More on Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson: Vindictive Theology, Weak Bible Literacy (Issues 2013)

⁹ Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, ¹⁰ nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.

--1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (RSV)

To return to Phil Robertson of A&E's reality series Duck Dynasty (previous blog), I’m surprised at how easily the media and many discussing the star's GQ interview, even if only on Facebook, have accepted the idea that he is merely expressing the Christian point of view. Is it really the Christian point of view that God views homosexuality as sinful and will "sort out" its practitioners on Judgment Day?

While I am now an atheist, I spent a great deal of my life growing up in small, Midwestern, largely Protestant and socially conservative communities, and I believed in the Gospel along with most everyone else. The dominant official opinion was always that homosexuality is indeed a sin, but hate the sin and love the sinner, we all sin, judgment is God’s business anyway, and God loves everyone. I do remember gay jokes being passed around, which isn’t good, but I have absolutely no recollection of any bullying or rancor whatsoever. I believe anyone suspected of being gay or openly gay would have been welcome at any of the churches I attended, and I know for certain there was no shortage of faithful who didn't believe it was a sin at all to be gay or who believed it was, along with all other sins, forgiven by the ultimate sacrifice Christ paid on the cross.

This softer approach by Christians toward the issue has not been entirely absent from the debate. I’m glad to see dogmatism and hate are not the norm for many Christian communities. I must point out, however, that underneath all the talk of forgiveness and love, there often still lurks the condemnation of a perceived sin and the threat of eternal damnation. No matter how nicely you tell people they’re going to Hell, you’re still telling them they’re going to Hell.

What I learned when I studied religion at a Methodist-affiliated college, however, was that the Bible doesn’t clearly say that homosexuality is a sin--contrary to popular belief. When the Bible verses cited as condemning homosexuality are studied, they are either obvious myth, do not specifically mention homosexuality at all, or take place within a context that throws their application today into serious question. Jesus himself said not one word about homosexuality, and some scholars posit that Paul himself may have been in the closet. In fact, nothing in the Bible suggests that two people of the same sex in a loving relationship ever crossed the minds of the dramatis personae themselves, the writers, or the editors of the Bible.

The research for this was done by Bible and theology scholars, many of them ministers, from a broad array of mainstream denominations. It’s too bad that more of their work doesn’t make it into the hands of the rank and file believers in the pews and those overzealous to condemn others.

I learned all that a long time ago, and my textbooks are buried halfway around the world in my parents’ basement, so I decided to go back and check some of the Bible verses commonly cited by those of Phil Robertson’s persuasion and found that much of what I remembered held up well.

While working on this blog, I stumbled across an article on CNN that examines First Corinthians 6:9-10, Duck Robertson’s own verses of choice. In typical CNN style, it asks a bold question, “Does Phil Robertson get the Bible wrong?” and then works its way down the field to punt, but along the way, it provides a fairly decent introduction to the types of translation and cultural issues that arise when trying to interpret what the Bible says about homosexuality.

The takeaway is that it’s anything but clear--which is okay for those of us Christian and otherwise who don’t see God (or wouldn't if we believed he existed) as the DMV and the Bible as the Rules of the Road, but bad news for those who do--because they’re the ones saying it’s right there as plain as day, and it just ain’t.

 

Take for example, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, the version I grew up with attending Methodist churches, the version in the pews, the version I was awarded on various occasions such as Confirmation, the version I quote at the top of this blog. Reading it, First Corinthians 6:9-10 wouldn't appear a likely candidate for supporting anti-gay views at all! 

The next time you hear condemnation of gay lifestyles as simply part and parcel of Christianity, don’t you believe it. This is a point we should not cede, a battle in the culture wars from which we should not retreat.

Another Brouhaha in the House of Cultural Warfare: Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson (Issues 2013)

Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson’s comments to GQ sparked another one of those controversies that a lot of people wish would just go away, but as with the Miley Cyrus VMA performance (blog), I find it to be a fascinating issue because of the cultural dogfight that resulted.

A few quotes from the interview (here):

“It seems like, to me, a vagina--as a man--would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”

“We never, ever judge someone on who’s going to heaven, hell. That’s the Almighty’s job. We just love ’em, give ’em the good news about Jesus--whether they’re homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort ’em out later, you see what I’m saying?”

And this on the South in the days of Jim Crow:

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’--not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

It is not surprising that many were not pleased with his comments, which they saw as bigoted and ignorant, and the A&E network immediately suspended him from Duck Dynasty. The reality show has a lot of fans, however, and they took to Facebook to express their disapproval of A&E’s decision.

I think it helps to think about issues like these by breaking them down into sub-issues. In the case of Phil Robertson, the broader issue is whether it is okay to be gay, including sub-issues like whether it should be okay before the law and whether it is okay before God. Then there is the issue of whether he has a right to his opinion and religion. And whether he has the right to freedom of speech, in his home, on television, in magazines, etc. Whether a company that employs him has the right to fire him and would be right to do so. And what kinds of response are the rest of us permitted when faced by his views?

