The Hills Are Alive With Confused Identity

If you’ve ever seen the MTV show, The Hills, you know how utterly unique, interesting, and, well, odd it is. On one level, The Hills is just another MTV teen drama-fest with all the usual trimmings: hot twentysomethings, vacuous dialogue, an orgy of product placement… But there is something very different about the form of the Hills-type shows, and it strikes me as one of the more intriguing “experiments” of post-network T.V.

Essentially The Hills, like its groundbreaking predecessor/model, Laguna Beach, is a “faux reality” docudrama that is equal parts Melrose Place, The Real World, and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. The plots are simple: rich, beautiful white kids living the jet-set scene in Hollywood and beyond. The Hills centers around Lauren Conrad (who also starred in Laguna) as she pursues a career at Teen Vogue magazine in Los Angeles. The drama of the show comes from Lauren’s various romantic entanglements, friendship/feuds (most notably with Heidi Montag), and mini-crises of the “I ruined my dress” or “what should I wear?” variety…

It sounds trite and passé, right? Well, yes, but something about it is definitely resonating with the youth culture zeitgeist, because it’s the highest rated program on cable television. Season Three just resumed last week, and the premiere episode was 2008’s highest-rated cable telecast—with 4.7 million viewers. Clearly there is something alluring and addictive about this show, which also streams online to an average audience of another 1-2 million viewers each week.

I can only take so much of it, but when I do watch an episode (and I watched last Monday’s “Paris Changes Everything” episode), I am struck anew by the curiosity that is The Hills. It’s such a strange thing to watch “real” people interacting in such a staged/performed/fake (pick your word) way. One could argue that this is what all “reality TV” is, but The Hills takes it to a new level. They flaunt the uber-constructed, un-reality of it all. These kids are living out fantasies and movie scripts and E! adventures in Hollywood, arranged and financed by the world’s biggest pop culture pimp: MTV. It’s about as unreal as it can get—and the MTV producers know it. Question is: do the audiences know it? And more intriguingly: do the stars of the show know it?

Does Lauren Conrad know that any value her “career” at Teen Vogue might hold pales in comparison to the value she—as an iconic commodity of flighty pop-culture fluff—offers the MTV/Madison Ave advertising behemoth? Do Heidi and Spencer know that their “relationship”—its survival or failure—is only important as a plot point or dramatic foil for the ongoing soap opera that is their publicized twentysomething lives? In short: as these “characters” live out their “real” lives, how much of it are they playing for the camera vs. living for their lives? Or perhaps those two have become indistinguishable?

When you watch any given interaction on The Hills, you can see two things very clearly: 1) scenes are setup and scripted, just like anything you see on TV, and 2) there exists some reality, somewhere—some measure of truth to every interaction, expression, and plot development. For example, in last week’s episode, Spencer tracks down Heidi at her picturesque Crested Butte cabin where she is “working on herself” in the comfort of her parents’ comfy abode. I was struck by one scene with Heidi and Spencer at dinner with Heidi’s parents. The scene was clearly setup by the producers to be a high-water mark of awkwardness—and several things Heidi and Spencer say are very suspiciously “straight from a movie.” But in watching the scene you can see—in Spencer’s eyes, in Heidi’s blank stare—that there is some truth to their relationship; they are really going through this tension and awkwardness, on some level. But herein lies the fascinating thing about this show: it fuses reality and fiction on a very cerebral, intrinsic level.

The stars of The Hills are performed characters. But they are performances of real people. “Lauren,” “Heidi,” “Audrina,” and all the rest are avatars for some real girls who are also called Lauren, Heidi, and Audrina. They are the performed selves of some actual selves (and, interestingly, there are also virtual selves at play here in "The Virtual Hills"). But in the end, are they necessarily different?

In this digital, second-life, avatar age, are our public constructions of self who we really are? The girls on The Hills seem to think so. Audrina told TV Guide, "Who I am on the show is who I am in real life.” And why wouldn’t she want to think this? On the show she is a rich, glamorous covergirl who can get into any club in L.A. If she is or ever was someone else in her life outside of MTV, that “self” is now no longer relevant and certainly no longer desired. When you become a character that millions across the world want to be like, who cares who you really are? The glossy, costumed, makeup’d character is who you want to be.

In our Facebook/Myspace/blog culture, who we are to ourselves (our “inner” or “ultimate” Self) is less important than the image we present to the world. Or rather, perhaps who we are to ourselves becomes the self we project to others. In either case, it is clear that our culture is characterized by identity confusion—and The Hills is cashing in on it.

Obama's Smart Speech

If you have not heard or read Barack Obama’s much-discussed “race speech” from a few weeks ago, I urge you to do so. You can read the transcript here (warning: it’s lengthy).

Now I am far from an apologist for Barack Obama. I have many reservations about him, as I do for the other candidates vying for the presidency. But one area in which I think Obama does exceed Hillary Clinton and John McCain is in rhetorical capability—the command of the spoken, well-articulated word.

Quite simply, Obama’s speeches blow the doors off of any of Clinton’s or McCain’s. Case in point: the “race speech.” Ostensibly delivered as a damage-control oration (to tranquilize the understandably damaging Rev. Wright controversy), the speech turned out to be one of the most complex, nuanced, unexpectedly brilliant bits of prose uttered by an American politician in the last two decades.

The speech was so striking because it did not sound political; it sounded intellectual. It did not pander to the lowest common denominator, but instead demanded a high level of cerebral engagement on the part of the audience. This is all very shocking and uncharacteristic of politics in the 21st century.

Even conservative intellectuals have noted the uncommon intelligence of Obama’s speech. Here’s an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal editorial by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan:

“The speech assumed the audience was intelligent. This was a compliment, and I suspect was received as a gift. It also assumed many in the audience were educated. I was grateful for this, as the educated are not much addressed in American politics.

Here I point out an aspect of the speech that may have a beneficial impact on current rhetoric. It is assumed now that a candidate must say a silly, boring line—"And families in Michigan matter!" or "What I stand for is affordable quality health care!"—and the audience will clap. The line and the applause make, together, the eight-second soundbite that will be used tonight on the news, and seen by the people. This has been standard politico-journalistic procedure for 20 years.

Mr. Obama subverted this in his speech. He didn't have applause lines. He didn't give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn't summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn't hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he'd said.

If Hillary or John McCain said something interesting, they'd get more than an eight-second cut too. But it works only if you don't write an applause-line speech. It works only if you write a thinking speech.

They should try it.”

