Tag Archives: Art

Life on Video

I’m an enormous fan of video. While I’m not a YouTube poster and I don’t upload images of my life onto Flickr, I do find myself occasionally drawn to those sites, and I wonder if it isn’t a matter of time. Statistically, as I understand it, this is a mark of the emergent generation more so than of my own GenX age, but I find myself crossing over from one generation to another in my interests, not as much because of my age but because of I have a huge dose of the geek gene when it comes to technology.

I’ve talked a few times here about the art-imitating-life-or-life-imitating-art debate, and I found this article through a Newsvine link today that I thought was interesting enough to bring it up again. There are very interesting results here: generally, most Americans think the media leads our society into a needlessly “liberal” (their word, not mine) and overly permissive worldview toward sexuality, God, and other subjects of importance. While I approach these types of studies with caution (I once had a psychology professor say that statistics are evil…you can make them say whatever you want), I do find it believable and interesting (if even in a prooftexting way) that Americans are dissatisfied with media coverage (“only 11 percent believe it has a positive impact,” according to the article). I bookmarked an interesting article today on my delicious page (on the sidebar) from BBC that provides an interesting glimpse into how we are perceived by other countries..it’s honestly frightening to me. As a news junkie a occasional journalist, I find it difficult at best to find impartial reporting out there…everything is slanted in one direction or the other.

That tangent aside, do we really think that television media is causing societal woes, or merely reflecting them?

Karen and I made the recent decision to ditch cable television. Initially, it was a financial decision, because we were paying a ridiculous amount of money to be locked into their schedule when we only actually watched 4-5 programs regularly, all of of which are available on iTunes significantly cheaper and a la carte. Since we went through with the decision, though, it has become a spiritual improvement in our lives: all of the time we ended up zoning in front of “white noise” television then has now turned to reading more books and engaging in the lost art of conversation. Either way, we come out of it smarter than three hours of meaningless channel surfing.

Television is certainly a valid medium of artistic expression, the same as film. However, there is a significant amount of crap on the airwaves as well. I can understand this study’s opinion that consistent intake of the crap leads to an overall degradation of one’s moral structure.

So, do I want to say that life imitates art here? No, because, if we’re honest, the garbage that is being aired isn’t art…it’s a gratuitous use of technology to indulge our voyeuristic tendencies. At some level, YouTube and Flickr and other platforms, including MySpace and Facebook, indulge the same tendencies. I’m just as guilty of liking to watch someone else’s life as you are, but, after a few glimpses at that type of content (unless it’s one of my friends), I’m either bored or disgusted, and “change the channel.”

The artistic content of television reflects our culture, and comments on it in extremely truthful ways.

The other content?

Well, I guess we just like to watch…

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Choosing the Right Beer

I was listening to an interview with Dick Staubs this afternoon on The Kindlings Muse about his new book, The Culturally Savvy Christian. He’s speaking of the horrendous “parallel universe” that modern Evangelicals have created for ourselves…Christian bookstores, Christian coffeeshops, Christian schools, etc., in an attempt to make our own pop culture and be separate from everyone else (exactly the opposite of what Christ modeled)…and likened modern Christianity to beer. The allusion goes something like this: our current generation(s) want strong, pure ale, but what the modern church is giving them is “Christianity Lite.”

Essentially, Staubs echoes my sentiment that we have digressed into producing pop-culture expression, art, and surface explorations of spirituality instead of engaging and transforming our culture with depth and truth.

It’s funny, because just last night Karen and I were discussing a lack of passion. It seems as though life sucks the passion out of us as we’re doomed to year after year of selling our souls to the industrialized machine in exchange for money instead of engaging in what truly matters.

Staubs points out that the digression began after the 60’s, when the art that was created during that passionate decade that was supposed to transform culture was taken over by corporate interests when everyone moved into the “real world” and got jobs on Wall Street.

I think he has a point.

I don’t like the real world, but I’m stuck here for the time being. Maybe we should try to engage it and change it with something of depth instead of stupid Christianized cliches on youth group T-shirts? Who knows? If we come out of our bubbles and start serving real beer, people just might become intoxicated with it.

Of course, we’re too comfortable for that. But, it was a nice thought. Pardon my interruption…you can go back to sleep now.

Disbelief in Disbelief

Okay, so being the super-hero nerd that I am, I couldn’t get to the theater fast enough last weekend to see Spider-Man 3. I wasn’t disappointed. The movie was full of great web-slinging action. It was also full of forgiving thoughts and redemptive images. Very much so, actually…I walked extremely impacted with the essence of forgiveness, redemption, and second chances. I’m grateful that I’ve received more than my share, and I find myself with a renewed determination to give this forgiveness as well. My personal studies have been about grace for the last two weeks, and this is sort of a culmination of those readings. It happened by divine appointment, I’m sure.

