There's a problem with writing "monster movies": there aren't that many monsters left. It's not that we disbelieve them too much; there's always that "willing suspension of disbelief" that is the entry price for a good story, and we gladly give it. But at this point, we've befriended all the major monsters. Friendly ghosts? That's been done long since; Casper was ages ago, and Nearly-Headless Nick is just one of the more recent entries in the series. Friendly vampires? Twilight has enough of them to make a vampire soap opera. Friendly werewolves? Definitely, Twilight and Harry Potter again have the territory well-covered between Jacob Black, the Wolf pack, and Remus Lupin. The old Adams Family and Munsters were just an early act in a now-expected storyline. Wicked has a sympathetic retelling of the Wizard of Oz's Witch of the West. Even Godzilla isn't that bad, once you understand his motives. (Godzilla as an apocalyptic vengeance on man has some small similarities to the beasties of the Book of Revelation.)
So what do you do when you need a monstrous character? Well, humans have enough monstrous traits, and the other monsters were often projections of our worst selves. So storytellers generally turn to humans for their monsters. Many a story contains a "surprising" revelation that the monster is, after all, human. Environmentalists tend to write stories where humanity or industrialism or capitalism is the monster, or man is the disease that needs to be eradicated. People of a political bent tend to create caricatures of their political opponents and show them as monstrous. Or (based on J.K. Rowling's statements), people she has personally disliked over the years appear in Roman-a-clef format as distasteful characters such as Gilderoy Lockhart, or odious ones like Dolores Umbridge. (Honestly, Lord Voldemort has more a sympathetic backstory than the stand-ins for some people the author once knew.)
But what if -- what if we haven't taken "befriending the monster" quite far enough? What if the human monsters also could be understood? What if, once you understand where they're coming from, they're not quite as monstrous as we supposed? What if prejudice has blinded us, or a personal bad experience has tainted our thoughts? Why is it, again, we're so certain we shouldn't listen and seek understanding?
Once we listen to "the monster" and try to understand, the monster tends to become more human. And if we decide not to understand or listen ... well, it's easy to miss the scarier point of the "surprise" revelation that the monster is human: the monster might be us.
So here's to Halloween. It's the night where we pass out lots of candy to all the ghosts, vampires, werewolves, witches, dragons -- and neighbors -- that we might see. And for that, it may well be my favorite holiday.
Showing posts with label drama and literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drama and literature. Show all posts
Friday, October 31, 2014
Saturday, August 31, 2013
"Slut-shaming" versus virgin-vilifying
Lots of people argue by slogan these days. There is a slogan now being used that way, "slut-shaming", and they say it like it's a bad thing for a "slut" to be ashamed. Granted, I wouldn't choose the word "slut" -- it's harsh and insulting and communicates nothing but contempt. So I wouldn't introduce such a word into the conversation myself, and will take this opportunity to say some words that are more accurate: foolish, irresponsible, using and being used, selling your future short. The feminists see this as an issue -- that men are not called to account for the exact same bad behavior -- then conclude that therefore women should behave just as badly.
Many feminists are genuinely trying to take a stand for fairness; but I wonder sometimes whether they realize that they're being played. Would it bother them to realize that "feminism" has become a tool by which the men play the women to get what they want? And the feminists are defining "success" in terms of "doing what men are doing" -- as if what men are doing is automatically smart or right or desirable. Why did that assumption pass unchallenged, especially among feminists? Does an "empowered woman" want to be a copycat of the men?
Women have traditionally been held to higher moral standards -- at least when it comes to sex -- because we're the ones who suffer the consequences of idiocy or short-sightedness. We're the ones who face the "choice" of aborting our children or raising them alone, often in hardship. The stakes of the game are far higher for us, so we were expected to play smarter.Why aren't men ashamed of lying their way into a woman's bedroom? Good question, but that doesn't make it smart for us to give them a free pass and condone it. And make no mistake, the men have played the feminist movement so that now they have women standing up for the "right" to play the game the way that men want them to.
Except conscience is a tricky thing. If, deep down, we know we have been irresponsible with our lives, our bodies, our hearts, our emotional well-being, possibly even our futures or our potential children's future -- our consciences demand that we notice. The "feminization of poverty" -- the fact that the poor are more and more likely to be women and children -- is directly because we have stopped playing smart, and started defining "success" as "imitating men at their worst". And we could be a little smarter. This is an age where people are security conscious. People wouldn't dream of giving out their ATM pin to someone they just met, or having their password that's something ridiculously easy to guess. I would suggest that most women need to change the password to their pants. "I love you" is just too easy to guess. It's a sure way to get lied to and played.