Indeed, I think the reason Obama is so appealing to many of my generation is because he is so very counter to the cable news soundbite/infotainment zeitgeist. He is smart, serious, and eschews political stupidity. After eight years of an “I feel your pain” amoral politico and then eight more years of an anti-intellectual cowboy in the oval office, Americans are aching for something new—something as far from the “establishment” as possible. We don’t want a trigger-happy maverick in the White House; we want an educated visionary. We don’t want a politician in control of the free world; we want a professor.

Obama’s speech was more akin to a lecture by a college professor than it was a policy speech by a politician. It requires more than a thirty second Fox News soundbite to process and inspires us to rediscover the art of thinking through the issues. It recognizes that complicated problems can’t be solved in campaign speeches—but campaign speeches can at least get us thinking productively and critically about what and why these problems are.

Buzzword R.I.P. - "Emerging"

Can we please dispense with using the phrase “emerging church”? I’ve never been a fan of the term, for the following reasons: 1) What does “emerging” mean in reference to the church? Isn’t the church always in transition? 2) Why do we need a label to define something so broad and fluid? Defining “emerging church” is almost as futile as defining “postmodern.” 3) Labels like this scream “buzzword to sell books!” to me. How many gullible pastors, youth pastors, and otherwise interested Christians have bought “emerging church” books just to see what all the edgy fuss was all about?

Now, before I am attacked for any of this, you must understand: I am a fan of much of what we might call “emerging.” I love Rob Bell, prefer liturgical worship (candles too!), and generally agree with the admittance of “mystery” into the epistemological discourse of Christianity. But I do not like the fact that “emerging” or “Emergent” is a thing. I don’t like the fact that suddenly there is this debate about whether emerging is a good or bad thing (as if there are two clear cut sides on the issue!). I don’t like that we’ve elevated the last ten years of history to be some revolutionary epoch of massive church change. There have always been shifts in how Christianity is understood and contextualized. Why are we getting so worked up about it now?

There are larger questions about trends in Christianity that we might be concerned about (and that probably implicate the “emerging church”): namely, the trendification of the faith. If anything really worries me about “emerging” things, it is that it has tended to make Christianity “hip” (in the “I’m not a fundamentalist, anti-environment, gay-hating prude!” sort of way). I’m not so sure “hip” is a thing Christianity should be… or can be. There is much more to say about this, and much more I will say about this. Stay tuned.

Snow Angels

If there is one word that describes David Gordon Green’s new film, Snow Angels, it is challenging. If there are five words, they are “challenging in a good way.”

The same words could be used to describe any of Green’s films, which have been consistently complex, beautiful, and multilayered. If you have not seen his stunning first feature, 2000’s George Washington (made for a paltry 40k), or 2003’s lush All the Real Girls, you should definitely check them out. His gorgeously gothic third film, Undertow (which was produced and co-written by Green’s inspiration Terrence Malick), is also a must-see.

Green’s fourth film and first adaptation (based on the novel by Stewart O’Nan), Angels is an ensemble drama about a chain of shattering events in one wintry Pennsylvania town. Like Green’s other films, Angels focuses on the complexities of interpersonal, familial, and intergenerational relationships. The film centers upon Annie and Glenn (Kate Beckinsdale and Sam Rockwell), a recently separated couple with a young daughter and a lot of issues to work out. Annie is having an affair with a man (Nicky Katt) who is married to her closest friend and coworker (Amy Sedaris). Glenn—an unstable, unemployed loser who has recently turned firebrand evangelical Christian—refuses to let Annie go, and a series of poor choices by all parties results in tragic consequences. On the lighter side, the second major relationship of the film is a budding high school romance between band-nerd Arthur (Michael Angarano) and new-girl Lila (Olivia Thirlby). Arthur’s parents are divorcing and his friend (and former babysitter) Annie is suffering, but his innocent and awkward relationship with Lila gives an otherwise cold film a hearty, curiously nostalgic warmth.

Snow Angels (opening March 14 in NY and LA) divided audiences at Sundance last year, and it’s easy to see why. This is not an easy film. I have seen David Gordon Green speak about his films on several occasions (and I met him in person three years ago), and he always reiterates that his goal in filmmaking is to “do things differently” than conventional Hollywood. He eschews the traditional three-act structure, preferring a “two-halves” form, and privileges moments over coherent narrative. He foregrounds odd little character moments and curious visual details not to service the plot but rather to add texture and color to his extremely unique, realist/phenomenological cinematic aesthetic.

Photographed by Green’s film school comrade Tim Orr, Angels beautifully captures the slightly-antiquated, worn-down material and heavily naturalistic settings that have come to define his films. The film’s post-rock instrumental music (including songs from Mono, Uno Dose, Silver Mt. Zion and a new track from Explosions in the Sky) further enhances the organic, ethereal mood. It’s an intensely artistic film, juxtaposing easy-listening poetry with brazen, balls-out subject matter that will leave unsuspecting viewers utterly confused.

Typically, Green’s films are most challenging on the tonal level, and this is where audiences and critics have been divided about Angels. “I like movies that challenge me tonally,” said Green at a recent screening of George Washington. And Angels is certainly one such film. At times it feels like a dark comedy, at others a tragedy. Frequently it is beautifully mellow, but there are several scenes of terrible intensity. Green loves to jump back and forth from humor to tragedy, sometimes within the same scene. There is a striking scene in which Sam Rockwell’s character is heartbroken and impossibly drunk at a dingy rural bar. It is desperately sad, until he starts slow-dancing with some equally blitzed drunks to a Gene Autry song. All of a sudden it is funny, and odd, and tragic—all at the same time. And it’s not just quirkiness for the sake of irony. It works. You never know what kind of wonderful and compelling nuggets Green will throw at you next, which is a rare and wonderful trait in a director.

I am purposefully avoiding a discussion of what actually happens in this film, because the joy of watching it is that it is totally unpredictable—even shocking. It’s a film that asks deep questions about morality and collective responsibility, offering little in the way of justice or blame. It’s a film that shows the small joys and heartbreaks of life in all their symbiotic simultaneity. It’s a wonderfully unsteady, untidy experience that will mess with the tidy filmgoer. But sometimes we need to be messed with.

Could it be True? Friday Night Lights Renewed?!

In what could be the happiest news of this Lenten season, reports are surfacing that NBC has decided to bring Friday Night Lights back for a third season! The ink has yet to dry on the deal (which has not been officially reported by NBC), but it appears that the peacock network has teamed with DirectTV for a co-finance, co-airing strategy that will ease the burden on NBC to justify higher ratings for the underseen show. The network has been in similar talks over the past month with several networks--CW, USA, even ESPN--but it appears that DirectTV was the one that finally coughed up the needed sum to make NBC happy. Thank you!

