To Boldly Go, Where Someone Has Gone Before!

In case you missed the bootleg version that's been floating around the last few days, the full HD trailer for J.J. Abram's reboot of the Star Trek franchise is due to be released this morning. All I can say is, Wow!

Update: Here it is!

New Harry Potter Trailer

I can't believe they're making us wait until July 2009, but it looks good:



And if you missed it, check out the international teaser trailer here.

Indiana Jones Denied Tenure

Nice:

The committee concurred that Dr. Jones does seem to possess a nearly superhuman breadth of linguistic knowledge and an uncanny familiarity with the history and material culture of the occult. However, his understanding and practice of archaeology gave the committee the greatest cause for alarm. Criticisms of Dr. Jones ranged from “possessing a perceptible methodological deficiency” to “practicing archaeology with a complete lack of, disregard for, and colossal ignorance of current methodology, theory, and ethics” to “unabashed grave-robbing.”...

Moreover, no one on the committee can identify who or what instilled Dr. Jones with the belief that an archaeologist’s tool kit should consist solely of a bullwhip and a revolver.

Tidbits

A few items of interest:

Conscience For Me But Not For Thee: The Case for Pro-Life Docs and Pharmacists from the Bad Idea Blog, provides a fairly thorough defense of the concept (see my own post on the subject, from June).

In What Lies Beneath, James McGrath offers a great analogy for the importance of critically examining one's own beliefs.

Peter Chattaway links to a number of early reviews of Religulous, including especially this one by John Nolte, via which I discovered this:

Bill Maher hates your (fill in the blank) religion, which reveals that many of the interviews for the film were acquired deceptively. People were told the movie would be called "A Spiritual Journey" and were not told that Maher would be the host until they were already caught on camera. I'm curious how many of those who (rightly) condemned Expelled for lying to it's subjects will defend Religulous for the using the same tactic. At least Expelled chose recognized experts to interview; Maher apparently went looking for the most ignorant folks he could find.

Finally, and just for fun: In Which Scott Goes To The Fourth Heaven…

The Religulous Trailer

I have to admit, I found the trailer entertaining, but it does nothing to diminish the impression that this will be a very biased and one-sided presentation of religion (as though the film title didn't give it away, right?). I did appreciate the dc Talk background music though:



HT Bag of Nothing, via Christ and Pop Culture

Religulous

I'm sure this will be a nice, evenhanded presentation of religion, sure to raise the level of public discourse to new heights (HT Peter Chattaway, who has more on the subject):

Dark Knight Reviews and Speculations About a Sequel

Here's an interesting review at First Things, which explores many of the same aspects of the film that I did, but in greater depth (minor spoiler warning for this and the next review):

Nolan focuses in The Dark Knight on the “idea of escalation,” the way Batman’s dramatic persona, with its violent heroism, calls forth a greater, more creative response from the criminal element. It would be hard to imagine a more compelling embodiment of the escalation of evil in Gotham than what Nolan and actor Heath Ledger have created in the character of The Joker, whose insouciant embrace of chaos eclipses the malevolence of Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs and John Doe from Se7en. What makes Nolan’s latest film such a success is not, however, Ledger’s compelling presentation of evil, on which critics have focused their attention, but the way in which he uses that character to bring out the depth and complex goodness of the other characters in the film, including Batman.

Next, John Carney, perhaps taking the films a bit too seriously, asks if Bruce Wayne's business dealings in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight might actually make him that "better class of criminal" the Joker claims to want (HT Peter Chattaway):

He seems to be a white-collar criminal, engaging in the kind of corporate crimes that attract our real-life two-faced prosecutors. He takes corporate resources to pursue his own interests, uses underhanded means to acquire a majority stake in Wayne Enterprises after encouraging an initial public offering, and intimidates a potential whistle-blower.

Finally, since Warner Brothers surely wont be able to pass up a cash-cow of a sequel (since everyone knows the third film in a trilogy is always the best!), check out MTV.com's brief interview with Dark Knight writer David Goyer, who claims he and the Nolan brothers already have a theme and a villain in mind. He's not saying who, but there are plenty of possibilities (but watch out for spoilers if you haven't seen The Dark Knight yet).

