A response to Gina Alfonso at the new and very good blog The Point, on whether the new television series, "Ugly Betty," is an indication of a healthy reacknowledgement of realism in the media or a further indication of what Richard Weaver calls the "failure to make distinctions." Gina argued the former. I wonder if, in fact, it is the latter:
Gina,
I'm not sure I agree with you here. It seems to me that there is a lot of ugliness in the media and popular culture these days--all mixed in together with the less ugly. Look at cartoon animation anymore, where bad drawing seems to be the standard.
Couldn't we as easily say that the fact that in movies like Suspicion, beautiful women were cast preciselyl because they were beautiful, and that there was some acknowledgement that beauty in fact existed and was clearly distinguishable from ugliness?
Maybe what you call "realism" is really just part and paracel of the modern failure to acknowledge any clear distinction between beauty and ugliness, just as there is a failure to acknowledge a distinction between truth and falsehood, and good and evil.
Just a thought.
By the way I have also posted this at my own blog, http://www.vereloqui.blogspot.com.
Showing posts with label entertainment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label entertainment. Show all posts
Friday, September 29, 2006
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Is There Such a Thing as the "American Way"?
In the recent "Superman Returns" movie, the mention of "the American Way" was apparently too politically incorrect to include in Superman's traditional formulation: "Truth, Justice, and the American Way". Instead, the best the editor of the Daily Planet (played by Frank Langela) could do was, "Truth, Justice, and all that other stuff."
When I posted this on another blog, it attracted at least two comments that voiced the skepticism only inherent in the newspaper editor's modified formula. The question those commenting seemed to be asking was, "Is there such a thing as the American Way worth mentioning in the first place?"
This seems to me a very important question, and one to which there is a definite answer.
Of course there is an "American Way", and of course it is worthy of mention. I would say furthermore, that, if there is not, we are all in deep trouble.
I think that the failure to see this is the result of a deep confusion in what a nation, or polity, is, and what our role as Christians is in it. It is a matter I think, of primary loyalty. The concept of a "primary loyalty" is one which few people can articulate, but all possess.
What is a "primary loyalty"? A primary loyalty is a commitment we must have to a thing, and it is a loyalty over which we have no choice and may not even be aware. It is not the result of any commitment we may have consciously made or that we can even escape from. It is something we are born to, in addition to being born into. There are various primary loyalties in our lives. Our family is one of them. If we are Christians, our membership in the covenant community of God is another. Another primary loyalty is that to our community.
When we are born into our family, we take on commitments and responsibilities from which we cannot escape. They are ours by virtue of condition over which we have no control. They are ours whether we wish to accept them or not. When we are told in the Ten Commandments, for example, that we are to honor our father and our mother, we cannot escape the responsibilities of this command by saying that we had no input into who our father and mother were.
Likewise, when we are born into the Church, and are given the sign and seal of this membership in infancy (Baptism), we are shouldered with commitments that are ours regardless of our acceptance of this later in life.
I submit that citizenship is the same kind of primary loyalty as these. If I decide to go 70 mph in a 35 mph zone, and the nice highway patrolman takes me aside and asks why I was going too fast, I cannot say to him that, yes, I saw the sign, but that I had no choice in having been born into a society that sees the limitation of speed as important. I cannot say, "I never committed to following the law, and am therefore not culpable for complying with it."
I can't say that I simply disagree with the laws or with the Constitution or with the current political leadership and expect to be free of the responsibilities that are mine by virtue of my natural citizenship. There are commitments that are mine simply by virtue of my being born into them. There is civil authority (ordained by God, if Paul is an authority on the matter, which he is) that I come under, whether I like it or not.
G. K. Chesterton, in his book, Orthodoxy, takes this point a bit further, and points to another primary loyalty: that to the universe itself--to reality. And he uses the idea of citizenship as the very analog to this:
The feeling I sense in the comments to the post I mentioned before, in which the American Way (let's take the double quotations off of that phrase so that we do not demean it) is somehow implicated in the fact that there are things about our country that are very obviously wrong. There are things that we do not want to endorse when we confess our commitment to an American Way.
If we say that we are for the American Way, are we not making ourselves complicit in all of the wrongs of our country? Well, we could ask a similar question: If we say that we are committed to our family, are we not making ourselves complicit in all of the wrongs of our family?