Unfortunately, public debate has a tendency to glob all the sub-issues together, with everyone joining a For camp or an Against camp. Sure we have all heard the various aspects of the issue raised, but always within the context of a battle between broad For and Against opinions. Rarely do you hear anyone speak as if they understand there are multiple issues at play and on some of them they may stand with Robertson and on others they may stand against him.

This is what I call the What-It-All-Boils-Down-To Syndrome. Take any issue, no matter how multifaceted, and there’s never any shortage of people reducing it to one facet that is most likely to support their globular For or Against position. Sometimes a complex problem can be reduced to a basic principle that undercuts the other arguments--identifying how concepts relate is a key tool of reasoning--but most of the issues of the day cannot. When people say “What it all boils down to is…” you can usually be sure it doesn’t.

But they sure wish it did, because then they win.

It is possible, however, to work through the problem, addressing each sub-issue to construct a nuanced opinion. For example, my own opinion is that Robertson’s condemnation of gay lifestyles is wrong and that God (if such a being worthy of the name existed) would disagree with him, too; that Robertson does indeed have the right to his personal opinion and brand of faith; that he has the right to speak his opinion wherever and whenever he pleases; but that he should not have immunity from certain consequences: his employer, A&E, has the right to remove him from the show and would be right to do so, and everyday people--especially those he maligns--have the right to express their criticism in non-violent ways.

Someone else might say that it is a sin to be gay, so Robertson was right in his personal religious belief, but God loves and forgives everyone, so Robertson was wrong to publicly judge and condemn. Nonetheless, A&E shouldn’t fire him because it sets a questionable precedent if corporations can fire employees for publicly uttering their personal views--like those CEOs who decreed they would fire any employees who didn’t vote for Romney in 2012. Best for all of us to keep private opinions private.

Countless variations on these themes are possible.

But instead of discussing these matters with our full powers of discernment--of sifting and sorting--the public participates in this strange phenomenon in which the following type of scenario is not uncommon: Person A who is For says, “Duck has a right to his personal opinion,” and Person B who is Against responds, “But his employer has the right to fire him,” and the two never appear to notice, much less admit, that they may actually agree on both of these points. In fact, it isn’t hard to imagine two people bitterly clashing over this issue when they actually agree on nearly all of the involved sub-issues.

That’s because in their minds, first and foremost, they stylize themselves as For or Against within the issue as one undifferentiated whole. So here’s another syndrome: High School Debate Syndrome. Remember how high school teachers would declare a class debate and assign every student to one side or the other? Inevitably, some students would protest that they didn’t believe in the side they were assigned, to which the teacher would always reply, “That doesn’t matter. Come up with reasons for your side and don’t budge an inch.”

It’s as if now that we’re adults, we do this to ourselves. We pick a side, then come up with reasons (which is backwards if philosophy and psychology have taught us anything) and begin digging trenches, even when, in our calmer and more rational moments, we aren’t fully on our own side.

But it’s okay to see issues in their complexity. When it comes to Robertson, it’s okay to be both for and against (little first letters now to keep them in their place), depending on the specific aspects of the larger issue and to find points of agreement in dialogue with others. This way, some actual progress can be made in, and some clarity brought to, the issue--even if only so that opponents can later butt heads all the more vigorously about what really separates them.

---

Postscript in light of recent news (here):

How do I feel now that A&E has restored Robertson to the program? I am opposed to it because I would have preferred to see a company take a firm moral stand even at the expense of a cash cow. But I’m also fine with it, because the public dialogue has played itself out, with certain forces winning the day. Those forces have been put on notice, they’ve won the battle, but they’re losing the war, and the day will come when they won’t even be able to get away with these little victories.

 

The Miley Cyrus Affair (Issues 2013)

Perhaps I can continue a run of blogs with a brief series on the issues that captivated me most in 2013, beginning with one that everyone probably feels they have already heard way too much about: The Miley Cyrus Affair.

During the controversy following the infamous Video Music Awards performance, many kept pointing out “There’s a war on in Syria!” Indeed, there were more apparently weighty stories in 2013, but I found this one to be among the most fascinating.

I first caught the performance in a series of GIFs I can't find right now. Soon after, the prudes attacked it as raunchy on a par with porn, feminists attacked it for the way it succumbs to the music industry's aesthetic of selling female flesh, other feminists defended it by attacking the first feminists for slut-shaming, then a series of professional bloggers attacked it as racist.

Say what you will, the performance initiated one hell of a dogfight in the culture wars, and this makes it worth some consideration.

