Influential Books and Music

I know I haven't posted in forever, and it would be amazing if anyone checked back here for some real material, but I really am working on not one but two posts right now. One of them might as well be an essay that I'm posting, since it will be that long, but hopefully someone will still read it, and the other one is my argument against the existence of natural rights. So check back if you're interested. But if you're not...read ahead.

I got tagged on Facebook by the one and only Christy Somerville to list fifteen books that have stuck with me after I've read them. I don't feel like tagging folks, so I thought I'd do it here. These are in the order they occurred to me.

1. Christ Our Mediator--C.J. Mahaney
2. God is the Gospel--John Piper
3. Orthodoxy--G.K. Chesterton
4. Peace Like a River--Leif Enger
5. The Count of Monte Cristo--Alexandre Dumas
6. The Chronicles of Narnia--C.S. Lewis
7. The Scarlet Letter--Nathanial Hawthorne
8. The Iliad--Homer
9. Macbeth--William Shakespeare
10. Gilead--Marilynne Robinson
11. Speaker for the Dead--Orson Scott Card
12. Holes--Louis Sachar
13. The Hound of the Baskervilles--Arthur Conan Doyle
14. A Tale of Two Cities--Charles Dickens
15. Paradise Lost--John Milton

And since I'm doing this, I might as well throw up a post I started forever ago and never finished. I wanted to compile my fifteen favorite albums of all time, but hit a roadblock when I had a bunch of albums I wanted to include because I was nostalgic about them from my childhood, not because I thought they were particularly great in reality. So I cheated, and I made two lists: my nostalgia list and my real list. The first list is in order of when they influenced me, starting from early childhood and ending in high school. The second list is in alphabetical order by artist.

Nostalgia:

1. The Man from Snowy River
2. The Parent Trap
3. The Prince of Egypt
4. Rich Mullins - Songs
5. Steven Curtis Chapman - Speechless
6. Chris Rice - Past the Edges
7. Michael W. Smith - Live the Life
8. Avalon - Oxygen
9. Steven Curtis Chapman - Declaration
10. FFH - Have I Ever Told You
11. Mark Schultz - Song Cinema
12. Big Daddy Weave - One and Only
13. Relient K - The Anatomy of the Tongue in Cheek
14. Casting Crowns - Casting Crowns
15. Godspell

Favorite Albums:
1. Anberlin - Cities
2. Caedmon's Call - 40 Acres
3. Chris Rice - Amusing
4. David Crowder*Band - A Collision (or 3+4=7)
5. House of Heroes - The End is Not the End
6. Jars of Clay - Good Monsters
7. Les Miserables
8. Mae - The Everglow
9. The Ragamuffins and Friends - The Jesus Record
10. Relient K - mmHmm
11. Rich Mullins - A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band
12. Simon and Garfunkel - Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme
13. Switchfoot - The Beautiful Letdown
14. Third Day - Wire
15. U2 - Joshua Tree

As He Said

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you.” So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him.

--Matthew 28:1-9

And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

--Luke 24:25-27

The Lord is risen! Our faith is not in vain, for all that was prophesied has been fulfilled. Christ is risen from the dead, and death is conquered forever!

A Herd of Bulls and Tigers

I've been reading G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy recently, and his amazing insight keeps flooring me. I don't agree with everything he says, but like Lewis I think he gets a whole lot right, and even when he gets it wrong it's healthy to think about why, because he raises excellent points.

In light of my previous post, I thought the following quote was particularly amazing. To give context, he's just spent a chapter arguing for why Christianity makes sense of the world by simultaneously affirming two seemingly contradictory premises, balancing them off each other to create one beautiful whole. He concludes the chapter by saying this:

It is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch, but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfillment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious...Here it is enough to notice that if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be careful, if only that the world might be careless. (101-102)

I encourage you all to get your hands on this book and wrestle through it. It will be well worth your while.

Tensions

I tend to be a reactionary person. If everyone is absolutely in love with something, my natural tendency is to avoid it and/or put it down. For example, when Lord of the Rings was massively popular, I did not even bother seeing any of them until just before Return of the King came out in theaters. Here at school, everyone is in love with C.S. Lewis, and so my natural response is to argue with them as to why C.S. Lewis is not really all that great, and to point out all the things he gets wrong, and its only when I sit down to read Screwtape Letters again that I realize, well, I may not agree with every word this man says, but he does have a lot of amazing things to say.

