Existential Jesus

I’ve just finished reading a book called The Existential Jesus by John Carroll. It’s an existentialist interpretation of the Gospel of Mark, and it’s pretty much heresy from start to finish. Some of its assertions are plucked from thin air – when Carroll claims that Jesus’ closing of the Gethsemane prayer with the words “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours” is not a submission to God’s will but a meaningless formula appended out of habit, it is tempting to respond, with post-Wikipedia cynicism, “Citation needed” – and its individualist approach to Christ’s teachings often melts them into airy-fairy New Age spiritual gloop.

However, The Existential Jesus does two things rather well. One is applying the concept of midrash to the New Testament (which is something I find incredibly exciting, and which could well prove a road toward reconciling reception theory and hermeneutic realism). The other is portraying Christ’s humanity.

It is all too easy to forget that Jesus was a human being. Yes, we sing each Christmas of the little lord Jesus asleep on the hay; yes, we parrot glib churchspeak like “fully God and fully man”; but I for one tend to focus on his role as savior and messiah. Pace my favorite gospel, I meditate on the mystery: the Word, the truth, the light. At this point in my life, though, I find it all too easy to relate to the idea of a Jesus my age – a young man, living a perfectly ordinary life, who didn’t yet know all the answers, and perhaps wasn’t yet sure of his own identity and purpose on this earth.

Another book I’ve just finished is Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation, which has also been branded as heresy. It’s a novelization of the life of Christ, and it packs a bold Christological punch from the very first chapter, which depicts Jesus the carpenter’s son being jeered and vilified for building the cross on which a prophet-rebel is crucified. Kazantzakis’ Jesus has always been tormented by a sense of God’s presence, but it is only slowly and torturously that he works his way toward an understanding of his destiny.

Kazantzakis was (on and off) a practicing Christian, Carroll is not, but in this sense their works make interesting companion pieces. Both portray a Jesus who does not spring forth fully formed, knowing himself and his part from the off; both portray him as fully human, with the cloudy understanding that entails, seeing through a glass darkly and seeking his higher calling without a straightforward knowledge and understanding to guide him. It’s a compelling, revolutionary portrayal for us today, who have always known Jesus’ full story. I don’t know if it’s heresy to envision Jesus struggling to discover his identity and his destiny, but it thoroughly humanizes this figure who was, after all, thoroughly human – and it’s an enormous comfort, two millennia on, for an unemployed twenty-something unsure of her purpose on earth.

The First Annual GCG Pop Culture Awards

In which I make up categories as it suits me and distribute awards entirely at random.

MUSIC AWARDS

“Come on Eileen” Award for Most Inane, Repetitive, Inescapable Song of 2010
I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas.

Critical Masturbation Award for Most Boring Record That Critics Inexplicably Loved
Lisbon by the Walkmen.

Most Essential Downtime in a Song
The eight measures in Kanye West’s “Monster” immediately following Nicky Minaj’s verse, allowing you to pick yourself up off the floor from the awesome, awesome, awesomeness.

Best New Genre Award
Prog-rap, the definitive text for which is of course Kanye West’s big, bold, mind-blowing My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Kanye should collaborate with Rush, because if there’s one thing better than a prog-rock steampunk concept album, it’s a prog-rap steampunk concept album.

FILM AWARDS

Pirates of the Caribbean Award for Terrible Film I’m Nonetheless Glad Exists Because of the Awesome Kermodean Rant It Inspired
Sex and the City 2. Witness the glory.

Crank: High Voltage Award for Most Ridiculously Fun Cinematic Experience
Piranha 3D.

3 Most Rage-Inducing Film Posters of 2010
(3) Gulliver’s Travels; (2) Vampires Suck; (1) that one Katherine Heigl movie with the grown man dressed like a baby.

Fish Tank / An Education Joint Award for Best Unintentional Double Bill
Catfish & The Social Network.

Bad Filmgoer Award for Terrible Alternate Version of Great Film I Kind of Want to See
The great film: Of Gods and Men. The terrible alternate version I kind of want to see: Uwe Boll’s Monks Vs. Terrorists.

Alison Bechdel Award for Most Feminist Film / Cagney & Lacey Award for Most Subtexty Film
Whip It.

Top Ten Films
In the order I saw them, because that’s just how I roll:
Ponyo
Shutter Island
Kick-Ass
Four Lions
Inception
Toy Story 3
Scott Pilgrim
The Social Network
Monsters
Of Gods and Men

BAD FEMINIST AWARDS

Bad Feminist Award for D00dliest Top Ten Film List
Me. Look at that Top Ten. There’s, like, two female characters total in all those films.

