I just recently watched "Napoleon Dynamite" with my family. It is a film so inane, vacuous, and downright offensive in its vapidity that I vowed long ago never to watch it again. Yet there it was at the yard sale last summer, staring at my then-six-year-old son who, transfixed, was somehow unable to resist the siren call of "fifty cents." He promptly purchased the monstrosity and proudly displayed it to me when he got home.
Watching this film again and ignoring, this time, the multitude of wanting elements liberated me from the chains of my own prejudice and helped me to look at this non-tour de force in a new light. What if I counted the LDS elements in the film? There are many:
1) No swearing. No violation of the seventh commandment. Chaste. And not in the "this film has no sex in it even though sex permeates the entire production" kind of way that the Twilight series is "chaste."
2) Speaking of chastity, there is a Jane Austen-like scene where Napoleon's and Deb's hands inadvertently touch each other. It is the only hint of chemistry throughout the film and is charmingly innocent, in a Jane Austen sort of way. And let's not ignore the Jane Austen-Mormon link. Mormon women like Jane Austen. They make you watch it with them. There was even a Mormon version of "Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-Day Tale," which made youth road shows look like they were stacked with talent. And Jane Austen's work was done at the same time that Wilford Woodruff did the work for the Founding Fathers and "other eminent men and women."
3) Creative dating. This one is not so much Mormon as it is Jello Belt Mormon specifically. Pedro has to bake Summer a whole cake to ask her to the dance? Napoleon has to draw Trish a picture before he can ask her to the dance? That is intense. I remember a program on the Faith and Values channel back in high school that was done by some LDS folks that was targeted at high school kids. One episode talked about how you could have fun in a group date by going to the local public library and having a scavenger hunt to find the smallest book, fattest book, oldest book, etc. I remember trying to envision what it would be like if I actually asked a girl to go do that with me. My social standing was frail enough without "creative dating" making it worse.
4) And speaking of social standing, Summer Wheatley, who is supposed to be the coolest girl in school, works a part-time job at DI. I have great respect for people who work while in school and believe it is a good thing, and something that taught me good values and so forth. But cool kids in my school definitely didn't work, especially at a thrift store. Except maybe in the summer, but not during the school year. I think the Mormon work ethic still allows for coolness in this case, however.
5) The dance. Everyone was dancing like at a church dance. No hands at the waist stuff. Only gentlemanly clasped hands, with one hand awkwardly placed around the girl's back. No booty shaking. Good distances between partners. Clean music.
6) A veritable profusion of self-employed people. Uncle Rico and Kip sell tupperware-type stuff as part of their own business. Rex opens a Rex Kwon Do studio to make some money. Deb sells trinkets and takes glamour shots to pay for college. I think I read somewhere that Utah has the highest number of women who are self-employed. There's a wiff of Jello Belt culture in all this self-employment.
7) Sign Language. The Happy Hands club sings in sign language. The only places in my life where sign language has been prominent are in Primary and the MTC. There's a Mormon-sign language link that is strong.
8) References to Boy Scouts. Nuff said.
9) Hospitality for the Lamanite. The (vice?)principal is a bit mean and condescending to Pedro when he first arrives at the school, but it is Napoleon who is kind to Pedro. We also are brought to feel sympathy when Pedro gets in trouble for making a pinata of Summer Wheatley and having people beat it with a stick. He says that it was simply something that people do back in Mexico and that he didn't mean anything by it. The script clearly creates sympathy for Pedro, who wins the school election at the end. Similar hospitality can be found in the Twilight series, The Other Side of Heaven, Baptists at our Barbecue, The RM, Johnny Lingo, and others.
10) Jokes about soul mates. Kip is absurd when he talks about his "soul mate" Lawfanduh, and Uncle Rico, also an absurd character, likewise dreams about his "soul mate." The context for both of these mentions of a "soul mate" makes clear that the notion is to be mocked. As Presidet Kimball said, "Soul mates are fiction and an illusion."
11) Napoleon wears a Ricks College t-shirt.
12) Trish's mom makes her go to the dance with Napoleon because it's the right thing to do. This is so like what a Mormon mom would do.
13)Deb really stands up for herself. She lets Napoleon have it, telling him he is a very shallow friend. This kind of self-confidence and letting the guy have it is something I've seen over and over again in Mormon girls.
14) In the brief sequel at the end, the person performing the marriage ceremony tells a much watered-down version of a story I've heard in church and in General Conference.
So there you have it. MTV picked up a bona fide Mormon cinematic masterpiece (not) and probably didn't even realize it!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
On the Accuracy of Language
The august body of French language gatekeepers known as the Academie Francaise has always seemed a bit silly to me. I mean, they were founded by the notorious Cardinal Richelieu in 1635, so that's already a shadowy beginning. They didn't have any women in the rank files of their forty "immortels" (as they are called in all non-humility) for about three hundred years, and just got their first Maghrebite four years ago (hurray for Assia Djebar!). Their goal is to maintain the purity of the French language by publishing a dictionary that delineates which words are or are not acceptable as French. Le Computer? Heavens, no- l'ordinateur. Le software? No again- le logiciel. And so on. And besides, thanks to my father's brainwashing, I don't believe in prescriptive linguistics anyway. Language is a living thing, it evolves according to the changes in the realities it tries to represent. You can't really prescribe language use for people or impose linguistic parameters on them since language itself comes from the people, is not artificial, and can only be measured or recorded, not prescribed. And I'm somewhat sympathetic to the leftist linguists who decry language prescription on the basis that such prescription only becomes a tool for certain groups to distinguish themselves from others, often to the disadvantage or detriment of the poor, the outcast, the downtrodden.
We certainly don't need a similar body for the English language, and though I am a fan of the OED, it doesn't perform nearly the same role as the Academie Francaise-- serving, as it does, more as a record of language as it is used rather than a prescription for how language OUGHT to be used.
Reading Tocqueville has caused me to reconsider some of my animus against the immortals of the French Academy, however. He points out that democratic societies(and the United States in particular) inherently do not achieve the level of precision in their language that other societies (particularly aristocratic societies- at least in 1835 when he was writing- like France) reach:
"An author begins by slightly bending the original meaning of a known expression, and, having altered it in this way, he does his best to adapt it to his subject. Another author comes along and bends the meaning in another direction. A third takes it down yet another path, and since there is no common arbiter, no permanent tribunal that can fix the meaning of the word once and for all, the situation remains fluid. As a result, it seems as if writers almost never stick to a single thought but always aim at a group of ideas, leaving it to the reader to judge which one has been hit.
"This is an unfortunate consequence of democracy. I would rather see the French tongue bristle with Chinese, Tartar, or Huron words than allow the meaning of words to become uncertain." (Goldhammer ed., p. 550).
It seems that Americans have an almost horseshoe-like quality in their expressions of language. Often, we do not aim for precision in our speech, but rather for approximation. With the meanings of words only approximate and not fixed or regulated by a "tribunal" as in France, everyone is free to imbue words with their own personal or individualized meanings. While this may please the deconstructionists among us, it would cause disaster, and in fact, it already has begun to do so. I am sickened, for example, to hear talk of people buying or selling a "home." You can't do that! You can only sell a "house," a thing made out of earthly materials-- walls, linoleum, stone, siding. A "home" can neither be sold nor bought; it is something that money simply cannot buy. When realtors promise you a "home," they are lying and corrupting our language at the same time, as well as guilty of profanation and simony for promising to sell that which is sacred.
The lack of linguistic regulation in our country and the resultant approximation in language use may help to explain the (post-)adolescent affinity for the word "like," as in "I was, like, going to the store today, and I like saw these apples, and like they weren't expensive, so I like bought them." (Post-)Adolescents can't seem to commit themselves to stating that they simply went to the store, saw some inexpensive apples, and then bought them. They live in uncertainties and often experience only approximations. This is why I try to emphasize precision in language in my students' papers, because approximate thinking won't do in a world and a life full of complex challenges requiring clarity and discernment.
Sports slogans, trade jingles, and soundbites only make things worse. I once had a student tell me that the message of a certain film was that "through education, you can achieve your destiny." I told her I didn't really know what that means. Did she believe in destiny? If you believe in destiny, then why can you only achieve it through education? I thought destiny was destiny, and not something to be achieved. It turns out that she meant that through education, people can reach their greatest potential (still only an approximate and cliche-ridden phrase, but a step upward nevertheless). And yet our very own universities, in their glossy brochures, commit such egregious crimes against the English language all the time when they promise students that their institution will help them precisely to "achieve their destiny" and other such absurd Jedi-talk.