That being said, one of the biggest areas where this tendency shows itself is when talking about the nature of God. I have friends here who tend to emphasize the love of God to the exclusion of his holiness or justice or wrath, and so my tendency is to downplay the love of God and show them why his holiness or his justice or his wrath is much more important. Or I have friends who tend to emphasize man's free will, especially regarding salvation, and so my tendency is to go overboard defending God's sovereignty to the exclusion of free will.

But one thing I've been learning since I've been at school is that Christianity is all about tensions. It's all about paradox. As humans we want to go all the way to either extreme, but staying the middle course is one of the hardest things for us to do. So the temptation is to say "It's all about God's love" or "It's all about God's holiness," but it takes serious effort and discernment to say "It's all about both God's love and his holiness." You can't downplay one to emphasize the other, because they are both equally true. 1 John 4:8 says "God is love," but Revelation 4:8 calls God "holy, holy, holy" with the triple repetition that is the Hebrew equivilent of our superlative. Both are absolutely true about God, and elevating one over the other, or trying to pick one as God's defining characteristic, is defeating the purpose.

Maybe the two are reconciled in the actual nature of what love is. Love is sacrificially giving of yourself for others ("Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" John 15:13), and God's holiness is his set-apartness from his creation, his purity. Love is essential to God's being, because the three members of the Trinity love each other and give themselves for each other, and this love overflows to loving mankind. And yet God loves mankind because he loves his holiness, and loves his glory, and glorifies himself through acheiving our redemption, so even his love for mankind is an act of love for himself.

But the thing is, I often try to explain or define my uncertainties about God away. Thinking about the previous paragraph may be helpful, but the moment I think I've solved the paradox, that's the moment I completely miss the point. Christianity is all about paradoxes, and its all about mystery. Delve far enough into any doctrine of the Christian faith and you reach a point where you say "Well, I'm stuck. God is so much bigger than me." If you're not comfortable with saying that, I think you've missed who God really is, and you've missed the wonder of the gospel.

Don't try and explain things away. Learn to live with, even embrace paradox. God reveals himself to us in amazing ways when we are no longer convinced that we can learn everything about him, but surrender ourselves to his infinitude.

The Glorious Paradox

I've never before enjoyed reading in the Old Testament prophets, since they are usually so dull and boring. Yet the more I read them, the more I find the wonders of the mercy of God on full display.

An excellent example of this comes buried in the middle of Ezekiel. God is defending himself against the charges of the Israelites that they are being punished for their fathers' sins by telling them that "the son shall not die for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself" (18:20). But then comes this wonderful little passage:

“But if a wicked person turns away from all his sins that he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is just and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of the transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered against him; for the righteousness that he has done he shall live. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?....For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord, so turn, and live." (18:21-23, 32)

What a beautiful statement about man's free will, and how God has abdicated his sovereignty in order to allow man to make his own decisions, right? Not so fast. Flip over two chapters to the section where God is reprimanding Israel for its constant rebellion against him. Suddenly comes this marvelous treasure:

And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I deal with you for my name's sake, not according to your evil ways, nor according to your corrupt deeds, O house of Israel, declares the Lord God. (20:44)

So God doesn't deal with us according to our deeds, but according to his mercy, for the glory of his name? How do these two ideas fit together? Short answer: it's the glorious mystery of God's sovereignty. How beautiful a thing it is to lean on the mercy of God!

The Cactus

This is the short story I wrote for our Honours retreat this summer. It was partially inspired by rereading one of my favorite books of all time, Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. I hope you all enjoy it.