Film Tidbits

The long anticipated (ahem) first part of Joss Whedon’s new project Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (a short film starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion) is available for free online viewing (HT Jeffrey Overstreet). The second and final parts will be released on the 17th and 19th, but will only be free through the 20th. Unfortunately, the website got too much traffic and crashed. It should be back in a few hours, but you can also buy the episode for $1.99 on iTunes, if you can’t bear to wait. [UPDATE: The site is back up and running, though impatience got the best of me and I had already coughed up the 2 bucks; it's delightfully wacky, just as you might suspect from the trailer!] In the mean time, here’s the Teaser:




Carmen Andres has a good review of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, discussing the film's spiritual themes.

In anticipation of The Dark Knight, due out this Friday, the first six minutes of the film have been posted as a trailer. Amazing, but be warned that it is quite violent: [Apparently the trailer wasn't authorized after all (it was on the Batman Begins Blu-Ray disk), so it has been removed.]

Finally, on a lighter note, I’ve never been a fan of “reality TV” and this video perfectly illustrates why (HT Think Christian):



Who needs love and friendship if you might win a pile of money?

Greydanus on Hellboy, Christianity and Supernatural Fiction

Steven Greydanus has an excellent article up at Christianity Today on the way the supernatural is presented in films like Hellboy II, particularly how demons tend to get more play than angels or God, and how Christian symbols and objects (like the Cross, a Rosary, Holy Water, etc.) become weapons to defeat evil:

Why is there so much hell and so little heaven in these movies? Partly, perhaps, it's because filmmakers simply don't know what to do with God—not just theologically, but for the sheer dramatic difficulty posed by omnipotence. It's the Superman dilemma times infinity: Against that much power, how do you make the enemy a credible threat? Even Gandalf's power was ultimately too intimidating for Peter Jackson and company; once it became clear the wizard could drive off the flying Nazgul, the filmmakers feared the enemy might seem too diminished. (This was the rationale for the problematic scene in which the Witch-King shatters Gandalf's staff.)

Another reason for the neglect of heaven is simply that heaven is harder to do. C. S. Lewis noted this point in his preface to The Screwtape Letters, in which he regretted being unable to offset Screwtape's diabolical perspective with a parallel heavenly correspondence presenting "arch-angelical advice to the patient's guardian angel." While the task of twisting his mind into a hellish perspective was for Lewis oppressive but not difficult, assuming an angelic voice seemed to him all but unachievable.

While Lewis did later achieve some success in dramatically depicting the outskirts of heaven in The Great Divorce, the general disparity of depicting heaven and hell in art and drama has been felt by many. It's not hard to see why. Beauty is more elusive an effect than grotesquerie; misery and wretchedness are far easier to inflict, and therefore to imagine and express, than joy and beatitude are to bestow or evoke. Even biblical or cultural images of hell (unquenchable flames, demons with pitchforks) are more immediately persuasive than biblical or cultural images of heaven (thrones and crowns, halos and harps). Every sinful impulse in us is hell in miniature, while our best impulses fall infinitely short of the glory of heaven. In a word, God's absence is easier to imagine than the fullness of his presence.

Like the familiar narrative dilemma of the colorful villain who makes the hero look pale by comparison—think of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Dorothy and the Wicked Witch, Clarisse Starling and Hannibal Lecter—the remoteness of heaven versus the imminence of hell seems a not unnatural creative side effect of our limited perspective as finite and fallen creatures.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Hellboy Shorts

Just for fun, here a few of the many humorous videos promoting Hellboy 2, which is due out this week (and is so far getting positive reviews). Enjoy:

WALL*E

I’ve been enjoying the sunshine we’ve been having ’round these parts, finishing up a couple other writing projects, and working to get the house ready for our second child (due next month!). So while I’m thinking about kids, here are a few interesting items about WALL*E (which I can’t wait to see, though I don’t know when I will): First, Jeff Overstreet links to an excellent interview with writer-director Andrew Stanton, at Christianity Today. Second, one of the film’s themes is the danger of excessive consumerism (it, literally, destroys the earth), and there is a humorous and satirical webpage for Buy N Large, the fictional corporation at the heart of the movie. On the other hand, the film’s critique of consumerism is ironic (perhaps even hypocritical?), considering the fact that, like all Disney films, WALL*E has been accompanied by its own heavy merchandising campaign. In any case, this is a great shot of WALL*E sitting atop a pile of garbage, including Pixar’s own toys!