Corporate interests, or at least our collective lack of resistance against them, have also contributed their fair share of the corruption of our language. My grandmother once asked me to go get her her "Skin So Soft," since her skin was dry and she needed some lotion. I wished she had simply asked me to get her her lotion, because to include (false) advertising in the very name of an object is a rank perversion of language. I want to eat chicken, not "I Feel Like Chicken Tonight," have sugar cereal, not Lucky Charms (think about it- eating lucky charms actually sounds kind of gross), and drink orange drink, not Sunny Delight. I give people tissues, not Kleenexes. And the corporate perversion of our language has gone so far that I sometimes find myself standing completely mystified at the Ben and Jerry's counter, wondering what the heck Chunky Monkey is doing on the menu (sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones movie) and why I can't just have a scoop of banana ice cream. I was once drinking a Mountain Dew in Germany, and my friends had no idea what it was, and wanted to know what the German translation for it was. When I explained it to them, they thought it was weird that a drink (especially one produced in a chemical laboratory) would be named after the moisture found in the grass on a mountain in the morning.
George Steiner commented on the corruption inherent in the German language during and after the fall of the Third Reich. So did Henry James, during Word War I, anticipating Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. James writes
One finds it in the midst of all this as hard to apply one's words as to enure one's thoughts. The war has used up words: they have weakened, they have deteriorated like motor car tires; they have, like millions of other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the happy semblance during the last six months than in all the long ages before, and we are now confronted with a depreciation of all our terms, or, otherwise speaking, with a loss of expression through an increase in limpness, that may well make us wonder what ghosts will be left to walk.
George Orwell likewise criticized the perversion of language in 1984- isn't that where he used the neologism "superdoubleplusungood"? I have oftened wondered what the Nephites meant exactly when they said that the Mulekites' language had become "corrupted," but the above reflections, I think, may bring me to a nearer understanding of just what was going on.
Maybe the Academie Francaise isn't such a ridiculous institution after all.
We certainly don't need a similar body for the English language, and though I am a fan of the OED, it doesn't perform nearly the same role as the Academie Francaise-- serving, as it does, more as a record of language as it is used rather than a prescription for how language OUGHT to be used.
Reading Tocqueville has caused me to reconsider some of my animus against the immortals of the French Academy, however. He points out that democratic societies(and the United States in particular) inherently do not achieve the level of precision in their language that other societies (particularly aristocratic societies- at least in 1835 when he was writing- like France) reach:
"An author begins by slightly bending the original meaning of a known expression, and, having altered it in this way, he does his best to adapt it to his subject. Another author comes along and bends the meaning in another direction. A third takes it down yet another path, and since there is no common arbiter, no permanent tribunal that can fix the meaning of the word once and for all, the situation remains fluid. As a result, it seems as if writers almost never stick to a single thought but always aim at a group of ideas, leaving it to the reader to judge which one has been hit.
"This is an unfortunate consequence of democracy. I would rather see the French tongue bristle with Chinese, Tartar, or Huron words than allow the meaning of words to become uncertain." (Goldhammer ed., p. 550).
It seems that Americans have an almost horseshoe-like quality in their expressions of language. Often, we do not aim for precision in our speech, but rather for approximation. With the meanings of words only approximate and not fixed or regulated by a "tribunal" as in France, everyone is free to imbue words with their own personal or individualized meanings. While this may please the deconstructionists among us, it would cause disaster, and in fact, it already has begun to do so. I am sickened, for example, to hear talk of people buying or selling a "home." You can't do that! You can only sell a "house," a thing made out of earthly materials-- walls, linoleum, stone, siding. A "home" can neither be sold nor bought; it is something that money simply cannot buy. When realtors promise you a "home," they are lying and corrupting our language at the same time, as well as guilty of profanation and simony for promising to sell that which is sacred.
The lack of linguistic regulation in our country and the resultant approximation in language use may help to explain the (post-)adolescent affinity for the word "like," as in "I was, like, going to the store today, and I like saw these apples, and like they weren't expensive, so I like bought them." (Post-)Adolescents can't seem to commit themselves to stating that they simply went to the store, saw some inexpensive apples, and then bought them. They live in uncertainties and often experience only approximations. This is why I try to emphasize precision in language in my students' papers, because approximate thinking won't do in a world and a life full of complex challenges requiring clarity and discernment.
Sports slogans, trade jingles, and soundbites only make things worse. I once had a student tell me that the message of a certain film was that "through education, you can achieve your destiny." I told her I didn't really know what that means. Did she believe in destiny? If you believe in destiny, then why can you only achieve it through education? I thought destiny was destiny, and not something to be achieved. It turns out that she meant that through education, people can reach their greatest potential (still only an approximate and cliche-ridden phrase, but a step upward nevertheless). And yet our very own universities, in their glossy brochures, commit such egregious crimes against the English language all the time when they promise students that their institution will help them precisely to "achieve their destiny" and other such absurd Jedi-talk.
Corporate interests, or at least our collective lack of resistance against them, have also contributed their fair share of the corruption of our language. My grandmother once asked me to go get her her "Skin So Soft," since her skin was dry and she needed some lotion. I wished she had simply asked me to get her her lotion, because to include (false) advertising in the very name of an object is a rank perversion of language. I want to eat chicken, not "I Feel Like Chicken Tonight," have sugar cereal, not Lucky Charms (think about it- eating lucky charms actually sounds kind of gross), and drink orange drink, not Sunny Delight. I give people tissues, not Kleenexes. And the corporate perversion of our language has gone so far that I sometimes find myself standing completely mystified at the Ben and Jerry's counter, wondering what the heck Chunky Monkey is doing on the menu (sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones movie) and why I can't just have a scoop of banana ice cream. I was once drinking a Mountain Dew in Germany, and my friends had no idea what it was, and wanted to know what the German translation for it was. When I explained it to them, they thought it was weird that a drink (especially one produced in a chemical laboratory) would be named after the moisture found in the grass on a mountain in the morning.
George Steiner commented on the corruption inherent in the German language during and after the fall of the Third Reich. So did Henry James, during Word War I, anticipating Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. James writes
One finds it in the midst of all this as hard to apply one's words as to enure one's thoughts. The war has used up words: they have weakened, they have deteriorated like motor car tires; they have, like millions of other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the happy semblance during the last six months than in all the long ages before, and we are now confronted with a depreciation of all our terms, or, otherwise speaking, with a loss of expression through an increase in limpness, that may well make us wonder what ghosts will be left to walk.
George Orwell likewise criticized the perversion of language in 1984- isn't that where he used the neologism "superdoubleplusungood"? I have oftened wondered what the Nephites meant exactly when they said that the Mulekites' language had become "corrupted," but the above reflections, I think, may bring me to a nearer understanding of just what was going on.
Maybe the Academie Francaise isn't such a ridiculous institution after all.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Confession and the Surveillance Society
It seems that confessions are replacing baseball as our national past-time. Eliot Spitzer, Jim McGreevy, John Edwards, Mark Sanford and far too many others are clogging up the airwaves with their heartfelt, public confessions, loyal wives at their sides, promising penitence and reform. I have never understood the "loyal wife" role in such cases, though I do sympathize strongly with notions like repentance and forgiveness, some of the first lessons of marriage, after all. But at least Jenny Sanford had the good sense to be out of town with the kids while her husband went on and on about his "soul mate" in Argentina before a live national audience.
Part of what troubles me about these confessions is that there is a sense that a good, public confession will settle everything and that afterwards everyone can go back to business as usual, as though the act of confession itself, particularly when performed publically, serves as an automatic expiatory balm that sets everything in order again. And given our heavily Protestant culture, we do not really understand what private confession is, causing me to wonder aloud with John Proctor in Arthur Miller's excellent play, The Crucible, "Is there no penitence but it be public?"
Certainly, Puritans and Protestants have long turned to their private journals for their confessions, filling in a space for penitence left empty by the absence of the confession booth. But today, in an age where the sacred divide between public and private is collapsing, where the written word can be quickly disseminated to thousands, and where blogs are often performing, particularly among young people, many of the functions of the now almost anachronistic "private diary," it appears indeed that there is hardly ANY form of communication anymore but it be public. So out come the Ted Haggarts, the Kobe Bryants, the David Patersons, and so on.
Of course, it is precisely the loss of this distinction between the public and the private sphere that leads to such a confessional society. When technology allows us to gaze into the lives of others-- think reality shows (with their appropriately-titled "confessional" scenes), blogs, the social networking sites such as the mystical one our esteemed Secretary of State once referred to as "MyFace" and my mother regularly calls "Spacebook," YouTube moments that derail presidential aspirations ("Macaca," Mr. Allen? - "I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose," Mr. Romney?) and invite access to the most intimate of strangers, not to mention wiretapping, patriotic library snooping, and ever-present surveillance cameras, whether I'm buying groceries or visiting the restroom at the public library (yes, they even have cameras in there...)-- confession becomes a necessity, since there is a sense that everyone is already watching, so we may as well come clean, and thereby claim our subjecthood by rejecting the inevitable objectification of ourselves that such a surveillance society surely brings.