As for virgin-vilifying, it has become a recurring action in pop culture. In The Breakfast Club, there's a scene in which the most disreputable character continually insinuates that there is something wrong with anyone who isn't sleeping around. And in that conversation, it looks as though he's the only one who may be sleeping around -- but the others allow themselves to be treated as if their patience or self-control -- or waiting for the right moment -- is somehow shameful. On The Simpsons, there is an episode in which we learn that Principal Skinner is a virgin -- and the town reacts in shock and disgust as if something was badly wrong with waiting for the right person, the right moment, the right relationship, or even marriage. There have even been some feature-length movies that have as their premise that there is something wrong with you if you are past a certain age and still a virgin. It was entertaining to see this virgin-vilifying turned on its head in the movie Easy A, where the main character helped other peoples' reputations -- that is, helped the reputation of vilified virgins -- by claiming to have slept with them.
On this particular topic, the feminist movement reminds me of a scene from the play Guys and Dolls in which Adelaide sings, "Take Back Your Mink". The lyrics are all about how powerful she is and how she is taking a stand and won't be played by the men any longer -- but the actions are all about her undressing herself for men's entertainment in a strip club. When it comes to the topic of "slut-shaming", the feminist movement is taking the role of Adelaide, singing about how sleeping around is "empowerment" while the men hoot and applaud, and maybe not realizing that was exactly what the men wanted them to do, and that the men are quite firmly in control of that situation.
Many feminists are genuinely trying to take a stand for fairness; but I wonder sometimes whether they realize that they're being played. Would it bother them to realize that "feminism" has become a tool by which the men play the women to get what they want? And the feminists are defining "success" in terms of "doing what men are doing" -- as if what men are doing is automatically smart or right or desirable. Why did that assumption pass unchallenged, especially among feminists? Does an "empowered woman" want to be a copycat of the men?
Women have traditionally been held to higher moral standards -- at least when it comes to sex -- because we're the ones who suffer the consequences of idiocy or short-sightedness. We're the ones who face the "choice" of aborting our children or raising them alone, often in hardship. The stakes of the game are far higher for us, so we were expected to play smarter.Why aren't men ashamed of lying their way into a woman's bedroom? Good question, but that doesn't make it smart for us to give them a free pass and condone it. And make no mistake, the men have played the feminist movement so that now they have women standing up for the "right" to play the game the way that men want them to.
Except conscience is a tricky thing. If, deep down, we know we have been irresponsible with our lives, our bodies, our hearts, our emotional well-being, possibly even our futures or our potential children's future -- our consciences demand that we notice. The "feminization of poverty" -- the fact that the poor are more and more likely to be women and children -- is directly because we have stopped playing smart, and started defining "success" as "imitating men at their worst". And we could be a little smarter. This is an age where people are security conscious. People wouldn't dream of giving out their ATM pin to someone they just met, or having their password that's something ridiculously easy to guess. I would suggest that most women need to change the password to their pants. "I love you" is just too easy to guess. It's a sure way to get lied to and played.
As for virgin-vilifying, it has become a recurring action in pop culture. In The Breakfast Club, there's a scene in which the most disreputable character continually insinuates that there is something wrong with anyone who isn't sleeping around. And in that conversation, it looks as though he's the only one who may be sleeping around -- but the others allow themselves to be treated as if their patience or self-control -- or waiting for the right moment -- is somehow shameful. On The Simpsons, there is an episode in which we learn that Principal Skinner is a virgin -- and the town reacts in shock and disgust as if something was badly wrong with waiting for the right person, the right moment, the right relationship, or even marriage. There have even been some feature-length movies that have as their premise that there is something wrong with you if you are past a certain age and still a virgin. It was entertaining to see this virgin-vilifying turned on its head in the movie Easy A, where the main character helped other peoples' reputations -- that is, helped the reputation of vilified virgins -- by claiming to have slept with them.
On this particular topic, the feminist movement reminds me of a scene from the play Guys and Dolls in which Adelaide sings, "Take Back Your Mink". The lyrics are all about how powerful she is and how she is taking a stand and won't be played by the men any longer -- but the actions are all about her undressing herself for men's entertainment in a strip club. When it comes to the topic of "slut-shaming", the feminist movement is taking the role of Adelaide, singing about how sleeping around is "empowerment" while the men hoot and applaud, and maybe not realizing that was exactly what the men wanted them to do, and that the men are quite firmly in control of that situation.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
A window into our daily struggles
Some stories are popular beyond any expectation -- even stories that are no better-crafted than average, or have serious flaws. I notice that the more popular series speak to the current situation: they touch the average person's daily struggles. Consider the basic premise behind the most popular stories of the last decade:
Harry Potter: An unappreciated boy with a dreary life finds a world that is enchanted and exciting -- where he is welcome, and he matters.
Twilight: An only child from a broken home finds a large family where she belongs, and love that will last literally forever.
Hunger Games: the common people fight a system rigged against them by a rich, out-of-touch political class in a corrupt and decadent capitol.
