recognize its worth.

I’m interested now in knowing if any of you enjoy reading romance novels. And, if so, what about them appeals to you?

Commercial Ramblings

2008-02-11T17:50:00.001-05:00

Our cable company, Cox Communications, is running a commerical now to advertise their telephone services. The commercial claims that signing up for telephone through them will save you money from using the phone company. Whether that's true or not, this particular commercial makes me very uncomfortable. I don't just hate the commercial. It literally makes me cringe. But it's not any sort of aesthetic distaste or philosophical resentment--although both of those happen to apply. The commercial embarrasses. I feel the way I always feel when I see someone doing something foolish.

The ad personifies a pile of money as a child. The bunch of cash runs around with little child's feet and acts as part of the family. The "parents" pat it on its head, toss it playfully onto a bed, and give it a birthday party. The voice-over says something about how using the telephone service can help us care for our money and watch it grow. I suppose it's intended to be funny or ironic, but the ad misses the point of irony.

Irony is supposed to be built on a contrast between what is said and what is intended. There is no such contrast here. The commercial shows us people cherishing their money the way they would cherish a child. And that's exactly what the commercial intends. Unquestionably, we live in a materialistic culture. But to see it played out so blatantly in this commercial is troubling. And embarrassing.

The truth is we do love, care for, and treasure our money as if it were a part of the family. As much as I find the ad morally repugnant, I know I'm guilty of that attitude myself. Maybe that's why the ad makes me cringe.

The commercial embarassses me, and I've started to change the channel any time I see it come on. But I might start to picture myself giving my little pile of money (complete with child's feet) a hug and a pat on the head whenever I make decisions that gives my money and possessions more importance than they actually deserve.

"Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.'" (Hebrews 13:5, NIV)

Lipstick Jungle

2008-02-08T07:57:00.000-05:00

I watched this show last night, and I’ll tell you why. While flipping channels, I saw Janet from the last few seasons of Beverly Hills 90210, and I thought, “Huh, I wonder what she’s up to now.” Yes, that’s exactly the kind of television viewer I am.

So I watched Lipstick Jungle and didn’t particularly enjoy it.

The show features Brooke Shields, Kim Raver, and Lindsay Price (the aforesaid Janet from 90210) as high-powered women trying to juggle their careers and their personal lives while finding support in their friendship, and it’s based on a book by Candace Bushnell of Sex and the City fame. The most noteworthy thing about the show is its remarkable similarity to Cashmere Mafia, another new show this spring. I also watched Cashmere Mafia—only because it stars Miranda Otto, who played Eowyn (my favorite character) in the Lord of the Rings films. The shows are really almost identical, distinguished only because one features a group of three friends and the other four.

In the last scene of Lipstick Jungle last night, the three friends, whose names I can’t be bothered to remember, share an emotional scene of comfort and companionship. It has all the necessary elements of a poignant friendship—tears, a group hug, the sharing of feelings—except I don’t buy it at all. I’m not moved. I don’t even care. And so I start to wonder why. It’s not like I’m a particularly challenging viewer. I’ve gotten weepy at commercials, cartoons, wildlife documentaries, and—yes—90210.

There were only two scenes in the pilot of Lipstick Jungle that I connected to emotionally. One where Raver’s character is in the bathroom, trying to see if her husband is still attracted to her. She shows him her cleavage and then the phone number a much younger man had written on her leg in marker. Her husband (an academic predictably stereotyped as bookish, oblivious, and apparently uninterested in sex) brushes his teeth and doesn’t notice that some other guy has scrawled huge numbers on his wife's thigh. Her reaction, the way her face crumpled at his disinterest, struck me as real. The feeling of being invisible to others, particularly those who are closest to us, is universal, and in that brief scene, I believed it.

The other scene I connected to was when Price’s character is having a breakdown on the phone. Her career as a fashion-designer has hit a roadblock, and she’s devastated over criticism of her designs. I was unaffected by her hysterical sobbing, but one thing she said rang true for me. At the very end of her outburst, she flops over on the bed and says something like, “And I just wish I was home.” Wow, that was familiar. Whenever I am stressed, or upset, or embarrassed, or annoyed, or exhausted, I find myself muttering the same inner-mantra: “I want to go home. I want to go home.” The need for home is instinctual—the desire to shut out the rest of the world with the close of your door, finding security and familiarity inside. After she said that, I was almost prepared to forgive the rest of her nonsensical ramblings.