Little wonder, then, that Arthur Miller's Puritan Salem would require such public confessions, "nailed to the church," for here was also a society under constant surveillance, not from the technologies available to us today, but from the close scrutiny and watchful eye of neighbors under which everyone in the community lived. And little wonder that my students, accustomed to constant connection (albeit artificial) with others, and to the ensuing surveillance by others into their private lives that such a connection ensures, all too often confess transgressions and intimacies related to their personal lives in the writing assignments that they hand in to me, something which embarrasses me but seems natural to many of them. After all, if my Facebook site, my blog posts, my YouTube clips and my loud, public cell-phone conversations have already revealed these things, why keep them from my professor?
Because a confessional society is a surveillance society, and a surveillance society is a confessional society.
Part of what troubles me about these confessions is that there is a sense that a good, public confession will settle everything and that afterwards everyone can go back to business as usual, as though the act of confession itself, particularly when performed publically, serves as an automatic expiatory balm that sets everything in order again. And given our heavily Protestant culture, we do not really understand what private confession is, causing me to wonder aloud with John Proctor in Arthur Miller's excellent play, The Crucible, "Is there no penitence but it be public?"
Certainly, Puritans and Protestants have long turned to their private journals for their confessions, filling in a space for penitence left empty by the absence of the confession booth. But today, in an age where the sacred divide between public and private is collapsing, where the written word can be quickly disseminated to thousands, and where blogs are often performing, particularly among young people, many of the functions of the now almost anachronistic "private diary," it appears indeed that there is hardly ANY form of communication anymore but it be public. So out come the Ted Haggarts, the Kobe Bryants, the David Patersons, and so on.
Of course, it is precisely the loss of this distinction between the public and the private sphere that leads to such a confessional society. When technology allows us to gaze into the lives of others-- think reality shows (with their appropriately-titled "confessional" scenes), blogs, the social networking sites such as the mystical one our esteemed Secretary of State once referred to as "MyFace" and my mother regularly calls "Spacebook," YouTube moments that derail presidential aspirations ("Macaca," Mr. Allen? - "I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose," Mr. Romney?) and invite access to the most intimate of strangers, not to mention wiretapping, patriotic library snooping, and ever-present surveillance cameras, whether I'm buying groceries or visiting the restroom at the public library (yes, they even have cameras in there...)-- confession becomes a necessity, since there is a sense that everyone is already watching, so we may as well come clean, and thereby claim our subjecthood by rejecting the inevitable objectification of ourselves that such a surveillance society surely brings.
Little wonder, then, that Arthur Miller's Puritan Salem would require such public confessions, "nailed to the church," for here was also a society under constant surveillance, not from the technologies available to us today, but from the close scrutiny and watchful eye of neighbors under which everyone in the community lived. And little wonder that my students, accustomed to constant connection (albeit artificial) with others, and to the ensuing surveillance by others into their private lives that such a connection ensures, all too often confess transgressions and intimacies related to their personal lives in the writing assignments that they hand in to me, something which embarrasses me but seems natural to many of them. After all, if my Facebook site, my blog posts, my YouTube clips and my loud, public cell-phone conversations have already revealed these things, why keep them from my professor?
Because a confessional society is a surveillance society, and a surveillance society is a confessional society.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Five Guys
It was my singular privilege to eat with my family at Five Guys Burgers and Fries in Nags Head, NC, last night. This is the East Coast burger chain to which President Obama has recently given great visibility by gracing with his presence one of its Northern Virginia venues. They boast the burger the Washington Post calls the best in the world, or something like that. It's a greasy place, but there is no want of peanuts or refills on soda. I'm glad they call it soda, too, since our last two years in Iowa have forced me to denominate only "soft drinks," since I refuse to say "pop," and saying "soda" sometimes brands me as an outsider in the Midwest, and I like to keep incognito.
The ease with which I could order "soda" instantly gave me a wonderful, homey feel, but it was a remarkable experience I had while filling my own soda at Five Guys that really gave me a feeling of being at home, of being comfortably situated in my own Bourdieusian habitus. Five Guys always has a sign inside that lets you know where your french fries came from that day. It's usually a place in Idaho, in my experience, though probably not limited to that fine state. As I was pouring my drink, my soda, I overheard a family noting that today's potatoes had come from none other place than Rexburg, Idaho. "Rexburg, Idaho? How random is that? Did they just throw a dart on a map and decide to get their potatoes from there? What's in Rexburg, Idaho?" they said. And suddenly finding myself in a place where Rexburg, Idaho, is not where you met and fell in love and got your education and got married and had your first child and used to be on the rodeo team but a random place you've never heard of, I confidently poured my soda in my cup and knew I was home.
(Note: I can probably count on my thumbs the number of people reading this blog, and I think they have both spent some time in their lives in Idaho, so I may have just lost whatever meager readership I once had, but hey, just sayin...)
The ease with which I could order "soda" instantly gave me a wonderful, homey feel, but it was a remarkable experience I had while filling my own soda at Five Guys that really gave me a feeling of being at home, of being comfortably situated in my own Bourdieusian habitus. Five Guys always has a sign inside that lets you know where your french fries came from that day. It's usually a place in Idaho, in my experience, though probably not limited to that fine state. As I was pouring my drink, my soda, I overheard a family noting that today's potatoes had come from none other place than Rexburg, Idaho. "Rexburg, Idaho? How random is that? Did they just throw a dart on a map and decide to get their potatoes from there? What's in Rexburg, Idaho?" they said. And suddenly finding myself in a place where Rexburg, Idaho, is not where you met and fell in love and got your education and got married and had your first child and used to be on the rodeo team but a random place you've never heard of, I confidently poured my soda in my cup and knew I was home.
(Note: I can probably count on my thumbs the number of people reading this blog, and I think they have both spent some time in their lives in Idaho, so I may have just lost whatever meager readership I once had, but hey, just sayin...)
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Henry Higgins and Women
When I was a senior in high school, I got to play Henry Higgins in our school's production of "My Fair Lady," one of the few occasions in my life where my stuffy white-boy persona actually came in handy. The many years of my childhood spent watching Britain's Sky Channel (yes, while everybody in the U.S. watched Spiderman and the Transformers on Saturday mornings at home, I was subjected to DJ Kat and Yummy Mouse, and Kitty Curls comm... er... advertisements) helped me to develop an ear for various British accents, particularly the sort of South Kensington thing required for the Henry Higgins role. Since many of my classmates knew few other accents than south Baltimorese (which to this day rivals Tennessee-Appalachian as one of the more grating sounds on my ears) it was my privilege to spend five months memorizing and rehearsing some of the greatest lines in the English language, most of which, of course, came from George Bernard Shaw's wonderful play, Pygmalion.
It was also my privilege to learn that fame and status can compensate for what may be lacking in other departments when it comes to receiving attention from the opposite sex, particularly the adolescent sort. Where I was a nice but nerdy guy with horse sweaters and an awkward hook shot before, I was now a star, and to my great surprise, I started receiving attention from girls for no other reason than my status as the main character in a musical. This was shallow and I knew it, but I liked the attention anyway. I, too, was of the adolescent sort. (Note to Lindsay- actually I'm lying about all of this. The truth is that I can't actually remember anything about my life before I met you...).
When I got to college, I went to the sort of school where football players weren't quite as cool as the a capella singers. For the first two weeks of my college existence, I walked around with little attention from the fairer sex. But when word got out that I was now a bona fide member of the Academical Village People, everything changed. Suddenly, I found myself invited to all kinds of parties that I never could have gone to on my own merits, and I was even developing my own groupies who followed us around on our gigs and faithfully came to our concerts with signs and things. (That's actually weird, now that I think about it, but again, remember the adolescent thing). On one incomprehensible occasion, I was talking to Miss Teen USA (a fellow first-year) and she was actually more nervous around me than I was around her. (Those of you who know me and know what I look like will share in my astonishment- again, it just shows what a difference status, even if only localized, can make, especially for the adolescent crowd). Now, there is no need to exaggerate my new success with the ladies, but I did actually notice a change, and it had to do with little more than my new status (as an a capella guy, of all things!).
I felt like Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors (since we're talking about musicals), who wondered whether "Audrey, lovely Audrey" would still love him without his plant. I wondered if Peter-sans-AVP-status would still get the same attention, and discovered after my mission (when I quit AVP over the new Sunday rehearsals) that the answer was the same one that all men who have ever enjoyed the slightest display of status in their lives come to discover upon losing it: a resounding NO.