Fans of the low-rated show have been in fearful limbo since it ended its second season on an abrupt, Writer's Strike-induced note last month. Lights has been consistently low-rated (averaging around 6 million viewers) and yet critics have showered praise and awards on the show since it's debut in 2006. A dedicated band of diehard Lights fans have been circulating online petitions and bombarding the offices of Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman (NBC pres) with little "Save FNL" foam footballs over the last several weeks. Whether this little bit of grassroots effort pressured NBC into making the decision to renew or whether it was a band of NBC execs who lobbied hard internally for the show, I don't know. All I know is that Lights is still the best show on network television, and a third season demands to be seen by more viewers.

Faith and Film Critics Circle Pick '07 Winners

The Faith and Film Critics Circle (of which I am a member) has just announced its awards for 2007. I'm happy to say that Into Great Silence won our highest honor: "most significant exploration of spiritual themes." It's a great, deserving film that was tragically under-seen. I had the pleasure of writing about it for Relevant last April. Here is the full list of awards and nominees:

Most Significant Exploration of Spiritual Themes - Into Great Silence

Best Narrative Film - There Will Be Blood

Best Documentary - Into Great Silence

Best Film for the Whole Family - Ratatouille

Best Director - Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood

Best Performance by an Actor - Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood

Best Performance by an Actress -Ellen Page, Juno

Best Performance by a Child - Saoirse Ronan, Atonement

Best Supporting Performance by an Actor (tie) - Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James & Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men

Best Supporting Performance by an Actress (tie) - Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There & Jennifer Garner, Juno

Best Ensemble Cast - Lars and the Real Girl

Best Cinematography - Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood

Best Original Screenplay - Diablo Cody, Juno

Best Adapted Screenplay - Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men

Best Original Score - Dario Marianell, Atonement

Paranoid Park: The Best Film of 2008 (Thus Far)

Gus Van Sant’s new film, Paranoid Park, is without question the best film of 2008 thus far. And if we consider it a 2007 film (it did qualify as such for the Independent Spirit Awards, for which it won one and was nominated for three), I would have to put it in the top four (certainly just as good as There Will Be Blood, I’m Not There, and No Country for Old Men).

Paranoid Park is one of those films that jolts awake my deep love of cinema (and I know that’s a cliché… but it’s true). I’ve seen six films in the theater over the last seven days, and admittedly such a schedule makes cinemagoing frightfully mundane—even laborious. But as I left Park I felt more alive and entranced by the beauty and possibility of cinema than I have since probably The New World. Like Malick’s film, Park is brimful of moments and sequences that are achingly beautiful.

Like several of Gus Van Zant’s more recent works (Elephant, Last Days), Park is on the experimental/lyrical/avant-garde side of things—which to this critic is definitely a good thing. Van Sant’s more mainstream films (Finding Forrester, To Die For, Goodwill Hunting) display a great mastery of the cinematic form, but the scope of the auteur’s striking talent and vision is only beginning to be fully realized. Paranoid Park is his most accomplished film—I might even dare to call it perfect.

But enough of the glittering generalities and over-the-top superlatives. So why is this film such a big deal? Why did it receive (and totally deserve) the 60th Anniversary prize at Cannes last year? Let me officially begin my review…

Adapted by Van Sant from the novel by Blake Nelson, Paranoid Park tells the seemingly simple story of a 16-year-old skateboarder, Alex (non-actor Gabe Nevins), who begins hanging out at a notorious Portland skate park (“Paranoid Park”) and associating with shady characters. One fateful night Alex accidentally kills a security guard, and the film is about how he deals with the (mostly psychological) consequences of this life-altering event.

Like its precursor and companion film, Elephant, Park features a cast of unknown teenage actors—a brilliant move that lends a striking awkwardness and realism to the film. Gabe Nevins is perfect in the lead role—a wide-eyed, innocent teenager who finds himself in the midst of something too horrible to comprehend. The film is told from his perspective, though in a non-linear, “never sure where or when we are” sort of fashion. Like a highschooler recounting his day at school to his mother, Alex gives us scarcely little in the way of sensical verbal narrative—repeating some things multiple times (with slight variations or shifted emphasis), retracting or reframing other things, giving staccato answers to immensely involved questions, etc. His fragmentary, confused perspective and stilted utterances speak many volumes of truth, however.

Unlike the fast-talking characters of other teen movies (Juno!), Nevins and the other adolescent actors in Park speak in the choppy, awkward, believable parlance of net-generation millennials. They talk about obligatory teen stuff (getting laid, making weekend plans), their personal problems (absentee dads, divorcing parents, annoying girlfriends), and even give MTV-style lip service to the problems of the world (Iraq, starving children in Africa, etc). They are the teenagers of today, and Van Sant’s eye captures them more perceptively than any film I’ve seen.

Paranoid Park explores the contemporary teen psyche well—externalizing the confusing and contradictory voices, influences, and narratives that crowd their mediated minds. Nevins’ Alex is never quite present in his interactions with people and lacks a tangible grasp of his own unfolding life. A scene of him driving a car and reacting to various songs playing on the radio (from classical to rap) displays his fluid, impressionable sense of self. Indeed, music is a huge part of the film, as it is in any teenager’s life. There is sort of “iPod shuffle” aesthetic to the soundtrack of Park—an eclectic, seemingly random assemblage of artists (everyone from Elliott Smith to Beethoven) that embodies the alternately angsty, meditative, whimsical, and disturbing mood of the film.

In the end, Paranoid Park is a film about the heavy incomprehensibility of “the self behind the self” (to use a phrase from an Emily Dickinson poem). There are multiple levels to this: Obviously Alex languishes under the tension between wanting to unload the terrible information that he holds and yet knowing that he can’t; but he also faces the more unsettling question of how he can live with himself in keeping it forever secret. Can one cordon off the unpleasantries of guilt and memory?

This is a film that astutely captures one young man in his first encounter with the burden of interiority—both as an adolescent in search of an authentic identity (beyond the Facebook self, the cell phone self, the skatepark self, etc) and as a human who must reckon with a reality that upsets the tidy balance of segmentation. All of this is rendered in far more organic and unpretentious ways than my discussion here would suggest. Still, it is complicated, challenging material—definitely not for the recreational filmgoer.

One of the things people will either love or hate about Park is the use of extended lyrical skateboarding sequences. During these audio-visual “interludes” (shot in a more home-video style), cinematographer Christopher Doyle (2046, The Quiet American) delicately follows the acrobatic swerving, flying, and weaving patchwork of teenage skater boys in slow-motion. It’s a remarkable sight to behold. For me, these were the most heartbreakingly profound moments—instances of making the familiar strange, of alienating the material environment while also exposing its truth. These scenes (and the whole movie), remind me of what realist film theorist Siegfried Kracauer believed cinema was most adept at capturing: “the flow of life.” Unlike photography, which can only capture moments and not movement of reality in time, the cinema, Kracauer believed, has the ability to capture reality in motion—an indeterminate glimpse into the open-ended continuum and “flow” of material existence.

