Category: Culture

Where Are the Anti-Communist Movies?

Abortions, pornography and contraceptives will be banned in the new Florida town of Ave Maria, which has begun to take shape on former vegetable farms 90 miles northwest of Miami.
Tom Monaghan, the founder of the Domino’s Pizza chain, has stirred protests from civil rights activists by declaring that Ave Maria’s pharmacies will not be allowed to sell condoms or birth control pills. The town’s cable television network will carry no X-rated channels.
The town will be centred around a 100-foot tall oratory and the first Catholic university to be built in America for 40 years. The university’s president, Nicholas J Healy, has said future students should “help rebuild the city of God” in a country suffering from “catastrophic cultural collapse.”

That’s the question being asked by David Boaz over at TCS Daily.

He notes that there have, actually, been some anti-Communist movies, but not nearly as many as there have been anti-Nazi movies, and the Communists killed far more people than the Nazis, thus creating innumerable dramatic human situations that could be illuminated through film.

I’ve got two thoughts on why there haven’t been as many anti-Communist movies:

1) Hollywood tends to the left of the political spectrum. It’s cultural/political ethos is socialistic to begin with, and there is less of a desire on filmmakers’ parts to go after Communists than people (like Nazis) that they perceive to be on the opposite end of the political spectrum (though, in actuality, the Nazi party was the National Socialist party).

2) The Cold War never got hot. What made Naziism so riveting and enduring an evil in film is the fact that a whole generation of Americans went off to fight it. Communism was a looming menace, but since we and the Russians (or the Chinese) never squared off in an actual world war, that looming menace never turned into the generation-defining experience that World War II was. If Stalin massacred more civilians than Hitler did (let’s suppose; I haven’t checked the numbers), we never had to fight Stalin, and that kept him from becoming an archtypal villain equivalent to Hitler in cultural stature. (Though he has clearly been the first runner-up in that category.)

So those are my theories.

What’re yours?

Dr. Tim’s 3D House of Space!

M31r Jimmy’s 3D Mars Man post reminded me of those 3D posters that were popular for a while back in the ’80s/’90s. They usually resembled a cross between the white noise on your TV screen and some kind of LSD trip (at least, from what I hear). It was said that if you looked at the posters in just the right way (kind of crossing your eyes) that a 3D image would emerge.

It took me a while to actually make one of these work, but after that it got easier, and eventually I could make out the 3D image within a few seconds. Not that the actual image was anything to write home about… they were really sort of like crude paper cut-outs, but they were there, if you looked hard. It was a moderately interesting effect.

WARNING! ANALOGY ALERT! Barely thought-out spiritual musings ahead…

It occurred to me that in some ways, these posters are like the way we might approach religious faith. I heard from numbers of people I trusted that these posters really worked, and that there was something – some kind of image not immediately visible – "inside" them. There was the apparent image (which could look pretty chaotic), and then there was the image within the image. Thing is, to make out the deeper image took a little work. It did not just leap off the paper. To even give the thing a decent effort required a certain amount of trust. It took me quite a while, looking at a number of different images, before I could see what others already saw. If I hadn’t kept at it, I would never have seen that deeper dimension.

Now, that reminded me of another sorta-related thing which I found very cool;

INAKA’S 3D SPACE WORLD!

Akira Inaka creates 3D images of pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope. These images work in much the same way as the 3D posters I mentioned above. It might take some experimentation, but they really do work, and the effect on some of the images is pretty striking, giving the viewer a little sense of the spatial depth that is lacking in regular photos of galaxies and nebulae and other neat stuff. Inaka gives instructions on the site on how to make the things work. One note of advice; if you do this for too long, you might run into some serious eye fatigue, and maybe a headache. If you start to notice that happening, just quit and come back to the site later.

I found the site by following a link on the Hubble Heritage website (which I’ve plugged before). The site offers a convenient way to look at some very beautiful images of the cosmos. The captions can be as fascinating to read as the images are to see. The vast distances, mind-boggling dimensions and sheer energy represented by some of these photos can be truly staggering.

Pretty SCARY, eh keeds?! Ooooohh…

Whoa, Momma!

