Media Meditation

Constructive creative chaos…in church?

2005-12-08T14:56:00.000-08:00

Over Thanksgiving break, I had the opportunity to take in The Little Prince at the Theatre de la Jeune Lune.

Point 1 – we have really fine theatres in the Twin Cities, and more theater seats than any other city in the U.S. except for NYC.

Point 2 – Theatre de la Jeune Lune won a Tony last year, and they deserved it. It’s a collaborative theatre with a small team working on scripting, staging, and performing together rather than having individuals take on one task/role each; the result being much more than the sum of each individual’s contribution. http://www.jeunelune.org/

Question 1 – Why don’t churches and Christian leaders take hints from arts organizations like this?

Question 2 – What if churches and Christian leaders took hints from arts organizations like this? What if more churches went beyond tolerating (or not tolerating) new ideas to cultivating environments truly conducive to creativity? And what if we learned how to work collaboratively in seminary and went forth to serve congregations as teams? Not teams as in, we each have our defined tasks and roles within a hierarchical structure and we meet together for coffee bi-weekly, but teams as in, collaborative synergy, dreaming and doing together in a constructive creative chaos.

This word brought to you by Edward R. Murrow

2005-12-08T14:40:00.001-08:00

Good Night, And Good Luck - a quite compelling film. Though this film has been billed as reporter/anchor Edward R. Murrow’s tense engagement with Senator Joseph McCarthy, I found Murrow’s challenging address to the Radio-Television News Directors Association & Foundation in 1958 (which opens and closes the film) to be as, if not more, compelling and convicting for his day and ours. The address reminds us that while particular political figures may not be paragons of virtue or vision, all of society – our systems, our institutions, ourselves – shares culpability for the state of nation. A thought both indicting and empowering. I wonder what our nation could have been had we heeded these words. Or what it could be should we heed them now.

Here’s the address – lengthy but riveting –

http://www.rtnda.org/resources/speeches/murrow.shtml

EDWARD R. MURROW

RTNDA Convention
Chicago
October 15, 1958

This just might do nobody any good. At the end of this discourse a few people may accuse this reporter of fouling his own comfortable nest, and your organization may be accused of having given hospitality to heretical and even dangerous thoughts. But the elaborate structure of networks, advertising agencies and sponsors will not be shaken or altered. It is my desire, if not my duty, to try to talk to you journeymen with some candor about what is happening to radio and television.

I have no technical advice or counsel to offer those of you who labor in this vineyard that produces words and pictures. You will forgive me for not telling you that instruments with which you work are miraculous, that your responsibility is unprecedented or that your aspirations are frequently frustrated. It is not necessary to remind you that the fact that your voice is amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other does not confer upon you greater wisdom or understanding than you possessed when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other. All of these things you know.

You should also know at the outset that, in the manner of witnesses before Congressional committees, I appear here voluntarily-by invitation-that I am an employee of the Columbia Broadcasting System, that I am neither an officer nor a director of that corporation and that these remarks are of a "do-it-yourself" nature. If what I have to say is irresponsible, then I alone am responsible for the saying of it. Seeking neither approbation from my employers, nor new sponsors, nor acclaim from the critics of radio and television, I cannot well be disappointed. Believing that potentially the commercial system of broadcasting as practiced in this country is the best and freest yet devised, I have decided to express my concern about what I believe to be happening to radio and television. These instruments have been good to me beyond my due. There exists in mind no reasonable grounds for personal complaint. I have no feud, either with my employers, any sponsors, or with the professional critics of radio and television. But I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage.

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.

For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally. If there were to be a competition in indifference, or perhaps in insulation from reality, then Nero and his fiddle, Chamberlain and his umbrella, could not find a place on an early afternoon sustaining show. If Hollywood were to run out of Indians, the program schedules would be mangled beyond all recognition. Then some courageous soul with a small budget might be able to do a documentary telling what, in fact, we have done--and are still doing--to the Indians in this country. But that would be unpleasant. And we must at all costs shield the sensitive citizens from anything that is unpleasant.

