Another Week Ends: Ugly Anthropomorphism, Shaken Manchildren, Big Love, The Church's Cognitive Dissonance, March Madness, and the MoneyQuest for Happiness

Doing my best to fill in for DZ, who is currently gearing up for next week's conference.

1) A great article from the Times this week, discussing the recent tendency of creaturely films ("Rango" etc) to capture the creature in all of us:

THERE is a special kind of appeal to stories that lead us to the far boundary of the human and allow us a glance at what is on the other side, where the wild things are. What often comes into view out there is a projection of something buried deep within. That wolf in the bed, in grandma’s clothes, embodies some threatening animal emanation of the self, sexual or otherwise, lurking in disguise in our cozy domestic enclosures. Those invaders from outer space, preying on our cities, represent our own predatory, destructive urges in monstrous, alien form. And we can’t forget the vampires, whose cold glamour places them at the busy intersection of love and death, where our longings chase their morbid shadows.

The lizards, rodents and other creepy-crawlies that populate its desert landscape are far more grotesque to behold than traditional Disney fauna, but their ugliness only adds an extra frisson to the film’s charming anthropomorphism. We might recoil and squint at first, but by the time “Rango” is over, the reptiles are as cuddly as bunnies or the fish in “Finding Nemo” or the ants in “A Bug’s Life.”...And also as human.

2) This piece entitled "Men May Be Jerks...But Women Are Insane", explores the laws and demands of gender identity in today's "manchild culture," from a woman's perspective. For a laugh, The Onion, too, has something to say (ht JS).
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Taking the Bait: The Urge to Escape

This morning, over at I Think I Believe, a blog written by theology student Arni Zachariassen (living in Manchester, England), Mockingbird got a mention... and was baited. Arni posted a video, called it “Mockingbird bait”, and said it would be right up our alley. So here we are, taking the bait. The video:

So, what to make? Well, that WOULD be a great stunt, if I thought the "winners" weren't corporate plants in crowd! (It’s got to be tough to predict that a guy’s vision of a perfect escape will be a trip to Lapland!) But I think the reason this is “Mockingbird Bait” is the truth inherent in the recognition that we humans have an incredible desire for escape. Loren Dean (in the great and under-seen movie "Mumford") says that humans have always found a way to escape, "even if it's just banging our heads against a rock." In the movie, he's talking about his drug use, but the fact remains, escape is a tantalizing prospect. Dean’s character can’t take the depths to which his life has sunk, and turns to drugs as his means of escape. People turn to virtual worlds (like World of Warcraft or Second Life), pornography, or literal travel to “get away.” The problem with escaping is that you always have to come back. The drugs wear off, the computer gets shut down, or the headache (from the rock) dulls. I wonder if the guy's trip to Lapland has a required end? Is it a round trip ticket? Bet it is! The fact that a person (disbelief suspended for a moment) would press a button on a scary black box for the chance at escape is evidence of the pressure (what we MBirders…and St. Paul before us…call "the law") we all feel all the time. But like trips to Lapland, human- (or coporate-) provided escapes always end. It's only the escape (or, more accurately, the death and resurrection) provided by Christ that is forever (2 Cor. 5:17).

James Franco and Bradley Cooper Are More Perfect Than You

Remarkably insightful article by Carina Chocano in this past Sunday's NY Times Magazine, "Our Imperfect Search for Perfection," using, among other things, the two recent Hollywood releases "The Adjustment Bureau" and "Limitless" to discuss our profoundly troubled relationship with perfection. Certainly the first time I've ever seen Pelagius in the Times (and certainly in conjunction with The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills). I was only disappointed she gave the Christian understanding of human fallibility such short shrift. Weird, almost - because fashionable or not, what she's describing here is nothing less than the unshakeable and inherent religiosity that plagues all of us, believer or no. As a treatise on the anxiety and despair produced by the Law, however, not to mention the absurdity/tragedy of the universal human addiction, it's one of the two or three best things I've ever read in that paper. And the line about Franco is one for the ages:

Given the recent hell-in-a-handbasket zeitgeist, you’d think we would all find more comfort in “The Adjustment Bureau” idea that control over our own destiny is just an illusion; that if it’s not God or fate or John Slattery in a fedora controlling what happens to us, then it’s something like luck, birth order, genetics, macroeconomics, the law of attraction, big government or your damnable idiot boss. But this is not so. Given the amount of time we spend thinking and fretting and dreaming about how to become more perfect, it’s clear we’re all living in a “Limitless” world. After the movie, a woman beside me sighed, “I really need that pill.” And I blurted out involuntarily, “So do I!”