JohnnybravoEvery few years one network or another has a period when they’re doing really entertaining cartoons. Back in the ’90s, Nickelodeon had such a run when they were first doing Rugrats (before they got stale) and Doug. Then it was kind of slim pickins until they came up with SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly Oddparents (though Hey, Arnold! and The Wild Thornberrys could be good).

Kids WB (back when they were around) also had such a run with Animaniacs, Pinky & the Brain, Freakazoid, and Earthworm Jim.

And Cartoon Network had one with Johnny Bravo, Dexter’s Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Ed, Edd, n Eddy.

I don’t know what it is, but these runs of good cartoons always seem to peter out after a couple three years and then you just have to wait until someone else starts doing good TV animation again.

Filling the gap between such little golden ages is, of course, why God created DVDs, but man hasn’t been doing his part up to now: The vast majority of these cartoons have never been released on DVD! (Yet another crime against the humanities!)

I was delighted to learn, therefore, that though it’s not yet out on DVD the first season of Johnny Bravo has been released on iTunes!

WOO-HOO!

I downloaded it immediately.

My guess is that they’re testing the waters to see how well it does before possibly putting it out on DVD–or at least expanding the number of whole-season releases of Cartoon Network’s classic toons.

For those who may not know, Johnny Bravo is the biggest, dumbest, most narcissistic, body-building blond Elvis-clone that the world has ever seen.

Bravodoobiedoo
The first season of the show also includes the immortal episode "Bravo Doobie Doo," in which Johnny meets the Mystery Inc. gang from Scooby Doo, and we get a double-franchise satire.

There are some really funny bits in that one.

A favorite moment: Velma’s glasses are knocked off in a chase scene, and she’s groping around on the floor for them saying, "My glasses! My glasses! I CAN’T SEE without my glasses!" then the camera pans over and we see that Johnny’s ever-present shades have been knocked off, too, and he’s crying, "My glasses! My glasses! I CAN’T BE SEEN without my glasses!"

Classic!

Amazing what you can do with the passive voice.

I just hope they release the rest of the series.

I can’t wait to watch the episode where Johnny runs for mayor against a ham sandwich and the ham sandwich is ahead in the polls.

Abstract Art Discussion

Columbinesea Hey, Tim Jones, here (not Jimmy).

I did a series of posts on the nature of art a long time ago, which I left unfinished, due to the fact that I had not thought through all the implications of my earlier assumptions and categories of thought, especially in regard to the place of non-objective art ("abstract" art that depicts no recognizable subject).

I have been doing more thinking on this recently, and though I am still not prepared to draw any huge, sweeping conclusions, I have clarified my thought considerably. I will be completing that series of art posts soon, but in the meanwhile, I stumbled on an interesting art blog, where the author and I have been engaging in a discussion about non-objective art that some readers might want to scan.

Basically, I’m not convinced, yet, that non-objective art is really capable of substantive communication, but I am open to argument.

The subject came up as a result of an upcoming opportunity I have to meet and view the work of artist Makoto Fujimura (above). I have heard a great deal about his work, and have been reading some of his articles and interviews, trying to get some insight into his understanding of the function of art, and why he prefers to work in such a highly abstract way. Fujimura is very open about his Christian faith, and his work has found increasing recognition in the secular art community. He speaks with great conviction both about the Christian faith and about the power of art, and so I look forward to meeting him and seeing his work. I will post about his exhibit afterward.

Visit The Aesthetic Elevator blog. In addition to our discussion, he addresses the chocolate Jesus sculpture of recent infamy. My take on it? Flippant, empty and of no consequence, artistic or sociological. Calculated to gin up publicity by means of controversy… *yawn*. Anyone could think up a project like this every twenty minutes.

See the work of Makoto Fujimura.

The Chronicles Of IncrediKid!

A reader writes:

I wanted to share this
movie I made. Its a family film, 5 minutes in length and was my first
attempt for "On The lot" by Steven Spielberg. My oldest son loved filming
it, so if you have a chance take a look. Its a general audience film. Thanks
again and God Bless.

I did indeed take a look at the fim, and thought folks (especially parents!) would get a big kick out of it. I’d love to embed it here on the blog, but unfortunately Mr. Spielberg doesn’t seem to have gotten with the YouTube generation yet, so . . .

