Category: Entertainment

The Healing Doctor

Posted on

This post is part of a synchroblog for Doctor Who and Religion Day

doctor who sonicIn the Series 1 episode “The Doctor Dances,” the Doctor and his companions Rose Tyler and the newly joined Captain Jack Harkness find themselves cornered by hospital patients infected with alien technology. Captain Jack brags about his sonic blaster and asks what sort of weapon the Doctor is carrying. Jack is incredulous that the Doctor merely has a sonic screwdriver, quipping “Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks, ‘Ooh, this could be a little more sonic?” Although said in a moment of humor, the answer is, of course, the Doctor. Instead of carrying a weapon that can threaten and destroy, he brandishes an implement of repair as his go-to device. As one who seeks to heal the wounds of the universe, he has no need of a blaster that could be used to coerce or manipulate others into doing his will. Instead he uses the sonic screwdriver as he works alongside others in order to heal what is broken.

The Doctor’s aversion to displays of strength and power, even to the point of rejecting weapons, echoes descriptions of a God who operates from a position of weakness. Unlike depictions of an all-powerful God who reigns above all things and can use fear of punishment to coerce followers to his will, a weak God operates out of compassion to heal the wounded. The Doctor’s choice to carry a tool of repair instead of a weapon of destruction models what it means to exchange the way of strength and power for the ways of weakness and love. This stance is what author John Caputo refers to as taking place in an “anarchic field of reversals and displacements” which appears “wherever the least and most undesirable are favored while the best and most powerful are put on the defensive.” It echoes Mary’s Magnificat where the rulers are brought down from thrones and the lowly lifted up. When he is at his best, the Doctor mirrors the very description of the divine that scriptures offer up and the Church has largely ignored.

One sees an example of this in the 2007 Christmas special, “Voyage of the Damned”, as the Doctor displays his inclination to stand alongside the least and undesirable in even the ordinary moments of life. Having found himself on a luxury cruise spaceship, the Doctor is immediately drawn to a couple that seems out of place in the opulent settings. While most of the guests on the ship are thin, attractive, and impeccably dressed, this particular couple is rather overweight and dressed in garishly tacky clothes. They are in the process of gorging themselves on the ample free food when the Doctor joins them at their table. He soon discovers that unlike the rest of the guests on the cruise ship, this couple won the trip through a raffle and are enjoying a vacation they never dreamed they would have. Soon though it becomes apparent that a group of the other guests are making fun of this couple. Overhearing this mocking of the undesirables in their midst, the Doctor with humor in his eyes draws out his sonic screwdriver and uses it to pop the cork of a bottle of champagne at the table of the mockers. They are drenched in the resulting spray and the Doctor assumes an innocent look. It is a demonstration of that very reversal of roles where the powerful are brought down and the humble lifted up, done not maliciously but with well-timed humor. It is an affirmation of Walter Wink’s assertion that “The Powers That Be literally stand on their dignity. Nothing depotentiates them faster than deft lampooning. By refusing to be awed by their power, the powerless are emboldened to seize the initiative, even where structural change is not possible.”

It is Amy Pond in her first trip out into the universe in the TARDIS in the episode “The Beast Below” who voices aloud the depth of compassion of the Doctor. Despite the Doctor’s protest that he just travels the universe to observe and not to interfere, she can’t help but notice that when he sees a small girl in pain he cannot but step in and help her out. As Amy points out to the Doctor, “You ‘never interfere in the affairs of other peoples or planets,’ unless there’s children crying.” From his position of weakness, the Doctor cannot help but notice the suffering of the innocent. He embodies the description of one who “fills the hungry with good things” and wipes away every tear.

It will be curious to see in “The Day of the Doctor” who the Doctor who is not the Doctor truly is. For when he stops extending infinite compassion, seeks power instead of leveling playing fields, and turns aside from his role as healer of the universe, he is most certainly no longer the Doctor. Throughout history, believers have tried to turn God into something God is not. Lust for power and an affinity for violence are not the traits of one who loves and heals. The Doctor serves as a reminder of what such a God should look like, and how utterly tragic it is when he does not.

Read more

Joss Whedon and Self-Referential Storytelling

Posted on

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins” – T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

In his recent interview in Entertainment Weekly (which can be read in part here) Joss Whedon mentions his dislike of movies that are not self-contained stories in and of themselves. As Mike Ryan describes in his reaction to the interview –

One of the most interesting moments of James Hibbard’s excellent EW interview with Joss Whedon comes just after a discussion about what’s wrong with the ending to The Empire Strikes Back, when Whedon shifts his point slightly to focus on a self-referential moment during Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. (To read the full interview, you will have to buy a copy of Entertainment Weekly.)

“A movie has to be complete within itself; it can’t just build off the first one or play variations. You know that thing in Temple of Doom where they revisit the shooting trick? … That’s what you don’t want. And I feel that’s what all of culture is becoming — it’s becoming that moment.”

Whedon’s comment fascinated me. On one hand, I can see that Whedon might still be dealing with some unresolved bitterness about not being allowed to actually finish some of his best stories. But the idea that our culture is becoming that moment—a self-referential pastiche of stories—intrigues me. But unlike Whedon, I don’t see this as a bad thing. In fact, I believe it is the only way cultures know how to survive.