Kracauer often referred to “the street” (i.e. shots of large groups of people in motion) as one of the most thrilling applications of cinematic potential. In his seminal work, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, Kracauer wrote:

The street in the extended sense of the word is not only the arena of fleeting impressions and chance encounters but a place where the flow of life is bound to assert itself. Again one will have to think mainly of the city street with its ever-moving anonymous crowds… Each [face] has a story, yet the story is not given. Instead, an incessant flow of possibilities and near-intangible meanings appears.

This applies to much of Van Sant’s film, which revels in the very indeterminacy and “near-intangible” meaning which photography and cinema uniquely relay. Indeed, much of Doyle’s photography in Park consists in long shots with purposefully little in the way of explicit meaning, point of view, or plot utility. As in Elephant, there are frequent tracking shots that simply follow Alex around as he walks in the school halls or carries his skateboard down a Portland sidewalk. Other shots linger on complicated faces (not just Alex) that could be thinking any number of things. There is a thrilling editorial restraint to this film, though it is no doubt a source of frustration for some viewers.

Clearly, Paranoid Park is not for everyone (again, a cliché!), but if you have any interest in seeing something truly unique and provocative and beautiful, I urge to go see this film. It comes out in NYC on March 7 and then releases wider as the month goes on.

The New Vigilantes

I recently saw Neil Jordan’s new film The Brave One, which stars Jodie Foster as a Erica Bain, a vigilante killer who cleans up the scum of NYC in revenge for the brutal murder of her husband by a couple of thugs in a park. It’s a very interesting film for a number of reasons—essentially a feminist retelling of Taxi Driver (which also starred Foster)—but its chief provocation is that it offers up a likeable protagonist who kills for pleasure, walking the streets at night in search of (male) sinners who need to be silenced.

Another incarnation of this amoral anti-hero is seen in the show Dexter (now on CBS). A sharply written and well-acted drama, Dexter follows a serial killer (the title character played by Michael C. Hall) who has an insatiable urge to kill those who kill others. He’s as likeable as any character on television and wouldn’t harm a hair on any principled, law-abiding citizen. But when it comes to rapists, pedophiles, murderers, and human traffickers, Dexter is as menacing as Jeffrey Dahmer. The show doesn’t condone or celebrate Dexter’s actions, but it definitely wants us to be on his side. To that end, it offers a “life is horribly complicated” backstory that attempts to explain (perhaps justify?) Dexter’s violent actions. Like Erica Bain, Dexter faced a violent past that made him who he is today: an unstable timebomb with a murderous axe to grind.

These are just two of the most recent examples of vigilante heroes in pop culture, which is just one subset of the much broader trend of moral ambiguity (the tendency of culture today to celebrate “the gray areas”). But none of this is especially novel or unique to the 21st century. I immediately think back to the novels of Dostoevsky that tackled these notions of DIY justice.

In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky explores the idea that some men are of an “extraordinary” nature, set apart from, or rather above, the common man. The character of Porfiry interprets the idea in this way: “The ordinary must live in obedience…while the extraordinary have the right to commit all sorts of crimes and in various ways to transgress the law.” In the novel, this concept is embodied in the character of Raskolnikov, a neurotic, distressed student who kills a pawnbroker and her innocent sister. Like Porfiry, Raskolnikov believes that the extraordinary man has a right (not official, but his own) to “step over certain obstacles, and then only in the event that the fulfillment of his idea—sometimes perhaps salutary for the whole of mankind—calls for it.” For Raskolnikov, his murderous actions constitute the “stepping over” of an extraordinary man, for in the killing of the wretched pawnbroker many people—if not the whole of mankind—will be better off.

So goes the logic of both The Brave One and Dexter. In each case we find ourselves rooting on the murderous actions of these vigilantes because they are “taking out the trash” so to speak. The disturbing allure of these types of films (and TV shows) is that we all, secretly, enjoy seeing a bad guy get shot in the face or (in the case of Dexter, chopped into pieces and thrown in the trash).

But there is a frightful end sum to this type of vigilante amorality. In Crime and Punishment progresses, Raskolnikov begins to understand that in trying to rationalize his killing through some grand idea, he is deluding himself. He senses the dishonesty of it, and though it proves painful, admits to himself that: “I simply killed—killed for myself.” At the end of the novel (the “punishment” portion in Siberia), Raskolnikov imagines the true implications of the idea that had fueled his former torment. He has a disturbing vision of pestilence taking over the world and producing a race of men who each assume the right to step over and who each find the truth “in himself alone.”

This vision paints a scary portrait of a world governed by relativistic morality. Dostoevsky’s comments that in this world “they did not know whom to judge, could not agree on what to regard as evil, what as good” prophesy the coming of postmodernism. Of course, the initial cultural manifestation of the “stepping over” idea seems to have been the rise in totalitarianism in the early-mid twentieth century, but Dostoevsky expresses a foresight of what would ultimately come in totalitarianism/modernism’s wake. Once one or two “extraordinary men” step over and take the reigns of a totalitarian authority, the natural outcome is that more and more people view themselves in the same way. Soon, because extraordinariness is so arbitrary and totalitarianism so distasteful, everyone claims the same rights to power and/or truth. Raskolnikov sees something of this future in his idea, and that is why he ultimately discounts it.

Does our culture today see the folly and contradiction that Raskolnikov finally does? Or are we once again romanced by the notion of “extraordinary” men and “above the law” morality? More broadly: is our emphasis on cultural specificity and relativism weakening our ability to even delineate where the “stepping over” lines are? It’s a question and pesky problem that deserves to be discussed.

The Art of the Cover

I’ve been thinking about covers recently, and not as in bedsheets. The cover is ubiquitous in our culture (form karaoke bars to American Idol in all its kitschy glory), but what makes a good cover? What, if anything, happens to the meaning of a song when it is covered by someone else?

Last night I went to a Cat Power concert at the Wiltern theater in Los Angeles. It was a very, very interesting show. Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) is a strange person and a very odd performer. In years past she was known to have emotional breakdowns during shows and frequently walked off the stage, unable to finish a song or set. Last night she was gleefully happy (a little too happy if you ask me—prancing around on stage like a bunny doing the moonwalk), and she plowed through an 80-some minute set of entirely cover songs, including 5 or 6 covers of some of her own older songs.

But how, you might be wondering, does an artist cover themselves? Isn’t that just called a performance? Not if you heard Chan Marshall last night. She played a medley of songs from her 2006 album The Greatest, but they were rather unrecognizable and completely reinterpreted from their original form. At best it was intriguing, at worst terribly frustrating; but this is Cat Power. She’s all about the covers… and she’s probably the best at it. That is: the art of the cover.