 


HERE’S THE LINK.

EMI To Nix DRM!

Good news, everybody!

EMI–one of the world’s largest music labels–has decided to give DRM-free online music a try. The deal is they’ll start selling their entire catalogue (except The Beatles) via iTunes in DRM-free form for $1.29 a song (up from 99 cents a song for the DRM-hobbled version of the music).

Personally, I’d pay the extra 30 cents for music portability, and I suspect a lot of other folks will, too.

As for The Beatles . . . well, they’ve been stick-in-the-muds for years, being slow to adopt changing music technologies. They were among the last artists to make their music available on CD, even when it was clearly the preferred choice by consumers. It’s like they’ve still got their heads stuck in the ’60s of something.

Steve Jobs also says that he expects half of the music on iTunes to be available in the premium, DRM-free version by the end of the year, which suggests he’s in negotiations with other labels for the same thing.

GET THE STORY.

By Their Lives of Judas You Shall Know Them

CNS is reporting:

Curiosity about the New Testament figure of Judas and a feeling that his reputation as the worst sinner in history "isn’t fair, isn’t right" led British novelist Jeffrey Archer to attempt a new version of the story.

Archer, presenting "The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot" at a March 20 press conference in Rome, said he is a practicing Anglican who wanted his new book to be backed up by solid biblical scholarship.

So he convinced Father Francis J. Moloney, provincial of the Salesians in Australia and a former president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, to collaborate.

Now, I don’t have a problem with someone writing a book called "The Gospel According to Judas" or writing novels about Judas or about Judas’s perceptions of Christ. I don’t even have a problem with someone who wants to present Judas as something other than the worst sinner in history–something that the Church doesn’t teach that he was. One could hold that Judas had diminished culpability for his sins and that someone else in history had a higher degree of culpability.

But I do have a problem with this:

Archer’s main thesis is that Judas tried to prevent Jesus’ arrest and execution by enlisting the help of a scribe to get Jesus out of Jerusalem and back to Galilee where the Romans supposedly would ignore him.

In the end, the scribe betrays Judas, which means Judas unwittingly betrays Jesus.

Both Archer and Father Moloney doubt that Judas committed suicide, a story recounted only in the Gospel of St. Matthew.

The Benjamin Iscariot in Archer’s title is Judas’ fictitious son, who — years after the death of Jesus — finds his father living in an ascetic community near the Dead Sea. His father reluctantly gives his version of what happened to Jesus and the son writes it down.

I’m sorry, but this is unacceptable on two grounds. First, it flatly contradicts the biblical accounts of Judas’ death. It would be one thing if the author made it clear that he was not writing about our universe and that he was dealing with a parallel Judas and what happened to him, but that’s not the case. The author and Fr. Moloney both cast doubt on the inspired text as it applies to our universe. This is an unacceptable misrepresentation of the facts of history. It’s not a case of them proposing a novel or unexpected way to harmonize the accounts of Judas’s death; it’s them flatly rejecting the biblical accounts.

Second, the author has fallen into the perennial trap of trying to exonerate Judas. That’s not the same thing as portraying him in a way that nuances his character and motives. It’s not the same thing as just saying "He may not have been the worst sinner in history." It’s flatly rejecting the betrayal that Judas performed. On this account, Judas didn’t betray Jesus; he was himself betrayed.

Sorry, but that’s not going to cut it. Not if we’re being asked to entertain what might have been the case with the Judas in our universe.

I don’t know what it is with authors (and filmmakers) who want to rehabilitate Judas in this fashion.

But I suspect it’s this: They themselves have an uneasy conscience.

They themselves feel that they have betrayed Christ (as have we all by our sins), but rather than throw themselves on Christ’s mercy and accepting his grace, they want to rationalize or excuse their sins and so–using the character of Judas as a psychological surrogate for themselves–they rationalize and excuse his in fictional form.

The underlying psychological message they’re trying to give themselves is: Hey, if Judas didn’t really betray Christ–if he was a tragic victim of circumstance–then that’s what I am, too. I haven’t really betrayed him. I’m just a victim of fate, too, and I’m not really responsible for what I’ve done.

By their lives of Judas you shall know them.

GET THE STORY.