this just in

from my sister-in-law's sister-in-law.

The first 10 seconds had me quite bemused and it was a sweet click when it came (must be getting old)!

maybe Orthodoxy is everything... ;-)

Searching online for David Thomas' discussion of the dating of Paul of Antioch's Letter to a Muslim Friend (as you do), I stumbled upon this blog, which opened a window onto modern Orthodox Christian experience.

Most interesting indeed, and one to return to when I have two-and-a-half hours spare (possibly in July) is this lecture by a real scholar, Roman Catholic professor Sidney Griffith. His breadth of learning and ability to synthesize and interpret the complexity of Middle Eastern Christian history in its fragmentary and repeatedly politicized context is outstanding. I've read most of his publications, and if I had time I'd read them all!

culture you can't argue with

While I languished on the sofa this evening, trying to shake off man-flu and skimming the internet, Mrs L was engaged in some serious and worthwhile fun - finishing off a sewing project that has converted an old jumper (shrunk in the washing machine) into a shoulder bag. Nice lining, nice button, good original material. If weren't decades behind the technological times I'd post y'all a picture of it.

Art and the artiness of being

was the subject of a little email conversation I had recently with a distinguished evangelical pastor ;-) in South Leicestershire, no less... ;-)

After our NTI seminar on aesthetics back in April, he asked...

I also wanted to (if you have time) continue a little conversation about art that you began on Friday when you asked the question "on what grounds should we judge art?"

I think you asked it when I was madly defending Shrek 2 for its cinematic purpose, and you rightly asked "well, if you're defending Shrek 2, how can\ we judge something as bad art?"

Here's what Rookmaaker says:

"Some people feel we ought to define the principle of art solely by the aesthetic. Is this not the core of art? Is not this its true meaning? ...Personally I have many doubts about this...The strange thing is that artists, almost without exception, do strive to express something in their art, and only rarely are happy with the aesthetic element alone. To me, this is one of the proofs that any theory that goes too much in this direction is out of touch with real artistic practice... Another question often raised is this. Should art be criticized on two levels, one aesthetic, the other moral? I think not. First, the term 'moral' is too narrow. It is better to speak of content, or expression, or portrayal of reality..."

Of course his argument goes deeper than this, but I was wondering what you thought were the right grounds on which to judge art.

And I replied in a not-terribly-theorized fashion, along the lines of...

On the question of art, I like Rookmaaker's point there, and think that
we should have (at least?) two ways of judging art simultaneously, the
aesthetic and the moral. On aesthetic grounds there's lots of argument
to be had over what the right standards are to use, of course! And on
moral grounds, I like what HR says about not merely attending to
'content' or 'morality', but on a broader spectrum of things. I wonder [and only the Lord knows what I intended to write here - I unaccountably broke off this sentence!]

Another question worth thinking about is how the art is used, and how it
can be used. It seems to me that we need to look at this because from
the viewer/listener's point of view that is he prime consideration. We
can discuss the morality of art in the abstrct all we like, and talk
about, e.g., camera angles, cinematography, etc, but is it possible to
watch 'Hostel' (to pick a random example) in any other way than either
relish or prurience towards its goriness? If not, then in neither case
is the attitude worth having, and I'm not sure that any amount of 'good'
film-making can justify it being used as art.

So, I think I'm advocating a full-orbed hermeneutic of art - descriptive
(moral check on content), structuralist (the aesthetic, what the work
is), and reader-response (how it is used). Maybe with a combination of
all three measures we can arrive at a total score for each work of art!?
However, it must score above/below a certain threshold on each one to be
worth it.

What do you think? Perhaps we need some more examples...

And then I tried out this approach on Serenity.

FIlms at L'Abri

Two years ago we went to this film festival at L'Abri in Hampshire. PG kindly drove us there and back in his teeny old car and we had a whale of a time listening to Lionel Richie (an education for me).

The films were...

Breaking and Entering
East of Eden
The Story of the Weeping Camel
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
Little Miss Sunshine
The Seventh Seal

The conversations were great (I stayed up for hours chatting with a Danish graphic designer working in Japan - just like being an undergrad at Cambridge all over again, except slightly less pretentious), the food was great, and although Ellis Potter's contention that "art = purposeful human activity" was slightly irritating, albeit nicely delivered, a good time was had by all.