But then she made out with a billionaire who’d sent his private jet to bring her back, and she lost me.

I have to wonder who the creators think will want to watch this show and those like it. True, you have attractive women in designer clothes, and you have the typical melodramatic plot twists of a soap-opera. But without any human connection, who’s going to care about their stories?

I know what they think the appeal is. Our culture is starved for real community, and we love to see it mirrored on our televisions screens. It’s one of the reasons why Friends was so popular for so long. But sticking a few people together in a room and claiming they’re friends isn’t the way to create a convincing portrait of friendship and community.

That’s why that last scene of Lipstick Jungle failed to move me. I could believe these women hung out together, but not they shared real community. In the midst of the scene that was supposed to embody their friendship, they were all still thinking about themselves. One character was caught up in her marriage troubles. Another kept mulling over the fact that she’d just cheated on her husband. And the other was rambling over how she wasn’t falling for the billionaire who’d sent his private jet for her. They were ostensibly sharing and comforting each other, but it was their own problems that they really focused on. That’s not what community is about.

Compare that scene to one of the most memorable in Sex and the City, when Samantha discovers she has breast cancer and Charlotte gets married. Samantha, who has just learned this devastating news, keeps from moping or telling Charlotte so she won’t spoil her friend’s big day. And Charlotte, who has been looking forward to her wedding day for ages, gives up her enjoyment of it to insist on hearing the news and then supports her friend in her need. That’s true friendship. Sacrifice. Giving up one’s own concerns in service of someone else’s. And that’s why the success of Sex and the City can’t be repeated merely with flashy clothes, urban lifestyles, and a group of female friends. Without the true heart of community, Lipstick Jungle is never going to be convincing.

God created us for community. And, as our culture has lost its understanding of the church—the community God designed for us—we feel the loss like a gaping hole in our existence. We see that hole played out, over and over again, in popular culture. But we want the easy fix. We want the benefits of community without the sacrifice. And we’ll never find it, in our lives or on our television screens, unless we understand that community means putting someone else before ourselves.

Cassie Edwards and plagiarism

2008-02-07T19:00:00.000-05:00

In every class I teach, I end up with at least one student who plagiarizes. They've usually looked up information online, and it ends up, usually word-for-word, in their assignment. When confronted with the evidence, most of them act astonished that they somehow stumbled into stealing language from someone else unintentionally. Occasionally, I actually believe them. Some students really don’t understand, no matter how thoroughly we try to instruct them, that “borrowing” language from another source without citation constitutes plagiarism. And they don’t believe me when I tell them it’s a serious issue.

My own experiences as an English teacher are part of why I was fascinated with a plagiarism-stir that ran through online romance communities a few weeks ago. A popular review and commentary blog on the romance genre, Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books (yes, that is the name of their blog), alleged that Cassie Edwards had plagiarized from a number of non-fiction sources. Edwards, a prolific historical romance writer, has written 100 novels and specializes in love stories pairing Native American heroes and white women. I’ve never read Edwards’s novels, but on reading the side-by-side comparison chart here, the numerous examples of lifted language are obvious. The online stir continued for a week, as Edwards told a reporter for an AP article that there was no expectation of citation in historical fiction, one of her publishers publicly claimed Edwards had done nothing wrong, and romance-writer supreme, Nora Roberts, weighed in.

My favorite part was when Paul Tolme, journalist and author of an article on ferrets that Edwards plagiarized, wrote an article in Newsweek on the issue. If I hadn’t already been predisposed to like Tolme because of his emphasis on wildlife, his good-natured response to being plagiarized and his turning the focus back to the ferrets would have completely won me over.

For several days, new revelations and responses to the accusations came out in rapid succession, and the intellectual and emotional momentum of the online discussions kept building. You can find a list of articles about the situation in the sidebar at Smart Bitches, and you can find a helpful timeline in the sidebar at Dear Author, another romance review and commentary site.

I’m not quite sure what to think about the whole thing. By any academic definition, Edwards clearly plagiarized. While there is no standard for citing information gained in research for historical novels, stealing direct language, as Edwards did, is plagiarism in any context. If any of my students had done such a thing once, they would receive a zero on the assignment with no opportunity to revise. If they did it more than once, they’d fail the course and be reported to the academic dean. Obviously, we can't fail Edwards. But I’m not sure what I want to happen here.