Most people who cover songs take the “imitation is the best form of flattery” approach—mimicking the original song in melody, phrasing, tone, and mood. Cat Power can do this too (just listen to her spot-on rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again”), but her preferred method of covering songs is to reconstruct them from scratch and sculpt them in her musical image. Take her cover of the Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”—there is little of the original left in her morose, acoustic version, save some remote, flickering (yet very much alive) musical idea. But songs are mysterious creatures, and to each listener they are completely different things. The meaning of a song is fluid, multifarious, easily changed and infinitely pliable. Every time a song is sung or performed (whether in the shower or on stage) it means something different, so it makes sense to say that the performer and audience have just as much or more to do with the “reality” of a song as the notes, chords, and instruments. And this is what Cat Power recognizes; this is why her covers are so utterly brilliant.

Chan Marshall has now made two albums of cover songs—2000’s The Covers Record (in which she covered Neil Young, Nina Simone, The Velvet Underground, among others) and this year’sJukebox (a two disc album which covers Hank Williams, Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday, among others). These albums don’t feel like covers records, however. They feel totally original, personal, and uniquely Cat Power. For Marshall, singing other people’s songs is not just an act of mimesis or karaoke. It’s an act of reinterpretation—and that, in a way, is what all art is.

Indeed, I might argue that the art of covering is, in fact, the art of art. After all, very little art is completely original. Whether you are making a film (in which you copy the styles, conventions and motifs of other films), writing a book (abiding by centuries of literary rules) or creating music (perhaps the most derivative of all art forms), repurposing the past is just part of the game. Shakespeare was the worst offender (none of his stories are original to him), but that doesn’t diminish him as an artist. On the contrary, it’s a rare skill to be able to take other stories and inspirations and histories (as Shakespeare did) and make them something altogether better and greater in a recombinant form.

Cat Power is one artist who gets it. Her view of “the song” is an interesting one—she seems to conceive of a song as a living, free-market organism that is more about collective intelligence and cultural ownership than singular expression or solitary authorship. Indeed, it is interesting that so many of the songs she covers could be considered “folk art” tunes of the sort that define a culture/region/era rather than a particular artist. These are artifacts of people, not one person. Cat Power is just one modern girl who connects to the songs she hears and sings them in her own voice and way—embedding a song’s meaning with her own meaning (which is the only way anything ever means anything).

At a time when the remixed/repurposed/recombined seems to be the only means of creativity in our increasingly exhausted artistic climate, Cat Power is a shining, thoroughly postmodern exemplar. As classic songs are systematically stripped of meaning by the vacuous performances on American Idol two nights a week, other artists—like Cat Power—are envisioning new ways of breathing life into long-lost art and ephemeral culture.

No Discussion Allowed

Yesterday I went to a press screening of the new film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. For those who are unfamiliar with this film, it’s an agit-prop documentary of the Michael Moore variety, with one main difference: it’s conservative. It’s about the evolution debate, and takes the position that Intelligent Design theory (ID) should at least be allowed a place at the table in discussions of biological origins.

The film stars Ben Stein as the Michael Moore/Morgan Spurlock/Al Gore figure—mounting an “op-ed” type argument that is less about why ID is right or evolution wrong as it is about why there is such a concerted effort by the mainstream science community to squelch any and all debate on the matter. The film begins by recounting about a half dozen cases of highly-qualified PhD professors at various universities who have been fired in recent years for daring to mention that evolution as a theory has some weaknesses. From here the film gives a general narrative of how the scientific and academic powers that be have aggressively sought to silence any dissent—either by ID proponents or anyone else with questions about Darwin’s theory.

I came into this film very, very skeptical, worried that it would be all about trying to disprove evolution and argue for creationism (thereby reinforcing stereotypes of anti-intellectual religious fundamentalists). I was worried that it would further reinforce the (false) binary that says Christianity and science are on two sides of a battle and can never have any common ground. But I was pleasantly surprised with Expelled on a number of levels.

First of all, it’s pretty funny and quite entertaining. Ben Stein’s hyper-dry way of interviewing people is great fun to watch, and his “everyman” persona makes him easy to sympathize with. His “anyone, anyone” Ferris Bueller character also makes him an appropriate choice for a film about the expulsion of dissenting ideas in the classroom.

Secondly, it’s a reasonably effective, well-mounted argument (if a tad on the manipulative side). The filmmakers interviewed many prominent figures from both sides of the debate, including an extended (and deliciously uncomfortable) interview between Stein and Richard Dawkins (atheist extraordinaire and author of The God Delusion). The film is smart to keep its focus on the glaring double standards and contradictions among the evolution advocates—who have built impenetrable walls around the sacrosanct theory of evolution and (in a very un-academic spirit) refused to allow any rational dialogue on the matter.

Indeed, the film hits a nerve in its critique of the contemporary American academy. As a graduate student immersed in academia and all its idiosyncrasies, I can attest to the pervasive and disturbingly hypocritical sense of close-mindedness that stifles the spirit of progressive discourse. It goes beyond the scientific communities in higher education and touches many disciplines. Quite simply: if you are not on the “right” side of the wall (whatever wall it may be), your voice is stifled, your work discredited, and your intelligence questioned. It’s gone beyond political correctness and is now something altogether more militant and sinister. Sadly, the academy today is less about the sharing and discovery of truth as it is about the wielding and protecting of power.

Critics will attack this movie and claim that it is manipulative propaganda, but if Michael Moore can get an Oscar for it, why hate on Ben Stein? Certainly the film has its faults. It is less-than-subtle at times and heavy-handed at others (the sequence on Nazism and Hitler as direct descendent of Darwinist thought is perhaps unnecessary), and overall it is very derivative of other films of this type. Obviously Stein knowingly mimics Michael Moore in his leading-question, “I’m going to make you look stupid” method of interviewing. But there are also direct parallels to Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth. Like Gore in that film, Stein gives a speech in a lecture hall, incorporates “deeply personal” elements, and plays on apocalyptic fears (in this case, the fear that free speech is increasingly suppressed, East Germany style).

But Expelled’s lack or originality and copycat style is, in a way, sort of the point. It’s a film that very deliberately presents itself as an alternative type of film—the anti-Michael Moore, perhaps. It is trying to argue that there is (or should be) room at the table for both sides, for multiple arguments on any issue. But more than likely the film will be denied wide distribution or much (if any) press coverage, just as Intelligent Design theory is either ignored or laughed out of most cultural discourse. Whatever you may think of ID or evolution (and I’m not saying either is wrong or right) it’s hard to argue against the injustice of denying the discussion. But unfortunately that’s just what is happening.