We missed last year - just too busy - but this October we will be heading down to the Manor House again. The menu is...

Gran Torino

Mon Oncle

Persopolis

Kitchen Stories

Three Colours Blue

Tsotsi

Man on Wire

And although I have seen two of those already, I shall cope!

A Christian Evaluation of Serenity (2005)

Having posted before on this great film, I thought I'd share the extended version, which I recently wrote up for NTI...

Background

Serenity is a feature film developed from a cult sci-fi series called Firefly, broadcast by Fox in 2002. Disappointed at the axing of the series after only 14 episodes, fans and the scriptwriter-director (Joss Wheedon, of Buffy and Angel fame) lobbied the industry for funding to a least get a film made, if not more episodes of Firefly. The New York Times verdict on the original series was, ‘A very funny, very hip, very terrific sci-fi show’, which is about right, and in my opinion the film is even better. Serenity works perfectly well as a stand-alone story, though it is enriched if you are familiar with Firefly, so I shall confine my analysis to the film, with occasional reference to the world described and explored in more detail by the earlier series. This world exists hundreds of years in the future, when ‘Earth that was’ has been abandoned by the voracious and fecund human race, who have colonised many other worlds. Their galactic culture is a neat blend of American and Chinese – the more rural settings often look like the Wild West, as do some of the weapons and costumes, and the dialect English they speak is redolent of 19th century America; however, the urban settings are like the seedier parts of Hong Kong and the characters usually swear in Chinese! The writing is all in letters and pictograms. There are no aliens!

Plot Summary
This is the 100-word version: for a fuller summary see the Appendix. Better still, stop reading this and watch the film so you can enjoy the unfolding story as it was intended!

Lead by charismatic rogue Captain Mal Reynolds the crew of Serenity, a smuggling ship, stumble across a massive state cover-up concerning population pacification technology, the murder of millions, and the creation of human monsters. The key to the mystery is locked away in the memory of a traumatised teenage girl (a fugitive, with her brother, on Serenity) who has been psychologically conditioned to turn her into a weapon with the right trigger. Pursued by a sinister and ruthless Parliamentary Operative, after various adventures, battles and tragedies, the crew overcome self-interest and succeed in broadcasting the information at great personal cost.

Aesthetic 
The script is successful at a macro level, with the plot developing through tension and resolution, propelled by various contingent and necessary motors. The challenge of introducing those who have never seen Firefly is overcome nicely. Occasionally there are clunky moments are a lot of information is shared with us through a conversation (e.g. 6 minutes in when the Operative discusses Simon and River with the doctor responsible for her conditioning) but in most cases we learn what background we need through odd phrases and through action. A fairly conventional meta-story (a rag-tag bunch uncover a conspiracy and through adversity being largely thrust upon them discover the courage to sacrifice for a greater good) with several stock characters (muscle-for-brains, repressed rich boy, cool British villain) is enlivened through cinematic and directorial splicing techniques on display from the start. Serenity opens with a narrator over documentary footage explaining human history since the exodus from ‘Earth that was’, which is revealed to be the voice of a teacher in a gazebo-like garden classroom of 12-year-olds, which is shown to be a flashback-dream in the mind of crazed River, strapped into a sinister lab chair just before she is rescued, a dramatic sequence which itself turns out to be a holographic recording of said rescue as viewed by the Operative on their tail. Russian dolls eat your heart out!

The script is even more successful at the micro level, as Wheedon manages to bring out his characters with their flaws and their humour through a convincing dialect version of English. The language has enough grace and charm to conjure up centuries past where eloquence was valued more highly, while still being comprehensible to modern viewers. Combined with effective set design and sparing use of quality CGI Wheedon projects a world that grabs the audience. Nothing is too grand or too clean. Making a virtue out of the necessity of budgetary constraints, there is general celebration of parvus pulcher est, which is also an important theme within the world of the film.

The cast perform extremely well. Each of the characters is rendered consistently and the actors are completely believable while more than coping with a demanding script that ranges from flippant to deep grief and is peppered with cod-Chinese curses. I was engaged by their relationships and moved by their struggles and tragedies. The stock characters are given their own flavour through great facial expressions, quirkiness and costume idiosyncrasies.