I think it helps to think of the performance as a text--and therefore somewhat ambiguous and open to interpretation. I’m no expert, but as I understand the basic premises of post-structuralism, the meaning of a text, as a work of language, gains meaning from factors outside the author’s intentions, from an infinite web of cultural connotations, infinitely involuted or expanding, however you want to think of it. In this case, the text is a live performance composed of images and gestures as well as lyrics, delivered by performers and technicians, but taking up meaning within the context of America today, including its historical heritage. Like an onion, you may peel away one layer to see another, but you never reach a core that is the meaning of the text. You may turn it like a diamond to see some facets instead of others, but you never see the one angle that counts.

Many of the attacks on the performance come from writers who appear to be well-versed in this kind of critique. They are eager to begin stripping away those layers, to reveal the hidden significance, usually connected to civil rights, behind every sign however innocuous at first glance--every turn of phrase, every gesture, every giant teddy bear, every extended tongue. Miley Cyrus was treated to a big helping of this, with some writers tying her to the history of slavery (recounted at great length) and calling her performance a "minstrel show" (Vulture).

Watching the performance, I myself noticed that the designers of the performance had clearly chosen black women to be the background dancers, so I don’t mean to say that these writers have no point, only that beyond the obvious fact of the race of the dancers, the rest isn’t immediately clear. And if it takes that much intellectual labor to show how bigoted something is, then one thing it isn’t is blatant. It appears to me that in the application of their interpretive techniques these authors are fueled from the start by their favorite moralizing on civil rights issues and have no inclination to apply the brakes on corners as the uncertainty of textual interpretation should encourage. It's all adamant outrage, with each writer seeming to try to find worse terms of condemnation than the last. 

 

Perhaps then, this blog is a post-structuralist critique of post-structuralist critiques.

Having said that, it is too lenient to suggest that Miley Cyrus and/or whoever designed the performance, bears no responsibility for whatever sexist or racist effluvium culture and history have deposited, through them, as knowing or unknowing actors, into their performance. In the post-modern world, most of us are aware that words and images speak more than they appear to at first glance, and this is doubly true for anyone marketing to the masses. Backup dancers are not just backup dancers--how they dance, how they are treated, how they are dressed, their race, their physique, and so on all speak an infinity of meanings, as the performance's critics point out knowledgeably if also somewhat overwroughtly. When I saw the performance, I thought, “Someone should have known better.”

However, they frequently don’t.

In short, while I wish that the teams of people designing the performance had been more color blind, I also wish the professional bloggers who took up the fight against its latent and manifest racial stereotyping had rejected the urge to jump to hyperbole and had instead made the same strokes with more restraint and fidelity to the philosophical foundations of their trade.

My Personal Best of 2013 in All the Rest: Movies, TV, Video Games and Comics

I may have managed to read a fair amount of books (blog) and listen to a lot of music (blog) in 2013, but I had little time for other types of media. Nonetheless, I always make an effort, so here’s my best of 2013 in movies, television, video games and comics.

The only movie I saw in movie theaters this year, and the most enjoyable movie I saw this year, was Star Trek: Into Darkness. J. J. Abrams’s reboot of Star Trek is the best thing to happen to the franchise since Star Trek: The Next Generation. But the rest of my movie viewing tended to be of classics, which I find increasingly reliable for stimulation (blog). After hearing philosopher Slavoj Zizek discuss Possessed (1931) in the following clip from The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, I had to check it out. (Discussion of Possessed starts after the intro and finishes at 3:16 when he starts talking about The Matrix.)

 

In Possessed, a short and fast-paced film, Joan Crawford plays a factory worker who becomes the kept woman of a city gent (Clark Gable). At first, she’s just out for his money, and even tells him so, but she ends up falling in love and desiring marriage even though the ensuing scandal would harm his chances of being elected governor. It doesn’t sound like anything special, but like all great films, it covers a lot of ground, as the back cover of the DVD summarizes so well:

“This pre-Code scorcher…expertly mixes greed, ambition, politics and sex into a frank portrait of a world where men have power and women have a sell-by date stamped on their flesh.”

I fared less well in television this year, falling even further behind with series I love like Game of Thrones and Mad Men. These are on hold until my wife and I can find time to sit down together and watch them--which means the situation is dire. On my own, I did find time to watch both seasons of Rome. The shifting fortunes of soldiers Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus were entertaining, and it was interesting to watch the fall of the Roman Republic as the House of Caesar rose, but I enjoyed most the character of Atia of the Julii. She schemes for her family’s power with such lovable simplicity that the sore price she pays in the end, as her son finally rises to become Emperor Augustus, makes her tragic. Here is Polly Walker in full flurry as Atia the Amoral:

 

In video games, I played through The 3rd Birthday, a sci-fi shooter and spin-off from the Parasite Eve series, on my trusty PSP, and, in a sudden burst of activity, I busted out the old PS2, scraped the crust out of its crevices, and finished off Silent Hill 2--a game I began seven years ago way back in 2006. I got the suicide ending, which apparently means I play on the edge with no regard for danger. I would have expected to get the chickenshit ending, but this is much cooler.