Bad Feminist Award for Film I’m Most Ashamed That I Didn’t See
Made in Dagenham. Missing it makes me feel like a bad feminist, a bad filmgoer, and a bad member of the Kermode nation.

Bad Feminist Award for Film I Feel Guilty About Not Really Liking
Winter’s Bone. Directed by a woman, starring a woman, highly acclaimed, hella boring.

Bad Feminist All-Round Award
Sex & the City 2. By all accounts, the movie’s portrayal of women is as problematic as its attitude toward class issues and race issues, but the discourse around it has been hideously misogynistic.

TELEVISION AWARDS

Buffy S8 Award for Series I Should Have Ditched Long Before I Actually Did
The League, which I watched for a season and a half in a vain attempt to discover why my equal-parts-loved-and-hated AV Club thinks it’s so great; I saw only a mean-spirited, misogynistic, unfunny show, like an incompetently executed answer to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Even the unearthly attractiveness of Katie Aselton couldn’t keep me at this show.
Honorable Mention: Mike & Molly, which started out surprisingly sweet and charming, but has gotten lazier and more reliant on hoary clichés week by week, to the point that I will definitely not be coming back in January.

Best TV Show of 2010
COMMUNITY, BITCHES

Best Comeback From A Show I Feared Might Be In Irreversible Decline
It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, which recovered from a patchy fifth season and a lacklustre two-part season opener to deliver a sixth season whose highs stand among the show’s finest moments.

Car Crash Television Award
Running Wilde. Mitchell Hurwitz, Will Arnett, David Cross – with the amount of goodwill guaranteed this show from still-mourning Arrested Development fans, it was going to have to be really terrible in order to squander it. It was.
Honorable Mention: Glee, of course.

Firefly Award for Most Lamented Single-Season Show
Terriers. TV gods, you owe me one. I expect at least a third season of Community for this.

BOOK AWARDS

The Amber Spyglass Award for Most Uncontrollable Weeping Induced by the Final Volume of a YA Trilogy
Since I failed to bottle my tears for an exact comparison, I’m going to have to declare it a tie between Mockingjay, the final volume of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, and Monsters of Men, which concludes Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy. Maybe I will even do a compare-and-contrast of the two series.

SILLY AWARDS

Robert Browning Award for Unintentionally Hilarious Word Usage
The Last Airbender, which was nowhere near as painful as I’d been led to expect, thanks largely to the giggle factor of lines such as “There are some powerful benders in the northern water tribes” (plus the ever-amusing spectacle of Aasif Mandvi making a fool of himself).

Amanda Seyfried Award for Blonde Lady I Find Stunningly Attractive Despite Not On The Whole Preferring Blondes
Whitney Able in Monsters. Like Ms Seyfried, she looks better in motion than in still photographs, because she has a luminous quality that lights up the screen.

Bad American Accent Award (Film Edition)
Aaron Johnson in Kick-Ass. He comes so close to getting it right, until he starts talking about “supaheroes”. Bless.

Bad American Accent Award (TV Edition)
Olivia Williams in that one episode of Terriers. I love you, Ms Williams, but wow can you ever not do an American accent.
Honorable Mention: Gabrielle Anwar on Burn Notice seems to be getting lazier with her fake American accent, but since the character’s supposed to be faking the accent I’ll let it slide. If there’s a similar excuse for Archie Panjabi’s similarly dodgy accent on The Good Wife, we haven’t heard it yet.

Hear me speak!

Ten days ago, I was the guest on a friend's student radio show. We played lots of good songs, with the theme "ladysingers only". You can listen to it on mixcloud here. The music's banging, the banter's, well, mostly nonexistent, and I have probably the weirdest damn accent you've ever heard on a native English speaker. Enjoy!

Look, an update!: Gay ladies onscreen

So, November’s over.

This means I once again have the free time to continue enlightening y’all about Jesus, pop culture, and the kyriarchy. Don’t all thank me at once. I’m sure you’ve been waiting, breath bated, for my opinion on two particular developments in lesbitainment (which is a word I just made up, and will never use again) (unless I do).

Lip Service

Ah, Lip Service. For six glorious weeks you brought the sunshine of trashy goodness into my life. This is a show about lesbians. Did you get that? Lesbians. Gay ladies. Dykes. I hope you got that, because if you weren’t aware of that going in then you might have found it difficult to keep up with.

I jest, of course. The characters on Lip Service are LADIES who sleep with LADIES, and beyond that there’s not much else. In all six hours of it, there was nary a scene that was not directly about or driven by the lesbianity*. The only threads of story that weren’t about gayness were the job hunt of aspiring actress Tess and Shanealike Frankie’s quest to uncover her true identity, and to be honest both of those plot strands were secondary to the relationship dramas in both characters’ lives. Tess is hooking up with a minor TV presenter who’s afraid of being outed; Frankie is hoping to win back Cat, the ex whose heart she broke, but Cat has just met the wonderful, gorgeous, amazing, beautiful police detective Sam, and she would have to be a TOTAL MUPPET to give that tedious Frankie even a minute of her time, and – I’m sorry, is my ship showing?