It never snowed in Hartville.
At least, not that Phil had ever seen. And he’d been living there for at least eleven years now, ever since that day he’d stepped out onto the tarmac with his mom and seen the cactus. It looked like one of those cactuses you see in the cartoons, when Yosemite Sam is blasting off those crazy pistols and trips and lands in a ravine, where of course he sits on a cactus and jumps up and yowls and runs around with little cactus spikes sticking out of his butt. It’s a cartoon staple, that cactus, that almost looks human—except a really deformed human, all bent out of shape, with one arm a good foot below the other. Maybe that’s why cartoonists always include it—it adds a sense of deformed humanity to the dry desert.
Phil wasn’t really sure why he had noticed the cactus. It was just sitting there, near the little building that in places like this could be called an airport. It was really nothing more than a waiting room with walls, with one sleepy old lady sitting behind a desk filling out a crossword puzzle. But the cactus stuck with him. It seemed to stare defiantly at the blazing sun, shaking its little spiked paw at the planes flying overheard, as if to say, “How dare you come and put asphalt in the middle of my desert!” In the eleven years that Phil had lived in Hartville, he had always remembered that cactus.

Jaden threw the pen down. Why on earth am I going on about a cactus? he thought, exasperated with himself. I’ve never even seen a cactus before, or a desert, for crying out loud. Stupid writing assignment. What am I even doing here? Venting? It’s not working at all. And seriously, it was only a birthday. Not a big deal. Yet despite his inner protests, his disappointment still hung inside him, draping itself around his heart so that his chest felt heavy and sticky.
Jaden stood up and started to pace the room. It didn’t help to dwell on it. But it’s not like it’s the first time that Dad’s forgotten my birthday… Jaden shook his head, trying to clear his mind. He had to do something, something else, something to take his mind off his dad. He grabbed his cell phone from his desk and ran downstairs.
“I’m taking the Honda, Mom!” he yelled as he ran out the front door.
“Be back by 7,” she called back, “ I need to take Kelly to Dana’s house.”
Bolting down the front walk, he jumped into the front seat, winced from the hot leather, turned up the stereo, and peeled out of the driveway.

Phil loved snow. Back in Colorado, he used to spend hours building snowmen and having snowball fights with his dad. There was nothing quite like waking up in the morning and seeing a fresh layer of white all over the ground, or like walking through the pine trees listening to the steady crunch, crunch, crunch under your feet as the rest of the world was silent. Nature always seemed quietest in the early morning.
One of the best things about snow was Christmas morning. There was always snow on Christmas morning, and every year Phil would run outside after breakfast and make a snow angel. He figured that since the angels sang over Christ’s birth, it was fitting that there would be one in his front yard every year. In a way, it helped bring the season home to him.
Of course, making an angel in the sand is a lot less comfortable than making one in the snow, but that was all that Phil could make now that he lived in Hartville. A sand angel and a cactus, those were his memories of Hartville. He’d only made the sand angel once, and afterwards had given up. It wasn’t really important anyway.

There was a willow that sat next to Lake Hugo. Its long, droopy branches just brushed the surface of the water, and the gnarly roots made a comfortable seat for a boy whose mood matched the demeanor of the tree. Jaden liked to sit there and watch the Canadian geese swim back and forth on the water, honking like Mack trucks on the highway. Geese made him laugh, the way they took everything so seriously, even fighting over the stale breadcrumbs he sometimes brought from home. Occasionally he’d even see a turtle out on one of the semi-submerged logs, but they didn’t usually stick around too long—the geese probably drove them crazy.
Jaden used his time at the willow to think. Often he’d reminisce about his recent escapades with his best friend, Paul. Just a few weeks ago he and Paul had gone hiking and had gotten lost, ending up spending the night in a lean-to they constructed from scratch. It had been a marvelous amount of fun, except when they made their way back to civilization and found out how worried their moms had been. Of course, his dad hadn’t even been aware that he had been missing… in fact, Jaden wasn’t even sure if he knew now that his boy had once survived a night in the mountains with nothing more than a water bottle and a pocket knife.
Jaden shook his head. He had come out here to clear his mind, not to keep thinking about his dad. He watched a goose hiss at a rabbit that came a little too close to its nest in the bulrushes and smiled. How nice it must be to have a parent willing to stick up for you in a moment of danger. Take advantage of this, he thought, as if the eggs could hear him thinking, this phase doesn’t last for long. He sighed. This wasn’t helping him at all. Usually nature cleared his head, but today it was just distracting him. He eased himself from his seat and patted the willow as he walked back to his car.