Comics suffered the worst this year since I have yet to find an economical and convenient way to buy them in Japan. However, I did read through the graphic novel of the Spider-Man classic Kraven’s Last Hunt, and it proved to be as engrossing as it was when I was a kid scouring the shelves for single issues at Day & Palin in Farmington, IL. When Kraven the Hunter decides it’s time to kill Spider-Man and take his place, we readers get a deep look into the psyches of the two, their darkness and strength.

 

All in all, as 2013, the Year of Dwindling Free Time, draws to a close, I count myself blessed. I can never read enough or absorb enough music, but increasingly I find that other forms of entertainment like movies, TV and video games can take a backseat to everything else. Much better to spend time with my family, say by talking with my wife over a bottle of Sangria or using Tomica cars to knock down Transformers with my son.

My Personal Best of 2013 in Music

Between my Major Life Activity, a two-year-old and everything else, my once small reserve of time for kicking back and relaxing has dwindled to the point where it’s as ephemeral as those stars you can see out of the corner of your eye but which disappear when you try to look straight at them. Nonetheless, sitting at my desk working long hours every day, I can still enjoy music--and here’s my personal best of 2013.

The hands-down best music I encountered this year was Lucius (new album), noted for its two lead female vocalists who often sing in unison. I’m reminded of when a band performed traditional Irish music at the Harbor Bar in Portrush, Ireland when I was at university. Sometimes, a female vocalist would join for a few songs and a reverential hush would settle over the bar. Lucius is like that. The group's best songs and recordings are a moment within which something intimate occurs, something carved out of all the surrounding clamor. A lot of fans came to Lucius through a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR (here), but I just can’t get “Two of Us on the Run” out of my head:

 

 

Perhaps the biggest force in my listening habits this year, however, was The Roots. It all started when I read drummer Questlove’s memoir Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove. I kept notes as he mentioned his favorite albums from soul and R&B to rap and hip-hop, and then I began tracking down as many of them as I could, from Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life to N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton to De La Soul classics like De La Soul Is Dead. And, of course, I devoured just about anything The Roots have touched: studio albums, live albums, collaborations, and even songs merely produced by the group or featuring its members as guests. Here’s an official video medley from the 2006 album Game Theory:

 

While I definitely prefer the late 80s/early 90s hip-hop style--the groups, social commentary, danceable beats and gritty production--my quest for the best in rap and hip-hop also led me to download more recent albums like NAS’s Life Is Good, Kanye West’s dark fantasy Yeezus, and, just last week, Busta Rhymes and Q-tip’s free mixtape The Abstract & The Dragon (here). These recent albums show that the genre ain’t what it used to be, but it can still be engaging.

In 2013, a lot of my favorite groups came out with new albums--AFI, Avenged Sevenfold and Linkin Park--but they all tended to be good rather than great. One artist who redeemed herself in my eyes, however, was M.I.A. Maya, her last official release, left me with the feeling she was rehashing old tricks instead of breathing new life into them, but this year I discovered the Vicki Leekx mixtape, and soon after, this year’s Matangi. Together, the two releases show that M.I.A. has the creativity to back up her swagger. Nothing sounds like her, and that isn’t an easy feat in today’s music industry.

 

All of that is a far cry from the usual heavy alternative and metal that usually moves me, but it wasn’t that kind of year. Go where Euterpe leads, and you can’t go wrong.

My Personal Best of 2013 in Books

Some friends and I have a yearly tradition of sharing our favorite media with each other, and since life hasn’t been kind enough to allow me time to think, much less blog, about anything heavier in recent weeks, I thought I would expand upon my favorites here at The Gleaming Sword, beginning with books.

In a year when a new Robert Jordan book comes out, nothing else stands a chance, and that was true in 2013 as well. Each of the last three installments in the Wheel of Time series, completed by Brian Sanderson based on Jordan’s notes, has been excellent, and A Memory of Light, the fourteenth and final book, was among the best in the whole series. Somehow, Sanderson brought the biggest plot spread and largest cast of characters I’ve ever seen to a satisfying conclusion. I remember seeing The Wheel of Time on a list of books adults should grow out of, but I have to disagree. Its stark vision of Good versus Evil is just as satisfying to me as an adult as it was when I began reading almost 20 years ago in college.

 

Instead of jumping from series to series this year, I tried to follow some straight through to the end. One such sustained reading project was Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series--which even got a blog of its own (blog). The true enjoyment of this series lay in the concept of all humanity resurrected along the banks of a massive river and in learning about the historical personages who appear throughout the series, from Sir Richard Francis Burton and Alice Pleasance Liddell to Cyrano de Bergerac, King John and Hermann Goring. Unfortunately, after the phenomenal first book, I found the series frustratingly uneven, with little in the way of prose style and only infrequent glimpses of the engaging characters, gripping events and insightful ponderings with which the series began.