Christian Carnival 229 and Other Good Stuff

This week’s Christian Carnival is up at RodneyOlsen.net and includes my post on Art, Nudity and Sex and the City. Among the other posts, I found David Gushee’s The market economy’s moral influence, at CounterCulture, to be the most interesting.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Ted Slater has added a follow-up to his criticism of Christianity Today’s approach to Sex and the City; Jeffrey Overstreet and Peter Chattaway have responded. Ted also invited Adam Holz (Senior Editor for Plugged In) to explain their approach to immoral content in film, and I found his explanation much more sensible than Ted's own posts.

Battlestar Galactica’s mid-season finale has also gotten a lot of attention (again with the spoiler warning). James McGrath links to a number of posts (including mine), Maureen Ryan offers perhaps the best run-down of the episode, and in case you missed the comments on my entry, check out this startling post at the JLA Battlestar forum. Whoa.

Quote - Wendell Berry on Art and Sex

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community:

When sexual lovemaking is shown in art, one can respond intelligently to it by means of a handful of questions: Are the lovers represented as merely "physical" bodies or as two living souls? Does the representation make it possible to see why Eros has been understood not as an instinct or a "drive" but as a god? Are we asked to see this act as existing in and of and for itself or as joined to the great cycle of fertility and mortality? Does it belong to nature and to culture? Can we imagine this sweetness continuing on through the joys and difficulties of homemaking, the births and upbringing of children, the deaths of parents and friends--through disagreements, hardships, quarrels, aging and death? Does it encourage us to forget or to remember that "certainly it must come to pass that the very gentle Beatrice will die."?...

The relevance of such imagining is urgently practical; it is the propriety or justness that holds art and the world together. To represent sex without this fullness of imagination is to foreshadow the degradation and destruction of all that is not imagined. Just as the ruin of farmers, farming, and farmland may be predicted from a society's failure to imagine food in all its meanings and connections, so the failure to imagine sex in all its power and sanctity is to prepare the ruin of family and community life and of much else. In order to expose the privacy of sex, we have made of it another industrial specialization, leaving it naked not only of clothes and of customary discretions and courtesies but also of its cultural and natural connections. (pgs. 165-166)

Review of Everything Bad Is Good For You - Part 3

In Part 2, I noted a few important omissions from Steven Johnson’s book Everything Bad Is Good For You, challenging especially his emphasis on structure over content. Yet to point out the importance of content is not to dismiss his argument as worthless (nor pop culture itself). Indeed, whether high-brow or low, written, filmed or sung, art doesn’t have to debase and distort, it can also uplift and illuminate, and Johnson is right that pop culture's dangers and drawbacks are too often wielded as a club to beat back any serious consideration of its benefits. To that end, he has identified some encouraging developments.

First, we need to put aside some dearly held illusions. Frequently, in judging popular media, we have an unrealistically romanticized view of the past. We remember the good ol’ days when television was innocent and uplifting, but forget that it was also simplistic and patronizing. We dream of the glory days before television, “when kids used their imaginations,” but fail to consider that they spent more time playing Kick the Can than reading Shakespeare. Compared to that, your typical ten-year-old computer wiz doesn’t seem so brain-dead after all.

Truly, Johnson has identified an important trend toward greater media complexity. Neil Postman did not anticipate this development, because it’s being driven primarily by the rise of newer “technologies of convenience,” from VHS to TiVo. The many ways these have pushed media producers away from the “Least Objectionable Programming” model of yesteryear, toward a “Most Repeatable Programming” model that rewards deeper concentration and long-term commitment, has not always been recognized by otherwise insightful cultural analysts.

When Postman was writing in 1985, television was essentially a “present tense medium,” and networks rightly feared the slightest confusion or offense might drive away their audience. In contrast, many of today’s popular programs--from 24 to LOST and Battlestar Galactica--absolutely depend on challenging their audiences to return again and again. Similarly, the most significant but often-overlooked feature of many recent video games is not the thumb exercise they provide, but how much intellectual work they demand. Anyone who has ever seriously attempted to succeed at SimCity or even Grand Theft Auto knows how blisteringly, frustratingly hard it is. Despite appearances, many of today’s most popular entertainments demand a remarkable degree of patient endurance, conscious interaction and long-term commitment.