I think it is this status phenomenon that merited me a surprising "hotness" chilli pepper from one of my (obviously visually impaired) students this semester. Status (he knows SO MUCH and he's SUCH A GREAT TEACHER!) still can go a long way.
Anyway, before this post digresses more than Melville's Billy Bud, playing Henry Higgins in high school meant I got to sing-song the classic misogynist tune, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" If women told me after the show that they were really upset with my character when I sang that song, I felt like I had done my duty as an actor. I think the whole purpose of that song is basically to annoy women.
And yet...
Deep down, aren't there many women who secretly believe this? Isn't success in our male-centric world defined largely in masculine terms? In significant ways, I think, we have not come very far in the last six hundred and fifty years. The great Italian poet Boccaccio wrote in his book ON FAMOUS WOMEN in 1362:
"If we grant that men deserve praise whenever they perform great deeds with the strength bestowed upon them, how much more should women be extolled— almost all of whom are endowed by nature with soft, frail bodies and sluggish minds— when they take on a manly spirit, show remarkable intelligence and bravery, and dare to execute deeds that would be extremely difficult even for men?"
Boccaccio's misogynist contention is that women's acts and deeds should be defined in "manly" terms, that is, by the degree to which women's acts or deeds provide evidence of a "manly spirit." Proto-feminists like the French Christine de Pizan spent their lifetimes countering these ridiculous claims, but even over six centuries later, I think we still define success, virtue, greatness, and so forth in largely male-centric terms. My wife, for example, is convinced that Jane Austen has been underrated as a writer precisely because she writes about women's perspectives in a way that men cannot readily understand. I used to think this was unfair, but I'm starting to come around to her thinking. Jane Austen captures very keenly and insightfully the longings, ambiguities, and viewpoints of certain rural, middle-class Englishwomen during a particular point in history. Her insights are every bit as brilliant as many of the canonical male writers', but because they concern women, they do not get as much credit.
But why would a woman want to be like a man, anyway? I like these lines from Eliza R. Snow, where she says that some who would improve women's status "are so radical in their extreme theories that they would set her in antagonism to man, assume for her a separate and opposing existence; and to show how entirely independent she should be would make her adopt the more reprehensible phases of character which men present, and which should be shunned or improved by them instead of being copied by women."
In response to Henry Higgins's question, "Why can't a woman be more like a man," an authority no less than President James E. Faust has responded, "What a terrible mistake that would be."
And so say I.
It was also my privilege to learn that fame and status can compensate for what may be lacking in other departments when it comes to receiving attention from the opposite sex, particularly the adolescent sort. Where I was a nice but nerdy guy with horse sweaters and an awkward hook shot before, I was now a star, and to my great surprise, I started receiving attention from girls for no other reason than my status as the main character in a musical. This was shallow and I knew it, but I liked the attention anyway. I, too, was of the adolescent sort. (Note to Lindsay- actually I'm lying about all of this. The truth is that I can't actually remember anything about my life before I met you...).
When I got to college, I went to the sort of school where football players weren't quite as cool as the a capella singers. For the first two weeks of my college existence, I walked around with little attention from the fairer sex. But when word got out that I was now a bona fide member of the Academical Village People, everything changed. Suddenly, I found myself invited to all kinds of parties that I never could have gone to on my own merits, and I was even developing my own groupies who followed us around on our gigs and faithfully came to our concerts with signs and things. (That's actually weird, now that I think about it, but again, remember the adolescent thing). On one incomprehensible occasion, I was talking to Miss Teen USA (a fellow first-year) and she was actually more nervous around me than I was around her. (Those of you who know me and know what I look like will share in my astonishment- again, it just shows what a difference status, even if only localized, can make, especially for the adolescent crowd). Now, there is no need to exaggerate my new success with the ladies, but I did actually notice a change, and it had to do with little more than my new status (as an a capella guy, of all things!).
I felt like Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors (since we're talking about musicals), who wondered whether "Audrey, lovely Audrey" would still love him without his plant. I wondered if Peter-sans-AVP-status would still get the same attention, and discovered after my mission (when I quit AVP over the new Sunday rehearsals) that the answer was the same one that all men who have ever enjoyed the slightest display of status in their lives come to discover upon losing it: a resounding NO.
I think it is this status phenomenon that merited me a surprising "hotness" chilli pepper from one of my (obviously visually impaired) students this semester. Status (he knows SO MUCH and he's SUCH A GREAT TEACHER!) still can go a long way.
Anyway, before this post digresses more than Melville's Billy Bud, playing Henry Higgins in high school meant I got to sing-song the classic misogynist tune, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" If women told me after the show that they were really upset with my character when I sang that song, I felt like I had done my duty as an actor. I think the whole purpose of that song is basically to annoy women.
And yet...
Deep down, aren't there many women who secretly believe this? Isn't success in our male-centric world defined largely in masculine terms? In significant ways, I think, we have not come very far in the last six hundred and fifty years. The great Italian poet Boccaccio wrote in his book ON FAMOUS WOMEN in 1362:
"If we grant that men deserve praise whenever they perform great deeds with the strength bestowed upon them, how much more should women be extolled— almost all of whom are endowed by nature with soft, frail bodies and sluggish minds— when they take on a manly spirit, show remarkable intelligence and bravery, and dare to execute deeds that would be extremely difficult even for men?"
Boccaccio's misogynist contention is that women's acts and deeds should be defined in "manly" terms, that is, by the degree to which women's acts or deeds provide evidence of a "manly spirit." Proto-feminists like the French Christine de Pizan spent their lifetimes countering these ridiculous claims, but even over six centuries later, I think we still define success, virtue, greatness, and so forth in largely male-centric terms. My wife, for example, is convinced that Jane Austen has been underrated as a writer precisely because she writes about women's perspectives in a way that men cannot readily understand. I used to think this was unfair, but I'm starting to come around to her thinking. Jane Austen captures very keenly and insightfully the longings, ambiguities, and viewpoints of certain rural, middle-class Englishwomen during a particular point in history. Her insights are every bit as brilliant as many of the canonical male writers', but because they concern women, they do not get as much credit.
But why would a woman want to be like a man, anyway? I like these lines from Eliza R. Snow, where she says that some who would improve women's status "are so radical in their extreme theories that they would set her in antagonism to man, assume for her a separate and opposing existence; and to show how entirely independent she should be would make her adopt the more reprehensible phases of character which men present, and which should be shunned or improved by them instead of being copied by women."
In response to Henry Higgins's question, "Why can't a woman be more like a man," an authority no less than President James E. Faust has responded, "What a terrible mistake that would be."
And so say I.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Iowa Supreme Court and Gay "Marriage"
Yeah, I'm going there.
Proponents of so-called "gay marriage" often ask how someone else's family would be affected by the recognition of same-sex marriage. Can't heterosexual couples and their children continue to live their lives as they wish, unaffected by what others may be doing?
I want to answer this question.
It seems helpful to invoke John Donne at this juncture, who understood that "No man is an island" and that "Every man's death diminishes me," reminding me of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s statement that "What influences one directly influences all indirectly." Donne and Martin Luther King, Jr. understood something that in our highly individualistic society (now thirty years past the "Me Decade") seems to be becoming increasingly incomprehensible, namely, the idea that we all form part of a community and that we are linked to one another as human beings. The rugged individualism on which Americans have long prided themselves (and which has, for the record, helped to accomplish great things and to instill an admirable sense of self-reliance in our culture at various times in our history) has now all but turned into an egocentric me-ism, a worship of self, a creating of God in our own image.
Witness the ubiquitous i-pod, helping to cut off nearly a whole generation from meaningful interaction with their peers (and especially with their non-peers), the cell phones and texting devices that promise increased human interaction but provide only counterfeit communication in its place. Witness the homes in which individuals (the word "individuum" didn't even pop up in Latin until ca. 11th century A.D.), all attached to their private screens, sequester themselves in their own separate spheres, a phenomenon not only criticized in Pixar's recent "Wall-E" (I love Pixar: "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" have restored my faith in modern animation- and Ed Catmull, one of Pixar's founders, is an LDS returned missionary) but also in a great conversation between Dana Gioia, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and a personal hero (see, for example, his excellent Stanford speech here: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/june20/gradtrans-062007.html), and Jonathan Katz, CEO of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (see http://www.nea.gov/av/index_v.html).
So I think we have become, or are gradually becoming, in Walter Scott's words, wretches "concentred all in self," bowling alone, as it were, ordering tickets and dinner for one, strolling down lover's lane holding our own hand.