Phil liked to sit out by the airport, under the shade of that lonely cactus, and watch the buzzards circle overhead. Planes only flew into the airport once every few days, and then usually only with the mail, since no sane postal worker wanted to drive all the way to Hartville to deliver congressional fundraising letters. Still, Phil enjoyed the thought that one day a plane was going to come that would take him out of this godforsaken town forever.
And that day wasn’t too far away. In a year and a half he would be shipping off for school, back to the University of Colorado. Of course, since he’d be coming home for winter break, he would still never get a white Christmas, but that couldn’t be helped. At least he’d be out of Hartville nine months of the year.
He glanced back at the cactus. It was still shaking its arms in the same defiant gesture as when he first arrived. “What good has it done you, little cactus,” he said aloud. “Why do you bother standing against the world?” He sighed, and went back to watching the buzzards.

It all happened so fast that Jaden afterward could never quite remember the series of events. One minute he was cresting the hill on his way back home, and the next second the biker seemed to materialize in front of his car. He swerved and crashed through the rail fence next to the road, and then his right front tire hit something and the car began to roll. The pasture was on the side of a mountain, and once the car started rolling it began to pick up speed. Jaden was wearing his seatbelt but it didn’t really matter as he felt himself battered around, and then his head flew forward against the steering wheel and everything went black.

He awoke with the strange feeling that he was hanging upside down and tried to shake his head to reorient himself. A rush of pain quickly awakened him to the fact that he was hanging upside down, and that he was still belted into his seat, and that he had a splitting headache. He gingerly unbuckled his seatbelt and crawled out of the hole where the driver window used to be. Standing up slowly, he turned and surveyed the damage to the car. To call it “totaled” would be an understatement. The vehicle was a smoking, twisted heap of metal, partially wrapped around the gigantic fir tree that had stopped its revolving rush down the mountain.
Jaden’s hand moved to brush away the sweat that was dripping into his eyes, but when he brought it back down it was covered with blood. That would explain the headache, he thought.
A voice behind him caused him to turn around. “Hey, kid! Are you all right?” The cyclist was running down the hill with a look of concern on his face. “Dude, I’m so sorry about that. I must have drifted out into the middle of the road—here, use this on your forehead.” He frantically dug through his backpack and handed Jaden a bandage. “I’ve never seen a car do that before! You must have rolled twenty times! How on earth are you even standing up?”
Jaden was still staring at him, only partially processing the stream of dialogue coming out of the biker’s mouth as he slowly raised the bandage to his forehead. The last question seemed to shake him out of his daze, and he slowly stammered, “I…I don’t really know.”
“Do you have any broken bones?” the cyclist continued, unstrapping his helmet. “You look just fine to me, except for that nasty gash on your forehead. Dude, you really should sit down.” He reached out his hand to grab Jaden’s elbow.
Suddenly Jaden’s knees suddenly began to feel wobbly, and collapsing next to the smoking Honda, his shoulders began heaving as he buried his face in his hands, tears streaming between his blood-stained fingers. As he sat there weeping, a lone goose slowly flew over the wreckage, emitting a single honk as it gazed in wonder on the scene below.

It was Christmas Day. Phil took the day to walk to his usual position under the cactus. The air was unusually crisp, and the sky was overcast as he settled himself down. Today he’d brought a book, a new Ken Follett his mom had given him this morning. After a few minutes, however, he set the book down. He really didn’t feel like reading.
He stared contemplatively at the solid gray sky. He hadn’t seen clouds like this for a long time, not since his days in Colorado. They filled him with a sense of chill foreboding, and his nostrils swelled with the memory of fresh pine. He stood up, slowly, still gazing intensely at the clouds. Maybe this is what they talked about in Genesis, where God split the waters between heaven and earth. It sure felt like he had a gigantic tarp stretched over his head, holding back a rush of something.
Phil shivered. It was remarkably cold today. He decided to head back home where it was warm, and turned and walked away from that deserted strip of asphalt. His mom was sure to be waiting there with some of her fresh-baked peanut blossoms and a cup of hot chocolate—the thought of it made Phil’s mouth water, and he smiled slightly. Merry Christmas, Mom.
And as he plodded slowly home, a solitary snowflake floated gently down and alighted on the outstretched arm of the angry cactus.

