The Culture Beat

June 7, 2008

Superhero Action Figure Theater

Filed under: General Pop Culture,Movies — Alex @ 9:13 am

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So, what do Superman, Spider-Man and other superheroes do when they aren’t fighting crime? Do they have downtime where they can just hang with other superpowered chums? That’s the premise of a delightful YouTube series that features perfectly pitched superhero characterization and big laughs.

In this summer of mega-movies featuring Iron Man, Hulk, Batman, Hellboy (and Hancock), it’s fitting that I got caught up with the superhero-themed mini-films at the other end of the cinematic spectrum. For about a year, Youtube has carried the “Marvel/DC” videos produced by “ItsJustSomeRandomGuy” the pen name of the creator seeking anonymity against legal action by the two giant comics publishers who might object to the use of their valuable characters in mini-skits featuring action figures purchased at retail stores. The videos are genuinely witty, even if you don’t know a lot about comic book continuity and make a creative virtue of their limited means.

The bright minds behind the series are Michael Agrusso who writes, does all the voices (extremely well–he is a voice coach), and edits the footage, and his girlfried Brinna Li (“JustSomeRandomGal”), who supplies the props and stages the action. Marvel bigwigs, rather than being offended by someone using their copyrighted characters, began featuring some on the Marvel website and Agrusso was commissioned to produced video promotions for the New York Comic-Con.
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The videos demonstrate how well-versed Agrusso is in superhero lore and the movies, both successful and not, that they spawned. They are like Saturday Night Live skits for the Web that are actually consistently funny. In the middle of the series run, Agrusso departed from the short form and posted a mini-series, “After Hours,” that starts out as the usual sketch comedy and then sprouts subplots and a complex structure with a character arc for Superman who is depressed at his seeming irrelevance in 21st century comcs. It’s as good or better than any superhero story I’ve read in a year and at times you may even get a lump in your throat at the unexpected pathos of the tale. But you’re still laughing every thirty seconds.

Perhaps the best way to experience the series is to go to the YouTube channel for the videos using the link above and, since the most recent are listed first, go to the last page and watch them in reverse but correctly sequential order. Agrusso and Li’s videos are another demonstration of the way the Web has democratized popular culture and revealed the secret abilities in the most “ordinary” people.

May 31, 2008

Indiana Jones and the Search for God

Filed under: Faith Issues,General Pop Culture,Movies — Culture Beat @ 12:08 pm

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This week I watched the latest installment of a popular movie series with heroes who dare to cross the thresholds between worlds we see and worlds we don’t, grappling with issues of faith and the limits of human knowledge as they go.

No, it wasn’t “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.” I’m talking about “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

For anyone napping, after 19 years Harrison Ford (pictured above with young sidekick Shia LaBeouf) has returned as the fedora-wearing archeologist – older, grayer, but still a literal whip-snapper in search of mysteries.

The Indiana Jones series – rollicking fun that tips a cap to 1930s action movies – isn’t heavy philosophical lifting. Even so, there’s no escaping the obvious: “Indy” is always after some religious object. In “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the original and best, it was the Jewish ark of the covenant. “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” pursued sacred stones from Hindu mythology. “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” chased down the legendary lost cup of Christ. The new movie unearths venerated crystal skulls from South American legends.

These things may seem like only props, but Indiana Jones and the pursuit of faith isn’t a completely unimportant story, given the popularity of the movies.

“The stories we tell ourselves and each other are a fundamental part of the culture we have and the mental universe we live in,” said film critic Steven Greydanus, who writes for the National Catholic Register and his Decent Films Guide Web site. “While that is most true about the most important stories we tell, even the trivial stories still contribute to that world view. The fairy tales we tell our children, the popcorn stories we entertain ourselves with – they still help us understand something about ourselves.”

Following the “biography” of the fictional archeologist-hero, Greydanus sees something like a spiritual pilgrimage, starting with a flashback from Indy’s childhood in “The Last Crusade,” working through a disappointing youth to adult skepticism and selfishness.

“But in ‘Raiders,’ he encounters something much more formidable – he has a genuine religious experience,” Greydanus said. “He discovers there are forces in this universe that are beyond man’s powers to trifle with. Indy learns there’s a veil around sacred things, and man goes beyond that veil at his own peril.”

It’s not that the hero is afraid of knowledge – he’s a college professor, after all. But he realizes there are limits to what humans can and even should know. When people trespass on the sacred – especially when they want to exploit that power for their own purposes – bad things happen. (Their faces can melt, for one thing.)