White People Like: Making Fun of Their Whiteness

The "Stuff White People Like" blog simply consists of an ongoing list of things that white folks like (or, more specifically, things yuppie/hipster white folks under 40 like). Some inclusions on the list: Difficult breakups (#70), Asian fusion food (#45), Knowing what's best for poor people (#62), Arrested Development (#38), Japan (#58), "Gifted" Children (#16), The Sunday New York Times (#46), Wrigley Field (#30), Writer's Workshops (#21), and Farmers Markets (#5).

It's a hilarious blog, with aggressively ironic writing (after all, "irony" is #50 on the list!) and humorous pictures throughout. The whole endeavor is blindingly white in nature (i.e. spending so much time ironically skewering whiteness in a non-standupcomedy sort of way).

If you look over the list on the blog, one of the major recurring themes is the idea that above all, white people like being the best or superior (but not in a self-deprecating sort of way) at whatever they do or whatever situation they are in. They're constantly trying to one-up one another and prove themselves better than the next white guy. It's funny and ironic, then, that "Stuff White People Like" screams of this sort of "look how smart and witty and self-deprecating we are" attitude. But then maybe the people behind the blog are trying to make some meta critique of the whole process of reflexive self-stereotyping (wouldn't that be white of them!). In any case, the sort of half-hearted deconstruction with which I'm concluding this post is certainly stereotypically white. We love taking things--even (perhaps especially) amusing and entertaining things--apart and analyzing them. There's no fun in that. But then again, white people are very prone to becoming wet blankets.

Does Jesse James Know Who He Is?

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a film I did not get a chance to write about when it came out last autumn, though I did put it #8 on my “best of 2007” list. I recently saw it on DVD again, however, and have been struck anew by the film’s surprising beauty, mystery, and psychological resonances.

Beyond its artistic excellence (including some really interesting photographic effects, beautiful music, etc), Assassination is a film that captures some pretty complicated truths about humanity and identity.

The “larger-than-life” title hints that this film is less about a real event (though it is a true story) than it is about a mythology about a larger-than-life man and his untimely demise. This is not a biopic of Jesse James, and as such we never really get close to understanding him as a person as much as a symbolic icon. The brilliantly cast Brad Pitt (himself a larger-than-life icon) recognizes this, providing his character scant few moments of intelligible humanity. What we do see of Jesse James the man is someone who is very much intrigued by his own cultural mystique. He’s acting the part that has been written by pop-culture and legend; he’s both an observer and the main attraction in the abstracted spectacle that is “Jesse James.”

Fittingly, much of Pitt’s performance consists of iconic poses and postures: standing gallantly amid the windswept plains; sitting throne-like in an Edenic yard with snakes writhing around his forearms; enshrouded in mystical steam and darkness as a train approaches (to be robbed). He’s the consummate rebel hero—an unbeatable bandit who, in the end, seems to orchestrate even the circumstances of his own assassination.

Indeed, the scene in which Robert Ford (heartbreakingly portrayed by Casey Affleck) shoots Jesse James is so thoroughly blocked and theatrical that we can’t help but wonder if James had this moment planned out his whole life. Without giving too much away (it’s a brilliant scene), I’ll just say that the sequence feels like the ultimate convergence between the “real story” and the “mythology”—in which James and Ford fully transition from people to characters, from humans living to actors performing. And this is not a knock on the verisimilitude of the film; on the contrary, I suspect that this climactic sense of artifice/performed mythology was just what writer/director Andrew Dominik intended.

The point is further made in the subsequent “one year later” sequence, in which Robert Ford is now a widely-known actor in New York, “performing” his legendary assassination on stage every night for star struck audiences. Here, in ghostly makeup and stage light, Ford shoots blanks and “Jesse” is just an actor who dramatically “dies” for a gasping audience. It’s a simulation of an event that, in reality, was a simulation in it’s own right.

Among other things, Assassination is a film that understands the performative aspects of identity. In a sense, we are all actors—performing and projecting versions of our selves to fit whatever circumstance, stage, or audience we are in. Like Jesse James we all have images and public “selves” to live up to (though to a less grandiose extent for most of us). It is an exhausting and seemingly unavoidable practice of everyday social interaction—the performance of a suitable self in social context.

Sociologist Erving Goffman touched on these issues in his 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, in which he wrote:

“The impression of reality fostered by a performance is a delicate, fragile thing that can be shattered by very minor mishaps. The expressive coherence that is required in performances points out a crucial discrepancy between our all-too-human-selves and our socialized selves. As human beings we are presumably creatures of variable impulse with moods and energies that change from one moment to the next. As characters for an audience, however, we must not be subject to ups and downs”

This is the burden of identity—the weight of having to maintain a “front,” manage impressions, and live up to perceptions and standards and (in Jesse James’ case) legends that we ourselves foster—even while we are humans with far more complexities and contradictions than one sellable “self” could assume.

But that is the very justification for why we must perform. We are far too complex to be understood by others (let alone ourselves) if not by way of crafting a character for every given context. Of course we can only take the theater metaphor so far, but I think Goffman is perceptive when he says that “All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify.”

Top Down Populism

I’ve been intrigued of late by a seemingly obvious and pervasive contradiction within American culture—the notion of “grassroots” or “populist” activity as something that can be not only leveraged but orchestrated from above by powerful groups seeking the “consensus” approval or authentic legitimacy that comes when something is done “by the people.” Politicians recognize the importance of tapping into populism (see how many times each of the presidential candidates’ websites name-drop the word “grassroots”), as do media moguls (who pay bloggers to start a buzz on the web to create “bottom up marketing”) and television executives (who, in reality shows like American Idol, cede “control” to the audience to portray themselves as “America’s show”).

Indeed, populism has always been a hallmark of America, a nation birthed out of a direct opposition to the elitism, stratified wealth, and top-down imperialism of 18th century Europe. But the very point of populism was that it not be coopted by the elites who—from their perches of power in Washington or Madison Avenue—sought to use “the people’s voice” as just another way to sell their products, their messages, their agendas.

So how can we take top-down populism seriously? After all, a “grassroots” movement is, by definition and necessarily, bottom-up. This is not to say it doesn’t take leadership on the grassroots level to get the ball rolling with any momentous movement or change. Of course it does. But something ceases to be authentically grassroots when the ideas or origins of a movement come not from the “people” or “populace” but are fed from above by campaign strategists, teachers, or other institutional arms of the hegemony.

