Will the Real Protagonist Please Stand Up?

There never seems to be much of a difference between villians and heroes. By that I mean, villians are always trying to convince their rivals that there is really not that much difference between them, and that they, by being extra-ordinary, have more in common and should be on the same side rather than opposing one anothers. Of course, usually the villian says all these things because he’s afraid the hero is stronger than him, so he tries to use rhetoric because of his fear. But in The Dark Knight the Joker has no fear. “Hit me!” he screams as batman hurtles towards him. He is chaos incarnate. And chaos has no fear. Only momentum.

So it is a legitimate question. How heroic is the Batman? The question is certainly a theme throughout the movie… he is a vigilante, an outlaw, someone who has no rules, save one. The Joker’s critique of rules is that they are imprisoning and then ultimately fail. He uses this against Dent, convincing him to abandon all his morals, reducing him to something not quite nihilistic, but darn near close.

Two-Face: You thought we could be decent men in an indecent world. But you were wrong; the world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance.
[holds up his coin]
Two-Face: Unbiased.
[looks at Gordon]
Two-Face: Unprejudiced. Fair.

One leaves the movie theater thinking that the Joker has succeeded in corrupting Gotham’s White Knight, but Batman has escaped unscathed. Saddened but not crushed by Rachel’s death, he is willing to take the fall for Dent because, he patristically decides, Gotham deserves better than the truth. Yet his actions contradict his own myth about how the world really is. He, unlike the Joker, believes in a world where people are naturally good, and have enough nobility of character to live for something greater than simple hedonism or self-preservation. Yet Rachel’s concern is valid… is Bruce Wayne Batman because he lives to serve the citizens of Gotham, or is it because he can’t imagine himself as someone other than Batman? Is he strong enough to endure so much power? Or wise enough? His arrogance in understanding the simplicity of criminals almost cost him as the Joker did the unexpected and nearly brought down the whole city. Why does he selfishly hog the role of hero instead of allowing someone like “Bryan” to do the same thing? He can believe in an ordinary citizen like Dent, but only because he’s powerful. What about the powerless? Has it ever occurred to Batman, or Bruce Wayne, that the powerless, the poor, possibly have a power and a wealth that is unimaginable to him? The power that was displayed by the criminals on the boat. That is true power.

Lots more could be said about this movie. Suffice it to say it is not simply good vs. evil. Throughout the movie the audience is horrified by the Joker, but a few times manages to find themselves siding with him or admiring his cunning, insane genius. Batman loses his perfect nobility, and it could be argued he compromises his identity and becomes more similar to the Joker than not by being deceitful and violent.

Competing Myths

It has only been in the last couple years that the importance of story has really been spoken to me. Through a number of sources, mainly a couple teachers of mine, Stanley Hauerwas, and the Pearl Church, I have come to think about Christianity as narrative, and the way narrative informs us about how the world is.

But recently, I have come to realize that Christianity is not the only entity that values narrative. The corporate world and the media do as well. I’m sure other areas are affected, but these are the two that stick out to me in recent days.

Yesterday I was listening to the news (which I normally don’t do, and I certainly don’t watch it if I can help it, but the TV was on during an awkwardly silent dinner) and I heard something over and over… “So-and-so will be on shortly to tell us his story.” One such “story” was about the Oregon man who got his arm chewed up by a big bear in Yellowstone. Another was the retired FBI officials who were a part of the D.B. Cooper investigation who were finally going to “exclusively” tell their story. One of the news anchors kept  being astonished repeatedly at any hint of goodness in the stories. For instance, in the case of the guy who fought off the bear, she commented (in what seemed like sincere astonishment), “Well, its great that he survived.” As if the only thing that “makes sense” in the world is violence; it is nonsensical and miraculous if anything ever goes right. I can imagine that would be how she views the world, since the majority of the stories are about disastrous situations. Other far more capable writers have commented on the dangers of making tragedy and violent situations spectacles of entertainment, so I will leave it at that for now.