Blue Like Jazz

So I'll admit, I did not expect to like this book. My mind associated it with books like Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell and The Shack by William Young. I thought it was a postmodern creed full of spiritualist gobblygook and that totally abandoned the gospel. Yet, after having one too many conversations with people that included me saying "well, from what I've heard, the book says...", I decided that enough was enough. It was time for me to suck it up and actually read the book. And the verdict? Well...

First, let's start with the good stuff. Donald Miller is a great writer. The book (which is merely a collection of essays loosely connected by Miller's personal journey through his faith) was absorbing from beginning to end. I really felt like I knew Miller by the end, and I appreciated his many insights into life, human nature, and religion. There were moments when he would wax eloquent that would literally take my breath away.

He also makes many great points. For a book by a guy who doesn't like fundamentalism, he spent a lot of time showing the truth behind many fundamentalist doctrines like human depravity and God's sovereignty. In fact, the book was surprisingly orthodox to me. He also made some valid criticisms of the modern church, especially the lack of humility and the legalism present in many orthodox churches. There were definitely times when I felt like he was blowing a problem out of proportion, or like I wanted to quibble with his focus, but these were mostly minor points.

That is, until his last two chapters. Suddenly he started talking about how to love yourself. And although I think I know what he was trying to say, what really got me was this paragraph right at the end:

All great characters in stories are the ones who give their lives to something bigger than themselves. And in all of the stories I don't find anyone more noble than Jesus. He gave his life for me, in obedience to His Father. I truly love Him for it...I think the difference in my life came when I realized, after reading those Gospels, that Jesus didn't just love me out of principle; He didn't just love me because it was the right thing to do. Rather, there was something inside me that caused Him to love me. (page 238)

Like I said, I think I know what he means by this. However, I think this was the great problem I had with this book: it's all about what Miller thinks, how he feels, how something doesn't feel right, how something feels wrong, etc. And when he's right, he's right. But he never backs anything up with Scripture, so sometimes he misses the mark, and he's okay with that. So long as it feels right to him, it's okay if it's not quite what Scripture says. His Christianity, although it has many orthodox parts, is ultimately a very "spiritualistic" thing, and he makes this point many times, that he doesn't think that doctrine can really be defined or that it's really that important anyways, and that Christianity is all about being in love with Christ.

Now don't hear what I'm not saying. We should be in love with Christ, but the way to get there is not through seeking experiences, it's through studying his Word. And like I said, that's what's glaringly absent from this book: God's Word. I can also predict that many are going to say "you have to remember his target audience, Sam. Look at his subtitle: 'Nonreligious thoughts on Christian Spirituality.' The Bible is religious, so he doesn't use it." And that's just my problem. The Bible is the very foundation of everything we believe. I can understand why he wouldn't start with it in a "I'm going to thump this Bible over your head until you agree with me" sort of way, but at some point he should have started coming back to it, and he never did. The closest he got was reading the gospels to find the real Jesus, the one who loves him for something inside of him (which completely contradicts Scripture, by the way. The whole point is that he loves us despite what's inside of us).

So that's my problem with the book. He bases his entire religion on feelings, and in the process manages to pervert certain crucial Christian ideas. This is not to say that this is a bad book; on the contrary, I would actually recommend it highly to friends with some level of spiritual maturity, because I think he has some very helpful insights. But, I would not give it to a non-Christian or a new Christian, because I think it could actually be dangerous. A little wrong doctrine at the start can lead to some major problems down the road.

Final verdict: a pleasure to read, but misguided in several crucial areas.

The Wonders of Pop Psychobabble

WARNING: The following post contains elements of Freudian psychobabble related to some of your favorite Pixar films, and could offend/ruin your Pixar-watching experience forever.

So I spent a very enjoyable afternoon in the library reading an article in the Journal of Modern Film and Television entitled "Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/Pixar." The article discusses the emasculation of men in recent Pixar films, specifically highlighting Toy Story, Cars, and The Incredibles, and how they move from "alpha male" characteristics of domination and aggressiveness to embracing more of their feminine sides.