Real life is not an action/adventure film. The stories of our lives are not those of independent heroes emerging to fight arbitrary villains and then living happily ever after. We tell our stories by placing ourselves in an ongoing context of other’s stories. To stave off the chaos, we gather the fragments of the known to shore up our own stability. This is just how culture works.

In describing this aspect of culture, Richard Kearney brilliantly summarizes Paul Ricoeur –

“Each society, explains Ricoeur, invokes a tradition of mythic idealization through which it may be aligned with a stable predictable, and repeatable order of meanings. This frequently assumes the form of an ideological reiteration of the founding act of the community. It seeks to redeem society from the crises of the present by justifying actions in terms of some sanctified past, some sacred beginning. We could cite here the role played by the Aeneas myth in Roman society or the cosmology myths in Greek society, or indeed, the Celtic myths of Cuchulain and the Fianna in Irish society. Where an ancient past is lacking, a more recent past will suffice – the Declaration of Independence for the United States, the October Revolution for the former Soviet Union, and so on.”

Where in the past cultures have turned to foundational myths as their self-referential source of stability, the postmodern world finds its fragments in the ubiquity of pop culture. The movies we love, the songs we listen to, the books we read, the games we play, the sports teams we route for – these become, as William Dyrness comments, “the building blocks of our personal and group identity.” To surround ourselves with such things is to reassure ourselves of our identity and hence our stability. We tell our story by referencing these other stories. We hang movie posters in our bedrooms and wear Wonder Woman or Superman underroos when we are young, wear our favorite brand or team logo proudly when we are older (be that Polo and Gucci or DC Comics and Star Wars), and make our favorite TV shows the ones that reference our other favorite aspects of culture (Gilmore Girls, The Big Bang Theory, Chuck, Community, Parks and Recreation…). We share our playlists on Facebook and find community in constructing a fantasy football team. Our stories are constant series of self-referential moments. Our culture has already become this moment whether Joss Whedon fears it or not. These are the fragments we are shoring against our ruins.

Unlike Whedon, I like the ending of Empire Strikes Back because it isn’t self-contained – forcing Return of the Jedi to build off what came first. The story continues and I have to know what came before in order to move forward. Even as the credits roll, the audience knows that the story of the rebel alliance did not end in the ceremonial hall on Yavin or even in the Ewok village on Endor, Empire just made that truth more apparent. The Avengers eventually left the shawarma place to deal with the aftermath. Cinderella’s fairy tale wedding is just the beginning of her story not the definition of happily ever after. No story is ever self-contained, so we must continually gather fragments to build the new—to construct frameworks for our stories that we then flesh out. That we are living in a self-referential uncontained moment in our culture is not something to lament, but simply a lens to help us understand our own stories and the way we tell them. For if we don’t understand the context we are building upon it becomes far more difficult to continue with a coherent or creative plot into the next chapter.

Read more

Alleluia, The Doctor Returns

Posted on

As posted at The Huffington Post Religion blog –

believeI’ll admit it: I was more excited about the return of “Doctor Who” than about Easter. Some may say this makes me a poor Christian — that it should be the communal celebration of the Resurrection that my hearts yearns for the most — but honestly, in the past few years it has been in this story of a self-proclaimed madman with a box that I have encountered the most meaningful depictions of the divine. Easter in many churches these days has become more about creating the most perfect liturgy, scientifically trying to prove the resurrection, or demanding that one must believe in divine child abuse in order to be saved than about celebrating a God whose healing love inspires us to believe and go do likewise. For that I have “Doctor Who.”

“Doctor Who” is one of the longest running television shows in history with its first episode airing in November 1963. In 2005, the BBC rebooted the show with a postmodern audience in mind and it has since gathered a worldwide fan base. The show follows the adventures of a witty and hyper-intelligent humanoid alien “Time Lord” known simply as The Doctor, who travels the universe in his time machine, the TARDIS. The Doctor generally travels with a companion and, as his title suggests, often finds himself in situations which are in need of healing and repair. One cannot argue that “Doctor Who” is necessarily a Christian or even theistic show (despite its habit of having Christmas and Easter specials) or even that the Doctor is intended to be equated with God. The two men who have creatively led and written many of the episodes of the BBC reboot of the show, Russell Davies and Stephen Moffat, are both self-proclaimed atheists. Yet, as producers and writers, they frequently address religious themes and use the character of the Doctor to challenge hollow and dangerous conceptions of God. It is in their attempts to use the Doctor to deconstruct inward-focused religion which has little relevance in a world full of injustice and pain that an alternative, more meaningful, vision of God emerges.

Jack Caputo has argued that a God that makes sense in our postmodern era is a God defined by weakness instead of strength. By weakness he does not mean a “weakness that lacks the power of faith or the courage for action” but a weakness that stands on the side of the powerless, that participates in the reversals which displace the high and mighty and lift up the lowly, and that keeps hope alive when life appears to be hopeless. Caputo writes in “The Weakness of God,” “You see the weak force that stirs within the name of God only when someone casts it in the form of a narrative, tells mad stories and perplexing parables about it.” It is in these mad tales that resonate with the imagination of the age that many of us are encountering an image of God more meaningful than what is being presented in many churches these days.