There is a sense of community that we have lost in all of this disconnected individualism, and it is precisely this lost sense of community that causes some to stand mystified at the suggestion that the actions of a few could, in fact, have a significant impact on others, even on those never met personally. Small wonder, then, that it is precisely the under-30 demographic-- the i-pod consumed, constantly texting, rarely voting, and often single folks who express their bafflement at the idea that one's actions may have an impact beyond one's own limited, personal spheres.
If this is all a bit abstract, let me provide some specific examples how gay "marriage" is already affecting heterosexual families:
(Now mind you, the following information is not coming from some crazy right-wing website- this is all from National Public Radio- see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91486340)
"When Gay Rights and Religious Liberties Clash
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
NPR.org, June 13, 2008 · In recent years, some states have passed laws giving residents the right to same-sex unions in various forms. Gay couples may marry in Massachusetts and California. There are civil unions and domestic partnerships in Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Oregon. Other states give more limited rights.
Armed with those legal protections, same-sex couples are beginning to challenge policies of religious organizations that exclude them, claiming that a religious group's view that homosexual marriage is a sin cannot be used to violate their right to equal treatment. Now parochial schools, "parachurch" organizations such as Catholic Charities and businesses that refuse to serve gay couples are being sued — and so far, the religious groups are losing. Here are a few cases:
Adoption services: Catholic Charities in Massachusetts refused to place children with same-sex couples as required by Massachusetts law. After a legislative struggle — during which the Senate president said he could not support a bill "condoning discrimination" — Catholic Charities pulled out of the adoption business in 2006.
Housing: In New York City, Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a school under Orthodox Jewish auspices, banned same-sex couples from its married dormitory. New York does not recognize same-sex marriage, but in 2001, the state's highest court ruled Yeshiva violated New York City's ban on sexual orientation discrimination. Yeshiva now allows all couples in the dorm.
Parochial schools: California Lutheran High School, a Protestant school in Wildomar, holds that homosexuality is a sin. After the school suspended two girls who were allegedly in a lesbian relationship, the girls' parents sued, saying the school was violating the state's civil rights act protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination. The case is before a state judge.
Medical services: A Christian gynecologist at North Coast Women's Care Medical Group in Vista, Calif., refused to give his patient in vitro fertilization treatment because she is in a lesbian relationship, and he claimed that doing so would violate his religious beliefs. (The doctor referred the patient to his partner, who agreed to do the treatment.) The woman sued under the state's civil rights act. The California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in May 2008, and legal experts believe that the woman's right to medical treatment will trump the doctor's religious beliefs. One justice suggested that the doctors take up a different line of business.
Psychological services: A mental health counselor at North Mississippi Health Services refused therapy for a woman who wanted help in improving her lesbian relationship. The counselor said doing so would violate her religious beliefs. The counselor was fired. In March 2001, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sided with the employer, ruling that the employee's religious beliefs could not be accommodated without causing undue hardship to the company.
Civil servants: A clerk in Vermont refused to perform a civil union ceremony after the state legalized them. In 2001, in a decision that side-stepped the religious liberties issue, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that he did not need to perform the ceremony because there were other civil servants who would. However, the court did indicate that religious beliefs do not allow employees to discriminate against same-sex couples.
Adoption services: A same-sex couple in California applied to Adoption Profiles, an Internet service in Arizona that matches adoptive parents with newborns. The couple's application was denied based on the religious beliefs of the company's owners. The couple sued in federal district court in San Francisco. The two sides settled after the adoption company said it will no longer do business in California.
Wedding services: A same sex couple in Albuquerque asked a photographer, Elaine Huguenin, to shoot their commitment ceremony. The photographer declined, saying her Christian beliefs prevented her from sanctioning same-sex unions. The couple sued, and the New Mexico Human Rights Commission found the photographer guilty of discrimination. It ordered her to pay the lesbian couple's legal fees ($6,600). The photographer is appealing.
Wedding facilities: Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association of New Jersey, a Methodist organization, refused to rent its boardwalk pavilion to a lesbian couple for their civil union ceremony. The couple filed a complaint with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights. The division ruled that the boardwalk property was open for public use, therefore the Methodist group could not discriminate against gay couples using it. In the interim, the state's Department of Environmental Protection revoked a portion of the association's tax benefits. The case is ongoing.
Youth groups: The city of Berkeley, Calif., requested that the Sea Scouts (affiliated with the Boy Scouts) formally agree to not discriminate against gay men in exchange for free use of berths in the city's marina. The Sea Scouts sued, claiming this violated their beliefs and First Amendment right to the freedom to associate with other like-minded people. In 2006, the California Supreme Court ruled against the youth group. In San Diego, the Boy Scouts lost access to the city-owned aquatic center for the same reason. While these cases do not directly involve same-sex unions, they presage future conflicts about whether religiously oriented or parachurch organizations may prohibit, for example, gay couples from teaching at summer camp. In June 2008, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals asked the California Supreme Court to review the Boy Scouts' leases. Meanwhile, the mayor's office in Philadelphia revoked the Boy Scouts' $1-a-year lease for a city building."
Now, who goes after Boy Scouts?
When you throw a stone into the water, there is a ripple effect. Changing the definition of marriage will also have a ripple effect, as it is already beginning to have. And we're only a few years into same-sex unions- I wonder what the effects might be ten or twenty years from now.
Iowa, and every other state that hasn't already done so, needs to pass a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The United States likewise needs to pass a Federal Marriage Amendment doing the same. There are fundamental, First-Amendment freedoms at stake.
Proponents of so-called "gay marriage" often ask how someone else's family would be affected by the recognition of same-sex marriage. Can't heterosexual couples and their children continue to live their lives as they wish, unaffected by what others may be doing?
I want to answer this question.
It seems helpful to invoke John Donne at this juncture, who understood that "No man is an island" and that "Every man's death diminishes me," reminding me of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s statement that "What influences one directly influences all indirectly." Donne and Martin Luther King, Jr. understood something that in our highly individualistic society (now thirty years past the "Me Decade") seems to be becoming increasingly incomprehensible, namely, the idea that we all form part of a community and that we are linked to one another as human beings. The rugged individualism on which Americans have long prided themselves (and which has, for the record, helped to accomplish great things and to instill an admirable sense of self-reliance in our culture at various times in our history) has now all but turned into an egocentric me-ism, a worship of self, a creating of God in our own image.
Witness the ubiquitous i-pod, helping to cut off nearly a whole generation from meaningful interaction with their peers (and especially with their non-peers), the cell phones and texting devices that promise increased human interaction but provide only counterfeit communication in its place. Witness the homes in which individuals (the word "individuum" didn't even pop up in Latin until ca. 11th century A.D.), all attached to their private screens, sequester themselves in their own separate spheres, a phenomenon not only criticized in Pixar's recent "Wall-E" (I love Pixar: "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" have restored my faith in modern animation- and Ed Catmull, one of Pixar's founders, is an LDS returned missionary) but also in a great conversation between Dana Gioia, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and a personal hero (see, for example, his excellent Stanford speech here: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/june20/gradtrans-062007.html), and Jonathan Katz, CEO of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (see http://www.nea.gov/av/index_v.html).
So I think we have become, or are gradually becoming, in Walter Scott's words, wretches "concentred all in self," bowling alone, as it were, ordering tickets and dinner for one, strolling down lover's lane holding our own hand.
There is a sense of community that we have lost in all of this disconnected individualism, and it is precisely this lost sense of community that causes some to stand mystified at the suggestion that the actions of a few could, in fact, have a significant impact on others, even on those never met personally. Small wonder, then, that it is precisely the under-30 demographic-- the i-pod consumed, constantly texting, rarely voting, and often single folks who express their bafflement at the idea that one's actions may have an impact beyond one's own limited, personal spheres.
If this is all a bit abstract, let me provide some specific examples how gay "marriage" is already affecting heterosexual families:
(Now mind you, the following information is not coming from some crazy right-wing website- this is all from National Public Radio- see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91486340)
"When Gay Rights and Religious Liberties Clash
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
NPR.org, June 13, 2008 · In recent years, some states have passed laws giving residents the right to same-sex unions in various forms. Gay couples may marry in Massachusetts and California. There are civil unions and domestic partnerships in Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Oregon. Other states give more limited rights.
Armed with those legal protections, same-sex couples are beginning to challenge policies of religious organizations that exclude them, claiming that a religious group's view that homosexual marriage is a sin cannot be used to violate their right to equal treatment. Now parochial schools, "parachurch" organizations such as Catholic Charities and businesses that refuse to serve gay couples are being sued — and so far, the religious groups are losing. Here are a few cases:
Adoption services: Catholic Charities in Massachusetts refused to place children with same-sex couples as required by Massachusetts law. After a legislative struggle — during which the Senate president said he could not support a bill "condoning discrimination" — Catholic Charities pulled out of the adoption business in 2006.