“Limitless,” in all its pulpy glory, represents the logical terminus of a certain pattern of modern thought, endlessly fueled by the culture: if you can theoretically become perfect, then it follows that you should at least try. This idea (that man is perfectible and so should strive for perfection) has been around for 2,000 years, but it has lately been streamlined and turbo-charged: in its contemporary incarnation, it regards any unfulfilled human potentialities as a particularly sad and sclerotic form of entropy. [CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Japan, Facebook & Divorce, Preschool Litigation, more Galli on B(h)ell, The Beach Boys' Smile, Community

1. Two very moving additions to the coverage of the disasters in Japan. First, if you can decipher the google-translation, there's the story of a woman who sacrificed her life to warn a village of the impending destruction here. And two, the footage that made this all very real to yours truly. If it doesn't get you on your knees, nothing will (be sure to stick with it to the end):



2. An amusing report in the Guardian about Facebook and divorce. If ever there was an excuse to take a potshot at lawyers for having a shallow view of human nature...:

A 2010 survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML) found that four out of five lawyers reported an increasing number of divorce cases citing evidence derived from social networking sites in the past five years, with Facebook being the market leader. Two-thirds of the lawyers surveyed said that Facebook was the "primary source" of evidence in divorce proceedings, while MySpace with 15% and Twitter with 5% lagged far behind.

A spokesperson for Facebook said: "It's ridiculous to suggest that Facebook leads to divorce. Whether you're breaking up or just getting together, Facebook is just a way to communicate, like letters, phone calls and emails. Facebook doesn't cause divorces, people do."

The NY Times Magazine had a similarly Zeitgeisty take on divorce this past week too, which is worth it for the candid quotes on depravity/original sin.

3. Speaking of the Zeitgeist, there's the outrageous but evidently very real "Mother Sues Preschool For Damaging Her Daughter's Shot at the Ivy League." ht JD. 

4. For those of you interested in the ongoing Rob Bell-univeralism saga, conference speaker Mark Galli's review of the Bell's Love Wins book appeared this week, and it is very much worth your time. Galli rightly places Bell in the context of Protestant liberalism, not in order to callously write him off as such, but in an attempt to discuss the heart of the matter, which as always, has to do with atonement/justification:
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Art Imitates Law

Never Tell Tina Fey She's Crazy

The lady is on a roll in The New Yorker. Her column in last week's issue, "Lessons From Late Night," had more than its fair share of pithy wisdom. Number Nine in her list of "Things I Learned From Lorne Michaels" was particularly worth sharing. You figure out why, ht MCZ: 

(9) Never tell a crazy person he's crazy.

There were many times in my nine years at [Saturday Night Live] when I couldn't understand why Lorne [Michaels, legendary producer of SNL] didn't just tell people to knock it off. Eccentric writers would turn in sketches that were seventeens minutes too long, immature performers tried fits and tears when their sketches appeared later in the show than they'd wanted. My instinct would have been to pull these culprits aside and scold them like a schoolmarm. "Please explain to me why your sketch should get to be three times longer than everyone else's." "How dare you pitch a a fit about what time your sketch is on? Some people didn't get to be in the show at all." But there is not one management course in the world that recommends self-righteousness as a tool.

Lorne has an indirect and very effective way of dealing with the crazies. It is best described by the old joke that most people know from "Annie Hall." A man goes to a psychiatrist and says, "My brother's gone crazy. He thinks he's a chicken." And the psychiatrist says, "Have you told him he's not a chicken?" The man replies, "I would, but we need the eggs." Lorne knows that the most exhausting people occasionally turn out the best stuff... Some people arrive at the show sane, and the show turns them crazy.