Likewise, Indy is forced in each story to make what can only be called a faith-based decision, whether it’s stepping into what seems to be thin air in “Last Crusade” or simply closing his eyes as the Nazis open the ark, with terrible results, in the first film.

Unlike the typical action hero, “Indy is totally passive in the climax (of ‘Raiders’),” Greydanus observed. “The true protagonist in one sense is the God of the Jews. He’s the one who finishes off the Nazis. … When I watch ‘Raiders’ with my children, they learn something about heroism they won’t get from other stories. They see that being a hero may not be enough.”

That twist in the tale places Indiana Jones with some unexpected literary company.

“It’s the same thing that (J.R.R.) Tolkien did in ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ – honoring but subtly subverting the heroic tale,” Greydanus said. “It’s not by accident that he makes his heroes humble, diminutive people of the earth. Tolkien was informed by a Christian tradition that extolled humility and realized that ultimately we are not in charge of our own destiny.”

Indiana Jones, almost in spite of himself, has dug into our most profound questions. That might help explain his success.

“The biggest questions are about what kind of a world we live in,” Greydanus said, “and God is an awfully big part of that. Having those stories does shape the way we look at the world, even if we think of it just as a story.”

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 31 May 2008.

May 27, 2008

The days of our lives

Filed under: Faith Issues,General Pop Culture,The Church — Culture Beat @ 9:52 am

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Mother’s Day and the Christian day of Pentecost fell together last Sunday – a rare coincidence, thanks to the same lunar calendar that this year gave us the earliest Easter any of us will see for the rest of our lives.

Pentecost commemorates the day when, according to the Book of Acts, the Spirit of God came on the small, huddled group of Jesus’ followers in Jerusalem, igniting them to “be witnesses” and in effect launching the church. The day is often called the birthday of the church. (As with other holidays, calendars vary between Western and Eastern traditions; the Eastern Pentecost is June 15 this year.)

So I was baffled when I noticed how many church bulletins, advertisements and newsletters focused on moms more than on Pentecost.

Nothing against moms or Mother’s Day – some of my best friends are moms – but Pentecost is a big day, traditionally regarded as a major Christian celebration, on the same plane as Christmas and Easter. It seemed strange that churches would give more attention to a secular observance, even a worthy one, than to a meaningful Christian holiday.

The fact is that, besides a couple of really big holidays, many Christians and congregations don’t follow the traditional church or “liturgical” calendar. Some even track the civic calendar more closely. I remember that my boyhood church observed Labor Day and Flag Day – Flag Day! – but ignored Advent. We politely nodded hello to Pentecost but rolled out the red carpet for July Fourth.

But the church calendar, according to Pastor Jim Nipper of Our Saviour Lutheran Church, can provide structure to the church teaching, to help Christians learn what they believe through annual cycles of Scriptures and observances. “Having that order does lift up what’s important,” he said.

There’s tomorrow, for example – Trinity Sunday. It’s a minor celebration, but not a meaningless one. As the name implies, it focuses on the doctrine of the Trinity, one of the most confounding teachings of Christianity, which says that God exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit – “God in three persons, blessed Trinity,” to quote Reginald Heber’s hymn.

This teaching is “the Christian way of offering some definition of who God is, even though the Trinity is a mystery,” Nipper said. “It is a unique understanding of who God is. We don’t have three gods; we have one God who makes himself known in three ways. It’s the same person who wears three different hats.”

Trinity Sunday found its way onto the church agenda after the first major doctrinal dispute, the Arian heresy of the early fourth century. A church leader named Arius denied that God could have a son in any meaningful way, and thus concluded, contrary to church teaching, that Jesus was not of the same “substance” as God. As he gained followers, church leaders gathered to debate and then formulate orthodox expressions of the faith.

“The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God,” stated the Athanasian Creed, from the mid fourth century. “And yet they are not Three Gods, but One God. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not Three Lords but One Lord.”

There’s more about this that I don’t understand than I do. It’s indeed a mystery, but one at the heart of the Christian faith. The doctrine of the Trinity sets Christianity apart from other religions.

Jews and Muslims may honor Jesus as a prophet and great teacher – but as equal, “one substance,” with God? That’s blasphemy. “God neither begets, nor is He begotten,” the Koran bluntly states. “The Lord our God is one,” declares the Hebrew Scriptures.