The other instance in which the world was presented a certain way through the art of story telling was in the business realm. We have a team meeting once a week, and probably about 90% of what my manager says is in narrative form. By this I mean, he tells stories about different people in the company. He realizes the importance of narrative, in that, if he tells his representatives stories about people having fifteen appointments in three days, they will think they can do that too. The problem with this is, however, that it gives people unrealistic expectations of the people he talks about. Me for instance. He has told numerous stories involving me. And usually they’re true, but put in the context of praise for the sake of exploiting people into selling a lot of stuff, it seems false, not to mention the exagerattions.  It prompted one of the managers to step down from the manager role, since he praises her in public and treats her like crap the rest of the time. The biggest frustration is that his praise is for his own gain, not because he actually legitimately cares about someone for their own sake. His use of stories is one that says the world is all about money, and so anything you can do to get money should be done. You care about people, because caring about them brings you money. You incorporate people into a community, because in a community they form an allegiance that makes them want to serve the company, and to do that they make money.

So all these fields, media, corporations, etc., all have a specific way narrative they are presenting that explains and consequently forms the reality in which we live. By mindlessly watching TV or attending a staff meeting, the words that float around our heads end up sinking into our skin and defining how we live our lives. May we be intentional about what words we let sink in.

Wall-E: A Movie Review

Wall-E repelled me from the start. The previews convinced me the makers of Pixar were going to make yet another movie about robots, and as opposed to the more critical (and I think accurate) accounts such as “I, Robot” and “A.I.” and others that show the negative affects of a world inhabited by robots, I thought this one was going to be about how good they were.

And it was… to a certain extent. Just as I was afraid they were going to do, since the main characters are robots, they used movie-making and story-telling magic (often through humor) to emotionally attach the audience to Wall-E and Eva. Wall-E’s eclectic-ness and love of beauty showed him to be more “humane” than one would expect from a robot, and it is subtly implied that that is what has kept him alive, since all the other Wall-Es have “died.” Eva could be described (in human terms) as a B.A.– ready to shoot anything that seems like a threat or even an inconvenience or annoyance.

Yet… ultimately, despite all my criticisms of the movie, it was a work in anthropology, trying to decide what it means to be human. And surprisingly to me, they encountered consumerism quite profoundly in the movie. Consumerism was seen to be a huge problem– the premise of why Wall-E is by himself on earth is because the humans filled it up with so much trash it was no longer liveable. So, they go off to space to live while the Wall-Es (which stands for “Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class”) clean up the mess they left behind. The original people intend to come back once earth is cleaned up enough that life can live, but for hundreds of years that is not the case. So instead, their space ship becomes something extremely and eerily similar to “A Brave New World”– people who can do whatever they want, consume as much as they want, and in that way find their happiness. And on that line of exciting consumerism, I recently found out that EVA is designed by Apple.

The captain, which is one of the three humans who begins to return to what it means to be human, specifically by being honorable and virtuous, says a profound line when the robot who is controlling the ship tells him they cannot return to earth. “You will survive here,” the robot tells him. “I don’t want to survive,” the captain says passionately, “I want to live!” Two other passengers, with Wall-E’s help, discover a world outside of their TV screen, a world of beauty. The space outside their windows, the pool that no one swims in, etc… and then ultimately, through human touch, each other.

It is not really clear (possibly because it is chiefly a children’s movie) how reproduction happens on this ship. Children are kept in separate quarters from the others, cared for by robots, and again it is a sense of Brave New World. The captain asks the control robot for statistics at the beginning of the day and is told there is no more human count. Death is not discussed, but there is talk of “ancestors” so even though they have found out how to live happily with no worries, it is not an eternal life. Obesity plays a large part in relation to consumerism as well.

My frustration with the movie is that although they brought out all these criticisms, the solution seemed extremely unreal. The ship defeats the “evil robot” (which is another discussion that could be had- some robots are essentially good, while others are not. How did that happen? A discussion of Frankenstein might be in order for that), and then returns to earth with a green shoot that miraculously survives quite a beating. The captain somehow had water on his ship, although all other water sources seemed to have disappeared on earth, and they have been in space for 700 years. Then the humans take that one shoot of green and manage to reproduce it into lots and lots of greenery.

Which on the one hand, is extremely profound. Wendell Berry might be excited, that farming is put in such a positive light, and that the humans’ personal relationship with the earth is what allows them to live instead of surviving in a consumerism theme park. But, possibly because its supposed to be a side-plot anyway, and the real story is the romantic relationship between two robots, their lives are way to easily, sometimes at the assumption that the technology and robots helped make it that way (even though that sort of lifestyle is what led to the hyper-consumerism in the first place).