Briefly, here are two examples I’ve encountered recently that illustrate my point:

1) I sit on a board at UCLA that oversees all student media (newspapers, magazines, yearbook, etc) and at our last meeting a few board members proposed a revitalization plan for several of the floundering niche magazines on campus. These magazines (for groups like African American students, Muslims, Latinos, Asian-Americans, etc) were quite popular in the mid to late 90s at UCLA, but for whatever reason have recently fallen on apathetic ears. Students are simply not as interested in this sort of community-based “progressive” journalism anymore. The proposed “revitalization” plan calls for the formation of an “alternative/underground journalism training program” wherein students are taught how to organize on the street level and produce community-specific journalism that is hopefully oppositional, subversive, muckraking and important. Sounds good, but we can easily see the contradiction here. How do we teach community-level, grassroots activist journalism? If the students are inclined to do it, they will on their own. If not, why should we (and how can we) force it?

2) I went to a conference at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts this weekend on the topic of DIY Video (i.e. kids with cameras and editing equipment who make their own films that wind up on YouTube). A panel of ridiculously utopian media theorists (Henry Jenkins, Howard Rheingold, Joi Ito, Yochai Benkler, John Seely Brown) went on and on about the “revolutionary” effects on culture that this sort of democratized video production might hold. They kept repeating that we (read: educated, old, and liberal) should create programs of “visual media literary” wherein young, poor, minority students would be given the tools (cameras, computers, etc) and training to visually express and distribute (via YouTube or elsewhere) the opinions they are otherwise never given platform to convey. The idea is that these muted voices will be enabled to speak and speak out against the forces that control and oppress them. The goal of the old rich benefactors who finance these “media literacy” initiatives is, of course, that some brilliant high schooler with a laptop will create the next great anti-establishment “stick it to the man” expose. But what happens if all the kids want to do is film Jackass stunts?

Ultimately, the problem both of these groups must solve is the problem of caring. How do we get young people (or anyone, really) to care enough about an issue to organize and build grassroots momentum for change? It’s a serious problem. But it can’t be solved by cloying, force-fed, top-down manipulation.

Perhaps the increased proliferation of top-down, taught populism is simply a sign that the populace doesn’t know what or who it is (or should be). Perhaps grassroots activity today—even with the ultimate grassroots tool (or, perhaps, hindrance) of the Internet—cannot exist without the orchestration and steering of someone who actually has a message or idea we can get excited about. In lieu of having little we are organically excited about (or perhaps in lieu of the overwhelming glut of potential things to get excited about), we need direction.

I’d like to think that a “mass” or “populace” exists outside the realm of top-down influence. I’d like to think that the people are capable of banding together and revolutionizing systems and societies, Marx style. But I think that Marx underestimated the extent to which—as we see today—the “people” are quietly (and perhaps unknowingly) going about the business of the powers that be, rather than overthrowing them. Indeed, I think Gramsci’s view of the world is more practical—the notion that control is wielded not through coercion but ideology, that subjugation can be framed as a positive, that we willingly participate in the subtle reinforcement of dominant values.

Of course this is all very pessimistic, and any Gramscian must hold on to the hope that little moments of personal rebellion are possible—that hegemonic forces can be thwarted by means of grassroots revolution. But it is definitely, and increasingly, an uphill battle.

Why I Love Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, and it is one of my favorite days of the year. I never really celebrated this beautiful day growing up… which is a shame. As the first day of Lent—the 40 day period of repentance, renewal and reflection in advance of Easter—Ash Wednesday provides a perfect chance to quiet oneself and get in the proper penitential mode for the Lenten season.

At my church and at many churches worldwide today, Christians will come together for worship, prayer, and the imposition of ashes. This part I love. An ash-marked cross on one’s forehead is a very strange thing to see (especially in a town as vain and airbrushed as L.A.), but it is beautiful. What a fantastic symbol of what Lent is all about: our coming into a focused, reverential meditation upon and solidarity with the suffering of Christ.

Ashes are a material of decay and death, but they also allude to new life. After a forest fire, for example, the ashes provide nutrients for the rebirth of a new generation of trees. And here it all comes together: “Lent” is derived from the Middle English “lente” which means “spring” or “springtime.” Though it comes early this year and spring feels miles away, Ash Wednesday is our first glimpse of that eternal newness and redemption just beyond the horizon.

I love Ash Wednesday for the way that it symbolizes—so concisely—what it means to be a Christian. It’s not about being beautiful or powerful or triumphant; it’s about being scarred and humbled and sacrificial. But it’s not like this is a defeatist exercise in self-flagellation or something. No, on the contrary, to “give up” or “sacrifice” in the name of Christ is (or should be) the height of our joy. We should strive to be like Christ, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame…" (Hebrews 12:2). For the joy set before him… That should be why we endure suffering and embrace self-denial. It’s paradoxical and mysterious and counterintuitive—certainly. But when I feel those cold ashes spread across my forehead, it all makes some sort of wonderful sense.

Paul Tillich once said that “man’s ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.” And I think in Christian sacraments and rituals (like communion, baptism, or the imposition of ashes), we can see how true this is. Ash Wednesday is more than just a day that follows Mardi Gras and kicks off the Christian period of Lent. It’s a symbol that exists within and yet points beyond the materiality and ephemera of this place and this time to the transcendent and restorative oneness of the “ultimate concern” which is God Himself.

Politics of Spectacle

I was watching something on Fox this week and was struck by some of the ads I saw for the Super Bowl. The ads were advertising that a full day of coverage on Super Sunday would begin with a morning of Fox News political coverage on “the other big contest” going on: the presidential election. Following this would be the main event: the Patriots vs. Giants. The ad seemed to suggest that together it was a day of utter and extreme Americanisms: our “two favorite pastimes: sports and politics.” Pull up a chair, get some beer and pizza, and revel in the spectacles of debate and conflict and fighting and smash-em-up democracy!

There are many things wrong with this framing discourse of “Super Sunday” (not least of which is the obvious untruth that Americans care as much about politics as we do about sports!), but the thing that most disturbs me is this equivocation of our electoral process with something as airy and insignificant and superfluous as the Super Bowl. Are we seriously trying to say that the current presidential election is mass entertainment? A spectacle?

Unfortunately, this is not really a new trend. For decades now, American media have been turning politics into a spectacle—a three ring circus of strategy, intrigue, danger, rousing victories and epic defeats. Turn on cable news on any given night and you get some grade-A melodrama posing as political discourse.

Exhibit A of the spectacle-ization of American politics happened on Thursday night in (the very appropriate location of) Hollywood. It was the Democratic debate on CNN—live from the Kodak theater (aka the home of the Oscars and nexus of all that Hollywood represents). Did anyone watch this debate? First of all, it was hardly a debate. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were as chummy as any two competing politicians have ever been. There was very little actual debate and even less clarification for the voters.