Although I originally started reading the article because I was interested in what they would say about Pixar and wanted to see how they defended their thesis, I was soon drawn into the article, my reading only broken by helpless fits of mirth at the sheer absurdity of many of their claims. The first bit that really made me start laughing was this:

“Emasculated” is not too strong a term for what happens to these male protagonists; the decline of the alpha-male model is gender coded in all the films. For his community service punishment, Lightning is chained to the giant, snorting, tar-spitting “Bessie” and ordered to repair the damage he has wrought. His own “horsepower” (as Sally cheerfully points out) is used against him when literally put in the service of a nominally feminized figure valued for more “feminine” orientation of service to the community. If being under the thumb of this humongous “woman” is not emasculating enough, Mater, who sees such subordination to Bessie as a potentially pleasurable thing, saying “I’d give my left two lug nuts for something like that.”

Seriously? Bessie is a symbol of being put under the thumb of a woman? Only women serve the community? Mater thinks such subordination would be "pleasurable"? But this is only the beginning. Only a few paragraphs later comes this gem:

From the beginning power is constructed in terms conspicuously gender-coded, at least for adult viewers: as they watch the incoming birthday presents, the toys agonize at their sheer size, the longest and most phallic-shaped one striking true fear (and admiration?) into the hearts of the spectators. When Buzz threatens Woody, one toy explains to another that he has "laser envy."

Wait, why does everything come down to phallic symbols? Oh, that's right, this is Freud talking (or maybe Jung). And things only get better (or worse):

The “mistress” tempting Mr. Incredible away from his wife and family is not Mirage at all but Buddy, the boy he jilted in the opening scenes of the film (whose last name, Pine, further conveys the unrequited nature of their relationship). Privileging his alpha-male emotional isolation, but adored by his wannabe sidekick, Mr. Incredible vehemently protects his desire to “work alone.” After spending the next years nursing his rejection and refining his arsenal, Buddy eventually retaliates against Mr. Incredible for rebuffing his advances. (bold added)

Now this is just getting ridiculous. Were the authors never kids themselves? Did they never idolize someone for their own sake, and not in a warped homosexual way? But this next section, right here, is the pinnacle of the ridiculousness. Read closely, because there's a lot of psycho-jargon in this bit, but it's worth the time you take to read:

Sedgwick further describes the ways in which the homosocial bond is negotiated through a triangulation of desire; that is, the intimacy emerging “between men” is constructed through an overt and shared desire for a feminized object. Unlike homosocial relationships between women—that is, “the continuum between ‘women loving women’ and ‘women promoting the interests of women’”—male homosocial identity is necessarily homophobic in patriarchal systems, which are structurally homophobic. This means the same-sex relationship demands social opportunities for a man to insist on, or prove, his heterosexuality. Citing Rene Girard’s Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, Sedgwick argues that “in any erotic rivalry, the bond that links the two rivals is as intense and potent as the bond that links either of the rivals to the beloved”; women are ultimately symbolically exchangeable “for the primary purpose of cementing the bonds of men with men.”

This triangulation of male desire can be seen in…Toy Story particularly, where the homosocial relationship obviously shares a desire for a feminized third. Buzz and Woody compete first, momentarily, for the affection of Bo Peep, who is surprisingly sexualized for a children’s movie….More importantly, they battle for the affection of Andy—a male child alternately depicted as maternal (it is his responsibility to get his baby sister out of her crib) and in need of male protection (Woody exhorts Buzz to “take care of Andy for me!”).

Did you catch that? Not only is Andy apparently a female archetype, and the primary purpose of women in a patriarchal society is to allow men to show their non-homosexuality by pursuing heterosexual relationships. Wow. . .

The article does make the valid point that the men in all of these Pixar films go from being domineering alpha-males to more gracious leaders, more appreciative of their families and friends, and much less arrogant. But unfortunately they put all this in terms of their "emasculation" and "acceptance of [their] more traditionally 'feminine' aspects," when in reality this is an embrace of biblical masculinity. No one said that just because alpha males exist, that's the definition of masculinity. In reality, that's the perversion.

But of course, it's not worth thinking too hard about this article, which has far too much nonsense in it to be taken seriously. Just enjoy it for what it is: a microcosm of modern feminist Freudian psychobabble.