However, with all that said, it is a great movie about what it means to be human, and what our relationship with the earth should be. And, it is fantastic that such a seemingly silly movie can have such profound implications.

You Are What You Consume: “Being Consumed”: A Review

I’ve heard a few rumors that Wal-Mart is moving into an area near where I live.

Discussing with an acquaintance of mine who had brought it up, I immediately (probably parroting something I had heard from someone else) said with selfish conviction, “Oh, yeah, that’s going to be just awful for traffic.”

To which they responded, “Well, maybe, but think of how necessary it is. Wal-Mart’s prices are great, and it’s going to help a lot of people out having one this close.”

This is a vague recollection of how the actual conversation went, since it wasn’t very important to me at the time. I remember thinking a little about the selfishness of my comment in light of my companion’s comment, and how it had caused me to feel a slight twinge of guilt, since my companion obviously was not thinking of just herself, as I was. But now, after spending the day reading William T. Cavanaugh’s new book, “Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire,” I realize we were both untruthful in our statements, for very different reasons.

Mine, was quite obviously a selfish comment. It is ridiculous that I would judge an event’s worth by how much inconvenience it would cause me through excessive amounts of traffic. My statement was not even concerned with environmental issues or safety issues that more traffic would cause… traffic was simply a negative entity because it would cost me an extra five minutes to get to where I wanted to go, as if the time was mine in the first place and that the new Wal-Mart’s traffic would unjustly rob me of that time.

My acquaintance’s comment, although seemingly more thoughtful, was unfortunately just as erroneous. Just as traffic is inherently a negative, something that’s going to save money is a positive, and Wal-Mart does this well, both by offering low product prices, and with the recent gas rates, being close in proximity for convenience. But even if the items are cheaper at Wal-Mart, one has to wonder, in this free market economy with other competing stores that charge a much higher price, how are those price reductions possible for a competitive business? How is the company dealing with the money that’s being lost?

One can only infer that, through globalizing and paying minuscule wages to workers in foreign countries, Wal-Mart saves money and can “afford” to keep their prices so low. But that is perhaps a hasty assumption. They may very well pay their workers a decent amount. But that’s an even larger issue– although, as my companion’s comment said, Wal-Mart might be convenient for the community in which it resides, that community will have no idea exactly where those products came from. Nor will they care. So in fact, although Wal-Mart offers decent prices, it cultivates a detachment from the products, and from the production process.

Through the unlimited amount of commodities they offer, they are encouraging an endless amount of desire for stuff. Cavanaugh makes a magnificent point saying that the problem of consumerism isn’t that people are too greedy, and hoarding away as much wealth as they can… the problem is that people are addicted to wanting for the sake of wanting. Instead of being overly attached to items, they are in fact quite detached from them, never being fully satiated and always returning to shop again and again. This detachment ends up not being just directed at the products, but at the method of production as well. Put simply, our want for a nice pair of jeans competes against our desire to have justice reign in the world. So although the jeans might have been made by a Chinese woman who had been working a 16 hour shift for the 30th day in a row, we feel like there is nothing we can do. We have no way of finding out whether or not the worker who made them made them with dignity. And even if we could find that information out, what would the alternative be? Our addiction to the idea of capital is often too strong for us to gauge how worthwhile it really is to pay more money for a product for the cause of justice, or healthfulness. We want a healthy world… but often the price seems to high.

Cavanaugh does not offer an easy answers for this. But what he does suggest, since the question should not be whether or not we consume but rather how or what we consume, that we allow our lives to be transformed through consuming the Eucharist. Cavanaugh’s Catholicism comes into place quite nicely here.

The Eucharist joins the body of Christ in a common telos, an end desire that is what directs our consumption. Any desire that does not have a goal, desire sought for desire’s sake, is nothingness, according to Augustine. The Eucharist is a sacrament in which a community of virtue learns to desire truthfully, and in that experiences true freedom.