I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry's program planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence. I have reason to know, as do many of you, that when the evidence on a controversial subject is fairly and calmly presented, the public recognizes it for what it is--an effort to illuminate rather than to agitate.

Several years ago, when we undertook to do a program on Egypt and Israel, well-meaning, experienced and intelligent friends shook their heads and said, "This you cannot do--you will be handed your head. It is an emotion-packed controversy, and there is no room for reason in it." We did the program. Zionists, anti-Zionists, the friends of the Middle East, Egyptian and Israeli officials said, with a faint tone of surprise, "It was a fair account. The information was there. We have no complaints."

Our experience was similar with two half-hour programs dealing with cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Both the medical profession and the tobacco industry cooperated in a rather wary fashion. But in the end of the day they were both reasonably content. The subject of radioactive fall-out and the banning of nuclear tests was, and is, highly controversial. But according to what little evidence there is, viewers were prepared to listen to both sides with reason and restraint. This is not said to claim any special or unusual competence in the presentation of controversial subjects, but rather to indicate that timidity in these areas is not warranted by the evidence.

Recently, network spokesmen have been disposed to complain that the professional critics of television have been "rather beastly." There have been hints that somehow competition for the advertising dollar has caused the critics of print to gang up on television and radio. This reporter has no desire to defend the critics. They have space in which to do that on their own behalf. But it remains a fact that the newspapers and magazines are the only instruments of mass communication which remain free from sustained and regular critical comment. If the network spokesmen are so anguished about what appears in print, let them come forth and engage in a little sustained and regular comment regarding newspapers and magazines. It is an ancient and sad fact that most people in network television, and radio, have an exaggerated regard for what appears in print. And there have been cases where executives have refused to make even private comment on a program for which they were responsible until they heard the reviews in print. This is hardly an exhibition of confidence.

The oldest excuse of the networks for their timidity is their youth. Their spokesmen say, "We are young; we have not developed the traditions nor acquired the experience of the older media." If they but knew it, they are building those traditions, creating those precedents everyday. Each time they yield to a voice from Washington or any political pressure, each time they eliminate something that might offend some section of the community, they are creating their own body of precedent and tradition. They are, in fact, not content to be "half safe."

Nowhere is this better illustrated than by the fact that the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission publicly prods broadcasters to engage in their legal right to editorialize. Of course, to undertake an editorial policy, overt and clearly labeled, and obviously unsponsored, requires a station or a network to be responsible. Most stations today probably do not have the manpower to assume this responsibility, but the manpower could be recruited. Editorials would not be profitable; if they had a cutting edge, they might even offend. It is much easier, much less troublesome, to use the money-making machine of television and radio merely as a conduit through which to channel anything that is not libelous, obscene or defamatory. In that way one has the illusion of power without responsibility.

So far as radio--that most satisfying and rewarding instrument--is concerned, the diagnosis of its difficulties is rather easy. And obviously I speak only of news and information. In order to progress, it need only go backward. To the time when singing commercials were not allowed on news reports, when there was no middle commercial in a 15-minute news report, when radio was rather proud, alert and fast. I recently asked a network official, "Why this great rash of five-minute news reports (including three commercials) on weekends?" He replied, "Because that seems to be the only thing we can sell."

In this kind of complex and confusing world, you can't tell very much about the why of the news in broadcasts where only three minutes is available for news. The only man who could do that was Elmer Davis, and his kind aren't about any more. If radio news is to be regarded as a commodity, only acceptable when saleable, then I don't care what you call it--I say it isn't news.

My memory also goes back to the time when the fear of a slight reduction in business did not result in an immediate cutback in bodies in the news and public affairs department, at a time when network profits had just reached an all-time high. We would all agree, I think, that whether on a station or a network, the stapling machine is a poor substitute for a newsroom typewriter.