As much as these faiths share – including a basic belief in one God – they also are defined by their distinctive beliefs and practices, and it is good to understand them. Nipper doesn’t want to emphasize separation from other people, but “the doctrine of the Trinity binds Christians together.”

Considering how important these teachings and events are, a few days on the calendar doesn’t seem like much at all. Not even with honored parents in the room.

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 17 May 2008.

March 28, 2008

Disney’s Enchanted Again

Filed under: General Pop Culture,Movies — Alex @ 9:00 pm

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Last week saw the DVD release of one of the Walt Disney studio’s biggest hit in years that wasn’t a Pixar production. Enchanted (reviewed earlier here) demonstrated how effective the mega-media corporation’s return to its uniquely family-friendly sensibility has been. We visited all the Disney World theme parks last year and seeing Enchanted‘s delightful tweaking of its fairy tale conventions brought into the “real world” of live action was the capper on my renewed appreciation on what Walt had wrought when he took his two-dimensional characters and stories and created an actual place where that world came alive for happy visitors to Disneyworld, the first of his revolutionary theme parks.

I wrote about Disney’s resurgence in January in World magazine (subscription required–but it’s a really good newsmagazine with evangelical perspective that’s worth a trial subscription). And I finally finished the biography, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, by Neal Gabler, which is likely to be the standard text on the great American dreamer for years to come. Walt Disney was a mercurial creator who saw things no one else did and made them come to pass with a quality that insured their endurance over the generations. The neat thing is that with Pixar creative visionary John Lasseter, now in charge of the creative efforts at Disney, and possessing Walt’s sense of wonder and storytelling, the company seems set on a new era of surpassing entertainment.
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March 22, 2008

Can a movie save the world?

Filed under: Faith Issues,General Pop Culture,Movies,The Church — Culture Beat @ 10:08 am

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Mentally track back four years, to the release of a certified blockbuster, Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ.” Remember the buzz surrounding that stunning and disturbing re-creation of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, with its Aramaic and Latin script and bloody torture scene.

The film’s success was fueled partly by churches that sponsored mass viewings (sometimes renting entire theaters) or scheduled sermons or programs to tap into the movie’s prominence. Here was a top-flight movie with Jesus at its center, seeming to beat Hollywood at its own game.

“Can you think of a movie that contained more explicitly Christian content?” asked film critic Frederica Mathewes-Green during a visit to Milligan College this week. “And yet, what has been its lasting impact on the culture?”

Not a lot. Scattered stories of individuals inspired by the movie to investigate the Christian faith or regain their devotion were no doubt valuable, but it didn’t create any cultural earthquakes.

The lesson, as Mathewes-Green told an audience on Wednesday night, is that, for all their power, we cannot count on movies to change the world.

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Mathewes-Green – author of eight books and hundreds of articles, public speaker, wife of an Eastern Orthodox priest and, full disclosure here, a longtime friend – displays a gift of connecting ancient Christian spiritual teaching and the modern world. One minute this self-described former hippy will quote St. Jerome or some other Christian hermit who lived 1,500 years ago. The next, she’s talking about “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” complimenting its pro-virginity message camouflaged in teenage humor.

As a friendly voice for Christianity, particularly the Eastern Orthodoxy to which she and her husband converted 15 years ago, Mathewes-Green has spoken on National Public Radio, CNN and a gaggle of other media outlets. If anyone understands the power and the limitations of mass media, she does.

That’s one reason she warns against expecting too much – such as the notion that a big media event can change culture.

Phrasing that idea so starkly, it seems odd that anyone would ever believe such a thing. Yet, some Christians think that if enough believers make movies or TV shows or pop albums, or if enough films and programs contain Christian-friendly content, or if enough believers take the reins of power at media organizations (or maybe just work on the set of a sit com), then they can usher in a new era that will redeem American culture and lead people to faith in Jesus.

But if this sounds outlandish, these notions aren’t much different from those wonderful dreamers who want to shake up society by creating the Great American novel/ movie/ album/ TV show.

Walking through a list of common reasons believers offer for trying to use mass media to shape culture, Mathewes-Green said such efforts are useful and praiseworthy – mostly – but they would not, could not have long-lasting effect. Culture is too big, like the ocean a fish swims in, and is in constant flux. Trying to “change culture” with a movie or a good job placement would be like trying to steer an oil tanker with a spoon.