Serenity pays homage to a great many other films from a variety of genres, notably Westerns and spacebound science fiction. Labouring the intertextual links would be wearing so I’ll mention just a handful. The use of the Universal Studios logo in the first scene recalls Waterworld, another futuristic human survival story (considerably more expensive and less successful!) River and Simon’s escape through a lift shaft into the belly of a spaceship honours Star Wars (episodes IV and V). Mal Reynolds is Han Solo, only better (“Heresy!” I hear you cry). The climactic and claustrophobic desperate rearguard battle with its high attrition is both Zulu and Aliens and more… This film is an artistic gem and a lovely example of how to work within a tradition but with originality.

Moral
A great many themes are picked up by Serenity in passing, many of which can be celebrated by Christians (in modified form), several of which cannot. Eccentricity and individuality in community is a major concern of the film. The crew have to deal with their differences and learn to recognise that fellowship is more important than ego or point-scoring, something they are not always successful at. Heroism expressed in sacrifice, not for the sake of glory but for the sake of others, is a clear theme; the crew, particularly Mal, learns that self-interest or feigned amorality as regards politics will not suffice in a fallen world if justice is to be done, even in a limited historical sense. 

There is a right suspicion of empire and human power, which chimes in with the Bible’s perspective, as does the recognition that people are in no way perfect. An optimistic/utopian belief in human ability to engineer goodness actually drives the plot. The explicit clash between this belief and the liberalism of the ‘Independents’ (neither blind obedience to the state nor chemicals can solve the human condition) occurs in a powerful piece of dialogue before the final act. Against a background of the slaughter of the innocents, Mal confronts the Operative on video phone about their respective motivations…

O: You should have taken my offer, or did you think that none of this was your fault?
M: I don’t murder children.
O: I do – if I have to.
M: Why? Do you even know why they send you?’ 
O: It’s not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.
M: So me and mine gotta lay down so you can live in your better world?
O: I’m not going to live there. There’s no place for me there any more than there is for you. Malcolm, I’m a monster. What I do is evil, I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.

As Mal stirs the crew to embark on a probably suicidal mission to broadcast the suppressed data he says of the state, 

They will try again… [t]hey’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people better. And I don’t hold to that. So no more runnin’. I aim to misbehave.

What Serenity lacks, however, is any answer as to how people are to be made better – by implication a celebration of diversity and resistance will be OK, but this is a serious aporia in the worldview. 

In its opposition to tyranny, Serenity also displays abhorrence of cover-up. The crew struggle, as we all would, with the cost to them of exposing the truth, but there is no doubt as to the morality of what they settle on. Mr Universe’s motto, ‘they can’t stop the signal’ displays a faith in exposure and in final justice, the idea that someone, somewhere is watching crimes and that the truth will out. CCTV and other technology along with independent-minded vigilance provide the all-seeing eye here, but Christians know that someone more reliable will provide ultimate justice.

 Several of the undercurrents or explicit messages of the film are less susceptible of a Christian embrace. While we can be grateful for a film in which the ‘Christian’ characters are neither pushovers nor hypocrites, the Christian faith of this galaxy is pretty bland, and the crew are happy to exploit this religiosity, carrying out their payroll heist during ‘Sunday worship’. The character of the Shepherd, representative of a deeper religious commitment, is ultimately called upon by Wheedon to be the mouthpiece for a kind of content-less will to transcend the self – as he urges Mal, with his dying breath, to fight on, he says ‘I don’t care what you believe, just believe it’. The clash between the Operative, ‘the kind of man who believes hard’ and Mal is ultimately a clash between the adherents of political philosophies who prove willing to die for their beliefs. But which belief is right? And is the morality of belief really to be reduced to the strength of feeling in the believing subject? Serenity appears to suggest this at the emotional climax, while of course undermining it in the case of the Operative and his beliefs.

 To put it another way, the gospel according to Serenity is that salvation can be had through cunning, decency and fighting for freedom with a strong dose of ‘belief’. Salvation is needed because people are not perfect but especially because big governments are tyrannical. The ‘fall’ was the formation of the central planetary Alliance at some point in the past. The moment of regeneration, as it were, comes with the enlightenment of knowledge – so long as we have unmediated access to information about everything (‘the signal’) we can deal with the evil. The major idols of the film are personal liberty and self-determination.