One of the minor tragedies of television news and information is that the networks will not even defend their vital interests. When my employer, CBS, through a combination of enterprise and good luck, did an interview with Nikita Khrushchev, the President uttered a few ill-chosen, uninformed words on the subject, and the network practically apologized. This produced a rarity. Many newspapers defended the CBS right to produce the program and commended it for initiative. But the other networks remained silent.

Likewise, when John Foster Dulles, by personal decree, banned American journalists from going to Communist China, and subsequently offered contradictory explanations, for his fiat the networks entered only a mild protest. Then they apparently forgot the unpleasantness. Can it be that this national industry is content to serve the public interest only with the trickle of news that comes out of Hong Kong, to leave its viewers in ignorance of the cataclysmic changes that are occurring in a nation of six hundred million people? I have no illusions about the difficulties reporting from a dictatorship, but our British and French allies have been better served--in their public interest--with some very useful information from their reporters in Communist China.

One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. The top management of the networks with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the coporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this. It is not easy for the same small group of men to decide whether to buy a new station for millions of dollars, build a new building, alter the rate card, buy a new Western, sell a soap opera, decide what defensive line to take in connection with the latest Congressional inquiry, how much money to spend on promoting a new program, what additions or deletions should be made in the existing covey or clutch of vice-presidents, and at the same time-- frequently on the same long day--to give mature, thoughtful consideration to the manifold problems that confront those who are charged with the responsibility for news and public affairs.

Sometimes there is a clash between the public interest and the corporate interest. A telephone call or a letter from the proper quarter in Washington is treated rather more seriously than a communication from an irate but not politically potent viewer. It is tempting enough to give away a little air time for frequently irresponsible and unwarranted utterances in an effort to temper the wind of criticism.

Upon occasion, economics and editorial judgment are in conflict. And there is no law which says that dollars will be defeated by duty. Not so long ago the President of the United States delivered a television address to the nation. He was discoursing on the possibility or probability of war between this nation and the Soviet Union and Communist China--a reasonably compelling subject. Two networks CBS and NBC, delayed that broadcast for an hour and fifteen minutes. If this decision was dictated by anything other than financial reasons, the networks didn't deign to explain those reasons. That hour-and-fifteen-minute delay, by the way, is about twice the time required for an ICBM to travel from the Soviet Union to major targets in the United States. It is difficult to believe that this decision was made by men who love, respect and understand news.

So far, I have been dealing largely with the deficit side of the ledger, and the items could be expanded. But I have said, and I believe, that potentially we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other. But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising. There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies. But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse. I do not suggest that news and information should be subsidized by foundations or private subscriptions. I am aware that the networks have expended, and are expending, very considerable sums of money on public affairs programs from which they cannot hope to receive any financial reward. I have had the privilege at CBS of presiding over a considerable number of such programs. I testify, and am able to stand here and say, that I have never had a program turned down by my superiors because of the money it would cost.

But we all know that you cannot reach the potential maximum audience in marginal time with a sustaining program. This is so because so many stations on the network--any network--will decline to carry it. Every licensee who applies for a grant to operate in the public interest, convenience and necessity makes certain promises as to what he will do in terms of program content. Many recipients of licenses have, in blunt language, welshed on those promises. The money-making machine somehow blunts their memories. The only remedy for this is closer inspection and punitive action by the F.C.C. But in the view of many this would come perilously close to supervision of program content by a federal agency.

So it seems that we cannot rely on philanthropic support or foundation subsidies; we cannot follow the "sustaining route"--the networks cannot pay all the freight--and the F.C.C. cannot or will not discipline those who abuse the facilities that belong to the public. What, then, is the answer? Do we merely stay in our comfortable nests, concluding that the obligation of these instruments has been discharged when we work at the job of informing the public for a minimum of time? Or do we believe that the preservation of the Republic is a seven-day-a-week job, demanding more awareness, better skills and more perseverance than we have yet contemplated.