Edwards has been writing for decades and she isn't young anymore. She seems genuinely baffled by the whole thing. Perhaps she is, like many of my students, completely ignorant of what constitutes plagiarism. Does that excuse her for stealing language from other writers?

I’ve always been intrigued by the often quoted Micah 6:8: “He hath shown thee, O man, what is good: and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (21st Century KJV). There’s a clear distinction of verbs in the verse. We’re to do justice and to love mercy. How does that shape our appropriate reactions to situations like this?

For justice to be done, there should at least be an acknowledgement on Edwards and her publishers’ part, of the lifted language. Will it happen? Probably not. It’s not clear she did anything illegal, and legal issues rather than ethical are what usually prompt behavior in these contexts.

I do wish there was more clarity in our culture on what constitutes plagiarism and why it matters. I’m afraid, as new generations grow up with the internet and online communication, understanding will get even fuzzier. If we've decided as a culture that our words and ideas are our own, then stealing them from someone else has to be wrong.

I’ll end by saying it was quite thrilling to see so many people weigh in on the ethics of the situation. There was genuine discussion and ethical debate, as well as education on the nature of plagiarism. I’d suggest you read over some of the comment threads for the Cassie Edwards’s posts on Smart Bitches and Dear Author. Some of it is the typical politics of online communities, but most of it is just people trying to determine what’s right and what’s wrong.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2008-02-05T18:43:00.000-05:00

I’ve noticed two opposing trends in Christian reactions to Harry Potter. They either label the books evil because of a connection to witchcraft and the occult, or they go to the opposite extreme and start to impose Christian allegory on the stories. There is plenty to say about Harry Potter—and book-length studies can and have been done on Christian readings of the series—so I’ll have to limit myself to a few main points. But I promised my sister I’d give my two cents on the books, and I’ll use Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to do so.

Magic is a staple of the fantasy genre, and faulting the Harry Potter books for the presence of magic is like faulting a mystery for including murder or a romance for including a happy ending. Certainly, there are those for whom magic in fiction is always an indicator of an occult connection. My purpose is not to argue against that viewpoint. Christians draw their own lines about content. And I can even respect the stance as long as those readers also similarly censor the entire fantasy genre and do away with every text with magic and supernatural elements, including the Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Alice in Wonderland, most Disney movies, and every fairy tale ever written. It’s those who pick and choose among the fantasy genre—claiming some books are evil because of the presence of magic while others aren’t because they’re “Christian”—that I have a problem with.

The other reaction of a lot of Christians, however, I find equally troublesome. Those Christian readers who like and value the Harry Potter books often go too far in defending them, reading them through the restrictions of allegory in a way that stretches credibility and overlooks the depth and complexity of Rowling’s themes. Certainly, a lot of the names, references, and symbols in the books have certain connections to the Bible and the Christian tradition. And, yes, Harry dies and comes back into the living world in the climax of the series. But imposing allegory on a text by necessity limits its narrative potential. This is one reason J.R.R. Tolkien vocally opposed reading the Lord of the Rings as allegory, and it’s why assuming The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a true allegory rather than a novel with some allegorical elements does a disservice to C.S. Lewis’s story. Symbolism doesn’t necessarily translate into allegory—in fact, it usually doesn’t. And allusions to the Bible in Harry Potter books certainly don’t imply that Rowling was trying to teach Christian lessons.

There is a vast stretch of ground between “Harry Potter as evil” and “Harry Potter as Christian allegory,” and it’s there where we might find an appropriately thoughtful and fair assessment of Harry Potter from a Christian perspective.

The books aren’t explicitly Christian. The characters aren’t Christian, and they don’t pretend to be. The good characters are moral for the most part, but none of them are always good. And for some of them (Sirius, Snape) the moral questions are ambiguous and complex. Harry, Ron and Hermione don’t always behave as children or teenagers should. They defy authority, lie, fight, entertain outbursts of anger, act in jealousy and selfishness. This is true, of course, of characters in lot of Christian fiction a well. In fact, it should be true of all stories that treat characters are real humans. There is a substantial argument to be made about morality in the books, but right now I’m more interested in the themes than the characters’ behavior.

And I would argue that Rowling’s development of the central themes in the Harry Potter books is as valuable—to Christians as well as non-Christians—and much more thoughtfully explored in nuance and realism, than most of what you can find in contemporary fiction labeled as Christian, where sadly we see only superficial piety rather than real human experience.