Cavanaugh explains, when we consume the Eucharist, although the body of Christ is being consumed, it is mysteriously consuming us. We are the body of Christ. We, like Christ, are identified with the poor and the weak. By consuming the Eucharist, we are subscribing to a reality more real than capitalism. We are allowing our lives to be transformed by this consumption by living “eucharistically”, giving and pouring ourselves out to be consumed by others.The Eucharist shows us a different sort of globalization, a universalism that is made real by embracing particularity, not by shunning it, replacing the abstraction of capitalism not with other abstractions but recognizing the concrete particulars of our community, and recognizing in that particularity of each person, a universalism that makes clear the universal nature of the Gospel.

Trade turns everything into a commodity, according to Cavanaugh– objects, people, ideas, feelings, etc. This is done with a mindset that assumes scarcity. To trade something implies a giving up of something for the sake of something else. It implies ownership of one object that is transfered to be owned by someone else. The Eucharist works with a very different mindset. By allowing oneself to be consumed, instead of just consuming, it gives up the illusion of being in control and offers one up to the vulnerability of a sovereign God, a God who invites us on a difficult journey of discipleship that will not always make sense, and will require us to lose everything, claiming that (illogically- loosening our grip on what makes sense) we will gain Christ. The Eucharist invites us to participate in a heart-wrenching event of loss, of death, claiming that in that very event lies true life, and hope for redemption. But that hope cannot be gained unless one lays down the desire to simply consume and allows oneself to be consumed.

Postmodern Language Deconstructed

I have yet to post anything on Derrida yet, for fear that I would misrepresent him with the little that I know of him. However, this video is a good start in offering an extremely truthful, in a wonderfully humorous way, analysis of our language in today’s culture, and its implications, and also an alternative way of speaking.

And… the scrabble shirt is SO awesome.

Norms and Nobility: A Review

Norms and Nobility is a book I read during my time as a teacher’s assistant. It was a difficult book for me to begin, honestly. The cover was a simple maroon that didn’t entice me much, and then when I began the language was just antiquated enough that I didn’t want to have to discipline my mind enough to put in the extra effort to understand it. But, finally, I was on the train back from Michigan and the two and a half day journey with nothing to do but read gave me the environment i needed to go ahead and read it. And once I did, I loved it! Here are some comments on it.

In this book, Hicks argues for the implementation of classical education because of its effectiveness in making the lives of students meaningful in a world inundated with meaninglessness, a world that Solomon might have described as “vaporous.” In the prologue, Hicks explains that classical education’s chief aim is to educate the young to 1) Know what is good, 2) Serve it above self, and 3) Reproduce it.

Drawing from the musings of Aristotle, he claims that while Aristotle’s theories of democracy made “the good life” possible for every one, classical education puts that theory into practice by teaching man that ultimately “the good life” is a life of virtue, or a life of serving a “self-transcending ideal.” Classical education will also secondarily benefit the state by giving individuals the role to “preserve and develop culture [paideia],” articulating society’s purposes and values.

Although teaching virtue in the classroom has become unnecessary to modern educators who are simply concerned with teaching in a utilitarian manner that is only concerned with teaching the student how to live, teaching a life of virtue makes that existence worthwhile by asking the question “how.” This is done by teaching the student to question not just whether something can be done, but if something ought to be done.

At the center of Classical Education is “the word,” which Hicks describes as a crossroads between the mythos (man’s imaginative and spiritual effort to make the world intelligible) and the logos (man’s rational attempt to make the world intelligible). Implemented in the classroom, the beauty of the mythos is experienced through studying literature and history, “eventually fill[ing] the young person’s head with the sound of voices: the impassioned debate of the many great figures of myth and history concerning what is good, beautiful and excellent in man.” The logos is served through ushering students into a dialectic maturity, wrestling with what Hicks refers to as “dogma.” It is the teacher’s role to embody “dogma” and allow students to wrestle with the embodied dogma, rejecting unimportant aspects and affirming what they ascribe to be true. The teacher is to “teach himself,” as opposed to the modern method of teaching objectively and analytically.

At its core, the classical education that Hicks describes is very truthful in light of the Christian story. In a world that is hauntingly “not right,” Christians can courageously have faith because of the story that teaches us to hope in redemption. Part of living that redemption is to live a meaningful existence. Classical education teaches students to lead a meaningful existence by asking, “What is the good life?” and perhaps in fact proving that part of “the good life” is asking that very question.