The themes of the day are being lonely and unappreciated, wanting to find love that will actually last, and living in a big system that is rigged against the little people. The newest entry in this list, Hunger Games, has a heroine whose early victories include seeing the politically-assigned "enemies" as not so different than herself -- or her younger sister. In that world where hatred and conflict are promoted, an act of defiance can be as simple as holding hands, or honoring a little girl's death with some wildflowers, or giving someone a small loaf of bread.
My point here is seeing how simple it is to undermine a corrupt system. Every act of honesty, decency, or compassion is good not only for its own sake, but also as a threat to the surrounding darkness. These books speak to daily life because so many people are looking for a warm welcome, for a chance to matter, for a place to belong. And like the Hunger Games' heroine Katniss discovered: it is a powerful thing to realize that other people -- even "the enemies" -- really are just like you.
Harry Potter: An unappreciated boy with a dreary life finds a world that is enchanted and exciting -- where he is welcome, and he matters.
Twilight: An only child from a broken home finds a large family where she belongs, and love that will last literally forever.
Hunger Games: the common people fight a system rigged against them by a rich, out-of-touch political class in a corrupt and decadent capitol.
The themes of the day are being lonely and unappreciated, wanting to find love that will actually last, and living in a big system that is rigged against the little people. The newest entry in this list, Hunger Games, has a heroine whose early victories include seeing the politically-assigned "enemies" as not so different than herself -- or her younger sister. In that world where hatred and conflict are promoted, an act of defiance can be as simple as holding hands, or honoring a little girl's death with some wildflowers, or giving someone a small loaf of bread.
My point here is seeing how simple it is to undermine a corrupt system. Every act of honesty, decency, or compassion is good not only for its own sake, but also as a threat to the surrounding darkness. These books speak to daily life because so many people are looking for a warm welcome, for a chance to matter, for a place to belong. And like the Hunger Games' heroine Katniss discovered: it is a powerful thing to realize that other people -- even "the enemies" -- really are just like you.
Saturday, February 04, 2012
There Are Seven Basic Plots - Or Maybe Just One
Some people say there are only seven different stories in the world -- though different people have different lists of what those seven stories are. There's the romance, the quest, rags to riches, growing up, defeating the monster, facing death, and rebirth. Or sometimes we define stories by their conflicts: man against man, man against nature, man against God, man against society, man against woman, man against himself, man against destiny.* (We sure enjoy being against things, don't we?) Sometimes we group these stories into broader groups like tragedy and comedy.
But what if they all have one underlying theme: Am I good enough? Am I good enough to win someone's affection? Am I skilled enough, brave enough to defeat the monster / enemy? Am I resourceful enough, determined enough to complete the quest, or to escape fate? Or the opposite side: Am I bad enough that everything I touch will fall apart? Am I doomed from the outset by some flaw beyond my control? Am I a hero or a villain, a success or a failure? If character is destiny, what is mine?
The best stories also point to something we know by instinct: there is only a thin line separating the good guy from the bad guy. The villain is really our long-lost brother. Or the person we met as a stranger and treated badly was more important to us than we ever could have guessed -- we would have acted very differently if we had known the truth. All of us, at some time, have been the villain in someone else's story -- or maybe even in our own.
The people who followed Jesus told a different story: not that our character is our destiny, but that God's character is our destiny, and God is good. They said that the bedrock reality of the universe is not all of the conflict, but God's love for what he has made, and his faithfulness to what he has made. And that the question of our character -- our aching hope to be good enough -- is to be satisfied by the imprint of God's own spirit on our own, God's own image on our own, strengthening and deepening day by day. It changes how we see the world, and ourselves, and "the villains".
* Some lists have "man in the middle" instead of "man against destiny"; I've found several variations of the basic list.
But what if they all have one underlying theme: Am I good enough? Am I good enough to win someone's affection? Am I skilled enough, brave enough to defeat the monster / enemy? Am I resourceful enough, determined enough to complete the quest, or to escape fate? Or the opposite side: Am I bad enough that everything I touch will fall apart? Am I doomed from the outset by some flaw beyond my control? Am I a hero or a villain, a success or a failure? If character is destiny, what is mine?
The best stories also point to something we know by instinct: there is only a thin line separating the good guy from the bad guy. The villain is really our long-lost brother. Or the person we met as a stranger and treated badly was more important to us than we ever could have guessed -- we would have acted very differently if we had known the truth. All of us, at some time, have been the villain in someone else's story -- or maybe even in our own.
The people who followed Jesus told a different story: not that our character is our destiny, but that God's character is our destiny, and God is good. They said that the bedrock reality of the universe is not all of the conflict, but God's love for what he has made, and his faithfulness to what he has made. And that the question of our character -- our aching hope to be good enough -- is to be satisfied by the imprint of God's own spirit on our own, God's own image on our own, strengthening and deepening day by day. It changes how we see the world, and ourselves, and "the villains".