As we watch “Doctor Who,” we encounter the story of one who far from being above humanity, comes alongside us to not only suffer with us, but inspire us to do the hard work of creating a better world. We see in the tale of the Doctor an example of a figure who calls followers to lives of adventure and wonder, practices radical forgiveness, and welcomes the marginalized and defends the powerless. It is an potential image of the divine that inspires hope, and which (for me at least) grasps what it means to live the way of life Jesus modeled far better than do the pointless attempts to orchestrate the perfect worship service or defend the plausibility of miracles.

So, as the show returned this Easter weekend, I eagerly anticipated immersing myself once again in a narrative about one who saves the world by calling it to participate in acts of healing and love. I wish I could say that I knew I could encounter the same in churches this Easter. As a committed Christ follower, I am tired of Easter being reduced to mechanics. I want more than marathon services or reiterations of the details of Christ’s death and resurrection that try to convince me that merely believing that something happened is the purpose of being a Christian. I want to be called to join in on the adventure of healing the world, in welcoming the marginalized, and living in the revolutionary way of Jesus. Thankfully, “Doctor Who” is brave enough to tell such mad tales even when the church is not.

Read more

On Superheroes

Posted on

My children have discovered superheroes.

They’ve always known about superheroes of course, but over the past few months they have jumped fully into the world. So we’ve been watching the movies, reading comic books, and listening to my trivia-obsessed daughter repeat all the details from entries in her X-Men or Justice League encyclopedias. I am even sewing capes for my son’s superhero birthday party in a couple of weeks.

So with all that said, I have a confession to make – I’m honestly really conflicted about the whole superhero thing. Oh, I too loved superheroes as a kid and like any good child of the 80’s I ran around my neighborhood in my Wonder Woman underoos. But while I love the idea of heroes working to help make the world a better place, there is just too much baggage that comes along with the genre for me to be comfortable with it. It is hard to get past the imperialist propaganda of Superman or Captain America out there fighting for “truth, justice, and the American Way.” It is even harder to accept as heroes the billionaire, playboy, philanthropist types who essentially must work to save the world from the fallout of their own participation in the military industrial complex and finance schemes. And while I recognize that more recent comics explore the complex ethics and struggles these conflicts present, that’s not the story my children are discovering.

But beyond those philosophical issues, my biggest struggle with superheroes is the portrayal of violence as the answer to everything. Even the characters that try to resist violence always end up facing a bad guy so evil that they have no choice but to respond with violence. Any commitment to peacemaking is cast as essentially choosing to side with evil. And on a visceral level, this is what the audience wants from this genre. It comforts people to have the world cast as good versus evil where the good guy is stronger and can beat the bad guy in the end. People want the solution to all the world’s problems to be as simple as the Hulk shutting up Loki’s endless prattling by smashing him back and forth into the floor. Who cares what Loki was actually saying (or that it sounded eerily similar to what a lot of theologians and politicians are saying these days), it’s funnier and more cathartic to have him beat into a pulp through mindless anger.

This issue arose with my seven year old daughter recently when after seeing The Avengers she asked me what “avengers” meant. I told her that to avenge means to get back at someone, to hurt someone because they hurt you or something you care about. Since this of course conflicts with everything we (and her school) are trying to teach her about how to respond to others, I asked her if she thought avenging wrongs was a good thing or not. After agreeing that it was wrong to avenge, she commented that it seemed like “The Avengers” was a bad name for that group of superheroes. She said that they don’t avenge as much as protect, so they should really be called “The Protectors.” She then told me that I need to email the people who created it and tell them they got the name wrong (cuz in her mind why wouldn’t Marvel and Stan Lee listen to her mommy?). So despite the violence “The Protectors” use, I at least got to discuss with her the impulse behind that violence – distinguishing defense from revenge and rage.

That conversation then led to another discussion a few days later about a t-shirt I was wearing (shown here). She asked about the symbols and I explained what they were and how each of them worked. I then asked her which would she choose. Interestingly, she immediately ruled out Excalibur and the lightsaber since those are only used for fighting others. She then had a hard time choosing from the remaining “magic wands” of Gandalf’s staff, the Elder Wand, and the Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver. The potential to alter and fix the world held far more appeal than simply fighting the evil it contains.

I think it is that impulse to do good in the world that attracts my kids to superheroes, but I remain conflicted with how the genre portrays building a better world as being simply the need to defeat absolute evil. There are demons that need to be fought in our world today (and all too often they look more like Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne than Loki or the Green Goblin), but the superheroes we need are those willing to work to fix problems and not simply those that avenge and destroy. It might not be as sexy or entertaining as blowing things up or smashing arrogant gods, but those are the hero traits I’d prefer my kids to be admiring.

Read more

Holistic Female Characters

Posted on

The conversations over the past week or so on feminine identity and image have sparked a number of discussions of what movies do portray women holistically. The trend these days in films is to make women appear strong by either stripping them of everything that is traditionally considered to be feminine and/or by making them attractive yet kick-ass action heroes. While I admit that there is a place for such portrayals, they often don’t allow women to be their full selves. So while I think it is wrong to portray women as just weak, it is equally wrong to go to the other extreme and remove all vulnerability from women as well. We’re human, let us be who we are. Let us be in love, but not be defined solely by being in love. Let us be smart, but also love our kids. Let us be strong without always having to hurt others.

So here is a (very) short list of movies and books that I think present women holistically. They are smart, strong, and kick-ass at times, but also fall in love, admit to weaknesses, and deal with pain – without being solely defined by any one of those things. I’ve started the list, I would love for readers to add to it in the comments (and yes feel free to add examples of men presented holistically as well!)