But it was an interesting series, and it led me to learn more about Sir Richard Francis Burton by reading Fawn M. Brodie’s biography The Devil Drives. Burton was a soldier, explorer, poet, linguist and translator, most known for discovering Lake Tanganyika and translating One Thousand and One Nights. In some of that--his penchant for study, travel and translation--I can’t help but feel he was something of a kindred spirit, but if he was, he was certainly a much higher specimen of our type. The Devil Drives was interesting for its insight into Burton, but also for its glimpse into a time when the world was still being discovered rather than simply covered.

 

If Richard Burton was something of a kindred spirit, my next big subject of interest--with his drugs, alcohol, guns and wild pranks--was certainly not. As I read the biography Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson, I was fascinated, but disconcerted by a mind both unglued as well as genius. I can sympathize with his political leanings, but his way of living positively frightens me. Nonetheless, it is hard to imagine he would have delivered up such classics as Hell’s Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas without continually living on the edge.

The real treat in my exploration of Thompson this year was Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. It spends over half its pages on the Democratic primaries, dives deep into the Democratic convention, and, almost as an afterthought, as a shrug, comments upon George McGovern’s loss to Richard Nixon. The book is Thompson in high style, slewing from serious reporting and interview transcripts to colorful anecdotes, invective and surreal fantasy--and it leaves one sad that a man as good as George McGovern should be forgotten to most:

 

Projects for 2014 include continuing a thread of reading in the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory with Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization, with lighter reading in the Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson Dune books and Michael Moorcock’s Elric books.

More on those next year, perhaps.

In Skip Ender's Game vs. Orson Scott Card, Money Wins

“Those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.”

 

--Orson Scott Card in “The Hypocrites of Homosexuality” (full text here)

The numbers are in and it appears Ender’s Game, the big-budget film adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s novel of the same name, has topped the weekend box office. According to AP, it earned $28 million, meeting Lionsgate’s expectations (article). The story of this film and the controversy surrounding Card’s homophobia has ended the way so many do: Money wins.

The controversy stems from the author’s opposition to LGBT lifestyles. The organization Geeks OUT (website) started the Skip Ender’s Game boycott of the movie (website), and offers the following as a summary of its position:

“Orson Scott Card is more than an 'opponent' of marriage equality. As a writer, he has spread degrading lies about LGBT people, calling us sexual deviants and criminals. As an activist, he sat on the board of the National Organization for Marriage and campaigned against our civil rights. Now he's a producer on the Ender's Game movie. Do not let your box-office dollars fuel his anti-gay agenda.”

I evolved on the issue of gay rights a long time ago, so I signed the Skip Ender’s Game pledge, but many, even supporters of marriage equality, take the position that Ender’s Game, about humankind at war with insect-like aliens in the future, has nothing to do with gay rights and is just cool sci-fi.

And I can understand that. I read the novel over a decade ago after a fellow teacher on the JET Programme pressed a roughed-up copy into my hands and urged me in hushed tones to read this book because it was awesome. It was indeed awesome, mind-bending even, so I can understand why many would prefer to ignore the controversy and just enjoy something for crying out loud.

One unfortunate aspect of that view is that it plays right into the hands of the movie execs. All along, they have tried to diffuse the situation by saying, in effect, “It’s just a movie.” (article) Which is another way of saying, “Whatever you do, close your eyes to all else and give us your cash.” As good Americans, we usually oblige.

The politicians, the corporations, the interests and the monied elite, including those in Hollywood, do not care one whit about what we say or do as long as we keep buying. I’m reminded of a rant by George Carlin:

 

In a capitalist society, one of the few voices any of us have left that makes any difference is the power to buy or not buy. By not buying a ticket to Ender’s Game or another book by Orson Scott Card, I do make a statement--which is to say, a difference in someone’s bottom line--even if it is a small one doomed to failure. As the box office reports show, Ender’s Game is getting a lot of dollars and the boycott hasn’t been able to mar the movie’s opening weekend.

Some would say that in addition to money winning, good science fiction has won, and that is at least something to be happy about. Nonetheless, I will stick to my boycott--unless someone gives me the DVD/Blu-Ray Special Combo Pack for Christmas. Then I’ll consider the battle lost and watch the hell out of it.

Money wins again.

Philip Jose Farmer Makes Nonsense of the Bodily Resurrection by Making It Happen

One of my reading projects the past year has been Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series, which begins with every human being who ever lived awaking after death on the banks of a massive river. As it deals with an afterlife of sorts, there is a great deal of religion in Riverworld and a great deal of skepticism about religion, but what struck me most was how Farmer has portrayed a bodily resurrection, and in doing so has highlighted what is ridiculous about the very idea.

Every time I heard about this series prior to reading it, I thought it sounded stupid, especially since book covers and promotional material for the books and related media tend to highlight the jumble of people from different places and times who find themselves together after rebirth: Medieval kings, modern day stockbrokers, African tribesmen, ancient Greeks, and so on. The whole thing sounded random and farcical, but after running across the first book, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, in a used bookstore for only $1.95, I decided to give it a try and found myself engrossed from start to finish.