Housing: In New York City, Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a school under Orthodox Jewish auspices, banned same-sex couples from its married dormitory. New York does not recognize same-sex marriage, but in 2001, the state's highest court ruled Yeshiva violated New York City's ban on sexual orientation discrimination. Yeshiva now allows all couples in the dorm.
Parochial schools: California Lutheran High School, a Protestant school in Wildomar, holds that homosexuality is a sin. After the school suspended two girls who were allegedly in a lesbian relationship, the girls' parents sued, saying the school was violating the state's civil rights act protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination. The case is before a state judge.
Medical services: A Christian gynecologist at North Coast Women's Care Medical Group in Vista, Calif., refused to give his patient in vitro fertilization treatment because she is in a lesbian relationship, and he claimed that doing so would violate his religious beliefs. (The doctor referred the patient to his partner, who agreed to do the treatment.) The woman sued under the state's civil rights act. The California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in May 2008, and legal experts believe that the woman's right to medical treatment will trump the doctor's religious beliefs. One justice suggested that the doctors take up a different line of business.
Psychological services: A mental health counselor at North Mississippi Health Services refused therapy for a woman who wanted help in improving her lesbian relationship. The counselor said doing so would violate her religious beliefs. The counselor was fired. In March 2001, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sided with the employer, ruling that the employee's religious beliefs could not be accommodated without causing undue hardship to the company.
Civil servants: A clerk in Vermont refused to perform a civil union ceremony after the state legalized them. In 2001, in a decision that side-stepped the religious liberties issue, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that he did not need to perform the ceremony because there were other civil servants who would. However, the court did indicate that religious beliefs do not allow employees to discriminate against same-sex couples.
Adoption services: A same-sex couple in California applied to Adoption Profiles, an Internet service in Arizona that matches adoptive parents with newborns. The couple's application was denied based on the religious beliefs of the company's owners. The couple sued in federal district court in San Francisco. The two sides settled after the adoption company said it will no longer do business in California.
Wedding services: A same sex couple in Albuquerque asked a photographer, Elaine Huguenin, to shoot their commitment ceremony. The photographer declined, saying her Christian beliefs prevented her from sanctioning same-sex unions. The couple sued, and the New Mexico Human Rights Commission found the photographer guilty of discrimination. It ordered her to pay the lesbian couple's legal fees ($6,600). The photographer is appealing.
Wedding facilities: Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association of New Jersey, a Methodist organization, refused to rent its boardwalk pavilion to a lesbian couple for their civil union ceremony. The couple filed a complaint with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights. The division ruled that the boardwalk property was open for public use, therefore the Methodist group could not discriminate against gay couples using it. In the interim, the state's Department of Environmental Protection revoked a portion of the association's tax benefits. The case is ongoing.
Youth groups: The city of Berkeley, Calif., requested that the Sea Scouts (affiliated with the Boy Scouts) formally agree to not discriminate against gay men in exchange for free use of berths in the city's marina. The Sea Scouts sued, claiming this violated their beliefs and First Amendment right to the freedom to associate with other like-minded people. In 2006, the California Supreme Court ruled against the youth group. In San Diego, the Boy Scouts lost access to the city-owned aquatic center for the same reason. While these cases do not directly involve same-sex unions, they presage future conflicts about whether religiously oriented or parachurch organizations may prohibit, for example, gay couples from teaching at summer camp. In June 2008, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals asked the California Supreme Court to review the Boy Scouts' leases. Meanwhile, the mayor's office in Philadelphia revoked the Boy Scouts' $1-a-year lease for a city building."
Now, who goes after Boy Scouts?
When you throw a stone into the water, there is a ripple effect. Changing the definition of marriage will also have a ripple effect, as it is already beginning to have. And we're only a few years into same-sex unions- I wonder what the effects might be ten or twenty years from now.
Iowa, and every other state that hasn't already done so, needs to pass a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The United States likewise needs to pass a Federal Marriage Amendment doing the same. There are fundamental, First-Amendment freedoms at stake.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Selfishness
I hate the letter "I," that lonely, spear-like pronoun.
I love these lines from Walter Scott:
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.
Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, "Selfishness is really self-destruction in slow motion," and President Hinckely said that "He who lives only unto himself withers and dies, while he who forgets himself in the service of others grows and blossoms in this life and in eternity."
I love these lines from Walter Scott:
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.
Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, "Selfishness is really self-destruction in slow motion," and President Hinckely said that "He who lives only unto himself withers and dies, while he who forgets himself in the service of others grows and blossoms in this life and in eternity."
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
A Kierkegaardian Reading of March Madness
Between my junior and senior years of high school, I took an introductory philosophy course at Georgetown. The course description stated that we would read a certain book by Soren Kierkegaard, and for the life of me I can't remember the title of it. So I read the book early that summer, to get a "headstart" on the course. (Turned out that we didn't end up reading it at all- a classic case of the all-too-frequent divorce between course description promises and the harsh reality of actual classroom experience).
I wish now that I could recall the name of the book, so that I could quote from it directly, but I will have to rely on my fallible memory instead. I remember that the writer of the preface said that no one would object more to having a preface to his works than Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard believed that people should define their own experiences, come up with their own interpretations of what they read, and not have someone else impose their preface, their interpretation, on anyone else.
All this has made me think of March Madness, and how the commentaries made by the sportscasters seem like an important part of each game. What would the Carolina-Duke rivalry be without the wisdom and enthusiasm of Dick Vitale? And yet, is my interpretation of the game being imposed on me by someone else? By listening to the analysis and commentaries of sportscasters, am I letting go, in some small way, of my liberty to interpret my own experience and to frame my own basketball narrative?
Would Kierkegaard tell me to turn the sound off, watch the game, and form my own analysis of the events before me?
Sometimes I wonder.
I wish now that I could recall the name of the book, so that I could quote from it directly, but I will have to rely on my fallible memory instead. I remember that the writer of the preface said that no one would object more to having a preface to his works than Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard believed that people should define their own experiences, come up with their own interpretations of what they read, and not have someone else impose their preface, their interpretation, on anyone else.
All this has made me think of March Madness, and how the commentaries made by the sportscasters seem like an important part of each game. What would the Carolina-Duke rivalry be without the wisdom and enthusiasm of Dick Vitale? And yet, is my interpretation of the game being imposed on me by someone else? By listening to the analysis and commentaries of sportscasters, am I letting go, in some small way, of my liberty to interpret my own experience and to frame my own basketball narrative?
Would Kierkegaard tell me to turn the sound off, watch the game, and form my own analysis of the events before me?
Sometimes I wonder.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Raising Kane
Colonel Thomas L. Kane (1822-1883) was always a hero of the underdog. As a Pennsylvania attorney, he frequently took up the causes of the outcast and the oppressed. He was a staunch abolitionist, even preferring to go to jail rather than to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act (and the even more stringent provisions of the Compromise of 1850) requiring him to be more active in returning escaped slaves to their Southern masters. The Supreme Court, fortunately, decided that his incarceration was unconstitutional, and he was set free.
His taking up for the underdog eventually led to his great and continual intercession on behalf of the Latter-day Saints, and time and time again he negotiated with government leaders on their behalf. The gratitude of the Saints has expressed itself in the establishment of Kane County, UT, the naming of the Kanesville Tabernacle in Council Bluffs, IA (where on Dec. 27, 1847, Brigham Young was sustained as the second president of the Church), and numerous articles and other publications recounting his many great acts of friendship towards the Saints. As Brigham Young once wrote Kane in a letter dated April 16, 1871, "Those who know you cherish for you the fondest recollection, while with all, your name is held in honorable remembrance" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_L._Kane).
Kane also spoke French, publishing several articles in that language while in Paris, and fought in the Battle of Gettysburg (where he was promoted to major general for his bravery in battle). He was, in short, a hero.
But it is his wife, Elizabeth, that I have been reading about recently and I find her to be an equally intriguing figure. On a visit with her husband and two children to Utah, she commented on the idea (which she disdained) that theological discussions belong properly to the male domain, and that women should not trouble themselves too much with doctrinal matters. The existence of this notion she traces to a (faulty, in my opinion) reading of the Apostle Paul. On the question of whether a woman should "refer all theological puzzles to her own husband at home" she writes, "Ah, St. Paul, little didst thou foresee how busy our husbands would be all day in Wall Street, how tired and cross every evening at home! Fancy our asking THEM to extract roots of doctrine for us!" (TWELVE MORMON HOMES VISITED, 1874).