I am frightened by the imbalance, the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything; by the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation. Heywood Broun once said, "No body politic is healthy until it begins to itch." I would like television to produce some itching pills rather than this endless outpouring of tranquilizers. It can be done. Maybe it won't be, but it could. Let us not shoot the wrong piano player. Do not be deluded into believing that the titular heads of the networks control what appears on their networks. They all have better taste. All are responsible to stockholders, and in my experience all are honorable men. But they must schedule what they can sell in the public market.

And this brings us to the nub of the question. In one sense it rather revolves around the phrase heard frequently along Madison Avenue: The Corporate Image. I am not precisely sure what this phrase means, but I would imagine that it reflects a desire on the part of the corporations who pay the advertising bills to have the public image, or believe that they are not merely bodies with no souls, panting in pursuit of elusive dollars. They would like us to believe that they can distinguish between the public good and the private or corporate gain. So the question is this: Are the big corporations who pay the freight for radio and television programs wise to use that time exclusively for the sale of goods and services? Is it in their own interest and that of the stockholders so to do? The sponsor of an hour's television program is not buying merely the six minutes devoted to commercial message. He is determining, within broad limits, the sum total of the impact of the entire hour. If he always, invariably, reaches for the largest possible audience, then this process of insulation, of escape from reality, will continue to be massively financed, and its apologist will continue to make winsome speeches about giving the public what it wants, or "letting the public decide."

I refuse to believe that the presidents and chairmen of the boards of these big corporations want their corporate image to consist exclusively of a solemn voice in an echo chamber, or a pretty girl opening the door of a refrigerator, or a horse that talks. They want something better, and on occasion some of them have demonstrated it. But most of the men whose legal and moral responsibility it is to spend the stockholders' money for advertising are removed from the realities of the mass media by five, six, or a dozen contraceptive layers of vice-presidents, public relations counsel and advertising agencies. Their business is to sell goods, and the competition is pretty tough.

But this nation is now in competition with malignant forces of evil who are using every instrument at their command to empty the minds of their subjects and fill those minds with slogans, determination and faith in the future. If we go on as we are, we are protecting the mind of the American public from any real contact with the menacing world that squeezes in upon us. We are engaged in a great experiment to discover whether a free public opinion can devise and direct methods of managing the affairs of the nation. We may fail. But we are handicapping ourselves needlessly.

Let us have a little competition. Not only in selling soap, cigarettes and automobiles, but in informing a troubled, apprehensive but receptive public. Why should not each of the 20 or 30 big corporations which dominate radio and television decide that they will give up one or two of their regularly scheduled programs each year, turn the time over to the networks and say in effect: "This is a tiny tithe, just a little bit of our profits. On this particular night we aren't going to try to sell cigarettes or automobiles; this is merely a gesture to indicate our belief in the importance of ideas." The networks should, and I think would, pay for the cost of producing the program. The advertiser, the sponsor, would get name credit but would have nothing to do with the content of the program. Would this blemish the corporate image? Would the stockholders object? I think not. For if the premise upon which our pluralistic society rests, which as I understand it is that if the people are given sufficient undiluted information, they will then somehow, even after long, sober second thoughts, reach the right decision--if that premise is wrong, then not only the corporate image but the corporations are done for.

There used to be an old phrase in this country, employed when someone talked too much. It was: "Go hire a hall." Under this proposal the sponsor would have hired the hall; he has bought the time; the local station operator, no matter how indifferent, is going to carry the program-he has to. Then it's up to the networks to fill the hall. I am not here talking about editorializing but about straightaway exposition as direct, unadorned and impartial as falliable human beings can make it. Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information. Let us dream to the extent of saying that on a given Sunday night the time normally occupied by Ed Sullivan is given over to a clinical survey of the state of American education, and a week or two later the time normally used by Steve Allen is devoted to a thoroughgoing study of American policy in the Middle East. Would the corporate image of their respective sponsors be damaged? Would the stockholders rise up in their wrath and complain? Would anything happen other than that a few million people would have received a little illumination on subjects that may well determine the future of this country, and therefore the future of the corporations? This method would also provide real competition between the networks as to which could outdo the others in the palatable presentation of information. It would provide an outlet for the young men of skill, and there are some even of dedication, who would like to do something other than devise methods of insulating while selling.

