I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a number of reasons this weekend — including the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Music. It was an overwhelming weekend in many respects—and I probably should not be blogging about it so soon. Things need time to digest, ya know? But because I have to write something on here today and because all I can really think about right now is what I experienced this weekend, I might as well attempt some observations about it now.
Trees.
Trees are about life and death. They’re mostly about life, but there’s some death in there too. The thing I love about trees is that even when they look lost and hopeless and perhaps down for the count, there is so often a vitality brimming beneath the bark, or a bud about ready to pop. In the dead of winter, an ugly, dead-looking tree is still very much alive, ready to spring forth with greenery and oxygen when the weather turns. It’s a comfort, and I feel it keenly this Palm Sunday weekend: there’s always a hidden life behind dead-looking things. There's always the promise of newness and rebirth.
Lenten Promises to Keep
Calvinism: So Hot Right Now
To the surprise of many, Time magazine recently listed “The New Calvinism” as the third most important idea changing the world “right now.” What?? 500 years after the birth of John Calvin, is his theological namesake really enjoying resurgence in 2009?
I Heart March (Madness)
T.S. Eliot once said “April is the cruelest month.” I don’t know about that, but I do know that March is one of the best months there is. We have Spring Break vacations, St. Patrick’s Day, and, most importantly, the NCAA Basketball Tournament. For college basketball fans, March is one big, energy-filled party. It’s madness. And hopefully this year it’ll be Jayhawk madness. (Again.)
Joaquin’s Greatest Acting Performance
Joaquin Phoenix is a great actor. He was amazing in films likes Gladiator, To Die For, Quills, The Village, Signs, and Walk the Line, among many others. He’s been nominated for two Academy Awards. He’s an actor of mysterious, artsy repute, born of cultish hippie Vegans in Puerto Rico and brother of the late River Phoenix. But Joaquin’s best acting performance so far is happening right now, in 2009, and you can see it in theaters.
I’m talking about his work in the new film, Two Lovers.
Coffee and Easter
25 Films to Represent America
When U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently visited with President Barack Obama at the White House, the two dignitaries customarily exchanged gifts. Brown gave Obama a pen holder made from wood from the anti-slave ship HMS Gannet. Neat. Obama gave Brown a custom box set of 25 DVDs that best represent American cinema. Nice idea. But lest you think Obama picked the films out himself, you should know that he had the American Film Institute pick the films for him. And unsurprisingly, the 25 they came up with conspicuously mirrored the AFI’s top 25 films from their 2007 “best American films” list. Borrrring.
The N.T. Wright Stuff
Things feel rather hopeless these days for a lot of people. The economy is horrific, many are out of work, the weight of existence bears down in customary fashion... And yet in this period of Lent--as Christians quietly prepare themselves for the remembrances that are Good Friday and Easter, hope seems to break through the bleak landscape. Christ is hope; Christianity is, if it is anything, a belief in hope. So often we Christians get sidetracked and come across as dour, judgmental, "get me out of this earth and take me to heaven" downers... which is why more and more people (especially young people) just tune it all out. Why believe in a religion that forsakes this world and looks forward to its demise and an otherworldly heaven? Is not this world worth anything? Why was it even created?
Why I Am Writing This Book
It has become clear as I have blogged about the phenomenon of Christian hipsters that this topic is polarizing. Whether through the conversations I’ve had at the various churches I’ve visited throughout the country, on the blog boards that deal with my book topic, or just with my friends who I’ve talked through these issues alongside, I have become more and more aware that the things I’m looking at are extremely complicated and deserve a fair, thoughtful, thorough treatment.
Notes on a Postmodern Weekend
I had a very disparate, fragmented, over-mediated, maybe-a-bit-too-breakneck weekend. In L.A., these seem to be the norm rather than the exception, but this weekend struck me as a particularly postmodern pastiche of way too much that any one mind should encounter in a 60-hour period. To my horror, one of the ways I coped with the weekend was to think in status updates. But since I don’t Twitter and only occasionally update my Facebook status via my phone, I could not publicize my disjointed weekend narrative to the world.
Documenting Los Angeles
Los Angeles is without a doubt the most visually documented city in the world. But it is also one of the least known or truly understood. What is this place we call L.A.? Besides all the Hollywood stuff, what is its history and culture? How do we make sense of it amidst all the glittered sidewalks, scientologists, palm trees, car chases, sunset strips and skid rows?
Are You a Christian Hipster?
Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down
The stakes are high. We cannot look flippantly on a human life—even strangers or enemies or the annoying people who sing too loudly and demonstratively in church. Whether we like it or not, all of these people are holy beings. As Lewis reminds us, “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses."
An Enemy of Serious Film Criticism
Rather than a recap/rant about the Oscars (which I did for Relevantmagazine.com), I am going to spend my post today exposing a much more urgent and insidious problem in the world of film criticsm: Ted Baehr and Movieguide.org.