In the book, every human being who has ever lived from 99,000 B.C. to 1983--that’s approximately 35 billion souls--wakes up along the banks of The River, which is roughly ten million miles long and winds around the entire surface of an alien planet. Everyone wakes up at once, nude, hairless, in perfect health, and with a body about 26 years old and immune to further aging. Grasslands and forests run along the river, bounded on both sides by nearly impenetrable mountains. The resurrected human race--including common folk such as you and me, as well as historical personages such as Richard Francis Burton, Cyrano de Bergerac, Samuel Clemens and Hermann Goering--must first learn to survive. Then, some embark on a journey to the head of the river to confront the mysterious beings known as Ethicals who have resurrected the human race.

As I read the mechanics of this science-fiction account of life after death, I realized that Farmer had to answer a question that religion avoids: What kind of bodies will we have in the afterlife? While Farmer is simply writing an interesting tale, he can fill in the details as he wishes, but the problem for the religious belief in a bodily resurrection--and the idea of Heaven in general, something along the lines of the vision at the end of Terrence Malick's beautiful film The Tree of Life--is that no answer to the question makes sense or satisfies the criteria of Heaven.

 

 

I doubt Malick intended for the above to be a literal representation of Heaven, but it is a lot like what many people think the afterlife will be like.

Consider the common conception of Heaven as a reunion: I can imagine myself reunited with my loved ones in their bodies from life, but does that mean my grandparents, for example, will be the elderly people I have so many fond memories of? They would probably prefer a younger, fitter body as in Farmer’s Riverworld, but then, while they would technically be my grandparents, with so much different about them than I remember, they would hardly be the people I knew. But isn’t that a great deal of the point, being reunited with those we once knew?

It does not solve the problem to say we will have new bodies, because new bodies would also make everyone something different, unrecognizable. That’s no reunion, either. Besides, a body, any body, is still a body, one that needs to eat, drink, sleep, couple and crap. Think about it a little, and you’ll see Heaven as traditionally defined has no place for hunger, thirst, lust and feces. With bodies, Heaven would soon be a lot like Earth, a lot like Riverworld, actually--just another struggle for food, shelter, power, sex.

This is why religion is better off sticking with spiritual resurrection. Then, at least, all the details can remain vague, backed up by assurances that the power of God pulls it off somehow. As an atheist, that doesn’t impress me much either, but that’s a different argument.

The Dark Knight Rises and Forestalls Revolution

It’s hard not to miss the theme of class warfare in The Dark Knight Rises, the third of Christopher Nolan’s masterful trilogy bringing Batman back to the silver screen, but what does the movie really say about it? When I watched the film again recently on DVD, there was more there and it was more nuanced than I remembered.

On a first viewing, the movie seemed to merely have a thin subtext along the lines of Occupy Wall Street: Isn’t it unfair how some have so much while others have so little?

 

When the villain Bane raids the Gotham Stock Exchange, a stock broker outside is distraught, claiming, “It’s not our money, it’s everybody’s,” a skeptical police officer nearby says, “Really? Mine’s in my mattress.” This and several dialogue exchanges highlight the difference between those who make their money on Wall Street and those who labor for wages.

Later, Bane locks most of Gotham’s police officers underneath the city, turning the city over to the common people. The result is instant revolution, with the masses dragging the rich from their homes and expropriating their wealth.

The point’s been made, but I can’t help but mention one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Bruce Wayne attends a ball, where he dances and verbally spars with Selina Kyle (Catwoman), one of Gotham’s marginalized living in a rundown apartment in a seedy neighborhood. With touching sincerity and anger, Anne Hathaway delivers a number of lines on economic injustice, among them the following:

“You think all this can last? There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, ’cause when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”

Slovenian philosopher and self-professed “some kind of a communist” Slavoj Zizek (video), however, has expressed disappointment with the film for its anti-revolutionary tenor. The film quite firmly states that if the people are given control of themselves, the result is violence and chaos:

There is this side to the film, and it has clearly drawn inspiration from some of the bloodier incidents of the French Revolution, even making them more sinister. At least the storming of the Bastille was an expression of outrage against the Crown’s practice of taking political prisoners, whereas the prisoners Bane frees from Blackgate Penitentiary appear to be mostly violent offenders. And the movie turns the Committee of Public Safety, which presided over the Reign of Terror, into mere sentencing hearings ruled by a bona fide lunatic, the Scarecrow, who only hands down one of two sentences: death or exile by death.

The Dark Knight Rises doesn’t seem to have much faith in revolution.

But something tells me that’s because Nolan is not trying to side with either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat over and against the other. To return to the man with his savings in his mattress at home, the stockbroker has an immediate rebuttal to this that I don’t take as a defense of status quo capitalism with all its failings so much as a statement highlighting the realities of today’s economy:

 

“If you don’t put those guys down, that stuffing in your mattress might be worth a whole hell of a lot less.”