 Furthermore, while it may seem a little moralistic to bring it up, the crew are a bunch of crooks! Our heroes make their living from crime, and to argue that their hearts of gold make up for this is to veer towards Gnosticism on the one hand ('what you do doesn’t matter, it’s who you are'; as if such things could be separated) or anarchism on the other (power is bad, authority is bound to be worse than independence). Serenity thankfully does not endorse a revenge ethic – the one moment where revenge briefly captures the grieving Zoë, she becomes reckless and endangers her companions – but, rather, a libertarian and pro-prole approach to society. Petty crime and prostitution are OK, so long as it’s only the rich that are made to pay. 

To conclude this section I want to consider Serenity’s take on two old chestnuts, sex and violence. The film stands in an ambivalent relationship to the interplay of these most misunderstood of human activities. Final answers on whether certain levels of violence in a film are gratuitous or whether particular costumes/scenes constitute soft porn (or a prelude to it) are not easy to settle on. In a general sense as regards film I am not entirely happy with my current stance of feeling slightly uncomfortable while trying not to be puritannical, but neither general flight nor general embrace are satisfactory. 

There is a lot of violence in Serenity, but with two exceptions our heroes only use it defensively. Their spaceship is not armed. Male strongman stereotypes are in some ways upset: although physically brave Mal is in fact an expert at getting beaten up; hard-case Jayne is knocked out twice by River; the Operative is a martial arts expert but clearly of a very cool Oriental variety in contrast to the generally less effective and more blustery ‘Western’ style fighting. Across gender lines, the upsetting occurs in a surprisingly conventional way. Ex-military Zoë is an Amazon figure (something of a trope in science fiction) who is in fact happily married and demurely dressed; River, effectively invincible in combat, conjures up Artemis – a (teenage) warrior maiden who really is a maiden. But better than Artemis, she is clothed and not the object of anyone’s desire. The action scenes featuring River in fact cast a shadow on efficient martial arts even as we marvel at the physical skill of the ‘dance’. The first time she uses violence it is on a room full of innocent people – a dark parody of the typical cinematic bar-room brawl. Serenity thus just manages not to revel in violence and furthermore succeeds in dissociating its violence from sexuality – no mean feat amid the genre expectations of ensemble sci-fi/fantasy not designed for kids. There are relatively reasonable standards of modesty in female dress, and only occasional lewd jokes. Prostitution is treated as a fact of life in the film, and barely mentioned – whereas in the original series it was seen as somehow a noble career choice (perhaps one reason why Fox axed Firefly was its willingness to discuss the hypocrisies surrounding prostitution in modern society without condemning the prostitute).

Use value
An important measure of whether or not a work of art is “good” is what it can be used for. An aesthetic (structuralist or technical) analysis is only part of the picture of assessing artistic value. A moral analysis adds more but the morality of the art does not exist in a static or abstract fashion – it is blended by the artist(s) and is appropriated by the audience. So we need a third approach to the artwork in order to answer the question of its value.

Serenity can be used as entertainment. There is nothing wrong with diversion and entertainment in themselves (although in fact there is no such thing as entertainment-in-itself, we are always entertained in and by something), and along with the quality of the story what Wheedon asks us to enjoy is largely positive – heroism, sacrifice, humour, mocking the proud, valuing eccentricity, anger at oppression, and so on.

 Serenity can also be used as a way in for analysing culture and commending the gospel. I would suggest that the following questions could be asked of non-Christian co-viewers who are interested in exploring the film more deeply.

(1) What is meaningful “faith”? Can it simply be, or must it be in something or someone?

(2) Is there any hope for the future (personal and species) other than quick wits and whatever resistance we can muster to oppression?

(3) Is the centralized state really our biggest problem? Is the Operative right to suggest that sin is the problem? Given the flaws in his solution,

(4) How then shall we be made “better”?

(5) What is “the signal” in the real world (e.g. supposedly unmediated access to information, or divine revelation)? Can anything stop the signal? Do we need the signal?

sent over by the mater

1. Teaching Maths In 1970

A logger sells a lorry load of timber for £1000.
His cost of production is 4/5 of the selling price.
What is his profit? 


2. Teaching Maths In 1980 
  
A logger sells a lorry load of timber for £1000.
His cost of production is 4/5 of the selling price, or £800.
What is his profit? 