If you are unfamiliar with Dr. Ted Baehr, he is a highly suspicious, frequently self-aggrandizing figure in the world of Christian film criticism. His method of film criticism is of the “how many f-words and sex scenes” variety, and he has a very strange Christian=capitalist bent to everything he writes. For those of us who aspire towards a progressive, insightful, nuanced engagement with film from a Christian perspective, Baehr is a most discouraging figure.
It is especially frustrating that, over the past few weeks, he and his organization have been representing Christian film criticism at large by being allowed to write columns in The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. In these wide platforms, Baehr has played up his usual lines about how family-friendly, G-rated, pro-capitalist films make the most money, and are therefore the best films. If you read the articles, his logic is laughable and his points almost satirical; it’s tragic that this is the Christian critic who is getting the most national media attention.
Anyway, rather than mounting a scathing rebuttal to Baehr’s nonsense (which my editor at Christianity Today did in this insightful blog post), I think it will probably prove the point to just give you some choice quotes from the two recent columns that Baehr and his partner-in-crime, Tom Snyder, authored.
From the Wall Street Journal column, Baehr and Snyder write:
As in past years, films with strong pro-capitalist content -- extolling free-market principles or containing positive portrayals of real or fictional businessmen and entrepreneurs -- tended to make the most money. The hero of the biggest success of the year, "The Dark Knight," is a billionaire capitalist who, disguised as Batman, defends Gotham City and its residents from a crazed, anarchistic terrorist criminal. In "Iron Man," the second-most popular movie with American and Canadian moviegoers in 2008, a capitalist playboy and billionaire defense contractor stops working against the interests of America and its citizens and uses his wealth to defend America and its free-market values.
The box-office receipts of pro-capitalist movies, which also included "Australia," "City of Ember" and "Bottle Shock" (which extols the virtues of the California wine industry), averaged $152 million per picture in North American theaters. On the whole, they far outperformed movies with strong anticapitalist content. That group, with films such as "Mad Money," "Chicago 10" and "War, Inc.," averaged only $5.4 million per picture in North American theaters.
The moneymaking trend was similar for movies with explicit or implicit anticommunist content. That group -- including an "An American Carol," which mocks communism; "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," where Indy reviles communists and their impoverished ideology is exposed; "City of Ember," where a tyrant steals from the people; and "Fly Me to the Moon," about the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union -- averaged $71.8 million at the 2008 box office in America and Canada. By comparison, movies with pro-communist content, such as "Che," "The Children of Huang Shi," "Gonzo," "Trumbo" and "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," averaged a measly $7.9 million in 2008.
And from the Newsweek article:
Not only did moviegoers prefer heroic movies with very strong moral virtues, they also rejected movies with anti-Christian, secular, nihilistic, and atheist content like "Religulous," "Adam Resurrected," "Save Me," "Wanted," "Hounddog," "Bloodline," "Hamlet 2," "The Love Guru," "Stop-Loss," and "Saw V."
Furthermore, contrary to popular opinion, 2008 was the year that obscenity, sex and nudity didn't sell -- again. In fact, movies with no foul language, no sex and no explicit nudity earned much more money on average than movies with some foul language, sex and explicit nudity, or a lot of it, by 2 to 1 or more!
Dr. Baehr, I’m sure you are well-intentioned and yes, you are a brother in Christ; but do you really believe what you are saying? The way that you twist and distort statistics to make "your type" of films look the most successful is simply egregious. And seriously: do you think audiences flocked to see The Dark Knight and Iron Man because they featured billionaire protagonists? I mean, couldn't you argue that people were much more interested in seeing the Joker in The Dark Knight than Bruce Wayne? And the Joker is hardly pro-capitalist. He burned a pile of money!
Five Films For Our Hard Times
The following is a list of five films that came out in 2008 that the Oscars largely overlooked, but which collectively put a very evocative, human face on the struggles of the day. These films portray average people doing their best to survive. They are people without jobs, with kids to feed, facing hardship after hardship. In this way, they are films that represent the larger human struggle—to make a living and support oneself and one’s family by whatever means necessary. It’s an uphill battle; the foes are many. But the human will to survive is a strong one. These films present snapshots of what are likely very common stories in this ever-weakening economy—sometimes very bleak and sometimes curiously hopeful, but always compelling because we can so relate. They are beautiful films that I highly recommend.
The Death of Facebook
Many of you know that I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I joined it reluctantly six months ago, and have loved and loathed it for various reasons. Recently, though, Facebook has been mired in a bit of an existential crisis. Just this week it reversed its new terms of service which users passionately rejected for its creepy proprietary implications. And then there is the whole "25 Random Things" sensation that has inexplicably captured the imagination of 7+ million Facebook users. To me, this oddly retro, gloriously insipid throwback to 1998 e-mail forwards is the strongest sign yet that Facebook will soon collapse under the weight of its own purposelessness.
Some Thoughts About Humility
The Class
Sex From the Pulpit: Part Three
Sex scandals and evangelicalism go together like Christian Bale and rage. And it’s all very unfortunate. From Jim Bakker to Paul Crouch to Ted Haggard, we Christians are all too familiar with our leaders being caught in sex, scandal, and hypocrisy. Mostly we just like to forget that these things happen, hiding them or writing them out of the history books to whatever extent we can.