Category: Culture

Archbishop of Canterbury on The Simpsons?

A new report indicates that Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the highest churchman in the Anglican communion, has been invited to appear on animated TV show The Simpsons.

This is less surprising than one might think since the Anglican communion’s recent history resembles episodes of The Simpsons. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist. But I suspect many Anglicans would say the same thing.)

In other Simpsons news, plans are in the works for a Simpsons movie.

Also, the fourth season of The Simpsons is finally out on DVD.

Archbishop of Canterbury on The Simpsons?

A new report indicates that Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the highest churchman in the Anglican communion, has been invited to appear on animated TV show The Simpsons.

This is less surprising than one might think since the Anglican communion’s recent history resembles episodes of The Simpsons. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist. But I suspect many Anglicans would say the same thing.)

In other Simpsons news, plans are in the works for a Simpsons movie.

Also, the fourth season of The Simpsons is finally out on DVD.

I . . . Have Returned

Just got back from Illinois
Lock the front door, oh boy
Got to set down, take a rest
On the portch.
Imagination sets in
Purty soon I’m singin’
Doo-doo-doo, lookin’ out my back door.

Or so says the song by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Actually, I was listening to this song on the Chronicle, Vol. 1 by Creedence Clearwater Revival when I was travelling through Illinois on my way back from the vacation I just took (finally, after ages and ages of not taking one).

This song perplexes me a little because it’s got a really toe-tapping tune, but if you read between the lines of the lyrics, it’s basically a ’60s-’70s drug song (“There’s a giant doing cartwheels, A statue wearing high heels. Look at all the happy creatures dancing on the lawn. Dinosaur Victrola listening to Buck Owens. Tambourines and elephants are playing in the band. Won’t you take a ride on the flying spoon?”).

I like the tune, and I don’t mind the psychedelic imagery, but don’t at all like the drug subtext of the song.

The way the song is written, the drug subtext is only required if you read between the lines. If you read the lines themselves, it isn’t there. In fact, all the bizarre things that the singer sees are explicitly attributed to the imagination of a road-weary traveller, not to drugs. This, no doubt, is a “plausible deniability” lyric included in the song to give kids listening to the song a defense to present to their parents (and also to keep CCR from getting in trouble for corrupting the youth–further than they already were, that is).

My solution is to enjoy the song by refusing to accept its subtext. In other words, to take it at face value and focus on the lyrics instead of what they would have meant in the socio-cultural context in which they were written. Yes, I know that the song was originally about drugs, but I don’t have to accept that just because it’s what the songwriter intended. I can take the song in whatever sense I want in the privacy of my own mind–especially when he’s put a harmless interpretation into the lyrics themselves.

It’s kind of like that episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 where Joel points out to the ‘Bots that you don’t have to accept the ending of the movie that the filmmakers give you. You can write your own ending, if you don’t like theirs.

I guess just about every conscientious Christian has to do something like this when appreciating items of popular culture that contain elements not in accord with the faith. Whether it’s a song, a movie, a TV show, a novel, or what have you, virtually everything has something bad in it. And that’s how it’s always been. It was the same in the Middle Ages, too. (In fact, when he was dying, Chaucer apologized for having included so much non-pious material in The Canterbury Tales). But that’s what we have to do, whether we’re dealing with art or simply with other people: “Test everything, and hold fast to what is good,” in the words of St. Paul.

So that’s how I handle “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.”

I was tickled to realize that, like the traveller in the song, I had “just got back from Illinois” (at least, I passed through Illinois). What was even more surprising to me, though, was something that happened with a different song on the CD: “Down on the Corner,” which is about a group of poor kids who have their own band. At one point in the song the lyrics say: “Poorboy twangs the rythm out on his kalamazoo.” I have no idea what this means. I suppose it was just John Fogerty being playful and needed a rhyme for
“kazoo” (which he uses in the next line of the song).

As it happens, I was listening to this song on my trip, looked up, and realized what town I was in at the moment: Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Weird, man. Weird.

Michael Moore Accused of Breaking Two of Ten Commandments

Enfant terrible Michael Moore, producer of the films Bowling for Columbine and the new Bush-bash Farenheight 9-11, has recently been accused of breaking two of the Ten Commandments, specifically the ones involving theft and lying.

Ray Bradbury, author of the classic dystopian sci-fi novel Farenheight 451, is hopping mad that Moore sideswiped his novel’s title and is assuing him of ripping it off. (NOTE: Bradbury is so mad the he us a . . . uh . . . colorful phrase to describe Moore.)

Regarding Moore’s receipt of standing ovations and the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) award at the Cannes film festival in the enfant terrible nation of France, Bradbury states:

“I have won prizes in different places and they are mostly meaningless. The people there hate us, which is why they gave him the d’Or. It’s a meaningless prize.”