Aren't the answers to these two questions the same? I think they clearly are. The answer is, "Of course not." Chesterton says that we can say, "My country, right or wrong," as long as we can say it in the same sense as we might say, "My mother, drunk or sober." There is a primary commitment involved in both cases, one we cannot escape.
Chesterton again:
Is this not also true of our country? We love these things--our family, our country, God--Chesterton would add reality--"with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason."
"Men did not love Rome because she was great," he says, "She was great because they had loved her."
If we cannot say this about America, then I think we are in a pitiable state. We have repudiated a primary loyalty. We can repudiate it, but we cannot escape it.
This being the case, what is the American Way? I submit that it is the same thing as Russell Kirk refers to as the "American Cause" (I use the double quotes here only to introduce the phrase, not to demean it). There are, like there are with all things to which we have a primary loyalty, ideal characteristics.
In the case of the American Cause, there are three elements or assumptions: a moral, a political, and an economic. The moral assumptions involve the Christian view of the nature of man and the proper view of the relation between church and state. The political assumptions are those which involve the concept of ordered liberty, which is based on the Christian view of man--primarily that he has inherent dignity and that he labors under original sin. The economic assumptions are those, again, which involve the Christian view of man, and imply a belief in economic freedom, which is based on this view of man.
The American Way, which is made up of those things to which we, as Americans, owe a primary loyalty, are ideals. The reality, to which we look to see how we measure up to them, do not affect or qualify them. In fact, if we do not have an ideal to which we expect our nation's action to live up to, then we have undermined our ability to criticize its actions at all, since we have not standard by which to criticize it.
Russell Kirk's book, the American Cause, is the best explanation of this that I know. I highly recommend it.
When I posted this on another blog, it attracted at least two comments that voiced the skepticism only inherent in the newspaper editor's modified formula. The question those commenting seemed to be asking was, "Is there such a thing as the American Way worth mentioning in the first place?"
This seems to me a very important question, and one to which there is a definite answer.
Of course there is an "American Way", and of course it is worthy of mention. I would say furthermore, that, if there is not, we are all in deep trouble.
I think that the failure to see this is the result of a deep confusion in what a nation, or polity, is, and what our role as Christians is in it. It is a matter I think, of primary loyalty. The concept of a "primary loyalty" is one which few people can articulate, but all possess.
What is a "primary loyalty"? A primary loyalty is a commitment we must have to a thing, and it is a loyalty over which we have no choice and may not even be aware. It is not the result of any commitment we may have consciously made or that we can even escape from. It is something we are born to, in addition to being born into. There are various primary loyalties in our lives. Our family is one of them. If we are Christians, our membership in the covenant community of God is another. Another primary loyalty is that to our community.
When we are born into our family, we take on commitments and responsibilities from which we cannot escape. They are ours by virtue of condition over which we have no control. They are ours whether we wish to accept them or not. When we are told in the Ten Commandments, for example, that we are to honor our father and our mother, we cannot escape the responsibilities of this command by saying that we had no input into who our father and mother were.
Likewise, when we are born into the Church, and are given the sign and seal of this membership in infancy (Baptism), we are shouldered with commitments that are ours regardless of our acceptance of this later in life.
I submit that citizenship is the same kind of primary loyalty as these. If I decide to go 70 mph in a 35 mph zone, and the nice highway patrolman takes me aside and asks why I was going too fast, I cannot say to him that, yes, I saw the sign, but that I had no choice in having been born into a society that sees the limitation of speed as important. I cannot say, "I never committed to following the law, and am therefore not culpable for complying with it."
I can't say that I simply disagree with the laws or with the Constitution or with the current political leadership and expect to be free of the responsibilities that are mine by virtue of my natural citizenship. There are commitments that are mine simply by virtue of my being born into them. There is civil authority (ordained by God, if Paul is an authority on the matter, which he is) that I come under, whether I like it or not.
G. K. Chesterton, in his book, Orthodoxy, takes this point a bit further, and points to another primary loyalty: that to the universe itself--to reality. And he uses the idea of citizenship as the very analog to this:
If a man came to this world from some other world in full possession of his powers he might discuss whether the advantage of midsummer woods made up for the disadvantage of mad dogs, just as a man looking for lodgings might balance the presence of a telephone against the absence of a sea view. But no man is in that position. A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it ... To put shortly what seems the essential matter, he has a loyalty long before he has any admiration.
...My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty.