In fairness to others, I will use myself as an example. In October, 2001, Manhattan was a tense place to work. One Friday morning, I was sitting in my tiny dressing room at 30 Rockefeller Plaza trying to write jokes for "Weekend Update." I was reading a thick packet of newspaper clippings, looking for something funny to say about Afghanistan, the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, the anthrax postal attacks: it was grim. Then Lester Holt came on MSNBC on the TV handing in the corner and said, "Breaking news. Anthrax has been found at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. CDC officials are investigating the potentially deadly substance, which was found in a suspicious package addressed to NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw." If you have decent reading-comprehension skills, you will remember from the beginning of this paragraph that I, too, was at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. "Nope," I thought. "I give up." I put on my coat, walked downstairs past my friend and co-workers without saying anything. I waslked past the host for that week, sweet Drew Barrymore, without telling her what I had heard. I just went to the elevator and left. Then I walked home and waited to die. Several hours later, Lorne called and said gently, "We're all here. You and Drew are the only ones who left. And Drew came back a few hours ago, so.... we're ordering dinner, if you want to come back in." It was the kindest way of saying, "You're embarrassing yourself."

I got back to work that evening just in time to find everyone assembled on the studio floor. Andy Lack, the head of NBC News, was giving the crew an emergency briefing. Nothing is scarier, by the way, than a bunch of adults being very quiet. Lack explained that the CDC would be "swabbing" workers from the second floor to the sixth floor...

As I watched from the audience balcony, I felt tremendous affection for everyone there. It was as if we were all a family and, if we had to go, at least we'd go together. I guess I forgot that just a few hours earlier I had booked it out of there, leaving them all to die. (I have a uniquely German capacity to vacillate between sentimentality and coldness). The point is Lorne did not do what I would have done, which is to say to me, "You're being crazy. Get back in here. Do you think you're more important than everybody else?" He also didn't coddle me, which is what I would have done if I were trying to overcompensate for my natural sternness. "Are you O.K.? If you need to take a couple of days off, I'm sure we can manage, blah, blah, blah." Instead, he found a way for me to slip back in the door as if my mental breakdown had never happened. "We're ordering dinner. What do you want?" He knew how to get the eggs.

Another Week Ends: Galli on B(h)ell, Growing Up Catholic, Secret Millionaires, Immortal Billionaires, Lillian Roth, Mixed Signals and Nicolas Cage

1. If you've been scratching your head over the whole "Rob Bell universalism" uproar this past week, conference speaker Mark Galli will set you straight with this charitable overview of how the topic of Hell has been dealt with over the centuries. Suffice it to say, there's nothing new under the sun, and the outcry says a lot less about Bell than about the folks reacting to his as-of-yet largely unread book. 

To lighten the mood, check the sort-of related and apparently very real After The Rapture Pet Care (ht CH).

2. The Guardian takes a look at the new laugh-or-cry memoir by comic Rory McGrath, The Father, The Son and the Ghostly Hole: Growing Up Catholic. Evidently it plumbs the depths of Catholic guilt - stemming in this case from an experience of religion as Judgment with a capital J (and zero Gospel) - in a particularly unflinching and let's-face-it tragic manner. Not exactly groundbreaking, but nonetheless striking, ht AOC:

"[After being disillusioned in high school, McGrath] never returned to the church, and he never quite shook it off. He was expecting to embark on a binge of guilt-free hedonism at university, but it didn't quite work out like that. He felt rootless rather than liberated. "You think, 'What do I do now, where am I supposed to go, what am I supposed to be doing?' It had an effect on my first years at university because I didn't know what to do. I don't know if this is to do with religion or just my character, but I had a total lack of self-discipline."

Nor did the sense of guilt disappear with his divorce from the church. In fact it grew, and he started to feel responsible for anything and everything. "I think guilt grows inside you. I'm still discovering it now, aged well whatever age I am. I'm over 40 and now discovering it's all guilt."

3. In an editorial that touches on some familiar themes, CNN accuses ABC's reality show Secret Millionaire of "shamelessly promoting a fantasy about the redemptive power of wealth." I haven't seen it but would love to hear others' thoughts:
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Another Week Ends: Grace & Cutting, Depression & Recession, David Foster Wallace, Burned-Over Generations, Greg McElroy, Supernatural, Arcade Fire

1. Continuing this past month's unexpected foray into gender-related topics (i.e. here, here, here and here), Christianity Today published a doozie of an article earlier this week on its Her.meneutics site, "The Gospel of Grace for Women Who Self-Injure". A couple lines from the conclusion (ht DB):

I’m not surprised that self-punishing behaviors occur among Christians. And this is not to blame the church. For legalism — and I would argue that this is what these behaviors are at their core — comes in guises both religious and secular. The desire to control the destiny of a few moments, if not our lives, is a fact of the human condition. But it is a fact that directly opposes the gospel of grace. 