Meanwhile, Conservative commentator Fred Barnes is accusing Moore of breaking the commandment against lying. In his book Stupid White Men, Moore recounted a phone call that showed Barnes acting like . . . well . . . . a stupid (and hypocritical) white man who didn’t know what The Iliad and The Odyssey are. Barnes flatly denies that the phone call ever took place and said Moore made it up. He writes:

The only problem is none of this is true. It never happened. Moore is a liar. He made it up. It’s a fabrication on two levels. One, I’ve never met Moore or even talked to him on the phone. And, two, I read both “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” in my first year at the University of Virginia.

Makes one wonder what other things in Moore’s work may be made up.

Speaking of Lurch . . .

addams_familyI don’t know if anybody out there gets the cable network TVLand (a spinoff of Nick at Night). I suspect that I am one of about six people who do get it.

Well, if you’re one of the lucky six, this weekend they’re having an Addams Family marathon. That show is SO cool.

As a boy I loved it, though I could seldom catch it in syndication. I infinitely preferred it to The Munsters, which struck me as a gaudy, less creative knockoff of The Addams Family. In the years since, I’ve decided that I *do* like The Munsters, but The Addams Family still has a kind of sophistication and subtlety that the Munsters didn’t.

The Munsters were all established types of monsters: Hermann was a Frankenstein monster, Lily and Granpa were vampires, and Eddie was a werewolf. Then there was Cousin Marilyn, the drop-dead gorgeous ugly duckling of the family.

The Addamses, by contrast, defy categorization. Morticia is vaguely Vampira-like, but she isn’t a vampire. Lurch is vaguely Frankenstein monster-ish, but he isn’t a Frankenstein monster. Gomez and the children aren’t monstrous in appearance at all, and Uncle Fester, Cousin Itt, and Thing defy classification. The only Addams that approximates an established stereotype is Grandmama, who is a hag.

The humor on The Addams Family also is more subtle than that on The Munsters. The writers didn’t go for as many predictable jokes. Thus, for example, in one episode this weekend Morticia offered a visitor to the house a dish of brazed giraffe whereas Lily Munster might have offered a wolfsbane casserole or something. Brazed giraffe is odd and exotic without being predictable and invoking a cliche.

That seems to be the main difference between the two oddball families (both of whom got their serieses in the same year: 1964). The Munsters are a fun romp through established monster motifs (mostly derivative of the 1930s and ’40s Universal monster movies), while The Addams Family is a quirky, understated, never-quite-predictable look at a family from The Twilight Zone.

One thing both shows have going for them is wicked cool main title sequences. The Munsters’ theme has those hard-driving (for 1964) electric guitars and saxophones, while The Addams Family has the lively harpsichord and finger snapping.

Both families also are functional, despite their oddballness. The family members care about each other, the mother and father in each are in love, and everbody has a kind of quirky zest for life. Gomez Addams (played by John Astin, father of Sean Astin or “Samwise Gamgee” from The Lord of the Rings movies) in particular seems to be thoroughly enjoying life with a passion that sometimes borders on mania.

When I was a boy, one of my favorite aunts (who reminds me of a non-spooky, Texas-accented version of Morticia, if that makes any sense) once compared my sense of humor to that of Charles Addams, the cartoonist on whose work the series is based. Maybe that’s why I like the show so much.

Now if they’d just put it out on DVD. It only ran two seasons, so it wouldn’t take much work to put the whole thing out. Just two, one-season volumes. Since TVLand has started releasing DVD sets of the shows it broadcasts, maybe it’ll put this one out. If so, I’ll get my copies pronto!

Michael Eisner Enters The Tower Of Terror

The last few weeks we here in California have been bombarded by ads for the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney’s California Adventure theme park.

Don’t know if you’re seeing these ads in the rest of the country, but they’re all over the place here.

Now, as this photo essay, it’s Disney head Michael Eisner’s turn in the Tower of Terror, the ultra-expensive ride he has been backing to bring bucks into Disney’s latest lackluster theme park.

Apparently, the California Adventure is a cost-cut, trimmed-down version of what was originally envisioned to be a much larger park, but the reaction of the public has been “ho-hum.” That’s my reaction, too. The concept of “California” just doesn’t send me, and it hasn’t been paired conceptually with the concept of “Adventure” since the 1890s.

In any event, the photo essay–taken this past Memorial Day–shows very few people seem to have the park resonating for them, either.

Terror time for Michael Eisner.

SCIENTIST: “Lies Cloaked as Science”

A real one, two punch on the new Fox fearfest The Day After Tomorrow. First, a Fox News critic takes the film apart from a cinematic angle, then the senior environmental fellow of the Cato Institute (who seems to believe in global warming) takes it apart from a scientific angle.

The latter also confirms something that I’d suspected: The film is based on a book by Art Bell and Whitley Streiber with a similar premise. That gives the movie enough camp factor to tempt me to see it, but not if it’s as bad a cinematic experience as the Fox News critic says.