There may be other and simpler methods of utilizing these instruments of radio and television in the interests of a free society. But I know of none that could be so easily accomplished inside the framework of the existing commercial system. I don't know how you would measure the success or failure of a given program. And it would be hard to prove the magnitude of the benefit accruing to the corporation which gave up one night of a variety or quiz show in order that the network might marshal its skills to do a thorough-going job on the present status of NATO, or plans for controlling nuclear tests. But I would reckon that the president, and indeed the majority of shareholders of the corporation who sponsored such a venture, would feel just a little bit better about the corporation and the country.

It may be that the present system, with no modifications and no experiments, can survive. Perhaps the money-making machine has some kind of built-in perpetual motion, but I do not think so. To a very considerable extent the media of mass communications in a given country reflect the political, economic and social climate in which they flourish. That is the reason ours differ from the British and French, or the Russian and Chinese. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

I do not advocate that we turn television into a 27-inch wailing wall, where longhairs constantly moan about the state of our culture and our defense. But I would just like to see it reflect occasionally the hard, unyielding realities of the world in which we live. I would like to see it done inside the existing framework, and I would like to see the doing of it redound to the credit of those who finance and program it. Measure the results by Nielsen, Trendex or Silex-it doesn't matter. The main thing is to try. The responsibility can be easily placed, in spite of all the mouthings about giving the public what it wants. It rests on big business, and on big television, and it rests at the top. Responsibility is not something that can be assigned or delegated. And it promises its own reward: good business and good television.

Perhaps no one will do anything about it. I have ventured to outline it against a background of criticism that may have been too harsh only because I could think of nothing better. Someone once said--I think it was Max Eastman--that "that publisher serves his advertiser best who best serves his readers." I cannot believe that radio and television, or the corporation that finance the programs, are serving well or truly their viewers or listeners, or themselves.

I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.

We are to a large extent an imitative society. If one or two or three corporations would undertake to devote just a small traction of their advertising appropriation along the lines that I have suggested, the procedure would grow by contagion; the economic burden would be bearable, and there might ensue a most exciting adventure--exposure to ideas and the bringing of reality into the homes of the nation.

To those who say people wouldn't look; they wouldn't be interested; they're too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter's opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, "When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.

Prophetic voices

2005-12-08T06:48:00.000-08:00

December 8, 2005

[Sorry for the gap in entries - I've been busy making media!]

I just finished a project for my Prophets class – a presentation pairing the words of scriptural prophets with the words of more recent prophetic voices. During the course, we discussed both what and how the prophets communicated – a nice departure from our usual scholarly tendency to focus on the content and not the means of communication. The prophets of scripture witnessed through creative means and with their whole lives (i.e., Hosea marrying an unfaithful woman). Likewise, many of the more recent prophetic voices offer witness through their words and lives (Gandhi, Wangari Muta Maathai…).

Connecting back to this class, I’ve found many of our Ignatian films to be quite prophetic. In The Thin Red Line, Private Witt speaks and lives a prophetic word, and the whole movie voices questions about war and humanity. Despite the best efforts of the adult characters in Magnolia to control and hush the child characters, the film(maker) gives the children an opportunity to speak wisdom. And in the theatre production Flow, which just closed in the Twin Cities, performer Will Powers portrays seven storytellers who “sing the songs and right the wrongs and carry on, on and on.”

There’s something about the medium of the arts that engages and challenges by allowing people to discover for themselves.