Also female-related, from Medical News Daily (aka Captain Obvious: The Journal) is "Mean Girls and Queen Bees: Females Under Threat of Social Exclusion Respond by Excluding Others First".

2. On the male side of things, and following-up the Man-Child post, Time reports on the impact the recession appears to be having on rates of depression among men, challenging the accepted finding that the condition is more prevalent among ladies, ht TB.

3. Speaking of men and depression, it's been a big week for David Foster Wallace. The New Yorker published an excerpt of his new book The Pale King, "Backbone". To compare the published version with the version he read publicly a few years prior, go here. I also came across a terrific discussion/defense of his fiction by Rebekah Frumkin on The Common Review, entitled "Our Psychic Living Room", which includes a variation of one of our favorite quotes from the man himself via a 1996 interview (ht CR):

The sadness that [Infinite Jest] is about, and that I was going through [when I wrote it], was a real American type of sadness. I was white, upper-middle-class, obscenely well-educated, had had way more career success than I could have legitimately hoped for and was sort of adrift. A lot of my friends were the same way. Some of them were deeply into drugs, others were unbelievable workaholics. Some were going to singles bars every night. You could see it played out in 20 different ways, but it’s the same thing. . . . I get the feeling that a lot of us, privileged Americans, as we enter our early 30s, have to find a way to put away childish things and confront stuff about spirituality and values.

4. By way of self-promotion, Modern Reformation just published "Compassion, Creativity and Connecting with a Burned-Over Generation" by yours truly, which outlines some of the thinking behind Mockingbird, in case you were curious. I'm proud to say I was able to sneak Axl Rose, Michael Jackson, Whit Stillman, Oscar Wilde, Stuart Murdoch, and David Foster Wallace into the party. UPDATE: Mod Ref has been kind enough to unlock the article, so it's now available in its entirety on their site, for free! For more Reformation goodness, be sure to check out their considerably more tricked-out sister site, The White Horse Inn, and then head over to New Reformation Press to hear Rod Rosenbladt's stunning new must-hear sermon "Christianity in Five Verses." It's raining Reformation!
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Old and New Adams (and Andrews) in The Office

Conference Preview: Romantic Reality and the Theology of the Cross for a Postmodern Generation

Nothing screams for the Theology of the Cross like The Bachelor, The Kardashians, and Teen Mom. In this workshop, Romantic Reality and the Theology of the Cross for a Postmodern Generation, we will look at  today's uniquely postmodern youth culture through the lens of reality television and romantic comedies. Then we will examine how Martin Luther’s Theology of the Cross outlines the crucial approach for ministering to  this generation and communicating the gospel of grace. Whether it is the description of sin, the engagement of suffering, or simply the overall obsession with romantic love (and failure to achieve it in any lasting way) Luther's theological insights provide the best tools for connecting with postmodern youth. This workshop will be particularly useful for people working with youth or college students, parents trying to understand their adolescent child, or folks whose guilty pleasure is watching reality television and romantic comedies. Don't miss your chance to register today.

Give Up, Charlie Sheen!

But alas, the exhortation to "give up" does not engender the ability, nor the desire, to "give up."

We've posted bits and pieces on Charlie Sheen's very public, very unfortunate meltdown before, but one might argue that Thursday the "bottoming out process" began. CBS has halted production on Sheen's successful TV show, Two-and-a-Half-Men, in response to Sheen's recent disastrous radio interview. Sheen attacked, among other things, the show's producer, Alcoholics Anonymous, and, of course, Thomas Jefferson? As Sheen publicly tailspins, he becomes a public example of the bound will we all wrestle with day-in and day-out. Some moments from Sheen's recent spectacle [from buddytv.com]:

On Alcoholics Anonymous: "This bootleg cult, arrogantly referred to as Alcoholics Anonymous, reports a 5 percent success rate. My success rate is 100 percent. Do the math ... another one of their mottoes is 'Don't be special, be one of us.' Newsflash: I am special, and I will never be one of you! I have a disease? [Expletive implying the previous statement wasn't true]! I cured it with my brain, with my mind. I cured it, I'm done."