I have to start the list off with Eowyn. The quote in my blog header is from her, an image I may or may not have a version of tattooed somewhere on my body. We also named our daughter Emmaline Eowyn. So, yes, she ranks up there as my all-time favorite female character. The Lord of the Rings movies did a fair job presenting her as the strong shieldmaiden, defeating the Witchking with her declaration “I am no man.” But they only briefly showed (in the Extended Editions at that), her greatest strengths. Through all the stories she knows that she is called to do great things and fears the cages that will hold her back. In the limits of her world she assumes this means either becoming like a man in battle or marrying the future King Aragorn. He reminds her though that she is a daughter of Kings; a cage will not be her fate. But it is in the houses of healing that she discovers her true calling as a healer. Rulers in Middle Earth are healers – Aragorn is recognized as the true king because he has the ability to heal. The elves name him Elessar (my son’s middle name) because it means one who can heal. Eowyn discovers that greatness inside her once she learns to serve and heal others – that is what it means to be a ruler. I love that. I love Eowyn. And I love that it takes her a journey to discover that.

Katniss Everdeen. I love the Hunger Games. I love Katniss. She is deeply vulnerable and has a long slow journey to figure out how to cope with all the pain in her life. She cares, self-sacrificially for others and yet knows what it takes to survive. From a place of utter brokenness after the death of her father, she pulled her family together and helped them survive by learning to hunt and forage. In the shadow of a totalitarian government that wants to use her as their pawn, she through trial and error figure out how to stay true to herself and yet protect those she loves. She succeeds spectacularly and fails tragically in the books and yet manages to figure out how to survive both. She isn’t cocky and she has more questions than answers. She feels pain deeply and gives tremendously. She is my hero.

President Laura Roslin from Battlestar Galactica. Okay she could be annoying at times, but her balance of taking charge in a crisis (the end of the world) and living in the vulnerable space of dealing with breast cancer at the same time is hard not to respect. When robots of our own creation return to annihilate the human race, I want her as my President.

Robin McKinley’s treasured The Hero and the Crown (Newberry winner) and The Blue Sword (Newberry Honor book) set the standard for strong female protagonists in beautifully written stories. The first book tells of the legendary Lady Aerin the dragon-slayer who saves her Kingdom despite her family’s assumption that she was just a worthless girl. The Blue Sword takes place centuries later as the orphaned, unladylike and socially awkward Harry discovers that she is heir to Lady Aerin’s mythical blue sword. These books have just the right amount of girls overcoming stereotyped roles without reducing them to simply being glass-ceiling smashers. Their stories are mesmerizing as you fall into them completely and find in Aerin and Harry heroes any reader can love. (On a side note, McKinley’s Sunshine is in my opinion the best vampire book ever written and it has an amazingly strong female protagonist as well).

Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. So there are some major gender issues in this play, the whole denounce Hero at the altar for being unvirtuous thing is just plain creepy in today’s world. But the development of Beatrice and Benedick and their witty brilliance are worth the weirdness. She is as independent of a woman as she can be in her world and is astute enough to point out her constraints. She is smart and understands that she does not need a man to fulfill her which of course makes the relationship she stumbles upon with Benedick all the more meaningful. Emma Thompson defines this role for me (she is great at playing real, vulnerable, and yet strong women). Sigh no more ladies, sigh no more…

I love the movie Away We Go and Maya Rudolph’s character Verona in it. She is funny, smart, and creative and trying to come to terms with being pregnant. After losing family and her home young, she is trying to understand what it will mean for her to start a family. She and her husband travel the country in search of a home and in the process define for themselves what family does not mean to them. The extreme stereotypes of women (the domineering wife, the hippie attachment-parenting mom) are humorously depicted as limiting women. In short, the film is the holistic woman’s hero’s journey as she seeks a way of being in the world that allows her to be herself – intelligence, scars, humor and all.

So now it’s your turn – who would you add?

Read more

Femininity, Image, and Identity

Posted on

In response to my last post, Bo Sanders over at Homebrewed Christianity brought up some related ideas and addressed a few questions to me. Here’s my (long and somewhat rambling) response. He writes –

Last week I saw two movies and was quite intrigued by a pattern I noticed during the trailers: women being tough guys. The three trailers were for Underword:Awakening with Kate Beckinsdale, Haywire with Gina Carano (both action films) and The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher.

I have read enough feminist literature to know that there is a principle (which Thatcher made famous) that “In a man’s world …” a women often has to out ‘man’ the guys in order to break into the boys club and be taken seriously….

What do we do with the karate-chopping drop-kicking heroines of violence on the silver screen these days? On one hand, it is nice to women getting these big-deal leading roles in major films… on the other hand, are they real portrayals of women-ness or is it the bad kind of mimicry – like ‘Girls Gone Wild’ as a picture of sexual liberation or power.