Crash, Dave Chappelle, & Hurricane Katrina in the news – mediated means to talking about race…

2005-10-23T18:37:00.002-07:00

October 23, 2005

I grew up Asian-American in a white family and in almost exclusively white communities, schools, and churches. Yet, for most of my childhood and adolescent years, I wouldn’t have construed myself or community as such. White wasn’t a racial category; it was the default mode of being and doing. I assumed the whole nation should look white, should act white, should talk white, should think white without recognizing whiteness as one of multiple racial groups and cultural identities comprising the United States. Since I encountered, with few exceptions, only whites in daily life and in the media (television, film, literature, etc.), I equated whiteness of thought, word, and deed with how America was and how all Americans should be.

Growing up, I didn’t often consciously consider issues of race but did intuit the connection between whiteness and power. In college, some training in understanding and dismantling racism helpfully and overtly articulated those connections. While living in Korea for two years, I experienced what it was to be a part of the racial majority for the first time and also experienced living within the rules and structures of a cultural group other than whites in the Midwest of the United States. Nice. Really, I can’t describe all the paradigm shifting.

These days, I think of whites as one of diverse racial groups and cultural entities. But I’ve noticed that though people of color tend to think about race fairly to very often, quite a few white people do not. And don’t like to. Yet, talking about race is a necessary thing for us as citizens of the American democracy and as Christians commanded to do justice.

I’ve appreciated both the dramatic intensity of the movie Crash and the comedic observation and critique of the “Dave Chappelle Show” for daring to frame commentary and engender discussion about race. Media coverage of the racial disparity amongst Hurricane Katrina’s victims likewise introduced conversation about racial equity and systemic racism. While an essay on race (like this blog) may further entrench folks into previously-held ideas about race, I’ve found Crash and Dave Chappelle to engage people in reflection on and even renegotiation of racial constructs. Someone skeptical of the existence of systemic racism may empathize with a character mired in systemic racism in Crash; a person reluctant to construe white as a privileged cultural/racial identity may see validity (and humor) in Dave Chappelle’s critique of racial/class inequity within our legal system. Oh, the power of visual and mass media to get us talking. Perhaps the best thing I can do is to stop writing and encourage you to get out there and watch Crash, enjoy Dave Chappelle (on DVD…with parental advisory), or think about how we can rebuild the Gulf Coast not as it was but as it could be. And start or keep on talking about race.

Merchants of Cool

2005-10-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

October 7, 2005

While watching, I wondered how Frontline rounded up so many corporate and marketing executives to discuss how they create unattainable and increasingly unhealthy images of “cool” and try to hook youth into high consumption of media and products to make themselves money. And, how those executives so openly shared their strategies of persuasion without acknowledging their manipulation of youth as perhaps, wrong. Strange and scary.

Though unnerved by the purpose of the marketing and cool-hunting, I was highly intrigued by the process and strategies. They know how to find out what youth are thinking about clothes and music, celebrities and school, friendships and dating, political and personal issues. What if churches and ministries were doing ethnography studies of youth or really, anyone we wanted to reach out to? Or, what if we had teams of creative people tracking and responding to youth and other cultures? Could be a quite exciting venture requiring only curiosity, time, and energy.

People with things to sell have great interest in learning as much as possible about youth and communicating with them in the most engaging and innovative ways possible. We have good news – how can we generate great interest in those with whom we’d like to share it?

Insomnia

2005-10-07T08:39:00.000-07:00

October 4, 2005

This semester, I’m taking a systematic theology course with twice weekly lectures focusing on how humans rotted with sin can do nothing at all to fulfill the law or work salvation along with a prophets survey course featuring voices passionately calling for fulfillment of the law and right living. Though I see the two courses as speaking different words from the same God (no human participation in salvation but upon salvation, a divine call to seek justice and live rightly), it’s been cognitively challenging reconcile doing nothing with doing more.