On how he's a High Priest Vatican Assassin Warlock: "Guys, it's right there in the thing, duh! We work for the Pope, we murder people. We're Vatican assassins. How complicated can it be? What they're not ready for is guys like you and I and Nails and all the other gnarly gnarlingtons [a term of endearment] in my life, that we are high priests, Vatican assassin warlocks. Boom. Print that, people. See where that goes."

On his own awesomeness: "I'm sorry, man, but I've got magic. I've got poetry in my fingertips. Most of the time--and this includes naps --I'm an F-18, bro. And I will destroy you in the air. I will deploy my ordinance to the ground."

On Jefferson: "I'm not Thomas Jefferson. He was a [expletive implying weakness]. But I dare anyone to debate me on things."

Perhaps Sheen's meltdown is at its most discomforting when, in feverishly rejecting his need for further help or recovery, he shows his desperate need for help and recovery. In passionately rejecting AA, he shows his desperate need for AA. In his refusal to accept grace, he shows his desperate need of grace. It is in his "health" that everybody else can see his sickness.

So, Mr. Sheen, all we can really do is leave you with that which you most despise: Step 1. "We admitted we were powerless... that our lives had become unmanageable..." Speaking from experience, this powerlessness is the only thing that gets you through the times when your F-18 crashes and your mind can't find the cure. Maybe one day we can be your "gnarly gnarlingtons?"

The full interview is available online, but listening to the whole thing amounts to cynical enjoyment in another person's vocational train wreck, which we don't endorse at MBird. As DZ said in his previous post- we really hope CS finds he help he needs!

p.s. For a glimpse into the hyper-relevant Mockingbird publication Grace in Addiction: What the Church Can Learn from Alcoholics Anonymous, go here - if we had his address, we'd send him a copy (nudge nudge).

Another Week Ends: U-Bending Happiness, South Park Religion, Charlie Sheen, Louie CK, Friday Night Lights

1. From one of the December issues of The Economist, some interesting findings about "Age and Happiness". The main discovery being the "U-Bend" - i.e. the finding that people are happiest in their youth and old age, and least happy in between. The most relevant section for us has to do with "the death ambition" (ht VH):

Maybe people come to accept their strengths and weaknesses [as they grow older], give up hoping to become chief executive or have a picture shown in the Royal Academy, and learn to be satisfied as assistant branch manager, with their watercolour on display at the church fete. “Being an old maid”, says one of the characters in a story by Edna Ferber, an (unmarried) American novelist, was “like death by drowning—a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling.” Perhaps acceptance of ageing itself is a source of relief. “How pleasant is the day”, observed William James, an American philosopher, “when we give up striving to be young—or slender.”

2. A great overview on Slate of South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone's dealings over the years with religion. They've certainly not shied away from the topic, as their upcoming Book of Mormon musical boldly drives home. Parker has always seemed to be the driving force, so it's a shame they didn't interview him, but nevertheless [vulgarity warning - duh]:

What Parker and Stone do isn't religion-bashing. It's religion-teasing. And it's born more from fascination than disdain. "I'm an atheist that admires and likes religion," Stone told me in an interview. He describes the new musical as "an atheist's love letter to religion." If you had to classify Parker and Stone's world view, you might call it Hobbesian absurdism.[CONTINUE READING]

Conference Preview: Bride of Mockingbird at the Movies!

How do we go from "I don't even believe in Jebus" to "Save me Jebus!"? We need to be impacted. Whether you're looking for new insight about faith and the Gospel for yourself, or looking for new ways to share it with others, come to the "Bride of Mockingbird at the Movies" breakout session at the upcoming Mockingbird Conference (March 31 to April 2 in NYC). In our time, and really, since the Lumiere brothers invented the moving picture in 1895, movies and television have had a special access to us. Drama can bring us to tears, and comedy can put aches in our sides, all while we remain on the couch, physically unmoved.

This access can be a powerful tool for ministry, and a powerful access point for God. At "Bride of Mockingbird at the Movies," we'll look at some film clips (all-new content from last year!) and talk about how even those godless Hollywood-types can tell stories that touch us and communicate something of God's grace to us, often without mentioning God at all. We'll have something both for the person looking to have the Gospel proclaimed to them in a new way, and for the person looking to proclaim the Gospel to others in a new way.

So come, join us, and let the movies do the preaching!