Nolan’s Batman films are about many kinds of people--rich and poor, law officer and civilian, white collar and blue collar--working together each in their own way for better communities against forces that seek to bring out the worst in us. Consider the scene in the previous film, The Dark Knight, when the Joker plays a ferry full of regular citizens against a ferry full of prison inmates. Each group has the choice of blowing up the other and thereby saving their own lives, but they don’t do it.

The world of Batman is rich in villains, perhaps because the unsavory in human nature is so easy to come by, but Nolan’s films are at least equally populated with heroes, and these heroes go beyond Batman and Jim Gordon to district attorneys, entrepreneurs, police officers, charity directors and the common man, whatever his place in society.

In a sense, anyone can be Batman--we are all Batman, potentially--and each is responsible for doing the Right for the greater good:

“A hero can be anyone, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy’s shoulders to let him know the world hadn’t ended.” (Batman himself)

Zizek is not satisfied with this vision of society, and I’m not sure I am, but it has its benefits, and in the absence of a revolution, it provides a ghost of a chance for a somewhat better world in which to live.

It's Okay Not to Have an Opinion About Syria

Now that President Obama has decided to ask Congress’s permission for military involvement in Syria (article), the same polarized invective with which Americans engage in every public debate has found a new outlet. It is possible, however, not to have a strong opinion about some issues, and Syria seems to me a likely candidate for this treatment.

Since I have a tendency to take an interest in ideas, politics and world events and to speak my mind on them, I’m sure there are some who think, “Man, that guy has an opinion about everything!” But I don’t really. I'm well aware that some issues are so large and complex as to defy definitive analysis leading to one sweeping conclusion for or against.

The war in Afghanistan is a good example of this, even though it now appears that the U.S. will mostly be out by the end of 2014. The debate always seemed to play out--and still does to some extent as the U.S.'s role in future years remains under consideration--between those wanting to stay for many years to come and others crying because we weren’t out yesterday.

But it should be clear to everyone that both of these options are highly problematic, in whichever overseas military action you choose. Staying means more death--of soldiers, of civilians--and, of course, a significant financial burden on the nation. That last is no small matter when there are serious problems at home that could be alleviated with some of the money used for war.

And the problems of leaving are equally clear. To stick with the example of Afghanistan, the return of the Taliban to dominance would be a humanitarian tragedy--think of Aesha Mohammadzai (graphic image) and the many like her--and likely mean the return of Al-Qaeda or similar groups seeking the next 9/11 or Madrid train bombings.

Neither option sounds very good to me, so when I ask myself whether we should stay or leave a country like Afghanistan or Iraq, I have no strong opinion. And that’s okay, not just because I don’t have to make the decisions and don’t have enough information to do so anyway, but because it’s better to think critically than to bleat one’s favorite political narrative.

I do have a modest opinion on Syria--one that I mostly adopted because of French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy’s arguments for humanist intervention (interview)--and it’s that a no-fly zone early on would have done much to aid the rebels and hasten Bashar al-Assad’s fall.

But it’s too late for that now, isn’t it? Now it’s more of a mess than it was before and I have no idea what Obama or Congress should do about it. Having been at war for well over a decade now, we are all too familiar with the pitfalls of military entanglements, and whatever helps the rebels is likely to benefit some terrorists. But staying out also means the continued slaughter of the Syrian people--slaughter the U.S. and other nations have the power to stop.

So I say consider the situation, and if you see no clear answer, reserve judgment. Sometimes it’s okay, even commendable, for regular people like you and me not to have a firm opinion about everything--and to spare the world a little partisan vituperative.

 

When I'm Outraged and When I'm Not

The Huffington Post declared Day Above Ground’s video for “Asian Girlz” to be “ridiculously offensive” and “quite possibly the most racist thing to happen to music since ‘Accidental Racist.’” (article) Apparently a lot of people agreed, because after intense condemnation, the band was forced to do some talking (if not exactly apologize) and make an effort to get the video off the internet. This got me to thinking about outrage--when I’m outraged and when I’m not.

I should be clear that even apart from the offensive content, it seems obvious to me that the song and video are shockingly bad, and apparently Day Above Ground is the name for a bunch of dipshits. As for the lyrical content, it consists of a stream of stereotypical references to Asians and Asian culture mixed in with how much the band members want to do it to Asian “girlz.” I find it distasteful, but I don’t find myself outraged.

Why is that? After thinking about it, I realized my outrage increases the bigger, more brazen, and more harmful the offense. I’m outraged when the U.S. government spies on its citizens and the president goes on television and lies about it, when the killing of an innocent black person by a white cop or vigilante is turned into an occasion for whites to complain about how persecuted they are, when politicians want to legislate who you can fall in love with, who you can marry, and what you can do with that person in bed. These are egregious offenses carried out systemically and openly and to the very real suffering of real people. The release of a music video clearly intended (however ill-conceivedly) to be humorous by a relatively unknown group is a small thing by comparison.