If all that sounds ridiculously soapy, that’s because it is. The show is about 50% OMG DYKE DRAMA, 50% blatant lesbian wish fulfilment, complete with extremely steamy sex scenes (leading me to coin a word: fantrashtic). Arguably, this is very reductive: everything these characters do relates directly to the fact that they are gay, whereas in, for example, my life maybe 5% of the things I do relate directly to being gay (though perhaps more if I’m in a relationship...). However, television is by nature reductive. I also don’t spend 95% of my time hanging out with my five best friends, but in a sitcom called Friends nobody questions that. And it’s possible that we need this single-minded focus on the gayness in order to counteract the extremely heterosexual television environment; a sense of identity is often forged most strongly by the feeling of being a tiny minority standing against the mainstream.

*Aside: in Bizarro World where everything’s backward, I guess I would be complaining about the portrayal of men in Lip Service, since their entire characters either (a) revolve around the ladies or (b) consist of being of raging A-hole; luckily, centuries of systemic oppression don’t reverse like that, so HA HA nobody cares. And actually I quite liked sweet little Ed and party monster Jay. It’s nice to see some straight dudes and gay ladies hanging out together in TVland, and if the dudes are hitting on the ladies, well, it happens. For a while my group of friends perforce included a Barney Stinson type who firmly believed that his magic wand was more powerful than the Scarf of Sexual Preference (actual quote, from our first conversation: “I’ve turned 3 lesbians in my time”, and oh, how disappointed he was to learn that some of the ladies are immune to his almighty d00dliness).

The Kids Are All Right

If Lip Service is all about gay ladies and their particular gay lady issues, The Kids Are All Right goes to the other extreme. I watched the film with certain reservations, knowing I would be subjected to the tedious trope of, well, some dude’s magic wand being more powerful than the Scarf of Sexual Preference, but that turned out not to be the problem I expected it to be. The story isn’t about sexuality (fluidity, whatever) at all; it’s about a middle-aged couple whose marriage is flagging. I freely admit that my judgment might have been colored by my fury at the pisspoor projection of the screening I saw, but I found the movie pretty boring.

Here’s a little thought experiment: change the sex of Annette Bening’s character. Swap her out for, I dunno, Chris Noth or somebody. Nothing else about the film is different, is it? It’s still the story of a marriage where both partners have gotten so comfortable that they take each other for granted, and Julianne Moore’s character enjoys the feeling of being wanted again; it’s still the story of a rich, white, suburban family being a little dysfunctional. While I admire the total normalization of same-sex parents, it is just not an interesting story to me.

We’re eleven years past American Beauty. We’re centuries into the kyriarchy. Rich, white, suburban families do not need their stories told anymore. I could happily go the rest of my life without seeing another rich, white, suburban family being dysfunctional onscreen. I want to hear the stories of people who have historically been othered, people who have interesting new stories to tell. The Kids Are All Right offers a picture of two lesbians – people who have historically been othered and marginalized – who have become a part of the mainstream. It tells mainstream America, “Look! The ‘gay lifestyle’ is no different than the straight one”, and in the process turns what is on paper a new story into a story we’ve heard a thousand times before.

The fact is, not everyone in a marginalized group wants or is able to become a part of the mainstream like that, and that doesn’t make their lives or stories any less valid. Art and culture can open our minds to people that live fundamentally different lives than we do, and sometimes that entails overemphasizing the difference; but then again, sometimes it involves minimizing it. I guess there’s a place for both the Lip Services and the The Kids Are All Rights of this world.

Glee: Infuriating Fans Since 2009

Overthinking It has been making ripples across the Interwebz of late with a series of articles on one-, two-, and three-dimensional characters, most notably the Female Character Flowchart (which has its own issues, chiefly that its gigantitude arguably negates its point, but that’s not what I want to critique today). Plenty could be said about all these articles, but the point I want to pick up on is Fenzel’s remark that

If a character lacks depth and believability on the page, the actor can provide it.

Chris Colfer understands this. At this point, Kurt Hummel is by far the best thing about Glee, and it’s not because he’s written more consistently and given more interesting things to do than the other characters (although arguably he is; that creator Ryan Murphy is rewriting the gay teen experience from a perspective of both wish-fulfilment and Aesoptinum gets more evident with every episode). No, it’s because, week in, week out, Chris Colfer delivers a performance of such depth and nuance that he elevates even the weakest material. I will admit to taking a fangirl’s delight in the appearance of Harry Potter and his puppet pals in Tolerance Narnia; as ridiculous as the whole thing was, it was the least cringe-worthy aspect of last week’s episode.