Sweet Emotion on American Idol?

Not being a huge American Idol person, or post-Rocks Aerosmith fan, everything in Jon Caramanica's article in this past Sunday's NY Times, "Steven Tyler Escapes From Idolatry," was news to me. Those of you who've seen the episode in question can tell us whether it was indeed a lightning-striking instance of grace on TV or a carefully played media-moment (or both, as the article suggests). But there's an unmistakeable note of Nazareth here - in regards to Mr. Tyler, that is - of folks being caught seriously off guard by his charisma/character/kindness, of their preconceptions being exposed for what they are (myself included), not to mention the sheer unexpectedness of grace, ht CW:

Fame isn’t all gold, honey and massage oils; it’s also the successful navigation of a steady stream of unlikely and uncomfortable situations. At this, the first few weeks of the 10th season of “American Idol” have proved, Steven Tyler is an unalloyed genius.

The moment when Mr. Tyler, one of this season’s new judges, claimed the show as his own came during the third night of auditions. Chris Medina tried out with a muscular version of The Script’s “Breakeven” after telling the story of how his fiancée, Juliana Ramos, suffered a brain injury that left her in a wheelchair, able to move her left arm and little more. After he sang, he brought Ms. Ramos in to the audition room at the judges’ behest. By any measure it was difficult to watch, testing the viewer’s urge to turn away, to wish for a speedy change of scene.

Randy Jackson and Jennifer Lopez introduced themselves to Ms. Ramos, but Mr. Tyler took charge. “Hi, girl,” he said, shaking her hand. “I just heard your fiancé sing, and he’s so good.” At this point, as she teetered back and forth, he was gripping her shoulder and staring at her comfortingly: a rock, a confidant, a seducer. “You know, because he sings to you all the time,” he said, leaning in to her, stroking her hair, kissing her warmly — all with tenderness — then whispering in her ear, “That’s why he sings so good, because he sings to you.”

It was a stellar embrace, the sort of practiced sincerity that’s one of the wages of extreme celebrity. Except that, over time, it can shake free of its dishonesty, as was the case here. In that moment Mr. Tyler was both deeply practiced and deeply humane. It made for a stunning display of kindness unusual not just for “Idol,” but for all of popular culture in matters of dealing with the severely disabled. [CONTINUE READING]

Tina Fey and The Baby-Career Dilemma

Tina Fey plays the double messages of modern life better than anyone, particularly those that relate to women. On 30 Rock, her character Liz Lemon is a catalog of contradictions, constantly (and hilariously) battling the differences between the ideal and the real, her 'shoulds' and her 'wants', her convictions and her appetites, etc. She mines those discrepancies for laughs, and in doing so, has become something of an icon for (a certain kind of) modern woman, a walking commentary on contemporary gender politics. She adds just enough straight-man self-deprecation to get away with some fairly subversive comedy, and whenever 30 Rock veers from that mold, it gets pretty shrill/snobby, pretty fast. Anyways, Fey recently put her considerable skills to work for the New Yorker, examining the question of whether or not to have a second baby, "Confessions of a Juggler." The piece, which is really very funny, doubles as a crash-course in moving-target Judgment, both the internal and external kind, and the fruit it produces: sleepless nights, canker sores, counter-judgments, etc. And in the final paragraph, if you substitute "minister" for "gynecologist," (and assume Christ as the basis of the assurance), you almost have Law/Gospel treatise on your hands... I'm only sort of kidding: 

"What is the rudest question you can ask a woman? 'How old are you?' 'What do you weigh?'... No, the worst question is: 'How do you juggle it all?' 'How do you juggle it all?' people constantly ask me, with an accusatory look in their eyes, 'You're screwing it all up, aren't you?' their eyes say. My standard answer is that I have the same struggles as any working parent but with the good fortune to be working at my dream job. Or sometimes I just hand them a juicy red apple I've poisoned in my working-mother witch cauldron and fly away.

The second-worst question you can ask a woman is: 'Are you going to have more kids?'
[CONTINUE READING]

Mr. Show presents: The American Heresy

"The only thing preventing your resurrection is YOU!"

Seinfeld Babies

World collide!