Wonderful comment from Elizabeth Kane.
President Kimball taught: "We want our homes blessed with sister scriptorians." Elder Maxwell said that for too long in the church, men have been the theologians while the women have been the Christians (see http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=c86f44584a204110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&hideNav=1#footnote7). It seems to me that women could more confidently study and expound doctrine while we men could sometimes stop expounding so much and actually start living more fully the Christianity of the doctrines that we are so happy to discuss.
His taking up for the underdog eventually led to his great and continual intercession on behalf of the Latter-day Saints, and time and time again he negotiated with government leaders on their behalf. The gratitude of the Saints has expressed itself in the establishment of Kane County, UT, the naming of the Kanesville Tabernacle in Council Bluffs, IA (where on Dec. 27, 1847, Brigham Young was sustained as the second president of the Church), and numerous articles and other publications recounting his many great acts of friendship towards the Saints. As Brigham Young once wrote Kane in a letter dated April 16, 1871, "Those who know you cherish for you the fondest recollection, while with all, your name is held in honorable remembrance" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_L._Kane).
Kane also spoke French, publishing several articles in that language while in Paris, and fought in the Battle of Gettysburg (where he was promoted to major general for his bravery in battle). He was, in short, a hero.
But it is his wife, Elizabeth, that I have been reading about recently and I find her to be an equally intriguing figure. On a visit with her husband and two children to Utah, she commented on the idea (which she disdained) that theological discussions belong properly to the male domain, and that women should not trouble themselves too much with doctrinal matters. The existence of this notion she traces to a (faulty, in my opinion) reading of the Apostle Paul. On the question of whether a woman should "refer all theological puzzles to her own husband at home" she writes, "Ah, St. Paul, little didst thou foresee how busy our husbands would be all day in Wall Street, how tired and cross every evening at home! Fancy our asking THEM to extract roots of doctrine for us!" (TWELVE MORMON HOMES VISITED, 1874).
Wonderful comment from Elizabeth Kane.
President Kimball taught: "We want our homes blessed with sister scriptorians." Elder Maxwell said that for too long in the church, men have been the theologians while the women have been the Christians (see http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=c86f44584a204110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&hideNav=1#footnote7). It seems to me that women could more confidently study and expound doctrine while we men could sometimes stop expounding so much and actually start living more fully the Christianity of the doctrines that we are so happy to discuss.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Sameness
Madeleine L'Engle is wonderful, and not just because she received an honorary doctorate from BYU in 1999 and gave a great commencement address there (see http://www.byub.org/findatalk/search.asp?all=true"). She is also a solid writer for children (intertext with Shakespeare, Goethe, the Bible!) in a time when the stultifying and the vapid have cornered too much of the children's literature market. As President Monson said recently, "In our age of mass culture, when so much that we encounter is abridged, adapted, adulterated, shredded, and boiled down, it is mind-easing and mind-inspiring to sit down privately with a congenial book." I consider Madeleine L'Engle's A WRINKLE IN TIME to be just such a "congenial" book.
There is a wonderful scene in A WRINKLE IN TIME where, on the planet Camazotz, the characters encounter an unusual town:
"Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play... 'Look!' Charles Wallace said suddenly. 'They're skipping and bouncing in rhythm. Everyone's doing it at exactly the same moment...'
Then the doors of all the houses opened simultaneously, and out came women like a row of paper dolls. The print of their dresses was different, but they all gave the appearance of being the same. Each woman stood on the steps of her house. Each clapped. Each child with the ball caught the ball. Each child with the skipping rope folded the rope. Each child turned and walked into the house. The doors clicked shut behind them" (pp. 103-04).
When one of the children breaks rhythm by dropping his ball, the visitors to Camazotz try to return it to him. They knock on his door, but his mother protests:
"The woman pushed the ball away. 'Oh, no! The children in our section
never drop balls! They're all perfectly trained. We haven't had an Aberration for three years'" (p. 106).
There is a wonderful criticism of sameness in this scene, one with which Brother Brigham might perhaps have agreed: "There is too much sameness in this community. . . I am not a stereotyped Latter-day-saint and do not believe in the doctrine. . . away with stereotyped Mormons!" (http://www.dialoguejournal.com/excerpts/36-2a.asp)
It is this form of sameness that often finds itself under fire in much of the criticism of suburbia that has long seemed fashionable, particularly of late. From recent New York Times articles and editorials extolling the "authenticity" of city or even rural life, to architectural history books decrying the "artificial" nature of suburban sprawl and its accompanying cookie-cutter lifestyles, to contemporary films like "Revolutionary Road" that emphasize the supposedly vacuous and unfulfilling lifestyle to which suburbia condemns its prisoners, it is clear that the 'burbs have gotten their share of negative publicity. The perceived lack of architectural variety among the monolithic rows of "bedroom communities" becomes, for some, symbolic of the homogeneity of the inhabitants, whose lives thus reflect the monotony and lack of individualism faced and even sought out by these native suburbanites, these worshippers of the temples of kitsch and conformity.
While I find some of these evaluations of suburbia somewhat unfair and even occasionally elitist and self-congratulatory, I do find something intriguing about this criticism of sameness that finds its way into such anti-suburban discourse. Sameness can stifle creativity and individuality, force individuals into roles which they neither wish for nor even are capable of filling. It can create suspicion and xenophobia towards all but the most limited of homogeneous circles. I have met people who were suspicious about folks in the next county over. Is this not xenophobia in the extreme?
I believe that our personal righteousness will lead us to greater individuality; as Elder Neal A. Maxwell (I miss him!) once said, "Of course, our individuality is actually enhanced by submissiveness and by righteousness. It is sin that grinds us down to sameness-- to a monotonous, single plane" (see Educating Zion, p. 202).
I am also reminded of a key opening passage in one of my favorite novels, Hermann Hesse's UNTERM RAD. Describing Joseph Giebenrath, Hesse writes:
"Er haette mit jedem beliebigen Nachbarn Namen und Wohnung vertauschen koennen, ohne dass irgend etwas anders geworden waere. Auch das Tiefste seiner Seele, das schlummerlose Misstrauen gegen jede ueberlegene Kraft und Persoenlichkeit und die instinktive aus Neid erwachsene Feindseligkeit gegen alles Unalltaegliche, Freiere, Feinere, Geistige teilte er mit saemtlichen uebrigen Hausvaetern der Stadt" (pp. 1-2)
(I apologize for the lack of umlauts- an ugly sight indeed. I'm still new and in the process of learning the ropes around here).
I am also reminded of those all-too-often repeated American evaluative phrases: "That was... different" or "She's definitely... different"-- as though variation from the norm were somehow unnecessarily transgressive and therefore undesirable. It is usually to avoid using other negative words that "different" is thus employed- after all, isn't it nicer to say "different" than incompetent, boring, stupid, annoying, etc? Yet by using "different," we thus inevitably inscribe the word's negative meaning, situating it firmly on the derogatory end of the lexical spectrum. Variation becomes transgression and invites ostracism and rejection. Those who seek individuality quickly find themselves despised and rejected of men.
It is often jealousy that seeks to impose rigid conformity. W.E.B. Dubois perceptively described this phenomenon when he stated, citing Booker T. Washington, that "we are like crabs in a barrel, that none would allow the other to climb over, but on any such attempt all would combine to pull back into the barrel the one crab who would make the effort to climb out" (see http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:i86bVA89DCkJ:xroads.virginia.edu/~MA03/faturoti2/Ambrose/relg280-washington%2520dubois%2520garvey.doc+%22w.e.b.+dubois%22+and+%22crabs%22&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us).
I began this (lenghty) post with a children's book, and now I end with one, J.K. Rowling's HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE. While Yale critic Harold Bloom excoriated the book in his (in)famous Wall Street Journal op-ed (see http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/courses/205.03/bloom.html) and claimed that reading Harry Potter was in fact not reading at all but "eyes simply scan[ning] the page," there is at least one aspect of Rowling's description of the Dursleys that I find appealing, particularly in this context of writers questioning sameness and conformity. The very opening lines of the book set the tone for what will become a subtle critique of the stifling, British "middle class morality" that English writers like George Bernard Shaw and others have long derided in their works:
"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense" (p. 1).