3. Teaching Maths In 1990 
A logger sells a lorry load of timber for £1000.
His cost of production is £800.
Did he make a profit? 


4. Teaching Maths In 2000 

A logger sells a lorry load of timber for £1000.
His cost of production is £800 and his profit is £200.
Your assignment: Underline the number 200.


5. Teaching Maths In 2008 

A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is totally selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. 
He does this so he can make a profit of £200. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers. If you are upset about the plight of the animals in question counselling will be available) 


6. Teaching Maths 2018

أ المسجل تبيع حموله ش حنة من الخشب من دولار. صاحب تكلفة الانتاج من> الثمن. ما هو الربح له؟

Culture and the Christian Faith

In an interview in Australia, Michael Horton had some very interesting things to say.

His call throughout for Christians to get back into the world, relating to unbelievers, doing their jobs well, being involved in cultural activities, etc is well put and surely completely correct. What was intriguing to me was that in his final paragraphs his views of ecclesial practice were shown to be rather myopic. He could only conceive of a modern magisterial reformed view...

Bible teaching and catechesis, and word and sacrament ministry. Then we could stop all this mid-week stuff and let Christians have those six days back that you find in the Ten Commandments...

or a modern evangelical subculture view (which he quite rightly criticises):

But now, we have an alternative culture going on so that a Christian can actually be involved in the Christian ghetto 24 hours a day, listening to Christian radio and Christian music, going to Christian functions, taking the kids to Christians sports to the point where they don't actually know a non-Christian. And no-one at their work would know that they're Christians because they don't have any deep relationships with any of their co-workers. They're so busy with other Christians all the time.

What about the idea that 'church' invades the week, that the subculture is open to non-Christians, that gospel conversation (not corny, but contextualized) saturates everything? Has Dr H not heard of the best of the missional/emerging church?

Prince Caspian (making of)

The recent Prince Caspian film has come in for a lot of stick – “Ben Barnes’ accent is tosh”, “the children are annoying”, “the Telmarine army is too small”, etc. I watched it again the other day and actually thought it was quite good. Most criticisms probably occasionaed by jealousy at the rather good performances by the younger actors and their obvious enjoyment of the project. 

The book is perhaps the weakest of the Narnia series, consisting of long flashbacks, and with quite compressed action (not that any of this prevents the imagination from having a great time with the material, of course) which the film expands on, even adding a long extra plot element, the attack on Miraz’ castle. Although ‘inauthentic’, that sequence is exciting, and effective in underlining the early gung ho hubris of Peter and is well done on screen. Even better is the conjuring of the White Witch – fabulous cameo from Tilda swinton and very effectively done. 

Not surprisingly the filmmakers didn’t know what to do with the almost surreal bacchic revelry that occurs at Lucy’s encounter with Aslan towards the end of the book, so they ommitted it altogether. For me the loss of this section and the generally scanty appearances of Aslan were the disappointments. Maybe they couldn’t take Lewis’ Christianization of classical cultural themes and figures? They prefer a Disneyfication instead.

The documentaries on the DVD certainly show that many in the production team do not understand Narnia, whether willfully or because of ignorance.

The message of Narnia is that ‘we’re all one’
No it isn’t. That’s the “message” of Disney.
At the end of the movie, the day is saved by nature
Well kind of… The next comment does spot who’s behind that…
it’s Aslan
OK…
and Aslan, really, is an animal
D’oh.
CS Lewis is showing us that we can learn from animals and that we can learn from nature
But ripped from its context of dominion, gody rule, as found in Genesis 1 and 2 (which the script even recognised – “Narnia was never right unless a son of Adam was on the throne”, they rightly retained from the book) this is mere tree hugging.

The endless pre-menu adverts were also advertising a (straight to TV) film set in a corny pseudo-Indian setting with elephants, white marble and petals, plus a bronzed girl band… “The Cheetah Girls: One World”, on the Disney channel… Hurrah for vacuous universalism – that’ll save us, yeah

Film recommendations

A friend from NTI decided to start watching films recently after decades of indifference. He emailed round asking for top 5 recommendations. Needless to say I could not reply with true brevity, not with only 5. Even these ten leave out some real classics, but, hey, you have to start somewhere...