“You can’t confront the culture” like that, Mathewes-Green said. “It’s a spontaneous collaboration, as spontaneous as a storm cloud rolling over the landscape. Being heard is not the same as having influence.”

And as she rightly pointed out, early Christians, living under a hostile Roman Empire, did not change the world by producing art or making movies.

“The only thing they did in the public square was die,” she said.

But they did that well, singing and praising God as they walked to their executions, believing they were following in the footsteps of Jesus. Many onlookers found their joy and serenity so moving and courageous that they joined the Christians there and then. Those early persecutions propelled the growth of the church, which eventually took over the empire.
Cloaked in that sobering thought is good news for modern Christians.

“The personal level is most important,” Mathewes-Green said. “Our highest obligation is to love our neighbor. If we lived that way, people would notice it. Be the light for five or six people around you, and you can change the world.”

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 22 March 2008.

March 8, 2008

American religion is on the move, y’all

Filed under: General Pop Culture,The Church — Culture Beat @ 11:24 am

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Scott Thompson sounds like a native of East Tennessee, but he was born in Maine and lived there until his family moved to this area when he was a child.

Thompson also grew up in a home where no one was religious, much less a churchgoer. Today, he’s a Southern Baptist. In fact, he serves as the children’s pastor at University Parkway Baptist Church, where he has worked the past 14 years.

So in a couple of ways, the 46-year-old Thompson typifies a fundamental trait in American religious life, one that includes even the most traditionally devout regions on the map. One major difference, however, is that Thompson moved into the church, rather than out.

Movement – in geography and in affiliation – is the name of the game in American religion these days, according to a major new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, an arm of the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. In its first-ever “Landscape Survey,” released last week, the forum found that almost half of American adults are in different religious traditions than when they were children, if indeed they are in any tradition at all.

“Americans are on the move religiously, and that movement takes a multitude of directions,” said Greg Smith, a research fellow at the Pew Forum. “We need to emphasize the fluidity of American religion.”

Thompson has noticed significant shifts locally. “There’s been a big paradigm shift” during his tenure at University Parkway, to form a congregation today in which “the majority of people did not grow up in a Southern Baptist background” and “most of the (church’s) growth has come from people who moved here.”

Pew measured changes by asking people to compare their current religious involvement with that of their childhood. The survey, a random sampling of more than 35,000 Americans aged 18 and older, discovered that 28 percent of adults have changed their religious affiliation from childhood. Include migrations within large religious groupings – say, from one Protestant denomination to another – and that percentage climbs to 44 percent.

But more and more people are abandoning formal religious connections altogether, with so-called “unaffiliated” adults forming the fastest-growing group. More than 16 percent describe themselves as “unaffiliated” with a religious group today; only seven percent were not affiliated as children. This trend is strongest among Americans aged 18 to 29: One-fourth say they are not affiliated with any particular religion. Overall, for every person moving into the affiliated category, three are moving out.

Why Americans move so much religiously is “the million-dollar question,” Smith said, one that the Pew Forum plans to explore.

Here’s one guess: We Americans, well-schooled as consumers, might consider our religious lives as just another buying choice, the spiritual equivalent of selecting a restaurant.

While Thompson can’t say why people leave religious affiliations, as a children’s pastor he sees a common reason why many join the congregation he serves: it’s about the children.

“Many couples were not affiliated with any church or had left from their childhood, but then they have children,” he explained. “They want their kids to be exposed to things they’re not seeing in the culture.”

It is tempting to think the church-on-every-corner South, including East Tennessee and other parts of the traditional Bible Belt, is different –perhaps even immune from national trends. Not so.

True, half the Southern population identifies with an evangelical church, by far the heaviest concentration of evangelical Protestant believers among all the regions.

But the South is also home to the nation’s second-highest concentration of atheists and agnostics, higher than the Midwest and the allegedly more secular Northeast. The South also has the largest percentage of people describing themselves as “religious unaffiliated.”

People in East Tennessee are no exception. They are moving – frequently away from affiliation – as much as anyone. According to Fred Davis, a church-planting strategist with the Tennessee Baptist Convention, 83 percent of the average East Tennessee community does not attend church at all. But 67 percent of that group attended in the past, he said, calling their exit “an indictment” on churches.

“We like to think we’re doing better,” Thompson observed, “but we’re a lot more like the nation than we might expect.”

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 8 March 2008.