Now, I'm all for morality, middle class or otherwise, but the term "middle class morality" carries with it sometimes connotations of contented, suburban conformity, an "All is well" mentality that is dangerous not only for its immediate and long-term spiritual ramifications (see 2 Nephi on that), but also for the rigid regimentation of behavioral codes it often imposes on others. There is no room for difference with such codes in place. Thus, the Dursleys' harsh treatment of Harry is not contempt for the boy himself per se; it is, rather, contempt for the very idea of difference, contempt for individuality, for non-conformism. The Dursleys are not so much of afraid of Harry's mysterious powers as they are of what their friends and neighbors, many of whom live in neatly-arrayed rows of nearly identical houses very similar to their own(the film makes this even clearer, depicting, as it does, the almost stereotypically middle-class, non-descript English suburban neighborhood), will think of them if they ever find out about their "freak" (a word that signifies the ultimate otherization) of a nephew. Petunia Dursley gives voice to some of this conformist anxiety in her speech before Hagrid when she reveals that she knew all along that Harry has magic powers:
"Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be [a wizard], my dratted sister being what she was... I was the only one who saw her for what she was-- a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family...
Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as-- as--abnormal-- and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!"
As Elder Eric B. Shumway (a personal hero) has pointed out, "We [can] become victims of a self-satisfied, narrow provincialism that can snuff out curiosity and harden our opinions into prejudices. There is a provocative Tongan saying that warns against the dangers of a "small fish" perspective. 'The lokua [a tiny reef fish] thinks his tidal pool is the vast ocean'" (http://home.byu.net/few2/pdf/BYUHawaii.pdf)
Like the lokua fish, the Dursleys have a hard time seeing beyond their own immediate, limited circle, and they guard fiercely the parameters and contours of the narrow sphere they have drawn up for themselves and those around them. Yet there is a whole world out there, with many different kinds of people doing many different kinds of things.
There is no need for us to impose sameness on one another.
There is a wonderful scene in A WRINKLE IN TIME where, on the planet Camazotz, the characters encounter an unusual town:
"Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play... 'Look!' Charles Wallace said suddenly. 'They're skipping and bouncing in rhythm. Everyone's doing it at exactly the same moment...'
Then the doors of all the houses opened simultaneously, and out came women like a row of paper dolls. The print of their dresses was different, but they all gave the appearance of being the same. Each woman stood on the steps of her house. Each clapped. Each child with the ball caught the ball. Each child with the skipping rope folded the rope. Each child turned and walked into the house. The doors clicked shut behind them" (pp. 103-04).
When one of the children breaks rhythm by dropping his ball, the visitors to Camazotz try to return it to him. They knock on his door, but his mother protests:
"The woman pushed the ball away. 'Oh, no! The children in our section
never drop balls! They're all perfectly trained. We haven't had an Aberration for three years'" (p. 106).
There is a wonderful criticism of sameness in this scene, one with which Brother Brigham might perhaps have agreed: "There is too much sameness in this community. . . I am not a stereotyped Latter-day-saint and do not believe in the doctrine. . . away with stereotyped Mormons!" (http://www.dialoguejournal.com/excerpts/36-2a.asp)
It is this form of sameness that often finds itself under fire in much of the criticism of suburbia that has long seemed fashionable, particularly of late. From recent New York Times articles and editorials extolling the "authenticity" of city or even rural life, to architectural history books decrying the "artificial" nature of suburban sprawl and its accompanying cookie-cutter lifestyles, to contemporary films like "Revolutionary Road" that emphasize the supposedly vacuous and unfulfilling lifestyle to which suburbia condemns its prisoners, it is clear that the 'burbs have gotten their share of negative publicity. The perceived lack of architectural variety among the monolithic rows of "bedroom communities" becomes, for some, symbolic of the homogeneity of the inhabitants, whose lives thus reflect the monotony and lack of individualism faced and even sought out by these native suburbanites, these worshippers of the temples of kitsch and conformity.
While I find some of these evaluations of suburbia somewhat unfair and even occasionally elitist and self-congratulatory, I do find something intriguing about this criticism of sameness that finds its way into such anti-suburban discourse. Sameness can stifle creativity and individuality, force individuals into roles which they neither wish for nor even are capable of filling. It can create suspicion and xenophobia towards all but the most limited of homogeneous circles. I have met people who were suspicious about folks in the next county over. Is this not xenophobia in the extreme?
I believe that our personal righteousness will lead us to greater individuality; as Elder Neal A. Maxwell (I miss him!) once said, "Of course, our individuality is actually enhanced by submissiveness and by righteousness. It is sin that grinds us down to sameness-- to a monotonous, single plane" (see Educating Zion, p. 202).
I am also reminded of a key opening passage in one of my favorite novels, Hermann Hesse's UNTERM RAD. Describing Joseph Giebenrath, Hesse writes:
"Er haette mit jedem beliebigen Nachbarn Namen und Wohnung vertauschen koennen, ohne dass irgend etwas anders geworden waere. Auch das Tiefste seiner Seele, das schlummerlose Misstrauen gegen jede ueberlegene Kraft und Persoenlichkeit und die instinktive aus Neid erwachsene Feindseligkeit gegen alles Unalltaegliche, Freiere, Feinere, Geistige teilte er mit saemtlichen uebrigen Hausvaetern der Stadt" (pp. 1-2)
(I apologize for the lack of umlauts- an ugly sight indeed. I'm still new and in the process of learning the ropes around here).
I am also reminded of those all-too-often repeated American evaluative phrases: "That was... different" or "She's definitely... different"-- as though variation from the norm were somehow unnecessarily transgressive and therefore undesirable. It is usually to avoid using other negative words that "different" is thus employed- after all, isn't it nicer to say "different" than incompetent, boring, stupid, annoying, etc? Yet by using "different," we thus inevitably inscribe the word's negative meaning, situating it firmly on the derogatory end of the lexical spectrum. Variation becomes transgression and invites ostracism and rejection. Those who seek individuality quickly find themselves despised and rejected of men.
It is often jealousy that seeks to impose rigid conformity. W.E.B. Dubois perceptively described this phenomenon when he stated, citing Booker T. Washington, that "we are like crabs in a barrel, that none would allow the other to climb over, but on any such attempt all would combine to pull back into the barrel the one crab who would make the effort to climb out" (see http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:i86bVA89DCkJ:xroads.virginia.edu/~MA03/faturoti2/Ambrose/relg280-washington%2520dubois%2520garvey.doc+%22w.e.b.+dubois%22+and+%22crabs%22&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us).
I began this (lenghty) post with a children's book, and now I end with one, J.K. Rowling's HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE. While Yale critic Harold Bloom excoriated the book in his (in)famous Wall Street Journal op-ed (see http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/courses/205.03/bloom.html) and claimed that reading Harry Potter was in fact not reading at all but "eyes simply scan[ning] the page," there is at least one aspect of Rowling's description of the Dursleys that I find appealing, particularly in this context of writers questioning sameness and conformity. The very opening lines of the book set the tone for what will become a subtle critique of the stifling, British "middle class morality" that English writers like George Bernard Shaw and others have long derided in their works:
"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense" (p. 1).
Now, I'm all for morality, middle class or otherwise, but the term "middle class morality" carries with it sometimes connotations of contented, suburban conformity, an "All is well" mentality that is dangerous not only for its immediate and long-term spiritual ramifications (see 2 Nephi on that), but also for the rigid regimentation of behavioral codes it often imposes on others. There is no room for difference with such codes in place. Thus, the Dursleys' harsh treatment of Harry is not contempt for the boy himself per se; it is, rather, contempt for the very idea of difference, contempt for individuality, for non-conformism. The Dursleys are not so much of afraid of Harry's mysterious powers as they are of what their friends and neighbors, many of whom live in neatly-arrayed rows of nearly identical houses very similar to their own(the film makes this even clearer, depicting, as it does, the almost stereotypically middle-class, non-descript English suburban neighborhood), will think of them if they ever find out about their "freak" (a word that signifies the ultimate otherization) of a nephew. Petunia Dursley gives voice to some of this conformist anxiety in her speech before Hagrid when she reveals that she knew all along that Harry has magic powers:
"Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be [a wizard], my dratted sister being what she was... I was the only one who saw her for what she was-- a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family...
Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as-- as--abnormal-- and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!"
As Elder Eric B. Shumway (a personal hero) has pointed out, "We [can] become victims of a self-satisfied, narrow provincialism that can snuff out curiosity and harden our opinions into prejudices. There is a provocative Tongan saying that warns against the dangers of a "small fish" perspective. 'The lokua [a tiny reef fish] thinks his tidal pool is the vast ocean'" (http://home.byu.net/few2/pdf/BYUHawaii.pdf)
Like the lokua fish, the Dursleys have a hard time seeing beyond their own immediate, limited circle, and they guard fiercely the parameters and contours of the narrow sphere they have drawn up for themselves and those around them. Yet there is a whole world out there, with many different kinds of people doing many different kinds of things.
There is no need for us to impose sameness on one another.
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