The feeling I sense in the comments to the post I mentioned before, in which the American Way (let's take the double quotations off of that phrase so that we do not demean it) is somehow implicated in the fact that there are things about our country that are very obviously wrong. There are things that we do not want to endorse when we confess our commitment to an American Way.
If we say that we are for the American Way, are we not making ourselves complicit in all of the wrongs of our country? Well, we could ask a similar question: If we say that we are committed to our family, are we not making ourselves complicit in all of the wrongs of our family?
Aren't the answers to these two questions the same? I think they clearly are. The answer is, "Of course not." Chesterton says that we can say, "My country, right or wrong," as long as we can say it in the same sense as we might say, "My mother, drunk or sober." There is a primary commitment involved in both cases, one we cannot escape.
Chesterton again:
The world is not a lodging-house in Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.
Is this not also true of our country? We love these things--our family, our country, God--Chesterton would add reality--"with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason."
"Men did not love Rome because she was great," he says, "She was great because they had loved her."
If we cannot say this about America, then I think we are in a pitiable state. We have repudiated a primary loyalty. We can repudiate it, but we cannot escape it.
This being the case, what is the American Way? I submit that it is the same thing as Russell Kirk refers to as the "American Cause" (I use the double quotes here only to introduce the phrase, not to demean it). There are, like there are with all things to which we have a primary loyalty, ideal characteristics.
In the case of the American Cause, there are three elements or assumptions: a moral, a political, and an economic. The moral assumptions involve the Christian view of the nature of man and the proper view of the relation between church and state. The political assumptions are those which involve the concept of ordered liberty, which is based on the Christian view of man--primarily that he has inherent dignity and that he labors under original sin. The economic assumptions are those, again, which involve the Christian view of man, and imply a belief in economic freedom, which is based on this view of man.
The American Way, which is made up of those things to which we, as Americans, owe a primary loyalty, are ideals. The reality, to which we look to see how we measure up to them, do not affect or qualify them. In fact, if we do not have an ideal to which we expect our nation's action to live up to, then we have undermined our ability to criticize its actions at all, since we have not standard by which to criticize it.
Russell Kirk's book, the American Cause, is the best explanation of this that I know. I highly recommend it.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Superman vs. Jesus Christ
I am sitting here in my office, the door blocked by formidible stacks of books, beating back repeated assaults from two young boys who are demanding that I take them to see the new "Superman" movie.
As I sit here, occasionally taking nourishment from food and coffee passed to me through small holes in my defensive fortifications from my sympathetic wife, I am pondering a recent post on The Acton Institute’s website by Jordan Ballor about the tendency on the part of Christians to see Christian symbolism in the most mundane of cultural artifacts.
The operative statement in Ballor’s piece is this: “The comic figure of Superman may indeed point us to Christ. Many Christian commentators are right in recognizing this. But if we do truly see Christ through Superman, it is by contrast and not by similarity.”
His argument is that the character of Superman in the movie has more to do with Nietzsche’s “ubermensch” than the Christ of the gospels. The Christ of the gospels, he argues, “embodies mercy, weakness, and suffering.” He “humbled himself and became obedient to death…”
Well, yes, if the story stopped at crucifixion, then that would be a complete picture of Christ. But there are a few things that happened after this that really shouldn’t be ignored; namely, his Resurrection and Glorification–and his installation at the right hand of God Himself. We can’t simply limit our view of Christ solely to the role he undertook in his 33 year mission on Earth.
He was “made a little lower than the angels”, but He doesn’t remain that way.
The main point Ballor sets out to make is that we have a tendency to overstate the significance of the typological similarities of the characters in movies and books. And why not? It gets us out of the problem of being more discriminating in what we watch and read if we can simply attribute some sort of Christian significance to it.
Just look at the popularity of Mel Gibson’s "Braveheart" among Christian ministers as a type of the Christian leader. There’s a lot of discussion of his leadership qualities, but little remark on his little brush with fornication in the movie. That’s not to say that I don’t like "Braveheart" or that I see don’t recognize the Christian symbolism in it. My point (and this is where I agree with Ballor) is that this tendency has turned into an unthoughtful reflex action rather than a critical aesthetic confrontation with the work of art.
Witness the books that play off of this tendency in evangelicals, such as “Walking with Frodo: A Devotional Journey through the Lord of the Rings.” Say whut?