And try not to let it ruin Pixar for you, too.

Odds and Ends Continued

Some of you who have been reading for a while probably remember my Odds and Ends posts where I would link to funny or interesting articles that I read throughout the week. Those posts were time-consuming to create, and so when time got tight, they were the first thing to go. I do have a semi-replacement, though, that I thought I would let you guys know about:

Sam's Shared Items on Google Reader

Even if you don't use Google Reader (and come on, why don't you?), you can still view everything that I share via Reader on this page. I typically share one or two articles a day, so this is a good way to see a lot of good articles. Check it out!

The Story of a Film...and Its Critics

So a movie comes out that becomes an instant hit. It's not an especially well-made film, but it has a couple of things going for it: exciting action sequences, a charismatic lead, and (most importantly) a killer MacGuffin, a filmmaking term for "an object or goal that kicks the film into the third act" (Jim Windolf, "Keys to the Kingdom"). The film instantly achieves a certain classic status. Two popular sequels are released, which combine the same ingredients together into cinematic gold.

However, over the course of the next few decades, the movies become idealized in the American mind. People who had originally been drawn in by the key ingredients begin to see the trilogy of films as something more, as truly great works of art. They raise their children watching them, who, with the innocence of childhood, enjoy the action and the funny lines and the MacGuffin and exalt it possibly higher in their imagination. It achieves true legendary status, unassailable with traditional cinematic critical objections such as believability or good acting.

Then come rumors that one more film is to be made. People are shocked that anyone would even consider adding to perfection, but are curious to see what will happen. And so a fourth film comes out, and is met with...hatred. People despise it. "It fails to live up to the originals," they claim. "It's completely unbelievable. It's stupid. And the MacGuffin makes no sense." Yet the very things they complain about are drawn directly from the first three films. The action is no less absurd, the MacGuffin no more outlandish, the plot no more unrealistic than the first three. But the difference is that the first three are accepted on their own terms, whereas the fourth is being compared to the legendary, inviolable images which most people held in their minds of the originals.

The films, of course, are the Indiana Jones films. The actor, Harrison Ford, mostly carries all four films by himself, only helped by the outrageous action scenes (come on people, is the journey into the "inner sanctum" of the grail any less outlandish than surviving a nuclear blast?) and the supernatural MacGuffins: i.e. the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, and El Dorado. People claim that the the fourth film is much worse than the original three (or at least, Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, since Temple of Doom gets a bad rep from just about everyone). But they fail to see that, in terms of MacGuffins, the angel of God coming out of the Ark is no less outlandish than El Dorado having been built by space aliens. The only difference is that Raiders was accepted on its own terms for what it was, and then elevated to unassailable mythical status, whereas Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been compared to that mythical symbol and then despised for the very things that made people love Raiders in the first place.

This may just be a rant, but I hate to see people put down a film like Crystal Skull for such irrational reasons as a hatred of something new that dares to try and live up to something old. When people try to make a film more than it actually is, the film fails miserably. The Indiana Jones films were never meant to be more than a combination of the best elements of 1930's B-action flicks, and they succeeded in that. The new one, since it had been pushed up 20 years into the 1950's, decided to combine that original feel with the best elements of 1950's B-sci-fi flicks, and despite its success at doing so, people hated it for that.

If people could somehow take the original films off the pedestal where they have placed them and compare them rationally to the fourth film, I think they would see that Crystal Skull follows in the Indiana Jones tradition very well. No, it's not a great film, but then, neither were any of the original trilogy. What the films do is capture that little child inside us who wants to be out saving the world, kicking butt, taking names, and finding out what really happened to the Ark, the Grail, and the City of Gold.

So instead of criticizing, sit back and enjoy The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It has everything you loved about the originals, if only viewed from the right perspective.

EDIT: Well, it turns out that George Lucas has already said it, and better than I did: "The fans are all upset. They’re always going to be upset. ‘Why did he do it like this? And why didn’t he do it like this?’ They write their own movie, and then, if you don’t do their movie, they get upset about it. So you just have to stand by for the bricks and the custard pies, because they’re going to come flying your way." ("Keys to the Kingdom")