* Some lists have "man in the middle" instead of "man against destiny"; I've found several variations of the basic list.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Guys and Dolls: How the missionary is redeemed by the gambler
It's high school musical season again. Have you ever seen Guys and Dolls? I like the unusual plot line: it's one of the few dramas in which a Christian is redeemed by someone she's trying to save.
When we first meet Sgt. Sarah Brown of the Save-A-Soul Mission, she is followed by a noisy band. Remember how St Paul says that, when we speak without love, we sound like a resounding gong or clanging cymbal? That's a fitting description of Sgt. Sarah Brown. I have to wonder if her annoying band is supposed to be a nod to St Paul's gong-and-cymbal comments. Her speeches are well-meant but completely loveless. There's not a lot of mercy in them. She's shocked and disappointed that nobody listens.
Sky Masterson's interest in Sarah Brown is in order to win a bet: he has to get Sarah Brown to agree to go to Havana, with its decadent night life. In her desperation to appear successful to her religious leader, she agrees to go to Havana with him in return for his promise to bring people to the mission where her supervisor can see.* In Cuba, Sky's skillful scheming seems to pay off. He even gets her drunk without her realizing what she's drinking. In a surprise twist, Sarah Brown begins throwing herself at Sky, and having fun for the first time in her life -- but he can't bring himself to take advantage of her. After they get back to the states, Sky even claims to have lost the bet that he could get her to go to Cuba in the first place.
When Sarah finds out that Sky has lied -- and put out word that he has failed -- to save her reputation, she has something close to a religious experience herself. She now knows what it's like to need mercy, and to be shown mercy. For the first time, she has some sympathy with people who have not lived blameless lives. She even finds herself talking to one Miss Adelaide -- a stripper -- as just another human being like her, a feat that would have been impossible in her former days as a cold and arrogant person who assumed her own superiority.
So from Sarah Brown's point of view, Guys and Dolls is the story of how a "sinner" saves a "saint".
* When they get to Cuba, the Sky-and-Sarah story has all the makings of a Faust story. She's sold her soul to gain the appearance of religious success in the eyes of her supervisor. The surprise in this story is that the devil repents. "Sky Masterson" -- symbolic name much?
When we first meet Sgt. Sarah Brown of the Save-A-Soul Mission, she is followed by a noisy band. Remember how St Paul says that, when we speak without love, we sound like a resounding gong or clanging cymbal? That's a fitting description of Sgt. Sarah Brown. I have to wonder if her annoying band is supposed to be a nod to St Paul's gong-and-cymbal comments. Her speeches are well-meant but completely loveless. There's not a lot of mercy in them. She's shocked and disappointed that nobody listens.
Sky Masterson's interest in Sarah Brown is in order to win a bet: he has to get Sarah Brown to agree to go to Havana, with its decadent night life. In her desperation to appear successful to her religious leader, she agrees to go to Havana with him in return for his promise to bring people to the mission where her supervisor can see.* In Cuba, Sky's skillful scheming seems to pay off. He even gets her drunk without her realizing what she's drinking. In a surprise twist, Sarah Brown begins throwing herself at Sky, and having fun for the first time in her life -- but he can't bring himself to take advantage of her. After they get back to the states, Sky even claims to have lost the bet that he could get her to go to Cuba in the first place.
When Sarah finds out that Sky has lied -- and put out word that he has failed -- to save her reputation, she has something close to a religious experience herself. She now knows what it's like to need mercy, and to be shown mercy. For the first time, she has some sympathy with people who have not lived blameless lives. She even finds herself talking to one Miss Adelaide -- a stripper -- as just another human being like her, a feat that would have been impossible in her former days as a cold and arrogant person who assumed her own superiority.
So from Sarah Brown's point of view, Guys and Dolls is the story of how a "sinner" saves a "saint".
* When they get to Cuba, the Sky-and-Sarah story has all the makings of a Faust story. She's sold her soul to gain the appearance of religious success in the eyes of her supervisor. The surprise in this story is that the devil repents. "Sky Masterson" -- symbolic name much?
Friday, October 31, 2008
Halloween Special: The First Faust ...
I've always loved the legend of Faust: the man who sells his soul to the devil for some sort of worldly gain. I read a couple of different short variations of Faust in school, my favorite of these being The Devil and Daniel Webster. Years later I saw that version of Faust reprised in an episode of the Simpsons; it has definitely made its way into the popular psyche. I think the story resonates because we have all been faced with the temptation for worldly gain at a price that would forever change who we are. We've even seen people take that road. How many people have traded innocence for acceptance, or decency for popularity? It is a choice that everyone is faced with, and (being sinners) on some level we all take the bait.