But it was compelling TV! It was a spectacle! And boy did the stars turn out in force to drive home that point… Every time the camera panned to the audience it focused on another celebrity’s face. Liberal stalwarts Steven Spielberg and Rob Reiner were there, along with familiar faces like Diane Keaton (in her Charlie Chaplin/Annie Hall getup), Stevie Wonder (stood up and cheered a lot), and Pierce Brosnan (wait—can he even vote? Isn’t he British?). But what can explain the presence of Brandy? Or Topher Grace? Or the guy who plays Andy on The Office? What are they doing here? To give CNN the glitz and glamour that Anderson Cooper and Angelina Jolie have tried so hard to achieve?

In any case, it was funny to watch the reaction shots of various B celebrities whenever Obama or Clinton said something about how ridiculously awful George W. Bush has been. It’s almost a Pavlovian instinct for many of them, I think: “Bush ruins everything”=clap and cheer! (because who wants to cheer for boring and complex solutions to issues like healthcare and social security?). It’s much more fun and gleefully vague to “cheer for change”!

Indeed. What fun this all is! There should be an “Election 2008” reality show or something. Ryan Seacrest could host it and every night millions could call in and vote on how well each candidate looked and performed during whatever debate or speech had just happened. It would be a ratings hit for whatever channel it was on, and doubtless way more people would get “excited” about our electoral process (as long as we could text in our vote). And then perhaps one day ads during Super Tuesday will sell for just as much as on Super Sunday. A Super Week of consumerist pop-hedonism/politics! Totally win win.

Jacob Wants Us Lost

I don't know what is going on on Lost (I never really have), but I do know that it is still the most consistently thought-provoking show on television. And the season four premiere last night did not disappoint.

What is most compelling right now (and, to an extent, what has been the most compelling thing about the show since day one) is the way Lost plays with time. For the first three seasons each episode featured a flashback where the mysteries of the shows were broadened and the characters deepened. But now it appears that this season (and I suspect the rest of the seasons) will feature flashforwards--glimpses of the "after rescue" future of Jack, Kate, Hurley, and whoever else makes it off the island. But this raises the question: is this "future" actually the "present"? Is the island in some alternative space-time-continuum? Does what we do now really change our path for the future?

Indeed, the show has a very complicated fixation on time and fate. The whole Desmond deja-vu storyline, for example, has always been one of the most intriguing threads of the Lost web. I really hope the writers have a grasp on all of it and can tie it together semi-coherently as the final few seasons play out.

In the meantime, season four is raising the deliciously provocative question of whether or not our beloved castaways are better off lost or found? Is it really freedom to be "in control" of one's own life? Or are we better off at the mercy of "others"--both seen and unseen? From the looks of it, Lost could quickly become the 21st century version of The Matrix: a sci-fi pop treatise on fate, free will, and the nature of reality.

I'm especially intrigued by this "Jacob" character--the ghost-like, (mostly) invisible force that lives on the island and seemingly calls all the shots. Is he meant to represent some Judeo-Christian deity? Is he a loving or malevolent being? On freeze-frame Jacob looks faintly like Jack's dad, Christian Shepherd (can someone say Jesus!), which is another piece to the puzzle. In any case (Spoiler alert!), I suspect that when Hurley calls out to Jack and says something like "I think he wants us back!" he is referring to Jacob--obviously the source of Hurley's apparent mental asylum issues...

Whether or not this theory is correct (it probably isn't), we can all be happy to have a watercooler show back on TV which we can all wildly theorize about!

In lieu of a real posting…

Do you ever have those moments when your mind is so utterly frenzied and unsettled and all-over-the-place that you couldn’t possibly articulate a coherent thought? Well I had a moment like that last night, and it was kind of wonderful.

I was sitting in church (the place I usually get all my blog post ideas… even about things that have nothing to do with church) and found myself in one of those totally involuntary mental overdrive moments. I tried and tried to think of a good topic to think and then write about, but too much else was in my mind. So in lieu of a real posting, I’ll just do what I tell my English 3 writing students at UCLA to do: freewrite.

So it’s been ridiculously rainy in L.A. all weekend. For like five days straight now. And cold. Tonight as I drove to church and the sun was setting, the clouds were ominous and I even saw lightning and what looked like a funnel cloud. Things were whirling and wispy and foggy and alive…

At church the sermon had something to do with Adam and Eve: the knowledge of good and evil, the tree, the serpent, the whole shebang. There was a good point about Othello and Desdemona (and Iago as the serpent)… and then there was some point about Martin Buber (who I love). He’s a Jewish theologian and not typically cited in protestant settings, but his I-It / I-Thou ideas are brilliant. Here’s one of my favorite Martin Buber quotes: “Spirit is not in the I but between I and You. It is not like the blood that circulates in you but like the air in which you breathe. Man lives in the spirit when he is able to respond to his You.”

The “You” is God I think, or perhaps the bit of God that we can touch and feel and “breathe,” as Buber writes.And I think that the “You moments” are the key to some sort of Joy. Buber calls these moments “queer lyric-dramatic episodes”—which reminds me of Lost in Translation or Once or any of a number of Richard Linklater films.

But this is but one of the many things bouncing around my head during church. I was also thinking about the millions of things I have to do this week, and then self-consciously thinking about how unholy it was to be thinking about such trifles in a time of worship. And then all of a sudden I became totally mesmerized by the word “Jesus” that was up on the screen during some mediocre Matt Redman worship song.

Jesus. How odd that this massive collection of wealthy white people is passionately singing about a Jewish guy named “Jesus.” J-E-S-U-S. Have you ever taken a step back from words like that? It’s a trip.

But then there was something in the sermon about how we should never ask the question: Is God really a loving Being? After all, Satan tried to get Eve to question what she thought about God… and look how that turned out. Hmm… I don’t know. I’m not sure that questioning God’s relative benevolence or malevolence is even a question I’m qualified to ask. Isn’t God beyond those categories? Aren’t those just words, anyway? Oh, deconstructionism. Death to Derrida (who, incidentally, is already dead).

In the end, the chaos in my brain gave way to a strange sort of epiphany. Most epiphanies, I think, might also be called “moments of clarity,” but in this case it was the opposite of clarity. But it was clarity, in a sense, because for a brief flutter of a moment I saw—or imagined—some large-scale meta connection in my life and the world and the weather and the cross. In and through the fragments and puzzles pieces of my schizophrenic cognition a truth revealed itself, though I couldn’t tell you what it was exactly. It was like a Picasso or Kandinsky painting or something—a thoroughly messy tapestry of colors and lines and ideas that somehow, inexplicably, coheres.You might not “get it” in the sense that you think you should, but it nevertheless brings you into a mysterious communion that transcends labels and categories and rationality.