February 24, 2008

2008 Academy Awards Prediction: Worst Oscars Ever? Hmm…

Filed under: General Pop Culture,Movies,Television — Culture Beat @ 4:38 am

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Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men

A shadow of doom and gloom has fallen over Hollywood. Because of a series of winter storms, the red carpet has been covered up. Nikki Finke in her 22 February “Deadline Hollywood Daily” column elaborates, “Nerves are still frayed from the writers strike just ended. Panic is setting in about an actors strike that may be on the way.”

To quote Queen Gertrude in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

So it’s been raining in L.A. Big whoop. I’m sure it’s not the first time the Academy Awards have been rained on.

As for nerves being frayed, most of my show biz friends are glad the strike is over, and that normalcy–or what passes for it in La-La Land–is starting to return as writers get back to work, and television series resume production.

And as for the potential of a Screen Actors Guild strike, c’mon Nikki. I realize some politicians like to exploit fear as a means of retaining power, but what’s your excuse? The end of the Writers Guild strike greatly reduced the probability of actors walking out when their contract expires mid-year.

Aside from the off-and-on rainy season we’ve experienced during the past month, the sky is not falling. In fact the biggest sounds I’ve heard in Los Angeles are collective sighs of relief.

That said, I do agree with Ms. Finke on one issue: the lack of popularity of the five Best Picture nominees almost guarantees that ABC’s Oscar-cast will receive record-low ratings.

Juno, my favorite of the five, is the biggest box office hit. So far it’s grossed $127 million and doesn’t show signs of stopping. As much as I admire the film, its lead Ellen Page, and its director Jason Reitman, I fear its sole win will be for Diablo Cody’s saucy and fresh Original Screenplay.

Then there’s No Country for Old Men, which is a shoo-in for Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, and Adapted Screenplay. The Coen Brothers’ latest film is favored to take home Oscar gold tonight.

But the other three nominees–Atonement, Michael Clayton, and There Will Be Blood–cause me to scratch my head in bewilderment.

Atonement is pretty to look at but inconsequential otherwise. And my problems with the film start with its title: the character in question never “atones” for her misdeeds.

Michael Clayton is an old-fashioned Hollywood thriller–shiny, glossy, well executed–but not Best Picture material. Heck, even its writer/director Tony Gilroy seemed surprised by its seven nominations. And ya gotta love Clooney, who does a clever riff on his uberdude persona in the title role.

Then there’s There Will Be Blood. I’ve liked Paul Thomas Anderson’s previous films Punchdrunk Love, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and Hard Eight. Why the Academy nominated Blood for eight Oscars, however, escapes me. I found Daniel Day Lewis’ performance chock full of scenery chewing. And Anderson is not a director renowned for restraint. Worse yet, the film’s bombastic score detracted from the storyline rather than enhancing it.

Although I haven’t read Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil!, the basis for There Will Be Blood, biographer Anthony Arthur remarks in today’s New York Times, “But where Sinclair could be overly didactic, Anderson’s film suffers from a lack of thematic clarity…” Amen, brother. Frankly I found Blood an overly long, rambling mess. And although I wouldn’t go so far as to accuse Anderson or the film of being anti-Christian, the lack of dimensional characters really bothered me.

My biggest problem with this year’s nominations were the omissions: Where were the substantial nominations for 3:10 to Yuma, Into the Wild, or American Gangster? How on earth did Hairspray not receive a nod for Best Song? I liked Enchanted, too, but three out of five nominations for Best Song? Really?!? Speaking of which, why didn’t the effervescent Amy Adams get a nom for Best Actress? She made that movie sing… pun intended.

And let’s get back to No Country for Old Men. I can see why so many people have affection for it. And it is the Coens’ best film since Oh Brother Where Art Thou, in my humble opinion. My problem is its message, which is a total repudiation of Fargo, a movie I absolutely adore. Fargo tells audiences simple good can overcome abhorrent evil. No Country reverses that… which troubles me.

But it’s not the end of the world. So the Coen Brothers have had a change of heart. Fine. Maybe they’ll change their minds again. One can hope.

Which is why I reject Nikki Finke’s doom and gloom prognostication. Besides, unless Rob Lowe does another duet with Snow White, no way could this be the “Worst Oscars Ever.”