Forgiving Don Draper

A laudably contrarian view of Mad Men appeared in the recent issue of The New York Review of Books by Daniel Mendelsohn, "The Mad Men Account," raising a number of important questions before making a remarkable and even rather touching conclusion. Mendelsohn definitely sells the series short: for example, when he claims that he was only genuinely drawn into the drama once in the entire four seasons (as participant rather than observer), it's a little hard to believe. And who's to say the stuff of soap opera isn't also the stuff of life?! His critique of the acting as vacant may have a basis - I'm thinking of Betty - but even there, it's a half-truth. Peggy and Pete go noticeably unmentioned, both played by actors who imbue their roles with undeniable blood and guts. But most of his gripes actually underline the show's peculiar brilliance, especially in light of the conclusion. That is, the Both/And nature of the Mad Men perspective (being simultaneously attracted to and repelled by the era and industry it depicts) is precisely one of the things that makes it so compelling. All this to say that Mendelsohn's take is worth a read - his thoughts on the conflicted and somewhat childish superiority at work behind the scenes may have more validity than we'd care to admit. It's also refreshing to see Friday Night Lights get some love from the high-art establishment. See for yourself:

We are currently living in a new golden age of television, a medium that has been liberated by cable broadcasting to explore both fantasy and reality with greater frankness and originality than ever before: as witness shows as different as the now-iconic crime dramas The Sopranos and The Wire, with their darkly glinting, almost Aeschylean moral textures; the philosophically provocative, unexpectedly moving sci-fi hit Battlestar Galactica, a kind of futuristic retelling of the Aeneid; and the perennially underappreciated small-town drama Friday Night Lights, which offers, among other things, the finest representation of middle-class marriage in popular culture of which I’m aware.

With these standouts (and there are many more), Mad Men shares virtually no significant qualities except its design. The writing is extremely weak, the plotting haphazard and often preposterous, the characterizations shallow and sometimes incoherent; its attitude toward the past is glib and its self-positioning in the present is unattractively smug; the acting is, almost without exception, bland and sometimes amateurish.
---------------

Mad Men keeps telling you what to think instead of letting you think for yourself. As I watched the first season, the characters and their milieu were so unrelentingly repellent that I kept wondering whether the writers had been trying, unsuccessfully, for a kind of camp—for a tartly tongue-in-cheek send-up of Sixties attitudes... But the creators of Mad Men are in deadly earnest. It’s as if these forty- and thirty-somethings can’t quite believe how bad people were back then, and can’t resist the impulse to keep showing you.

This impulse might be worth indulging (briefly), but the problem with Mad Men is that it suffers from a hypocrisy of its own. As the camera glides over Joan’s gigantic bust and hourglass hips, as it languorously follows the swirls of cigarette smoke toward the ceiling, as the clinking of ice in the glass of someone’s midday Canadian Club is lovingly enhanced, you can’t help thinking that the creators of this show are indulging in a kind of dramatic having your cake and eating it, too: even as it invites us to be shocked by what it’s showing us (a scene people love to talk about is one in which a hugely pregnant Betty lights up a cigarette in a car), it keeps eroticizing what it’s showing us, too. For a drama (or book, or whatever) to invite an audience to feel superior to a less enlightened era even as it teases the regressive urges behind the behaviors associated with that era strikes me as the worst possible offense that can be committed in a creative work set in the past: it’s simultaneously contemptuous and pandering. Here, it cripples the show’s ability to tell us anything of real substance about the world it depicts.
[CONTINUE READING]

PZ's Podcast: Protestant Interiors (Whistling Dixie)

EPISODES 31&32

You can say all you want about a certain thing, yet people won't believe you. They will simply not believe you. You can present old documents and ancient photographs, accompanied by diaries and essays by people who were "there"; and they still won't believe you. For whatever reasons of their own, they won't believe you.

That's the experience I have had for almost 40 years in trying to convince people that Anglican Christianity is a Protestant phenomenon, or at least was once Protestant.

The fact that this is an empirical fact, which can be proven from the evidence and with no difficulty, seems to make no difference. It 'can't' be true because most people don't want it to be true.

PZ's Podcast this week is an exercise in futility, and I give it no hope of success. But I really was asked to talk about this, or at least one more time before keeping silent forevermore.

Episode 31 relates the Prayer Book history of Anglicanism, in England and America, from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to about 1980. This episode tells that story in terms of the interiors of church buildings: where the pulpit was positioned in relation to the altar, the arrangement of the seating, the color of the glass in the windows, the Sunday service that was customary (i.e., Morning Prayer with Sermon), the position of the clergy during the service, the location of the galleries, and so on.