But what was the origin of the Faust legend? We can trace Faust-like characters, even under the name "Faust", back to medieval Germany. But I suggest that there is a much older Faust story in Judeo-Christian literature. The first story about selling our souls for worldly gain: Adam and Eve.
Happy Halloween!
But what was the origin of the Faust legend? We can trace Faust-like characters, even under the name "Faust", back to medieval Germany. But I suggest that there is a much older Faust story in Judeo-Christian literature. The first story about selling our souls for worldly gain: Adam and Eve.
Happy Halloween!
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Tolkien: Reality, Fantasy, and Awakening Desire
“I didn’t want it to be a fantasy. I wanted it to be a history.” – The Fellowship of the Ring special extended edition, dir. Peter Jackson, New Line Home Entertainment, Inc., 2002, cast commentary, comment by actor Sean AstinJ.R.R. Tolkien was not content just to write a story. It was not enough for him that people should like his world, like his story, like his characters. It was not enough that we should admire or appreciate his world. In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien did not set out merely to entertain; he set out to entice. He set out to awaken desire, to arouse longing. A reader hasn’t really understood Tolkien until he has wanted to go to the Shire, to visit Rivendell and Lothlorien, to see the great dwarf city of Dwarrowdelf in its day.
“Isn’t this just the place everybody wants to have grown up?” – The Fellowship of the Ring special extended edition, dir. Peter Jackson, New Line Home Entertainment, Inc., 2002, cast commentary, comment on the Shire by actor Orlando Bloom
How far Tolkien succeeded in arousing desire is seen not only in the enduring popularity of the story, but in the unprecedented extent to which people want to make that world their own. An entire new genre of games – the modern fantasy role-playing games beginning with Dungeons and Dragons – began with fans of Tolkien who were not content to let the story be someone else’s story, the world someone else’s world. Tolkien succeeded in making us want those places as part of our lives, those friends as our friends, that quest as our quest.
Many authors are said to treat the themes of good and evil, and many authors do treat the subject of evil seriously and extensively. But relatively few treat the subject of good in any depth at all. Tolkien has one of the more deep and sustained focuses on goodness – and its desirability – in modern literature. He adeptly sidestepped shallowness, triteness, and (possibly worse) a dry, inorganic approach to good that renders it impossible to desire profoundly.
Tolkien also did a great piece of workmanship by making the most desirable parts of this fantasy world to be entirely natural. Magic appears in the story – but it is not what gives the world its allure. The Shire has no magic; it has little more than grass, sunshine, and friendship to commend it. The dwarven city of Dwarrowdelf was not made by one dwarf with a magical ring, but by a host of dwarves employing a great natural wonder: the ingenious craftsmanship of those who pour their hearts and souls into their work. The elven kingdoms’ greatest boasts are the forests, poetry and music, and the memory of ancient beauties. What we most desire in Middle Earth is already part of our own world. Neither is it beyond our grasp – we could live in the hillsides and carved mountain-halls if we chose. The humbler, still satisfying joys of sustained friendship and enduring accomplishment are still available to us.
So Tolkien has made his answer as to the value of this world, and of goodness. If we get to the end of Lord of the Rings and think, “I want to go on the ship to the Undying Lands,” then he has won us over.
Originally blogged at CADRE comments January 1, 2005.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Christianity in Tolkien: A traitor's place in salvation
| Tolkien's work is usually too subtle for plain allegorical comparison. | |
| Frodo is not exactly a Christ figure. At the end his goodness fails; the temptation to claim the ring overcomes him. |  |
 | But Gollum is much closer to a Judas figure, a traitor. Gollum's treachery was predictable and long-expected. The only thing that was largely unexpected was that his treachery worked out for the good, much like the treachery of Judas Iscariot or of the brothers of Joseph son of Jacob. |
| Tolkien brings out one of the themes of Christ's life in the character of Gollum: even treachery tends to go wrong, and traitors often do good that they never intended. It's not that Sam Gamgee was wrong to distrust Gollum; it's that Frodo was righter still to bring him anyway. | |
All graphics from New Line Cinema's Lord of the Rings trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, presented under fair usage.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Christianity in Tolkien: Compassion and Redemption
| In the Lord of the Rings, one of the central relationships and conflicts revolves around Frodo and Gollum/Smeagol. | |
| Frodo recognizes that he is not so different from Smeagol. He knows that the same temptation would destroy them both, so he knows that abandoning hope for Gollum also means abandoning hope for himself, |  |
 | and that keeping hope for himself means refusing to give up on Gollum. |
| In Tolkien, several central teachings of Christ are shown most clearly in the relationship between Frodo, the most resilient against evil, and Gollum, long since conquered by it. Frodo knows humility, the inseparable link between the best of us and the worst of us, the commonness of sin even in the best, and therefore the commonness of hope for redemption, even for the worst. | |
All graphics from New Line Cinema's Lord of the Rings trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, presented under fair usage.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Christianity in Tolkien: What is Strength?