PERSONAL FAVES

Tremors
top pick: a total masterpiece! Attention to detail, characters, dialogue, suspense, silliness... This should be top of everyone's list of quality and love!
My Cousin Vinny
fun courtroom drama with oscar-winning Marisa Tomei and a host of B-movie figures to spot.
La cite des enfants perdus
earlier, darker work from the director of Amelie, like a modern fairy-tale.
Serenity
wonderful, tongue-in-cheek spin off from sci-fi series 'Firefly'; quite thought-provoking, and incredible quality to budget ratio!
Galaxy Quest
spoofy blockbuster sci-fi, child-friendly, which pushes all the right buttons.
Raising Arizona
young Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter in Cohen brothers farce, much nicer than their sinister later films (which are also excellent, of course).

MORE SERIOUS

Boys Don't Cry
utterly harrowing, painful, important, tough issues, incredible performances.
Crash
the new one about race in America and cleverly interlinked stories, not the twisted weird one based on Ballard's novel.
East/West
Russian-French family return to Stalin's USSR and find that life is not nice.
Kekexili
true story of locals vs poachers in Western Chinese icy desert.
Grand Canyon
like an 80s version of Crash - big names, big drama, big heart.

on the shelf / floor

A recent touch of spring cleaning at the homestead enabled me to chuck away all manner of bits of paper and curiosities I had lying around. On one of them was a list of folk superstitions from a country that inerests me. Things like “If you stare into space, or if a toddler peers through its legs, a guest will arrive”. I can’t remember what the source was, unfortunately (possibly chat with foreign friends or some book of popular anthropology), and I will only divulge the country of origin to the alert readers of this blog…

Thinking of something bad will lead to something bad, unless you pull your ear and tap the table to prevent it.

Umbilical cords buried in certain places will influence the lives of the children they were attached to.

Refusing to wash up and leaving the dirty crockery overnight encourages the Devil to wee on them.

Kutting toenails at night brings evil (compare this to Japan, where the evil is specific – your parents will die early!)

‘Evil Eye’: the blue-white-black circular charm wards off a sort of covetous glance from others that would otherwise damage the house, possessions. (NB. the problem is other people. Mrs L wondered if that was related to the practice of giving a thing to someone who admires it? A prophylaxis against extreme and unnecessary generosity?)

Your clothes must not be left outside overnight, or else evil will arrive.

Cartoon on Niebuhr

This is silly, but as it involves part of the A-Team it deserves a mention. Thanks to Stuart of NTI!

The blog itself has a lot of good stuff on depression, among other things. Very open, very honest. I take my hat off to them. In fact, it's a good read all over - a really pleasant tone that the cynics among us wish we could emulate!

Lowbrow

Deep thinking has been looking a bit thinner on the ground of noearthlycity lately. Perhaps taking my foot off the labouring pedal over the summer has resulted in brain contraction!? A certain loss of intellectual confidence (in my case in the face of challenging writing projects) leads me to comment on a set of increasingly ‘lowbrow’ cultural artefects. Something I have observed in longwave in friends and family, and now see in myself [pride always comes before a fall]. Talking about the Simpsons is safer than talking about the meaty stuff of life. Ditto on the blog: ‘safer’ to put up one’s personal thoughts on a film or TV series than on anything really serious.

Theoretically, I don’t want to supprt a falsely watertight dichotomy between, e.g. ‘film’ and ‘theology’, but there it is in practice unless you work at it. You can theoretically believe that, e.g., art is crucially important, that God is interested in everything we do and all that cultural-mandate-Schaeffer-apologetics stuff, and then still consume a film (of any sort, though certain sorts lend themselves to popcorn consumption rather more readily) uncritically, unreflectively and without any intention of change. Once in while that might be OK, but habitually and it becomes dangerous and the effect on personality can be a contraction…

the shack and the boosh

Yes folks, a unique experience is offered to you this morning: nowhere else in the blogosphere are these two cultural artifacts linked.

The Shack – wordy and slightly hammy from the literary perspective, risky in terms of its theological presentations, but compelling so far (I’m up to page 89).