Bo brings up some really good questions to which there are no easy cut and dry answers. I ranted/blogged about this general topic a few years ago, but the issues still exist, and perhaps are even intensified. On one hand, I would start by pointing out that just because a woman is an action hero, tough as nails, or possess traditional leadership qualities doesn’t mean she is acting like a man. That could simply be just who she is and she should be given space to be herself without being judged. But at the same time, I agree that it is a widespread cultural issue that women often feel like they must put on the persona of men in order to succeed. Our culture doesn’t know how to handle women who are strong, intelligent, and assertive. So women who are those things must become overtly masculine (like Thatcher) or play up objectified femininity in order to appear safe (be in perfect shape, always look pretty and put together, or be the supermom). For instance, I’ve found in settings like seminary, church, or conferences if I am even half as vocal and assertive as the guys around me I get told I am rude or am mocked. But if I can talk about my kids, help with a family event, or provide food for something, I am seen as more feminine and therefore safe. Like you said, we have to find ways to overdo it in order to gain credibility.

The main issue for women at hand here is how aspects of our self (traditionally labeled as feminine) are objectified and therefore not embraced as strengths but become symbols of our weakness or inferiority that make us safe and acceptable. Most action movies with female leads give us physically strong women who are also eye candy and use that to their advantage (seriously, who does martial arts in a leather catsuit and high heels? It’s not even physically possible). These strong women are safe because they can be objectified as sex objects. It is the rare film that breaks that trend. I recall after watching Salt that that it was refreshing that Angelina Jolie never once used her sexuality as one of her weapons in the film, she was simply a slightly awkward, highly intelligent, kick-ass spy. Then I found out the part had originally been written for a man, mystery solved. Sucker Punch also brilliantly deconstructed and critiqued the pattern in movies of women entering worlds controlled by men and having to become oversexualized and exceptional in order to succeed in those places. But neither Salt or Sucker Punch did well in the theaters – they strayed too far from the mold.

In college I recall reading a novel for class and thinking that it had the best portrayal of women that I had read all semester. In class though the professor tore the book apart for its horribly unrealistic portrayal of women. He argued that not just in fiction, but in reality all women fit the Madonna or whore category (pure saints or sensual sinners) – for him (to the shock of many of the women in the class) women can’t be real people we can only be those archetypes. That is what the world expects as well, so our movies deliver – we get weak princesses in need of rescue or sexualized action heroes – but very few real strong women. Don’t get me wrong, I like the kick-ass female action heroes. After we saw the Haywire trailer, my husband leaned over and said “that is soo your type of movie.” Sydney Bristow and Mara Jade are my heroes. Accepting even objectified strong women is at least a first step (albeit flawed) towards accepting strong women for who they are. (My hope is that with Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games (pictured) we will be getting a wholistic strong woman who captures audiences’ attention.)

In an ideal world women could be strong, kick-ass, and intelligent without being objectified or assumed to be acting masculine. And our other strengths – even the traditionally feminine ones like mothering, or cooking, or artistry – will be seen not as things that make us safe because as the weaker sex we should be limited to them, but as strengths in and of themselves that are all part of the matrix of who we are (the Doctor Who Christmas Special this year did a fantastic job portraying this btw). As a mother my identity should not be reduced to that role, but neither should it be something I should be ashamed of or use to prove I can succeed at everything. Women should be able to be strong without having out out-violence or out-revenge the men. Women should be able to be smart without having to either be the smartest in the room or search for ways to make her intelligence acceptable to men. Women should be able to feel pretty and accept their sexuality without being turned into be eye-candy or live in fear that they are causing men to stumble. Women (and men) should be valued as themselves regardless of whether or not they fit traditional masculine or feminine labels.

The world is not there yet. And the church certainly is not. But the rise of the female action hero means that the conversation is started. The confines of gender stereotyped identity are being deconstructed, we simply have not gone far enough yet. Instead of allowing people to be whole in who they are, we assume that to not be feminine is to therefore be masculine (or vice versa) and therefore that the person is lacking for not conforming to our gender expectations. I don’t know if we will ever get rid of the categories of masculine and feminine (which sadly always portrays the feminine as weaker and lesser) in favor of simply naming strengths and virtues for all people. Perhaps the place to start is in making our heroes women who display “masculine” strengths and men who display “feminine” ones in hopes that the definitions will one day become too blurred to be distinguished, or at least the feminine traits valued more. I know for me, I am encouraging my kids (as I did when I worked with youth) to question those limits, to interrogate images in movies and television, and embrace their strengths no matter how they are labeled. I am still trying to navigate how to be a woman in a world that tries to limit, ignore, or objectify me so I know it is not an easy task. But being aware that it is a struggle, and helping my kids be aware as well, I think helps make it more doable.

Read more

To Occupy, Liberate, and Love

Posted on

Although I am late to the game, I have recently started watching through the newer seasons of Doctor Who. The Season 3 episode “Gridlock” has been haunting me since I watched it. In this episode the Doctor and Martha Jones visit New New York in the year 5 Billion and 43 where they find an underground world consisting of one massive traffic jam. In an overpopulated world, underworld families live in small flying cars on a deadly polluted underground highway. It can take years to travel a few miles, and so they exist isolated in their cars as they inch forward through the gridlock. The commuters have hope that the police will one day open more lanes or solve the traffic problems and they then take comfort in the moment by singing nostalgic but meaningless hymns (like “The Old Rugged Cross”) during broadcasted daily reflection moments. The Doctor steps into this world and breaking all established rules of traffic discovers that the overworld has been wiped out leaving the commuters stuck in hopeless and pointless gridlock. He subsequently flings open the doors to the overworld, showing them the way out if they are willing to simply fly themselves out into the light.