February 20, 2008

The Writers’ Strike: Counting the Cost

Filed under: General Pop Culture,Movies,Television — Culture Beat @ 1:49 am

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John Bowman, Chief Negotiator for the Writers Guild

So the 100-day strike has been over for a week, and it’s been interesting to witness the post-mortems and armchair quarterbacking.

The biggest question I’ve been asked is this: Was it worth it?

The answer is a resounding “Yes!”

Prior to the strike, the studios weren’t even willing to discuss residuals for online distribution. The deal that will soon be voted on by WGA members will eventually give members a cut of the gross proceeds—not the net.

This is HUGE.

Studios are notorious for concealing profits on paper, which is why Peter Jackson had to sue New Line Cinema when the studio tried to claim The Lord of the Rings films didn’t make a profit (?!?). They were losing the case (surprise, surprise), which is why the studio had to settle. By the way, the Tolkien estate is now suing New Line for pretty much the same reason that Jackson did—to get a cut of the proceeds as promised in their contract.

For the first time I can remember, the Writers Guild negotiated a better deal than the Directors Guild. And frankly, the directors couldn’t have made that deal if we writers hadn’t already been a few months into our strike.

Something else I’ve heard is “The strike really didn’t affect television. The networks’ ratings weren’t that affected.”

Not true. All the networks have either had to resort to…
1) Reality shows, which are of the devil—seriously, Satan loves them.
2) Midseason replacements, which range in quality from not bad to “Who was smoking what when they came up with THAT piece of junk?”
3) Reruns. Blech!

Since the strike even American Idol’s ratings are off, and they don’t use writers (at least not according to Fox). Nielsen Media Research reports overall TV ratings are down 5-9% from last season. And that’s bad.

When television shows don’t deliver the audiences to advertisers in the promised amounts, the networks have to provide “make goods.” Translation: they have to give the advertisers free time to make up for the missing audiences.

Did the strike accomplish everything we as writers wanted? No. Animation and reality shows are still not covered by the deal—concessions we made to the producers.

But some people may not realize that after 5-1/2 months, the 1988 Writers Strike ended with the Guild achieving none of the gains they fought for. This is the reason industry veterans get agitated when discussing those negotiations.

In contrast, the just-concluded strike nearly guarantees the Screen Actors Guild will not go on strike when their contract expires this June. The actors can simply request “favored nations” status, which is industry speak for “I’ll have what she’s having” (the best line from When Harry Met Sally).

Close coordination between the two guilds especially paid off when actors on television shows, which had scripts to shoot, refused to cross the picket line in support of the writers—and in some cases even joined the writers on those lines.

Evidently one beneficiary of the strike may be schoolkids who spent time doing homework rather than watching TV. According to a January 20 LA Times article, a parent in Galveston, TX sent a postcard to the Writers Guild of America office pleading, “Please stay on strike. My daughter went from Cs to straight As!! Strike for the sake of the children!!!!!”

My suggestion to this parent: Don’t let your kids watch so much TV even if they do have good grades.

So sit back and relax, many of your favorite shows will slowly but surely make their way back to you with all-new episodes. And for a TV lover like me, that signifies that many of my colleagues are back at work—the real cause to rejoice.

February 2, 2008

Sunday belongs to God. (Yeah, right.)

Filed under: Faith Issues,General Pop Culture,The Church — Culture Beat @ 12:26 pm

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On Wednesday, many Christians will begin the annual observance of Lent, the 40-day period of intense spiritual discipline that recalls Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness and helps prepare for next month’s observance of Holy Week and Easter.

But another event looms larger in most American minds this weekend. Tomorrow’s pro football championship has reached such dizzying heights of hype that there’s talk of making Super Bowl Sunday a national holiday. That might just be a formal acknowledgement of an informal reality, but it still seems strange – no, just wrong – to think about a football game in the same terms as Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

But that impulse to elevate sports to some kind of holiness – “holiday” is shorthand for “holy day,” after all – dates back at least three millennia, to the original Greek Olympics, a fact that reminded me of a conversation in April 2005 with Robert “Jack” Higgs and Michael “Mickey” Braswell.

Higgs is professor emeritus at East Tennessee State University, where he taught English 27 years before retiring in 1994. Braswell is a professor of criminology at ETSU. Neither are trained theologians, but they have joined a growing academic conversation about the connections between sports and religion, including Higgs’ 1995 book, “God in the Stadium: Sports and Religion in America.” Their last work, “An Unholy Alliance: The Sacred and Modern Sports,” was published in 2004 (Mercer University Press).