Moreover, I wonder if simply restricting our indulgence in pop culture to rare and superficial engagement actually risks backing us into the very dangers we are trying to avoid. If the main thing making pop culture smarter is that producers can now expect us to pay better and longer attention (as Johnson helpfully notes: the separation between set-up and punch line on shows like Seinfeld can sometimes be measured in years rather than seconds), might it be that any proper response to modern society will have to leave room for the occasional obsession? Pop culture is here to stay, and Johnson is right that: “Out of obsession comes expertise, a confidence in your own powers of analysis – a sense that if you stick with the system long enough, you’ll truly figure out how it works.” (pg. 194) While learning the minutiae of Seinfeld lore might seem a waste of time, the skills necessary to discover such trivia probably do have wider applicability than is usually assumed.

If nothing else, the days of treating modern entertainment as a kind of degenerate second-best to the pristine realm of text should finally be put aside. There are clear and important differences between reading and gaming and television viewing, and the kinds of society they foster, but not all differences are bad. Writing is one art, not the only one. Truly, the “boob tube” is no substitute for literature, but it might just be that even great books are no substitute for good popular entertainment?

Review of Everything Bad Is Good For You - Part 2

As mentioned in Part 1 of this review, there is much in Steven Johnson’s book that deserves consideration as we think about the potential and dangers of modern entertainment. Before getting there, however, we must first step back and examine the book’s presuppositions: Everything Bad is Good For You, regrettably, suffers from a kind of schizophrenia of purpose that deeply undermines its force.

As the provocative title implies, Johnson wants to be iconoclastic, but in the end he’s too smart for his own good. His book brims over with qualifiers and his conspicuous back-peddling strongly suggests that the thesis has been hyped to increase sales (a tactic which worked, by the way). Everything Bad is Good For You quickly becomes something like: Pop Culture Is Smarter Than It Used to Be – Though Maybe It Still Can’t Compare to High Art – and Can Be Part (But Only One Part) of a Healthy Media Diet. The latter statement is certainly closer to the truth, even if it makes for a lousy title. But in shifting towards this more nuanced stance, his point is nearly reduced to an empty shell aimed at a straw man. There is much worth pondering here, but it’s up to the reader to sort it out of the rubble.

The problem, it seems, is Johnson’s willingness to emphasize the positives while downplaying or ignoring the negative aspects of these “distractions.” For instance, you will search in vain for a discussion of the close connection between infant TV viewing and attention deficit disorder. Similarly, Neil Postman’s point that our overly visual culture has diminished our tolerance for sustained public discourse is all but dismissed as irrelevant (I wonder if Johnson learned his lesson promoting the book on various talk shows?). He elects to focus on how TV lets us see our politicians in more candid settings – providing “valuable” insight into their integrity – while completely ignoring the medium’s far broader implications on the political process.

But television's predisposition to replace substance with image must not be ignored: It’s no accident that flashy crime dramas like CSI – with their high tech gadgetry, attractive actors and tidy conclusions – far outperform true crime documentaries. Real life can’t live up to fiction in any form, but no previous medium provides a more convincing illusion that its truncated worldview is actually educational.

Finally, by focusing on structure rather than content, Johnson misses a great deal of what is most important in determining the potential benefits and dangers of these media. For instance, it’s hard to believe that anyone would try to judge the “cognitive value” of 24 based solely on the number of plotlines and significant relationships it juggles – yet this is precisely what Johnson does! Apparently, he hasn't considered that by this standard daytime soap operas would be the smartest thing on television. And when he starts praising Reality TV because it can teach “social IQ,” I’m tempted to respond: Sure, and you can learn risk-assessment betting on cock fights....

Despite all of this, however, Johnson is right to criticize those who appeal to poor content in dismissing television and gaming as media. Not all television, movies or games are mindless – far from it – and just because some popular choices are immoral or worthless, does not prove these media are irredeemable. One need only mention The Da Vinci Code to realize the same criteria would also eliminate reading as a waste of time. Indeed, doesn’t even the Bible include a rather large amount of immoral behavior? Clearly there is more to the value of a medium than whether all of its content is “family friendly,” and Johnson is right to insist upon this. In Part 3, then, we will consider the more positive aspects of his argument.

The Dark Side of Sci-Fi

The following is an modifed version of the very first post I ever wrote, originally submitted to the old Crux Project blog Situation Critical (no longer available online). This is admittedly one-sided, so please read John's piece for the other side of the coin:

John Colman has written an excellent post defending science fiction’s ability to ask deep questions and point us toward the supernatural. I wholeheartedly agree with him. Ever since I was a kid watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with my dad, I too have loved science fiction. Besides the positive aspects he mentions, I also love the adventure, the dream of exploring the unknown and fighting wicked villains. But most of all, I love the camaraderie that so often characterizes these stories--a tight-knit group of friends facing the future together, come what may!