The Boosh – wordy and hammy, though not, perhaps, by sitcom standards; alas very hit and miss in terms of quality (‘when she was good she was…’)

The link: funk, of course. God the Father listens to funk in the log cabin while cooking, and Julian Barratt's character, Howard Moon, waxes lyrical about the genre and its relationship to jazz in the two best episodes of the series, 'Electro' and 'Hitcher'. Laugh-out-loud best, playing (ho ho) on everyman’s hesitations about jazz and its afficionados (which I share, despite wanting to get into “the most significant art form of the twentieth century” [Howard Moon]).

They might be giants

My naivete concerning DIY is matched only by my child-like ignorance of pop music. One of the four popular CDs I own is the album Flood by They Might Be Giants. (The others are Sounds of the Sixties, Status Quo’s Rockin all over the years and Carry on up the charts from The Beautiful South.) Someone at church introduced me to it at a bring-your-favourite-track evening for the 20s & 30s group four years ago. Thank you, Nat.

I love its wackiness, its ‘folly’ in the medieval sense, and the amusing electronic instrumentation. ‘Particle Man’ and ‘Whistling in the Dark’ are very fine indeed, but they stand on the shoulders of what might be giants. Even their cover of Kennedy and Simon’s ‘Istanbul’ (from 1953) is great fun.

However, rather than find out anything more about the band and their work, which might lead to disappointment, information overload, or becoming an earnest groupie, I shall continue to feed off this fun slice, unrepresentative or not. After all, everybody just wants a rock to wind a piece of string around, or, failing that, prosthetic foreheads on their real heads.

Lord of War

Yet another film to raise the question of realism and extra-artistic significance. This is almost getting tedious (were it not for the seriousness of the subject of this one) - no more 'entertainment' seems to be permitted!

How realistic is Lord of War? Does that matter? Can we enjoy it? (Let alone all the unnecessary sex, I'm talking about the cynical, bleak take on arms and government string-pulling to sell more of them)

Privacy and naturalism again

As for me, I think that no extra disclaimer is needed and that audiences should know better than to rely on films for their historical knowledge, but I could be wrong and questions remain about censorship and responsibility...

...but how I can plug that into Rendition, a film in some ways frighteningly similar to Das Leben von Anderen in its view of government (though the Westophiles in East Germany, as a rule, were not bombing civilians, either in the film or in reality, unlike the extremist Muslims in Rendition and reality). It's very tempting to take Rendition as accurate in spirit and in details - a respectable and innocent Arab living in America is grabbed without due process at an airport and tortured in a pro-US military regime in the Middle East. Watching that sort of thing cannot simply be an artistic activity, as if there were a self-contained artistic zone we can slip into every now and then (pace escapist fans of pap action films). It is bound to affect one's views of the current US approach to fighting terrorism.

And there has been no shortage of films recently about how Americans ought to think about domestic terrorism, the latest being Déjà vu, a slightly glossy and fluffy sci-fi thriller, which once again brings up the question of the viewer-as-voyeur. It's actually very well done (Denzel Washington is excellent and reassuring as always), even if the female-lead-in-underwear device is exploited in a slightly populist and degrading reference to the problem of voyeurism. And the ultra-patriots within the country are just as dangerous as the enemies outside... The state propaganda machine is working hard these days against the defenders of individual liberty and federalism... ;-)

not at all naturalistic (in that sense, at least)

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Why is it called ‘Rise of the Silver Surfer’? How and when does the Silver Surfer rise? Is it perhaps in the final scene when the Surfer turns on his master, ‘Galactus’? That does involve some sort of a moral rise (self sacrifice) as well as the spatial ascension from the surface of the planet. Given how tiny this moral and spatial ‘rise’ is in comparison to all his other movements in various modalities, I think it’s a silly title, even if it does have a nice cinematic ring to it.

But who would have thought that the film could have so many religious resonances?

Right at the opening a new bulletin sums up some of the back-story: “Scientists have ruled out global warming as the cause of the extraordinary climatic events being reported around the globe. With scientists unable to explain the extraordinary events, some are beginning to wonder if the hand of God is at work.”

Here the newsreader articulates an intriguing zero-sum theology of natural/superntural agency. Some things have natural causes (obviously scientists have the final word there) and other things don’t [yet] so that must be God… That sentiment would surely tick off all manner of people, not least Christians who reject any position on causality and natural philosophy they can dub ‘God-of-the-gaps’. However, as a bonus, although probably incoherent, that sentence does represent the kind of thing that a news bulletin would say.