Take one of the Harry Potter books’ central themes: true judgment. In every book, Harry and the other characters have to learn to look beyond appearances and judge other people for who they really are. Harry’s initial misassessment of Snape in the first book foreshadows his far greater misunderstanding of Snape in the last two books. Judging by surface features, by initial feeling or without full knowledge, always leads Harry astray. This is why I couldn’t understand how anyone could truly believe that Snape was evil at the end of Half-Blood Prince. Had Harry’s initial hatred of Snape been validated, Rowling’s entire development of one of her central themes would have been undercut. Making true judgments about people is difficult and complex because people aren’t always what they seem. To say that there is no true good and evil in the books (an argument I’ve read more than once) is absurd. Of course, there is that which is good and that which is evil. But Snape is our example of how it’s not always easy to distinguish between them—just we know in the real world from our own experience. Watching Harry and the other characters come to terms with this—and commit themselves to what is good despite the complexity of making sound judgments—can hardly be counter to a Christian perspective.

Another main theme that runs through all seven books is that of community. No character can accomplish anything worthwhile on his or her own. Whenever one of them isolates himself (we see it in Harry, Sirius, and Ron, to throw out a few examples), he gets himself in trouble. In Deathly Hallows, the entire search for the Horcruxes is put on hold indefinitely when Ron walks out. Harry is the central figure, but Ron is every bit as necessary to the mission. Voldemort wouldn’t be defeated without Harry. But he also wouldn’t have been defeated without Ron, or Hermione, or Neville, or Snape, or Lily, or Narcissa Malfoy. The friendship at the heart of the series—Harry, Ron and Hermione’s—is what sustains the narrative momentum in every book. Each member plays a part. Each brings something different to the table. And only together is anything accomplished. God created us to work in community—seen most clearly in the body of the Church—and the way the Harry Potter books reflect this truth is as clear and powerful as anything we see in Tolkien (for whom fellowship and community was also a central theme).

The primary theme in the books is also the most clearly in line with the Christian worldview: sacrificial love. Salvation and defeat of evil can only happen through love and sacrifice. Obviously, Lily’s death is the most tangible example of this. Her willingness to die to protect Harry didn’t just save him from Voldemort as an infant—it altered the nature of Harry’s being. This dynamic is seen on a grander scale in Deathly Hallows when Harry submits to death to save them all. To claim he is a Christ-figure is stating the obvious. But the symbolism doesn’t point to a Christian allegory—it points to the culmination of this particular theme. The only way for evil can be overcome is for individuals to be willing to sacrifice, for them to love others enough to sacrifice. Harry is not the Christ of the narrative. His sacrifice doesn’t cover all the others. His sacrifice is not enough. Without the sacrifice (in death or life) of so many other characters, Voldemort wouldn’t be defeated. Instead of allegory, the theme directs us all to live lives of love and sacrifice, just as Christians are called to do because of Christ’s sacrifice for us.

Say what you will about narrative flaws in Deathly Hallows. Talk about too much exposition. Or overly complicated plot arcs stuffed into one book. Or underdeveloped relationships (for the Harry/Ginny happy ending to be truly satisfying, we could have used a few more scenes of real relationship development). Or disappointingly pulled punches when Rowling didn’t kill off the characters the narrative seemed to call for (Hagrid and Neville) and instead killed Lupin and Tonks with no emotional payoff. But don’t try to convince me that Harry Potter is evil or isn’t valuable for Christians to read.

The books are a stronger and more compelling exploration of what it means to be human in a fallen world—more redemptive, if you will—than anything you’ll find in the sugar-coated, simplistic world of much of “Christian” fiction. We should certainly assess our own children’s understand and maturity before we let them read anything, including Harry Potter. But I can’t imagine how anyone who has thoughtfully read and considered these texts dismissing anything that celebrates sacrificial love, true judgment and the need for human community as much as the Harry Potter books do.

Juno

2008-02-02T19:10:00.000-05:00

Juno is a film that refuses to judge. From teenaged sex and abortion to the compulsive overachievement of uptight yuppiness, Jason Reitman's Juno treats every issue it explores with clever humor and a startling grace. In fact, the only moment of judgment I can think of was reserved for a presumptuous, judgmental ultrasound technician. Even the characters I would have thought were brought into the narrative only to mock—like Su-Chin, Juno’s classmate and a lone anti-abortion protester—are ultimately treated with kindness and understanding. As human.