So I appreciated how Insomnia illustrates the causes of both courses. Detective Dormer has spent his whole life on the side of right until one questionable action and a small lie align him with a force of evil, thus demonstrating that even the right-est of us are culpable of and susceptible to sin and need grace. But even with his own life at its end, Dormer still advises a younger officer to continue on with her work and maintain her integrity. We’re sinful and need grace; we receive grace and accept a call to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

If you haven’t yet watched the film and spook easily, just picture the antagonist Robin Williams as Mrs. Doubtfire…

Requiem for a Dream

2005-10-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

October 4, 2005

I was living overseas when Requiem for a Dream was released, so I didn’t hear anything about it and began watching it with limited knowledge of the content or intensity of the film (other than blogged reactions). A few days later, I’m still thinking about it, the spiraling conclusion especially. During Ellen Burstyn’s interview with author Hubert Selby (included in the DVD), he comments that almost everyone who has discussed the film or book with him has said it has inspired compassion. Perhaps because we’ve spent hours immersed in the stories of the characters and now cannot but extend more empathy to actual people living those stories. Or maybe we see how we’re each only a few choices away from a degradation, despair, and destruction of our own design.

Hubert Selby indicates he meant this to be less a story about drug-induced ruin and more an all-American tale narrating the consequences of pursuing the American dream and feeling entitled to fast success:

"The dream I'm referring to in the book, of course, is the great American dream: prosperity, property, prestige, etc. And the fact that it'll kill you dead. Striving for it is a disaster. Attaining it is a killer. It takes many forms, and the results are not happy. It's not a feel-good thing," Selby says.

"'Requiem' is about the cancer of that dream," he continues. "Of course, there are a lot of people who are successful who work very hard. They're not all George W. Bush. But the point is they're misguided. That's not what life is about. We believe, probably more than anywhere, that life is getting all this material stuff. It's a case of misguided ambition and desire” …

… "What part do drugs play in Selby's American dream? According to the novelist, drugs come into the picture when we don't get our slice of the pie fast enough or when, after gorging ourselves on it, we still feel unfulfilled. Selby's not only referring to the illicit drugs. He's including the legal stuff, from Prozac and diet pills to coffee, candy and talk shows -- all of those things that divert us from self-examination and spiritual growth."

-Hubert Selby, interviewed in Salon

www.salon.com/people/conv/2000/10/26/selby/

Like Ebenezer Scrooge’s three other-worldly tour guides, this movie, and this Ignatian film exercise, has brought me to some new low places, but instead of showing me where I could land ala Scrooge’s story, it has shown me where I am, mired in collective and very personal sin.

And that would be utterly depressing except I know where the Ignatian exercises will lead and how the Christian story will end.

Koyaanisqatsi

2005-09-22T11:14:00.002-07:00

September 22, 2005

I appreciated the IMAX-like opening of Koyaanisqatsi (how glad I am to be writing that rather than attempting pronunciation) even on the library’s mini-tv. The earth is grand indeed. I wasn’t, though, as disturbed by the metropolitan shots as the filmmakers likely intended. I do agree that we need connections with the natural world but don’t see all that’s human-made to be evil or destructive. I found this movie to be hopeful prophesy – showing us where we’re likely headed unless we reconnect and live in accord with the larger world.

So, koyaanisqatsi means “life out of balance.” And do we need balance? Indeed. But, I wonder if we’re too keen on balance as an ultimate end. Is it possible to live a perfectly balanced life and live passionately? Does Christian discipleship prescribe balance or call for a more radical abandon?

2001: A Space Odyssey

2005-09-22T11:13:00.000-07:00

September 22, 2005

I’ve now experienced 2001: A Space Odyssey. While impressed with the technological forecasting and the expanse of time and space depicted in the film, I thought the film seemed quite representative of the particular cultural context of America in the 1960s. Though the film carefully imagined technological advancements, it failed to reconsider the social constructs of its own time – amongst the film’s characters, white men occupy positions of power almost exclusively and interact according to social mores vintage 1960s.

In 2005, we continue to embrace rapid technological change and forecast future trends, yet how often do we consider our own status quo and wonder how we’ll look to people half a century later? How much time do we invest in rethinking our social structures, our institutional rules, our cultural assumptions? What if we deeply questioned who we are and where we’re going? How then would we live? Those questions could lead to quite an odyssey.