Anyhow, notice how the hand of God may be at work. At the meta-level, the Surfer is the hand of God, and God is ‘Galactus’. And what does this ‘god’ do? Floats around devouring planets (feeding off thermal and other energies), sending his representative ahead of him to prepare the way. An attempt to naturalise and radicalise concepts of the divine, like Pullman’s dust?

Who might the representative of God be? Well in Christian theology he’s Christ, and the Surfer does not disappoint in the final scenes as he stretches out his arms in the classic crucifixion position (compare Superman’s floating position in the stratosphere at a similar altitude in the recent extension of that comic franchise) and gets all white and glowing. This is his moment of self-sacrifice as he heads into the firey [wrath] maw of ‘Galactus’ who is poised over the earth. (Surprisingly no one at NASA spotted its approach! Didn’t they watch Independence Day or Armageddon to see how to track these large objects coming into the solar system?)

So there’s some sort of naturalist parody of judgement, atonement and the like.

Well, probably not, it’s just a fun film that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Though that doesn’t mean there isn’t anyhing meaty to say about it… On the DVD the featurette ‘The Four Elements’ there was possibly the most intelligent discussion (or rather, collection of interesting character studies) that one could imagine a cheesy comic-book film having as part of its package. A Marvel writer and the main actors all had something interesting to say and there was none of the luvvie codswallop that usually fills these mini-documentaries (‘Oh, it was so great to work with X, he was so lovely…’)

Privacy and naturalism again PS

Speaking of which, The Lives of Others also raised questions of voyeurism which I have mused on before (in relation to Being John Malkovich). Watching Rendition didn't help (though the superb review on imdb does) . In fact, I'm not sure that watching films is going to answer the moral questions raised by the activity of watching certain films. Perhaps I should become the kind of person with enough self-control and moral fibre to stop watching a film half-way through, even if I've paid for it. Have you ever done that? If so, what does that say about your pre-watching discernment!?

Privacy and naturalism

As my post on Away From Her indicates, I am currently not too fussed about naturalism in films. But is that a luxury position? Can I say that because I haven't seen a family member die from advancing Alzheimer's long before the body gave up? Can I say that because I didn't suffer at the hands of the Stasi and have to ask 'why?'. Can I say that because I am neither Armenian nor Turkish and so am not woven in to a complex history and culture of recrimination, violence, revenge, massacre, oppression. My identity is not found there, so I am not troubled by minor historical inaccuracies in The Lives of Others or as troubled as some people are by major political and historical statements in Ararat that are extremely controversial.

Am I an untypical viewer? Does the audience in general really suspend its disbelief? Does it do so more or less in 'historical' films, or films set somewhere special?

And what about the marketing of the film. Das Leben der Anderen [a SUPERB film, by the way] has been marketed as being fanatically accurate in its depiction of conditions in East Germany in the mid-80s, but it has been criticised for portraying the Stasi's surveillance practices rather liberally. No assignment would have been left in the hands of just two agents, apparently, and no one would have been left on one assignment long enough to develop any sort of attachment to the people under surveillance. We watched The Lives of Others with friends from church on Friday and then had a long conversation about this with an eminent historical writer.

On the one hand, does that really matter? On the other hand, what if people watched the film and were asking 'why weren't more Stasi people as compassionate as that?' On that particular point, of course, maybe they were - after all, we wouldn't know about it because they would have suppressed incriminating evidence in order to prevent people's arrest. That 'flaw' allows us to be as hopeful about the lives of the Stasi operatives as it opens up the agonised question, above. There is still the question of artistic responsibility. Should the film have a disclaimer at the start that notes what is and what is not claiming to be accurate?

That would be tricky in the case of Ararat because the history is rather controversial. Not to mention the fact that the second half of the film seems to undermine the rather hammy 'educational' message of the first half. 'There was an Armenian genocide' it says clumsily through the words of the young hero at the airport, but then through his further words and actions it says 'people sincerely believe false things on no evidence'. What sort of a disclaimer or otherwise does such a complex (almost surreal) and controversial film require? And is that the director's responsibility, or the distributor's, or the wider society?

As for me, I think that no extra disclaimer is needed and that audiences should know better than to rely on films for their historical knowledge, but I could be wrong and questions remain about censorship and responsibility...