The episode is a beautiful incarnation story and has repeatedly popped into my mind as I reflect on the current Occupy Wall Street protests (yes, this is the way my mind works). There is no precise correlation, but I couldn’t help but notice similarities. In our isolated attempts at living the American dream according to the rules the system imposed upon us we know there are problems, but there is a tendency to assume that some authority will somehow eventually fix our problem for us. So we wait patiently, abiding by the rules, taking comfort in our sweet but impotent religious rituals, dying slowly as we come to mistake the rat-race for reality. A few of us might get ahead, moved to the fast lane so to speak, which we take as a sign of hope that the system is working and that one day we might actually arrive. We might talk about freedom, and love, and justice, and mercy as if they are some ideal we can strive towards – a better world we can hope to someday arrive at – but they aren’t reflected in the shape of our everyday lives. That is consumed with inching forward in our individual existence.

So when something like Occupy Wall Street comes along it challenges the status quo. And if our hope is in the fulfillment of the status quo, a challenge to that makes us fearful. What if we lose our place? What if all the time we have spent was wasted? Shouldn’t we just wait for the people in charge to figure it all out and get us all running smoothly again? What is scary to some about the Occupy movement is that instead of giving comfort in the moment or hope in the continued status quo, it is calling for liberation. Perhaps that is not the message of every voice or even of the details, but the collective message is one calling people out to a different way. It is a message that the system is broken, we are hopelessly stuck, and we need to find a way out.

There might not be a TARDIS to incarnate the Doctor into our particular moment, but for the sake of liberation perhaps we are the one we have been waiting for. Liberation is the result of the event of love. Not a vague hope in the idea of love, but the event of love entering into and utterly transforming the tragedy of the status quo. As Jurgen Moltmann wrote about this love,

It is not the interpretation of love as an ideal, a heavenly power or as a commandment, but of love as an event in a loveless, legalistic world: the event of an unconditioned and boundless love which comes to meet man, which takes hold of those who are unloved and forsaken, unrighteous or outside the law, and gives them a new identity, liberates them from the norms of social identifications and from the guardians of social norms and idolatrous images. … [But] Just as the unconditional love of Jesus for the rejected made the Pharisees his enemies and brought him to the cross, so unconditional love also means enmity and persecution in a world in which the life of man is made dependent on particular social norms, conditions and achievements. A love which takes precedence and robs these conditions of their force is folly and scandal in this world.”

The impulse toward freedom, toward liberation, is slowly awakening across the nation. The doors have been thrown open; we now have to choose if we will drive out into the light. The protests are, of course, not perfect. There are the dangers of creating new constraining status quos, of corruption, or simply the re-iteration of the same status quos with new faces at the helm. These are the typical demons that prey upon those embracing the event of liberating love – demons that the guardians of the current status quo are sure to parade about in attempts to scare the timid away from joining the movement towards freedom. But love always involves risk. Freedom from the conditions and gridlock of this world is always tied to the ongoing event of love. Love – that unconditional event that liberates for the shalom of the whole – is not an ideal but that ongoing way of life. It takes work to live into a new identity – to figure out how to live differently. The call to occupy isn’t for a quick fix (which I sincerely hope it doesn’t settle for), but it is instead the call to usher in an entire new way of being that requires us all to drastically change as we enter into the difficult work of liberating love – despite obstacles, despite opposition.

It’s hard to speak of a different way in our world today. Perhaps all I’m doing is just reflecting on a good story here. But maybe it’s a parable, or better yet, a dream. And the world is waking up and sometimes dreams do come true.

Read more

The Complexity of Identity

Posted on

Over the last few weeks I have finally had the chance to introduce my kids to the Star Wars movies. It took them awhile to get interested, and since Star Wars was one of the defining narratives that shaped my childhood, I had to force myself to wait to show it to them until they were ready (and yes, like any good parent of my generation, we started with Episode IV). But as we watched it and the array of characters appeared on the screen my daughter would repeatedly ask, “so is that a good guy or a bad guy?” When she asked that about the Ewoks I had to laugh (seriously, how could wonder if a teddy bear was a bad guy?), but most of the time I found myself having to give qualified answers. She is used to disneyfied depictions of the world where there are obvious good and bad characters. But Star Wars, like reality, is nuanced. The good guys can be self-seeking and greedy, and cute little Anakin becomes the evil Darth Vader who still has enough good in him to be redeemed in the end. Identity is fluid and people are complex. My six year old (along with many adults) would rather have the world be easily divided into clear cut categories of good and evil, but that’s just not the way it works. Heck, even the Ewoks tried to roast Han and Luke alive.

While our nature as children of God created in God’s image defines us at our core (and makes the ultimate redemption of all possible), who we are in relation to each other is constantly being shaped and changed as we proceed through life. We, at various points, can be both good and evil – as well as simply greedy, self-centered, and apathetic even as we try to follow the way of Jesus. We are the good guys and we are the bad guys. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously wrote –

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Not only are we unwilling to destroy that part of ourselves, we often can’t even admit to the complexity of our identity. If we see ourselves as decent citizens and committed Christians, we have a hard time admitting that within that framework we might be participating in evil. I hear this all the time when I speak on justice issues. It’s the “I’m a good person, how dare you suggest I am hurting others when I buy clothing made in sweatshops or treat the environment however I wish.” We prefer our binary categories that help us label and judge the world. I’m good, others are bad. I’m normative, others are abnormal. It’s not reality, but it’s how people cope.