But our favorite genre also has a dark side that John neglected to discuss. The more I watch these shows, the more I realize just how many of them fairly drip with naturalistic philosophy. Indeed, much of the sci-fi genre is based on thoroughly materialistic presuppositions. And while a lot of mainstream television and film shares these assumptions, sci-fi is uniquely suited to showcase them in that it expresses, more than any other genre, the hopes and fears of a society.

Consider the Star Trek universe, for instance: Here is depicted a future when humanity will finally see past its differences and live in peace and harmony. Of course, there is still war and violence, but not generally among humans or the United Federation of Planets. If every worldview must tell us who we are, what’s wrong, and what's the solution, then Star Trek tells us we are the product of evolution on one of many planets that have evolved life--not the least advanced, but certainly not the most either. What’s wrong with the universe is not human rebellion against her creator, but interspecies strife among the various races in our galaxy. The solution? Not the final victory of God, but the victory of the Federation against all who oppose peace in the universe--whether they be Klingons, Romulans, or the Borg.

Or take another favorite of mine: Stargate SG-1. Where Star Trek generally ignored religion, Stargate tried to reinvent it in light of modern science. The ancient gods were really just powerful aliens who visited earth throughout our history--some, like the Goa’uld, in hopes of enslaving us, others, like the Asgard, to bless and protect us. In this universe, science is king, and God has no real place. Humanity is a fledgling species, teetering on the brink of either a major evolutionary step forward or complete destruction by our own or some malicious alien’s actions.

Just consider the one episode in the show’s ten-season run which included the word “God” in its title ("There But For the Grace of God," Episode 119): Through a “Quantum Mirror” we are taken to an alternate earth (one of the infinite universes that exist alongside ours, we are told) where things have not worked out so fortuitously--earth has been invaded by the Goa’uld Apophis and faces slavery to a false god. In the end, this alternate earth is saved by the intervention of another alien, the Asgard Thor (note the Egyptian and Norse mythology lying behind their names), but it is clear that “the Grace of God” had nothing to do with it. The show does admirably remind us that we cannot save ourselves, but when God is barred from that role, an alien or superhuman is forced to take his place.

For, in the end, shows like Stargate teach that our universe could just as well be overrun with evil as saved by good. Indeed, the fact that there are an infinite number of universes means that an infinite number have been overrun by evil, and there is no good reason why ours shouldn’t be one of them. For sci-fi is not without its pessimists.

Where the ancient Jewish apocalyptic writers maintained an unwavering faith that even their darkest dreams of worldwide catastrophe would be tempered God’s grace, today’s secular futurists have no such assurances. Whether we are threatened with destruction by our own technology (as in Terminator), an alien race (as in Independence Day), or a killer virus (as in Resident Evil), there are no guarantees that human life will survive. Only God could promise that, but he is too often dismissed as a figment of our imaginations, a relic of bygone days when primitive men still believed in a universe controlled by spirits. Now, apart from alien intervention, we must trust our own resources to overcome such dangers and charge ahead to a glorious future, unless of course this is one of those universes that ends badly. I’ll have to watch next week to find out.

Glamorized Magic and Harry Potter

I finally convinced my wife to watch one of the Harry Potter films this week. She enjoyed it more than she expected, but remained concerned that these are marketed to children. Echoing a common Christian objection to the series, she asked: What if, by glamorizing magic, it leads kids to the occult? As adults, she admitted, we can see that this is fantasy, but kids are impressionable. I pointed out that the magic in Harry Potter bears no relation to any kind of real-world sorcery (no gods or demons are invoked or manipulated; they merely wave wands around and speak in Latin!). Then it occurred to me: If a movie’s effect on kids is truly one’s concern, Harry Potter ought to be much further down the list than it usually is.

If kids really are liable to copy what they see in their favorite films, shouldn’t we be much less concerned about magic, and much more concerned about glamorized violence? After all, a kid can practice waving a stick around all week and he’s not going to do any harm, but how many times does he need to see his heroes solve their problems by beating up or killing “bad guys,” before he considers trying that? If, on the other hand, a story can legitimately employ violence as a metaphor for the battle between good and evil, why cannot fictionalized magic be used in the same way?

Surely I’m not the first to have thought of this.