That isn’t to say that a music video can’t be wrong, offensive or even cause real hurt--it can and should be condemned accordingly--but emotionally, it’s not going to get me waving my arms and ranting. I remember a few years ago when I noticed that most of the stand-up comedy on The Comedy Channel used stereotypes to poke fun at a wide variety of ethnicities. I don’t like it, so I’ll change the channel, and maybe blog about it later, but I’ll save blowing my top for something worse, say, the GOP’s next voter suppression effort.

My criteria, however, are clearly not others’. Liberals have a reputation for freaking out over every offense, but during a Democratic presidency, the conservatives are the new liberals with their freaking out. I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon on Facebook. Every now and then, I will run across a conservative’s laundry list of beefs against Obama (example) posted by someone usually described as having great courage, and then reposted by others, who encourage others to have the guts to Share or Like it. They’re mostly full of junk, often incoherent, and always full of outrage.

Yet most of the accusations in these posts don’t amount to much. Despite trying really hard to list as many offenses as possible, there’s a curious sparseness of things that actually hurt real people. They’re outraged about what they see as disrespect to the military, apologies to foreign nations, and not giving enough props to the Christian god, but show little concern for policies that have actually done real damage. If Obama bows to the king of Saudia Arabia this is an outrage, but killing innocent Pakistanis in drone strikes elicits no mention.

I hope nobody buys Day Above Ground’s stupid song, but I hope even more strongly that we could work up some widespread outrage over a lot of the worse things going on.

Critical Theory, Emo Music and the Struggle for Transcendence

Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse’s The One Dimensional Man discusses the way modern-day society and the way it is administered limits human beings, reducing what they are capable of doing and even thinking. There is an established order, an enforced order, and having grown up within that order, we are incapable of seeing outside it, do not even want to, and do not even consider the possibility of other orders.

A quote:

“In the most advanced areas of this civilization, the social controls have been introjected to the point where even individual protest is affected at its roots. The intellectual and emotional refusal 'to go along' appear neurotic and impotent.”

I am reminded of the reaction against emo music. When emo became a designated genre, I lived in Japan, mostly unplugged from American popular culture. After some years back in the U.S., I began to run across the term, always used disparagingly, and I gradually came to realize that some bands I liked were considered emo--My Chemical Romance, Saosin, Paramore, Thirty Seconds to Mars--even though the bands themselves often reject this label and declare emo to be crap.

What’s so bad about emo that even emo bands hate it?

Part of what stirs revulsion is the emotional displays from which the genre has received its label. The bands wear their hearts on their chests and accentuate this with their own style, a mix of Goth, punk, neon pop and teenage bric-a-brac, making a spectacle of and confronting us with their disaffection with the world. They care too much, show it openly, often with fatalism, while ours is a society that prefers to confess caring only in measured tones and hidden behind success and aloofness. But how much do you really care if you’re aloof?

Emos are despised as a defense mechanism against the reproach their refusal casts at the status quo--the people who have it together that we fancy ourselves to be or be on the way toward becoming. Identifying real problems and sincerely bemoaning them is so gauche.

Another quote from The One-Dimensional Man:

“‘Romantic’ is a term of condescending defamation which is easily applied to disparaging avant-garde positions, just as the term ‘decadent’ far more often denounces the genuinely progressive traits of a dying culture than the real factors of decay. The traditional images of artistic alienation are indeed romantic in as much as they are in aesthetic incompatibility with the developing society. This incompatibility is the token of their truth.”

Replace “Romantics” with “emos” and the passage above is perfectly applicable to the sneering attitude many have toward emo music and its fans. Yet it is the emos and Goths and punks and what have you--the subcultures, the counterculture--who, finding themselves deeply out of place in society, struggle most viscerally for a critique, for a measure of transcendence beyond the pressures forcing them into a single acceptable mold.

No doubt, however, their endeavor is a confused one from the get-go and largely doomed to failure. They too, like those who turn their noses up at them, will one day be working stiffs, whether as slaves in a cubicle, slaves behind the broad desk of a CEO, or a slave scrounging away in the margins of society.

A final quote:

“They [the Romantics/emos] are invalidated not because of their literary obsolescence. . . . What has been invalidated is their subversive force, their destructive content--their truth. In this transformation, they find their home in everyday living. The alien and alienating oeuvres of intellectual culture become familiar goods and services. Is their massive reproduction and consumption only a change in quantity, namely, growing appreciation and understanding, democratization of culture?”

No effective means of protest is open to most of the disaffected but what finds approval in the mass market. Think of image makeovers effected through trips to Hot Topic. Their means of resistance against the system, our means of resistance, are all part of the system. It will take a much more massive and painful effort, and a more coherent message than recent countercultural movements have provided, to open up multiple dimensions for humankind.