Getting at that reality is part of why I’ve recently become obsessed with the show Torchwood (a Dr. Who spin-off). Described as a postmodern, postcolonial, pansexual narrative, episode after episode it serves to deconstruct binary assumptions about our world and our identity. Captain Jack Harkness, the 51st century time-traveling, omnisexual, and morally ambiguous main character who is constantly re-negotiating the identity of the alpha-male lead role, dismisses our tendency to be comforted with the binary with “you people and your cute little categories.” There is no one purely good or evil in the show, simply people trying to survive as best they can. Friends who would otherwise die for each other turn on each other when it could save those they love the most. Middle men just doing their job contribute to systems of evil and yet are not powerful enough to stop them. In one poignant scene one sees that it is the poor gang members who have nothing left to lose who are the only ones willing to stand up against an act of extreme injustice the government tries to commit. The show pushes the boundaries of sexual identity, but also tears to shreds the stereotypical colonial narrative of the alien invasion story. In one storyline an alien race was threatening the destruction of earth unless we gave them 10% of our children to use as drugs. As the story unfolded we saw that the humans weren’t merely victims, but as capable of sacrificing the weak for their own comfort as the aliens. Even Captain Jack’s solution to the invasion revealed him to be just as much monster as hero. Assumed categories of right and wrong broke down in light of the messiness of reality.

I love the show because it is so real. As absurd as it sounds to describe a science-fiction show as real, it is the honest depiction of the fluidity and complexity of our identity that resonates so well. Most episodes leave me deeply frustrated and unsettled, but also commenting to my husband that this is the way evil works in the real world – not as some absolute tyranny out to destroy the world, but in the accumulation of everyone’s small decisions to shape the world for their own personal benefit. It takes these sorts of postcolonial stories that deconstruct hidden power structures and allow for the exploration (as opposed to imposition) of identity for us to become aware of the complexity of our own selves. The rigid definitions of who we claim to be break down when seen light of our relations to others. We are the victim and the oppressor, we are the hero and the villain, we are friend and we are the enemy – all at the same time. South Africa discovered this after Apartheid. They knew that to even function as a postcolonial nation the community had to let go of binary labels like victim and oppressor, confess their corporate complicity in evil, and embrace the messiness of living in relation with complex people.

Good relationships evolve because they allow for people to be in process. To understand where that line of good and evil exists in their hearts and to hold their cute little identity categories loosely. People change, we grow, we constantly fail, and yet we must remain in community. Unless we start to understand the fluidity and multiplicity of our identity in relation to others it is impossible to build healthy relationships that revolve around our core nature of being created in the image of God. And ultimately it is those relationships with God and others that matter the most.

Read more

Speculative Fiction, the Church, and Hope

Posted on

So NPR just released the results of their survey for the Top 100 Science-fiction and Fantasy Books. It’s a great list with some of my all-time favorite books on it (although I disagree with their decision not to include young adult books on the list, but that’s just me). Some 5,000 books were nominated for the list, but the ones that made the top 100 were mostly ones that were more than just entertaining stories; they are the stories that mean something. Stories that through their imaginings of alternative worlds tap into the power of the prophetic to deliver the message that our world too is not absolute, but imagined and therefore capable of change.

Now while I have complained in the past about why imaginative challenges to oppressive orders in our world only seem to happen in speculative fictions, the genre still remains my favorite – often for that very reason. As this recent comparison of women of sci-fi vs. women of prime time shows, there are just so many more substantial ways of being in the world than the status quo generally allows for. Speculative fictions not only present the possibility that the dreams we struggle for now could someday actually be realities, they are also the prophetic voice calling us into that world.

In many ways these fictions take up the task that the church has nearly completely abdicated. Churches don’t use their collective voice and energy to challenge the existence of a world where God’s ways are not allowed to reign. Oh, churches fight for their rights, but rarely are the ones helping build a better world for all. Churches instead help people feel fulfilled, spiritually connected, and generally as comfortable as they can. The church is often nothing more than a support group or vendor of experiences to help us feel like we belong. God is tacked-on to make our experiences feel meaningful, but not to challenge us to subvert the constraints to the sovereignty of the Kingdom of God. So we go to church to feel connected to a tradition, we go to get an “I’m okay, you’re okay” affirmation, we go to hear why we are right and everyone else is wrong, we go to feel safe and secure amidst likeminded people – but rarely do we go to imagine how everything could be different. Dreaming of better world is apparently only for those sci-fi/fantasy geeks.

But it was the role of the biblical prophet to imagine alternative ways of living in this world that reflected the ways of God. As Walter Brueggemann wrote about the prophetic, it is “an assault on public imagination, aimed at showing that the present presumed world is not absolute, but that a thinkable alternative can be imagined, characterized, and lived in. … Thus, the prophetic is an alternative to a positivism that is incapable of alternative, uneasy with critique, and so inclined to conformity.”
Churches are inclined to comfort and emotional well-being, and so therefore to conformity (read a fantastic article about that here). Prophetic voices are dismissed as too political, too extreme, or just a quirk of personality. Heck, in many churches even science-fiction and fantasy are banned because they are too subversive. Churches don’t bother imagining a better world where God’s ways of compassion and justice reign because we are too comfortable with the world we have now. We don’t want a prophet to challenge our comfort, or force us to look outside ourselves, or (heaven-forbid) start caring about the things God cares about.