Episode 31 offers some examples of the "Prayer-Book church", which is the formal term to describe the 200 or so protestant interiors that survived in England after the Victorian-era Oxford Movement swept them all away. Almost every church mentioned PZ has visited in person, often with other members of the Mockingbird team.

Episode 32 (up on Thursday) takes a little trip down the East Coast, from Boston to Charleston, surveying the Prayer-Book churches, almost all of them dating from the Colonial period, which survive in this country. They are fascinating survivals and tell an interesting story.

But look, it's really not important. You can bay and whinny and hold up books and pictures on this subject 'til you are blue in the face. No one will believe you. Whenever I used to talk about The Protestant Face of Anglicanism, I felt like the man in CCR's "It Came Out of the Sky (Landed just a Little South of Moline)". No one really believed me. In fact, the vision of what had once happened -- Anglicanism as an inherently Protestant phenomenon -- became divisive. I felt like the little boy in the classic 'Twilight Zone' episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street". He saw the saucer, no one believed him, but then they started killing each other. (See that one!: It's vintage and will never date.)

Please don't listen to these two podcasts. They're a little funny, but you won't like them. Next week I'll return to something important, like maybe the 1997 Viennese musical "Tanz der Vampire". Nothing funny about that -- "Total Eclipse of the Heart".

Another Week Ends: Transformation Myths, Eating Disorders, Suicidal Standards, Aging Ungracefully, Rehab Albums, St Elizabeths

1.  The timing just could not be any better. NYC Mockingbird Conference Speaker Mark Galli has been blowing up this past week, most notably on The Internet Monk. Start with The Evangelical Myth of "Transformation" and go from there - the discussion provides a helpful overview of where Mr Galli is coming from, not to mention a few clues as to why we asked him to speak. Speaking of NYC, we can now announce that childcare will indeed be available, for kids under the age of 8. Email us at info@mbird.com if you plan on taking us up on the offer. Register today. Otherwise, brace yourself for a rather somber week ends column...

2.  Why Am I Not Smarter Than My Eating Disorder? on Salon.com is about as unassuming an article on the bondage of will as we're likely to find. Almost comically so - at least, if it weren't about something so unfunny (ht JD):

I know what I need to do to overcome this disorder. I just need to get over it and eat healthily and according to the principles in which my intellectual mind believes. This shouldn't be hard. For whatever reason, I don't seem to be doing it.

3.  From the Scientific American, a revealing but also pretty grim article, "What It Feels Like To Kill Yourself," which gives new meaning to the phrase "the Law kills." The following portion was particularly relevant:

Most people who kill themselves actually lived better-than-average lives. Suicide rates are higher in nations with higher standards of living than in less prosperous nations; higher in US states with a better quality of life; higher in societies that endorse individual freedoms; higher in areas with better weather; in areas with seasonal change, they are higher during the warmer seasons; and they’re higher among college students that have better grades and parents with higher expectations.

Baumeister argues that such idealistic conditions actually heighten suicide risk because they often create unreasonable standards for personal happiness, thereby rendering people more emotionally fragile in response to unexpected setbacks.

4.  In an article entitled "The Myth of Aging Gracefully" in The Daily Beast (via Newsweek) author Susan Jacoby has some refreshingly counter-cultural things to say about the "thirst for glory," ht RF:

"Who wants to live to 100? Just about everyone, if old age fulfills the fantasy that we can sail through our 90s with vigorous bodies and minds and die instantly of a heart attack, preferably while making love or running the last of many marathons. As the oldest baby boomers turn 65, it is past time to take a realistic look at old age as it is—not as a minor inconvenience to be remedied by longevity-worshiping hucksters of “anti-aging” supplements or brain-teasing computer games, not as a “disease” that will soon by “cured” by a medical miracle, and not as an experience to be defied and denied, in the spirit of a 2008 World Science Festival panel on aging titled “90 Is the New 50.” No, it’s not. It’s not even the new 70. The truth is that we are all capable of aging successfully—until we aren’t.

5.  The Wall Street Journal reports on the fascinating relationship between sobriety and hit records in "The Rehab Album", using Mbird favorite Justin Townes Earle as one of their case studies, ht DW.
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