| In the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien also challenges our worldly ideas of strength. Is there a land in all of Middle Earth strong enough to defeat Mordor? | |
| A land like the Shire |  |
 | could defeat a land like Mordor |
| not by might of arms such as the long stalemate waged by Gondor |  |
 | but like this, with compassion for the enemy. |
| In Tolkien's scheme, the Shire was stronger than Gondor. Gondor, for all its might of arms, had become a little too much like Mordor, just as Saruman had become a little too much like Sauron. But the Shire was a humble land filled with people who boasted no great deeds. They loved good tilled earth, good food and celebrations. They alone in Middle Earth had the strength needed to defeat Mordor. They still had humility, compassion, and hope. Frodo's love of his enemy played an essential role in the rescue of Middle Earth. | |
All graphics from New Line Cinema's Lord of the Rings trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, presented under fair usage.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Christianity in Tolkien: What Is Wisdom?
| In Tolkien's Middle Earth, Saruman began as wisest of the wise. He spent his time in arcane research in a high tower. He had rare forms of knowledge, uncommon access to information. Isn't that wisdom as the world conceives it? |  |
 | Gandalf was not generally reckoned to be as wise as Saruman. He spent his time with his feet on the ground, and found himself drawn to the humble. |
| And when he chose specialized knowledge, the kind he chose was the knowledge not of domination but of friendship, the kind of knowledge that could lead him to know when a friend needed help, or when to show up for a long-expected birthday party. |  |
| In Tolkien's scheme, Gandalf was wiser than Saruman, and Gandalf's view of wisdom was truer than Saruman's. A wisdom that forgets why life is worth living, and why good is worth defending, is not wisdom at all. True wisdom is not proud but humble; true wisdom does not exalt itself but exalts the lowly. It has room for friendship, even room for self-sacrifice if that is the price for maintaining these things. True wisdom places love first, and is recognized by joy and gladness. The other may appear wise, but is not. | |
All graphics from New Line Cinema's Lord of the Rings trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, presented under fair usage.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Paradise in Children's Stories: Lewis and Burnett
If the vision of paradise awakens desire, then successfully creating a vision of paradise ensures a place amongst the classics.
C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia offers a wide variety of glimpses of paradise, from the creation of a new world to a midwinter dance involving snowballs to a dazzling underground abyss growing live gems at the bottom of the world. This glimpse of paradise is from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader beyond the sea to the edge of the world, but here on an island not quite yet at the world's end.
Previous in the Visions of Paradise series:
Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece
Tolkien's Lothlorien
Coleridge's Xanadu
C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia offers a wide variety of glimpses of paradise, from the creation of a new world to a midwinter dance involving snowballs to a dazzling underground abyss growing live gems at the bottom of the world. This glimpse of paradise is from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader beyond the sea to the edge of the world, but here on an island not quite yet at the world's end.
"I am a star at rest, my daughter," answered Ramandu. "When I set for the last time, decrepit and old beyond all that you can reckon, I was carried to this island. I am not so old now as I was then. Every morning a bird brings me a fire-berry from the valleys in the Sun, and each fire-berry takes away a little of my age. And when I have become as young as the child that was born yesterday, then I shall take my rising again (for we are at earth's eastern rim) and once more tread the great dance."F. H. Burnett's The Secret Garden is an exercise in paradise to itself, even if a little overdone for today's tastes. Though the garden itself is so enchanting that I can hardly read it without wanting to pick up my gardening tools, it also does an excellent job of picking up on the motif of the feast of paradise.
The morning that Dickon -- after they had been enjoying themselves in the garden for about two hours -- went behind a big rosebush and brought forth two tin pails and revealed that one was full of rich new milk with cream on the top of it, and that the other held cottage-made currant buns folded in a clean blue and white napkin, buns so carefully tucked in that they were still hot, there was a riot of surprised joyfulness. ... Roasted eggs were a previously unknown luxury and very hot potatoes with salt and fresh butter were fit for a woodland king ...
Previous in the Visions of Paradise series:
Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece
Tolkien's Lothlorien
Coleridge's Xanadu
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Visions of Paradise: Tolkien
The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lorien there was no stain.
Previous in the Visions of Paradise series:
Coleridge's Xanadu
Previous in the Visions of Paradise series:
Coleridge's Xanadu
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Haunted World: The Past that Won't Stay Buried
Amityville Horror. The Shining. Poltergeist (and Poltergeist II). Pet Sematary (and Pet Sematary II). And more imitators than you can count. What do they have in common? The Native American / Indian burial ground underneath it all. Then there's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, with its cursed Aztec treasure. This horror over our national past is not strictly a United States phenomenon. Mexican horror films have seen their share of Aztec mummies.