The church has shut the door on imagination.

Which is why so many of us are desperate for the hopeful imaginings offered in speculative fictions.

Read more

Cowboys & Aliens – A Review

Posted on

Americans have a hard time knowing how to respond to the sins of our colonial past. Except for a few extremists, most people know on a gut level that the extermination of the Native Americans was a bad thing. Not that most would ever verbalize it, or offer reparations, or ask for forgiveness, or admit to current neocolonial actions, or give up stereotyped assumptions – they just know it was wrong and don’t know how to respond. The Western American way doesn’t allow the past to be mourned, or apologies to be made. Instead we make alien invasion movies.

It’s no secret that alien invasion films are a way our culture attempts to deal with the sins of our past. Just like we colonized, pillaged, and exterminated indigenous peoples around the world with our advanced technologies of deadlier weapons, we now explore how that might have felt by imagining aliens doing the same to us. But of course, in our never-ending hubris those films always end with the hero kicking the aliens’ butt. Identification with the other can only go so far.

It is into this postcolonial genre that Cowboys & Aliens attempts to fit in, except with the twist that it’s actually set during the period of Western “Manifest Destiny” expansionism. In trying to make such an odd marriage work, the film very self-awarely makes use of all the stereotypes of those genres. You have the old West mining town populated with stock characters like the bespectacled Doc, the crusty old preacher, the lawful sheriff, the prostitute with the heart of gold, the grumpy old Civil War vet turned cowboy (Harrison Ford), and the rugged outlaw (Daniel Craig). The aliens too are the expected insect-like slimy vicious being with no hint of compassion. Added to that is the Hollywood version of a band of Apaches, including the favorite colonial narrative story of the young Native American boy who had been adopted by the racist cowboy (Ford) after his parents died in raids who now serves him as a field hand, looks to him as a father, and willingly sacrifices his life for him later on. Of course, in this alternate world the cowboys and Indians quickly see that they must overcome their differences and work together to fight the aliens (or at least the white men condescend to fight alongside the Natives after the Natives accept that the white men’s attack plan is superior.) Perhaps more ironic self-awareness would have made the stereotypes actually work instead of just descend into the uncomfortable, but as it was they made it difficult for the rest of the films’ theme to play out fully.

As for that, the narrative attempted to follow the colonial trope almost too well. One of the opening lines of the film states that “we are near to Absolution” which is soon followed by Daniel Craig’s wounded character being asked if he is a criminal or a victim to which he replies “I don’t know.” From there the story becomes the journey to seek absolution – in the personal characters’ story arcs and awkwardly in the cultural story of White/Native American relations. While the Preacher is an entertaining character, it quickly becomes apparent that religion will be of no help on this particular journey. In their pursuit of aliens who have abducted their family members, the group of main characters come across a wrecked upside down-steamboat in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Five hundred miles from the nearest river large enough for it, the boat (named the “Amazing Grace”) doesn’t belong. It also is where the Preacher gets attacked and killed. Finding absolution becomes not a religious quest, but a way for boys to become real men as they learn to fight to preserve their way of life.

They soon discover that the attacking aliens (which they call demons) came to earth on a scouting mission to plunder us of gold. Yes, gold. Not some odd resource needed for advanced technology, but the exact same resource that sent pox-infected Conquistadors and Cowboys alike off on quests to plunder the lands of indigenous American peoples. The aliens also round-up humans and keep them sedated in holding pens until they can experiment on them to discover weaknesses. So a combined cowboy, Indian, and outlaw force launches an assault on the alien ship making use of six-shooters, dynamite, arrows, and spears. They, of course, rescue their enslaved family members and (with the help of an angelic-like being) use the alien’s technology against them to destroy the scout ship. The oppressive colonizers are vanquished, the American narrative remains intact.

The happily-ever-after ending has the characters not questioning how gold led to evil and oppression, but prospering off the alien’s discovery of nearby goldmines. Cinematic absolution has been reached, relationships healed, and the threat of colonization seems to have vanished for good. Hollywood delivered some decent action sequences, a hint of a love story, and stock character arcs that make for good entertainment (not to mention the requisite shots of Daniel Craig with his shirt off). Summer blockbuster status achieved.

And yet I wanted more. There was too much historical commentary for Cowboys & Aliens to simply be entertaining escapism, but not enough for it to have anything meaningful to say. Good commentary on our colonial past forces us to examine current assumptions by allowing us to see things from the perspective of the other. But in this film the cowboy still won. The cowboy is both the criminal and the victim, demonstrating superiority in both roles. Just as the Native Americans in the film had to concede to the superiority of Harrison Ford’s ideas, the message is that even when faced with stronger beings and more advanced technology the cowboys (with God’s angels on their side) will by their very nature always come out on top. The other is still other. True absolution, true reconciliation, remains elusive as the hierarchical status quo remains.

In a blundering attempt to deconstruct the colonial narrative, Cowboys & Aliens simply reasserts the myth of the rugged individualist who has no need to ever apologize for current or past sins. But sadly most viewers will be more disappointed with the film’s lack of explosions and sex scenes than its neocolonial message. But I guess that’s the prerogative of cowboys trying to retell their own story.

Read more