It’s refreshing, and not at all what I would have expected from a trendy film that has garnered so much critical attention. The screenplay, written by Diablo Cody, has all the quick wit and offbeat coolness needed to appeal to postmodern audiences. But the core of the story is not its coolness. It’s its heart.

Sixteen-year-old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) is the sort of smart, quirky outsider that teenaged-movies usually end up pairing with the handsome, misunderstood jock with the heart of gold. Fortunately, this is not that movie. When she gets bored one night (that’s her story, anyway) and has sex with her friend, gangly, geeky Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), Juno ends up pregnant. In keeping with its refusal to teach lessons, we never learn why a teenager as intelligent and self-assured as Juno would have unprotected sex. There is no self-recrimination and no lectures from anyone, aside from a few grumblings by her ironically supportive father (a wonderful J.K. Simmons).

The story skates over the issue of abortion—Juno changes her mind about going through with the abortion from instinct more than any conscious decision. I was vaguely baffled, after a quick Google search, at the number of Christian reviewers who have lauded the film as pro-life. It isn't anything of the sort. Pro-choice viewers have also lauded the film as treating abortion as a valid option, and I have to agree with their reading of the film. There is just no judging of any kind here.

The rest of the story recounts Juno’s pregnancy and her relationship with Bleeker and with the adoptive parents she chooses for her baby (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman). There are no dark secrets lurking below the surface of the story (a few small ones, maybe). No violent climax to shake the foundations of the characters’ lives. The whole thing feels real, and I connected emotionally with the characters more than I have at a movie in a really long time.

The movie deals with sin, but it doesn’t treat it as sin. It recognizes that all humans are flawed—from a teenaged moment of stupidity to a husband going through an early midlife crisis that leads him to relate to a sixteen-year-old girl in highly inappropriate ways—but most Christians would, I think, want more acknowledgment of the nature of sin than the story is willing to provide. We do see realistic consequences of sin. The scene where Juno cries after giving birth and giving up her baby is quietly, deeply moving. But there is no real sense of right and wrong in the film—it won’t draw those kinds of lines.

The thematic conclusion of Juno, however, is one well worth appreciating, especially for Christians. Every life is flawed. Even lives that look like fairy-tales are filled with pain and unfulfillment. And more often than not, you’re hurt by those closest to you.

But you love people anyway.

It’s not a saccharine greeting-card message. The actors and screenplay are far too sharp-edged for that. But the message is as sincere and unblinking as any sermon. Love is the only thing capable of covering the imperfection of our lives. For me, this was seen most movingly in Jennifer Garner’s character, the uber-yuppy with a life of cookie-cutter affluence and ginseng coolers who can’t have the one thing she wants the most—a baby. In most other movies, her uptight rigidity would be a target of cynical satire, but as the narrative unfolds, she is treated with the same compassion as every other character. Her life is not the picture-perfect image she has tried to construct—it’s as imperfect as everyone else’s. But love is what saves her too.

As much as we love to see sin treated as sin, I think it’s far rarer to see a genuine picture of love (and I don’t mean the sap and superficial romance that usually masquerades as love in popular culture). Our own sins were covered by Christ’s love for us. And God designed human community to work when we love others more than we do ourselves.

In that way, Juno has it right.

About this Blog

2008-01-17T16:04:00.001-05:00

After almost a year of procrastinating, I'm finally starting this blog. Several months ago, I got the urge to begin a blog in which I could post readings and commentary on various facets of popular culture. As a Christian literary scholar, but not a literary snob, I love to read, view, and talk about popular culture. But I've failed to find a lot of thoughtful, well-developed analyses of popular texts. So many Christian reactions to our world are either narrow-minded (discounting potentially thought-provoking or enlightening texts because of challenging content) or superficial. The purpose of this blog is to take encounters with popular culture a step farther.

Each week, I will choose two or three books, movies, television shows, or other cultural texts and events and analyze them--using my Christian worldview. I am not a reviewer--I don't grade the texts I discuss. Nor am I a gate-keeper, giving advice or standards about safe or "kid-friendly" viewing. This is a blog intended for adults, and I'll discuss texts of various ratings and maturity-levels.

I will not be going out of my way to find texts to discuss. I'll usually just use what I watch or read in my normal life. So I won't always address the blockbusters or best-sellers. I am, however, always open to suggestions.

I welcome comments and feedback--including contrary opinions. I like intellectual debate, so feel free to tell me I'm dead wrong,

The title of the blog, by the way, is an allusion to H. Rider Haggard's Victorian adventure novel, She.