The stuff that nightmares -- and horror films -- are made of: Genocide of chilling scope, partly accidental through disease but far too much deliberate. A culture's betrayal of those who welcomed them. The more technologically advanced cultures plundering and dispossessing the less technologically advanced cultures. These days shame has increased to the point where it's not considered polite to mention that the native peoples of the Americas were less technologically advanced, even though the New World cultures of the time were often stone-age and, more often than not, pre-literate in development. But I don't think these things should be swept under the rug. Abusing our advantage was an aspect of what went wrong, and part of a pattern that has repeated itself often in history. One lesson we need to remember these days is that scientific and technological advantage does not make for better people. And if the learning of our culture counts for anything, then how in the world did all that happen?
We Christians have to wonder at those times. Had the words of Christ fallen on deaf ears? Had our culture learned no more, or forgotten so much, about treating others as we would want to be treated? To be sure, there were cases of people protesting the treatment of the native population back when the land was still, in the main, in their possession. But not enough to make a difference. The majority of people went along with what was happening. And as a culture, it gives us nightmares. (Are horror films the nightmares of a culture? I wonder.)
Then there's the temptation of self-defense. How many cultures in the rest of the world are built on the subdued ruins of the peoples who lived before? How many of our cultural role models (such as Greece and Rome) were empires? How many of the native peoples of the new world attacked and conquered and enslaved each other, built empires at each others' expense before any Europeans came? But that rings hollow in our own ears despite being true. It's just that defending ourselves by saying "we are absolutely no better than anyone else at their worst" is no excuse at all, and we know it.
Neither is this only an American-content concern. It began under Old World flags with Europe pushing out its religious heretics and deporting its criminals, or plundering gold and silver to send back to the mother country. Still, those of us who live in the Americas must remember that when the New World won its independence from the Old World, nothing changed. The high-sounding ideals of the U.S. Declaration of Independence did not make the U.S. suddenly wiser or kinder in its dealings with the native peoples. "All men are created equal ... " Ouch.
It wasn't us. But for many of us, it was our culture and we don't get away clean. And the time for easy solutions is centuries past. Many of us are not from Europe -- we are from Africa or Asia; not part of the culture that betrayed its hosts, though still living on land that was not rightfully gotten from its previous owner. Is there still a lien? Many of us who look European are of partially native ancestry. Many of us who are of entirely European ancestry would have nowhere to go in Europe now, when we no longer even remember the names of our ever-so-great-grandparents' home towns, even if we assumed (perhaps optimistically) that we would be welcomed in Europe. Many a hard-traced family tree in the U.S. stops at the eastern ocean in the early days of our country, unable to bridge the gap to where we came from.
Still the horror movies keep asking: Will the spirits of the betrayed ever rest? Can there ever be peace after what happened? Is there a solution of gold returned or blood repaid to end the nightmare? The movies always seem to find the answer in two or three hours. It is both easy and true to say that history cannot be undone. But not all of history has been written. We do not share guilt for the evils of the past merely because we are the descendants of "Pilgrims" and and conquistadores. But the lingering problems of injustice are as much a part of our cultural heritage as the music and scientific achievements of our culture. We share the evils of the past if we do nothing to right the wrongs we have inherited. As a culture, it bothers us; that's why so many works of literature pick up on that theme. We know we have to act, but have no easy time figuring out what to do. The first step is figuring out what end result we would want. This would be a good step in the right direction: that the native peoples who remain now should live in as much prosperity as is common in this nation. So the task falls to our generation: to figure out what it would take to make that happen. Will our children inherit our nightmares and our horror stories, a tradition of helplessness or apathy or self-justification? Or a tradition of action?
The stuff that nightmares -- and horror films -- are made of: Genocide of chilling scope, partly accidental through disease but far too much deliberate. A culture's betrayal of those who welcomed them. The more technologically advanced cultures plundering and dispossessing the less technologically advanced cultures. These days shame has increased to the point where it's not considered polite to mention that the native peoples of the Americas were less technologically advanced, even though the New World cultures of the time were often stone-age and, more often than not, pre-literate in development. But I don't think these things should be swept under the rug. Abusing our advantage was an aspect of what went wrong, and part of a pattern that has repeated itself often in history. One lesson we need to remember these days is that scientific and technological advantage does not make for better people. And if the learning of our culture counts for anything, then how in the world did all that happen?
We Christians have to wonder at those times. Had the words of Christ fallen on deaf ears? Had our culture learned no more, or forgotten so much, about treating others as we would want to be treated? To be sure, there were cases of people protesting the treatment of the native population back when the land was still, in the main, in their possession. But not enough to make a difference. The majority of people went along with what was happening. And as a culture, it gives us nightmares. (Are horror films the nightmares of a culture? I wonder.)