As I sat in the theater this weekend, the lights went down, the preview loop finished and the feature started began, I was caught up in that excitement you experience as you realize you are about to experience a story. There’s a knowledge that you’re about to permit yourself to be drawn into that story, apprehended by what it has to say. In theatre, we call this the willing suspension of disbelief. It is when you stop realizing that the story isn’t part of the real world, and start believing that what’s on the screen or the stage is real. It is then that the story has you.

If you’ve been here before, it comes as no surprise to you that I have difficulty accepting the validity of hyper-conservative Christians. It boggles my mind that we can turn our beautiful faith into such a strict set of rules, regulations, and fear that we can’t breathe. For several years of my childhood, I was engulfed in just such an environment, however, so I can at least empathize if not understand it. Along these lines, there are people (who call themselves Believers…I’m not always so convinced) that reject this concept fearing that somehow their souls will be drawn into the fiery abyss if the permit themselves to be taken in by the story. They freeze like deer in headlights because they fear the possibility that they may see/hear/read something that (gasp!) offends them. And certainly, God never wanted us to be offended, right?

(If you need to pause to roll your eyes or experience some other violent and involuntary physical response to this nonsense, go ahead…I completely understand)

In fact, our churches have largely rejected story altogether. The attitude seems to be the Falwellian principle that, if didn’t really happen, then we shouldn’t be interested in it. Fiction is for children. Real Believers focus on good, solid devotional and theological non-fiction, right?

Well, ignore with me for a moment the fact that 98% of the devotionals lining our bookstore shelves are crap and that theology will always end in heresy if followed to its logical conclusion. Instead, just think about Scripture for a second (you know, Scripture…it’s what people used to read before there were devotional writers). Jesus told these wild things called parables. Parables, while occurring within the realm of what is possible, are, by definition, fictional stories. Jesus used fiction to illustrate spiritual reality. Jesus was a story-teller. His apostles were writers. Yet, the modern church seems to shy away from this as a viable medium of communication.

Fortunately, as the emergent church movement begins to take a stronger hold in both mine and the next (occasionally even the previous) generations, there seems to be a return to story. The emphasis has rightly returned to reading Scripture as narrative literature instead of the analytical picking apart of each individual word that many seminaries tend to favor.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condemning nonfiction. In fact, it’s probably my strongest genre as a writer. However, when we look at Scripture, we see that God uses all types of genres in His writing: the straight-forward non-fiction of Paul and James, the poetry of David, the historical records of Chronicles and Samuel, the vision-casting apocalyptic writing of Revelation, the fictional parables of Jesus. Some have even posited theories that the Song of Songs was originally penned as drama. So many different styles to God’s literature. So many lives changed by all of the above. So many people offended by much of its content.

So, apparently, God wasn’t too concerned about offending people with His writing.

There is an important component to all good art: if you haven’t offended someone, then you really haven’t done it right. People think when they are offended. They engage in self-examination. They see themselves and their environment differently. All of these are things that art is supposed to bring about.

We’ve become so interested in enclosing ourselves in a bubble as Believers that we immediately disregard anything that may offend us. We’re afraid of seeing a play because a character may swear. We’re afraid of going to a movie because it may be too violent, or contain magic. We’re afraid to read a novel because it may contain a point of view with which we don’t agree.

And, in doing so, we’ve stagnated our own growth. We’ve become still, we’ve become irrelevant, we’ve become paralyzed.

We’ve become, in a word, pathetic.

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Overcompensating for Safety

We knew it would happen.

When it comes to security (or, rather, what we perceive as security), America has this nasty way of overcompensating and (dare I use the word in the blogosphere??) shooting itself in the proverbial foot.

A high school student in Chicago was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct when his creative writing teacher became concerned about an essay he had written. The Chicago Tribune described the essay as “violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.” Originally, the student was not suspended, but later was arrested.

So, after disturbing screenplays were discovered to have preceded the recent Virginia Tech bloodbath, now we’re going to sweep up anyone who writes something even remotely violent, arrest them, force them into counseling, lock them away from the rest of society in fear? That, after all, is what this comes down to: fear. Fear that creates witch-hunts. Fear that creates the book burning ceremonies of the Qin Dynasty and Nazi regimes. Fear that causes us to throw our liberties to the wind in the name of safety and security.

Look at the story carefully. Notice that the assignment, according to the Tribune, was for the “students to express their emotions through writing.” Any poet that has done the same will tell you that sometimes the result is ugly, because sometimes our emotions are ugly. Granted, these are usually venting exercises for the writer and not published works. But this was a free-writing exercise. The students were told, in essence, to vent their feelings, to write whatever was on their mind. And so, after completing the work as assigned, this poor kid gets arrested for it.

Ever have a thought go through your head that is out of character for you? One that you have absolutely no intention whatsoever of acting on? A passing thought that doesn’t stay? If you haven’t, be careful not to write it down when you do. There’s the moral to this mess.

Here’s an interesting twist on the story, as well. A blogger for Wired notes that the school system in question offers an anonymous online tip form for students to use to report safety concerns to the administration. The source code for the link includes a tracker for the initiator’s IP address. So much for anonymity.