When the two men start talking about their favorite topic, the conversation gets as lively as ESPN Sports Center. The difference, however, is that they’re not talking just about games, but what these events mean for individuals and entire civilizations. Among their observations:

* Sport might be sacred, but it’s not holy.

Higgs and Braswell, following the lead of various theologians, distinguish between the “sacred” and the “holy.” Both words refer to things set apart, but the holy is “set apart from everything else,” Higgs explained. “The ‘holy’ speaks of the wholly other, that which is so much beyond our understanding that it creates a sense of reverence.” It’s a divine, not human, quality.

By contrast, “sacred” refers to things set apart from each other. The sacred is “the world trying to masquerade as the holy,” Braswell said. It’s a word invoked everywhere – in politics (the presidency as “a sacred trust”), business (Donald Trump’s office as sacred space) and sports (think of Olympic ceremonies).

“And sports,” said Braswell, “are a kind of cheap date for the sacred. They do whatever you want them to do.”

* Sport isn’t religion.

That might sound obvious, but on this point Higgs and Braswell differ from a number of scholars who indeed classify sport as a religion.

That’s an understandable notion, considering the frenzy surrounding sporting events, from high school homecoming to NASCAR – and, of course, the Super Bowl. All the usual religion elements are present: rituals, jargon, secret insider knowledge.
But while sport offers much, Braswell said, “the one thing sport cannot do is lead people to awe and mystery.”

* In very important ways, sport and religion are opposite and even incompatible.

In competitive sport, “the athlete competes in a public place,” Higgs said. “The purpose is to defeat an opponent to gain a prize. Religion has other goals.”

The men referred to the story of Jesus, whose apparent defeat was very public and whose victory was relatively private.

“Jesus wasn’t doing a victory dance around the cross,” Higgs explained. “He wasn’t giving anyone high fives.”

It’s not that sport is bad, both men insist. It’s a matter of degree.

“It’s only bad when it’s overemphasized,” according to Higgs.

But he and Braswell believe Americans do just that. These days it is normal, even expected, to value competition and victory above the joy of play, even during childhood. That attitude, they think, can work its way through a society in all kinds of ways, often with devastating effects. Consider fallen civilizations such as Greece, Rome or Nazi Germany: all super-elevated competitive sport, Higgs noted.

“Sport becomes a symptom of a deeper problem, the glorification of the individual self” above what is truly holy, he said. “It’s driven by evolution. We’re competing for turf.”

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 2 Feb 2008. (Associated Press photo.)

January 21, 2008

Launching a relaunch site

Filed under: General Pop Culture,Movies — Alex @ 10:01 pm

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Today saw the launch of the Paramount-sponsored site for the latest iteration of the studio’s lucrative but long moribund Star Trek franchise. (About the only thing there so far is a great self-launching teaser trailer to whet your appetite till its Christmas 2008 premiere.) A cash cow in television and film from the 80s into the latter 90s with a whole publishing division at one point devoted to books about the futuristic adventures of Gene Roddenberry’s humanistic sci-fi heroes, Paramount plowed and planted the same starfield for so many years that the franchise that launched a thousand tales grew increasingly sterile. Two years ago, Enterprise, the last Star Trek TV series, was canceled with little more than a whimper and a sigh of relief from those who remembered the series’ in better times.

J. J. Abrams, the bright young mind behind television series (Felicity, Alias, Lost) and film (this weekend’s explosive monster-in-a-mini-cam hit Cloverfield) has been given the reins of the new film, no. 11 in the series, which is titled just Star Trek. So, just as Batman and Bond have begun again, so, with a fresh new cast and, one would hope, a really worthy story about the youthful days of Kirk, Spock and the rest of the crew, the original Enterprise will trek again.

The ability of a popular culture franchise to reinvent itself for rising new audiences is of , er, paramount importance in an ever more uncertain entertainment landscape where mid-level budget films are fewer than ever leaving quirky and cheap horror and independent films on one end and mega-expensive blockbusters on the other to fill the multiplexes. The Captain Kirk-era Star Trek, generally known as The Original Series (TOS), long in the tooth for many years, keeps getting refurbished in restored video releases, the most recent being a high-definition clean-up with digital special effects smoothly inserted to replace the fuzzy originals. Hence, in one form or another, Captain Kirk, and his intrepid crew will keep soaring through the heavens as long as audiences keep beaming up.

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