Then there's the temptation of self-defense. How many cultures in the rest of the world are built on the subdued ruins of the peoples who lived before? How many of our cultural role models (such as Greece and Rome) were empires? How many of the native peoples of the new world attacked and conquered and enslaved each other, built empires at each others' expense before any Europeans came? But that rings hollow in our own ears despite being true. It's just that defending ourselves by saying "we are absolutely no better than anyone else at their worst" is no excuse at all, and we know it.
Neither is this only an American-content concern. It began under Old World flags with Europe pushing out its religious heretics and deporting its criminals, or plundering gold and silver to send back to the mother country. Still, those of us who live in the Americas must remember that when the New World won its independence from the Old World, nothing changed. The high-sounding ideals of the U.S. Declaration of Independence did not make the U.S. suddenly wiser or kinder in its dealings with the native peoples. "All men are created equal ... " Ouch.
It wasn't us. But for many of us, it was our culture and we don't get away clean. And the time for easy solutions is centuries past. Many of us are not from Europe -- we are from Africa or Asia; not part of the culture that betrayed its hosts, though still living on land that was not rightfully gotten from its previous owner. Is there still a lien? Many of us who look European are of partially native ancestry. Many of us who are of entirely European ancestry would have nowhere to go in Europe now, when we no longer even remember the names of our ever-so-great-grandparents' home towns, even if we assumed (perhaps optimistically) that we would be welcomed in Europe. Many a hard-traced family tree in the U.S. stops at the eastern ocean in the early days of our country, unable to bridge the gap to where we came from.
Still the horror movies keep asking: Will the spirits of the betrayed ever rest? Can there ever be peace after what happened? Is there a solution of gold returned or blood repaid to end the nightmare? The movies always seem to find the answer in two or three hours. It is both easy and true to say that history cannot be undone. But not all of history has been written. We do not share guilt for the evils of the past merely because we are the descendants of "Pilgrims" and and conquistadores. But the lingering problems of injustice are as much a part of our cultural heritage as the music and scientific achievements of our culture. We share the evils of the past if we do nothing to right the wrongs we have inherited. As a culture, it bothers us; that's why so many works of literature pick up on that theme. We know we have to act, but have no easy time figuring out what to do. The first step is figuring out what end result we would want. This would be a good step in the right direction: that the native peoples who remain now should live in as much prosperity as is common in this nation. So the task falls to our generation: to figure out what it would take to make that happen. Will our children inherit our nightmares and our horror stories, a tradition of helplessness or apathy or self-justification? Or a tradition of action?
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Visions of Paradise: Coleridge
For awhile during this season of Pentecost, I'll be reviewing visions of paradise on Sundays. For this series, the defining character of a vision of paradise is to arouse desire for the holy.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stateley pleasure-dome decree;
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stateley pleasure-dome decree;
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Tolkien and the shadow of evil
I've written before on Tolkien's treatment of goodness. Tonight I'd like to glance at the other side of the coin: Tolkien's acknowledgment of evil. The evil wizards and the orcs and the explicitly evil elements are obvious enough in his works. But in Tolkien's writing, unlike many heroic epics, the heroes do not all simply live happily ever after. In Tolkien's reckoning, on October 6 of each year Frodo was visited by returning pain, likewise in March of each year, on the anniversaries of serious wounds he had taken. When Frodo returns to the Shire, he cannot take up his life again. Something similar had happened long years before to Celebrian, who was Elrond's wife, Galadriel's daughter, and Arwen's mother.
In Tolkien's earlier work, The Hobbit, Bilbo's adventures stay with him after his return, though not in a bad way at first. Bilbo spends much of the rest of his days in his study, writing, while the evil he has unwittingly brought back with him slowly grows on him. Frodo's darker adventures leave him at times haunted, and again after his return he spends much of his time in his study, writing.
As for Tolkien, after he returned from his own adventures in the Great War / World War I, we all know where and how he spent much of his time: in his study, writing. I've made a few searches and haven't found what I was looking for. But I'd be very curious if anything had happened to Tolkien on the dates he chose for Frodo's yearly visits of pain: March 13 and October 6.
In Tolkien's earlier work, The Hobbit, Bilbo's adventures stay with him after his return, though not in a bad way at first. Bilbo spends much of the rest of his days in his study, writing, while the evil he has unwittingly brought back with him slowly grows on him. Frodo's darker adventures leave him at times haunted, and again after his return he spends much of his time in his study, writing.
As for Tolkien, after he returned from his own adventures in the Great War / World War I, we all know where and how he spent much of his time: in his study, writing. I've made a few searches and haven't found what I was looking for. But I'd be very curious if anything had happened to Tolkien on the dates he chose for Frodo's yearly visits of pain: March 13 and October 6.
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