Look, I like the "Lord of the Rings". I think it is one of the greatest Christian books of all time. But a devotional? This kind of treatment just demeans the work itself–just as the silly repackagings of the Bible demean the Holy Scriptures.
Part of this, of course, is due the increasingly trivial and opportunistic Christian publishing industry, which tries to milk every evangelical trend for every dollar it can squeeze from it. (Do you have your “Prayer of Jabez Daytimer for Teens” yet?) And if it can do this by being parasitical on the broader secular culture, all the better. It does save us from the trouble of actually enriching the culture ourselves.
I agree with Ballor’s main point, but not the reasons he gives in support of it. There is very obviously typology in movies like "Superman Returns" that evidences Christ–through similarity as well as contrast.
I haven’t seen “Superman Returns.” But my ramparts will be breached in time, and I will be dragged from my redoubt, forced into a well-cushioned stadium theatre seat, and made to ingest mass quantities of buttered popcorn and Cherry Coke. Once thus installed, I will be able to offer informed commentary on the movie itself.
But there has to be some responsible way for Christians to recognize in a work of art the symbolism that follows necessarily on the fact that all nature bespeaks a Creator without getting silly about it.
See Quiddity for responses to this article by Jordan Ballor of the Acton Institute and others.
As I sit here, occasionally taking nourishment from food and coffee passed to me through small holes in my defensive fortifications from my sympathetic wife, I am pondering a recent post on The Acton Institute’s website by Jordan Ballor about the tendency on the part of Christians to see Christian symbolism in the most mundane of cultural artifacts.
The operative statement in Ballor’s piece is this: “The comic figure of Superman may indeed point us to Christ. Many Christian commentators are right in recognizing this. But if we do truly see Christ through Superman, it is by contrast and not by similarity.”
His argument is that the character of Superman in the movie has more to do with Nietzsche’s “ubermensch” than the Christ of the gospels. The Christ of the gospels, he argues, “embodies mercy, weakness, and suffering.” He “humbled himself and became obedient to death…”
Well, yes, if the story stopped at crucifixion, then that would be a complete picture of Christ. But there are a few things that happened after this that really shouldn’t be ignored; namely, his Resurrection and Glorification–and his installation at the right hand of God Himself. We can’t simply limit our view of Christ solely to the role he undertook in his 33 year mission on Earth.
He was “made a little lower than the angels”, but He doesn’t remain that way.
The main point Ballor sets out to make is that we have a tendency to overstate the significance of the typological similarities of the characters in movies and books. And why not? It gets us out of the problem of being more discriminating in what we watch and read if we can simply attribute some sort of Christian significance to it.
Just look at the popularity of Mel Gibson’s "Braveheart" among Christian ministers as a type of the Christian leader. There’s a lot of discussion of his leadership qualities, but little remark on his little brush with fornication in the movie. That’s not to say that I don’t like "Braveheart" or that I see don’t recognize the Christian symbolism in it. My point (and this is where I agree with Ballor) is that this tendency has turned into an unthoughtful reflex action rather than a critical aesthetic confrontation with the work of art.
Witness the books that play off of this tendency in evangelicals, such as “Walking with Frodo: A Devotional Journey through the Lord of the Rings.” Say whut?
Look, I like the "Lord of the Rings". I think it is one of the greatest Christian books of all time. But a devotional? This kind of treatment just demeans the work itself–just as the silly repackagings of the Bible demean the Holy Scriptures.
Part of this, of course, is due the increasingly trivial and opportunistic Christian publishing industry, which tries to milk every evangelical trend for every dollar it can squeeze from it. (Do you have your “Prayer of Jabez Daytimer for Teens” yet?) And if it can do this by being parasitical on the broader secular culture, all the better. It does save us from the trouble of actually enriching the culture ourselves.
I agree with Ballor’s main point, but not the reasons he gives in support of it. There is very obviously typology in movies like "Superman Returns" that evidences Christ–through similarity as well as contrast.
I haven’t seen “Superman Returns.” But my ramparts will be breached in time, and I will be dragged from my redoubt, forced into a well-cushioned stadium theatre seat, and made to ingest mass quantities of buttered popcorn and Cherry Coke. Once thus installed, I will be able to offer informed commentary on the movie itself.
But there has to be some responsible way for Christians to recognize in a work of art the symbolism that follows necessarily on the fact that all nature bespeaks a Creator without getting silly about it.
See Quiddity for responses to this article by Jordan Ballor of the Acton Institute and others.
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