We get angry when the Bush Administration taps phones and monitors email communications without legal authorization, yet we forget that we can only blame ourselves for throwing our privacy and free speech rights out the window the first time we get spooked. Hmmm…

Permit me to point out that the writing of “disturbing” material can be a sign of depression, or bipolar disorder, or any other of a host of psychiatric concerns. As a counselor, I have felt in the past that this has merited my attention in certain cases. However, there is a difference between a threat and a story with disturbing or violent content. Scripture tells stories with graphically violent content. There is also a difference between violent and disturbing content or language that is necessary for the story or artwork, and content that is gratuitous (the screenplays penned by the Tech killer were gratuitous). Permit me to also point out that all of us will suffer from diagnosable depression at some point in our lives. Artists experience this more because we are far more in touch with those emotions. It is our blessing as well as our curse. What we feel, we express in our work. Soon, we will not be permitted to do so, because everything we write or paint or compose or sculpt will require approval to make certain that it is “safe” enough. Soon, the books will be burned. Soon, the hunts will begin.

Because after all, we have to be “safe.”

Is it ironic that we have more to fear than ever from those we expect to keep us that way?

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All About the Benjamins

Okay, okay…first off, I have to say that I was completely bored when I did it. Boredom should be considered the equivalent of temporary insanity…the things that it can make one do is astounding. It forces us to grasp at any fleeting thing in order to pass the time. It forces us to perform life experiments that carry the risk of unending humiliation should they ever be discovered. It forces us to watch (gasp!) Fear Factor.

I know, I know…there really are no excuses for it. But I did it. I’m not happy about it. I watched people precariously perch on top of a yellow car that had been hoisted several stories into the air in the rain at an angle, attempting to get flags that had been tied onto either end of it. Two of them gave up entirely. One screwed up his arm pretty bad as he fell. And, of course there was a winner. The winner walked away with $50,000 because fear was “not a factor” for him.

(Applause, gasp, realize what I just watched, become horrified, repent in an overly religious way….)

The guy that went before the winner, though…the one who screwed up his arm…was talking all kinds of smack before he went up. Constantly talking about how no one was there to be friends, and that all of their encouragement to each other was fake (moments earlier, the others had been yelling encouragement to him while he screamed like a girl tied down in a pit full of rats that were biting his fingers and crawling up his crotch). They were there for the money. Nothing else. No camaraderie. Just money.

All about the money.

And so goes our culture. And so goes the source of my personal frustration. Like anybody else, I can think of a lot of things that I could do with $50,000. But I wouldn’t do anything to get it. I certainly wouldn’t let rats crawl around my stuff. But, the insanity of these contestants aside (there’s a thin line between courage and stupidity), I’m disturbed at the philosophy behind this show.

The philosophy is that we, as a society, would do nearly anything for money. Or, more importantly, that we have to do things for money. Things we don’t like. Even things we hate. Because we have to pay the rent. We also have to pay for things that we should never have to pay for (like healthcare), and we’re forced to pay for things that should be nothing short of illegal (like insurance). And, of course, we are the nation of debt…the debt that has screwed up our economy as badly as this guy screwed up his arm, the debt that holds us captive to our credit cards and education loans (education: something else that should be free).

Because of this, most of us don’t have the freedom to do what we love. Men who love their families and want desperately to spend more time with them can’t because they have to sell their souls to earn a decent lifestyle. Single mothers who desperately want an education beyond high school can’t get it because they’re forced to wait tables at IHOP or answer the phone as an administrative assistant who is paid far below what she’s worth.

Because of this, artists can’t create because they lock up in fear that they won’t be able to sell enough to eat. Musicians are prisoners of their record companies who could care less about artistic integrity as long as their pockets are deeply padded. Poets wonder what they’re going to eat tonight because a magazine only paid them $150 for four poems.

Because of this, politicians…well, don’t even get me started on politicians.

The rise of impressionist art was, according to many scholars, triggered by the angst that man feels arising from a de-humanizing society that reduces us to numbers and skills. This angst continues to plague us as we realize that standards continue to invert, as we realize that we are a prisoner to a culture that demands 60-hour work weeks for a salary of $30,000 a year.

So, college students give blood over and over because they need the money to pay for a privilege called education. People who love to create force themselves into a jungle called the office in order to make it. Adults climb on top of yellow cars and let rats crawl up…well, I don’t want to keep repeating…

Can’t we see the desperation we’ve driven ourselves to? Can’t we see how suicidal we’ve made ourselves? No wonder shrinks and therapists make such a great living.

No wonder we’re all unhappy with our lives, and feel like we’re treading water without a direction or purpose.

No wonder spirituality is forced to the bottom, along with other critical aspects of humanity like artistic expression.

No wonder we’ve created a need for attorneys and insurance agents and counselors, so we slave away, exacerbating the problems in our own lives to pay them to contribute to our problems.

No wonder we think God is dead.

No wonder.

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