That song really sucks, though. I live in a little bubble of indie, prog, and Kelly Clarkson (WHO IS THE GREATEST POP STAR OF HER GENERATION AND AS SOON AS I HAVE ANY EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THIS ASSERTION I WILL PRESENT IT TO YOU), so my familiarity with the songs featured on the show is variable, but I like it best when they do great show tunes or interesting reinterpretations of classic pop songs. From my point of view, a lot of the music this season has been kind of terrible. It’s the missed opportunities that sting the most, though: imagine if ‘Grilled Cheesus’ had featured, instead of the not-really-relevant ‘Losing My Religion’ sung insipidly by the insipid Finn, Kurt singing XTC’s ‘Dear God’. Or Sue singing it. Or both of them singing it, as one of those neat cross-cut duets the show used to do? *dies from the thought of what might have been*

The most recent episode featured a couple of fun mash-ups, so I guess it wasn’t all bad. What was all bad was the treatment of Coach Beiste, which was a veritable shag-pile of WTF. I watched in horror as the show drained away everything I love about the walking factory of awesome that was pre-‘Never Been Kissed’ Coach Beiste. First we were invited to laugh at her in an unbelievably mean-spirited way, and then we were fed the vomitous rom-com line that every woman, whoever she is and whatever she’s accomplished, wants nothing more in life than for a boy to tell her she’s pretty – preferably in the form of a hideously patronizing pep-talk and pity-smooch from Will Douchester, who is fast becoming the show’s least likable character.

Also, she’s not gay, you know. Well, why the heck not? Kurt Hummel began life as the most flamboyant acculturation of gay male clichés in TV history, and through a combination of increased airtime and brilliant acting has transformed before our eyes into the most well-rounded member of the ensemble. Why not do something similar for the gay ladies?

While I’m at it, what is this show’s problem with women, anyway? No other show literalizes the virgin/whore dichotomy so thoroughly. On the one hand, Santana and Brittany are the school bicycles, maliciously stealing the virginities of male characters Finn and Artie in between screwing every other guy in school and fooling around with each other (which is both a telling comment on the show’s portrayal of bisexuality, and the only bone thrown to the gay ladies).

However, while both Finn and Artie regret losing their virginity, they quickly get over it and certainly do not suffer in any discernible way. Contrast this with the one female character we have seen lose her virginity (since Rachel and Emma choose to stay chaste and wholesome, while Coach Beiste is actually a 40-year-old virgin – I hope she has a large and well-loved collection of vibrators). Quinn submits to pressure from Puck, who is of course promiscuous without being judged, and is punished with pregnancy, loss of her social status, and getting kicked out of her parents’ home. After spending a season paying the price for her one foray into whoredom, she has earned back her place on the virgin side of the tracks, and she’s staying there now that she’s learned her lesson. Hmmm...

That’s probably enough TV Tropes links for one blog post. (Sorry about those hours of your life you’ll never get back.) To put it succinctly:

Glee, please try harder.

Public Service Announcement

I know I haven't updated in ages - blame the killer combination of NaNoWriMo (25,844 and counting!) and indentured servitude. I didn't even have time to watch TV last week (shock, horror, etc.). Rest assured, gentle readers, I have not forgotten you. I am totally working on some interesting posts that will be up here as soon as I have the time to pummel them into presentability.

In the meantime, if your life is a little deficient in the awesome department, I recommend this free download of Altered Sky's EP. If you like catchy rock songs with the hint of prog sensibilities, lady drummers, and things that are awesome, your socks will be comprehensively rocked.

The five stages of NaNoWriMo

Remember November 2005? (Actually, I don't particularly, but saying that ruins my rhetorical flourish.) It was a time of peace and sanity, or at any rate it was no more or less so than any other month of the year. Fastforward a year, and it's the momentous occasion of my first NaNoWriMo. Lo, November would never be the same for me again.

Using sophisticated algorithms, I have calculated the inevitable stages through which a NaNo participant must pass in the course of the exercise. Behold, the Five Stages of NaNoWriMo:

1. Anticipation
In the build-up to November, in the planning stages, or (if you've failed to plan) in the moments before you write the first sentence that comes into your head, you'll feel excitement writhing inside of you, and you just know that this year is It. This year will be The Big One, the novel so brilliant that someone from Penguin will read your excerpt on your NaNo profile and send you an email begging to be allowed to publish a work of such almighty genius. Savor this feeling; you won't get it again until this time next year.

2. Terror
May also strike in the planning stages, especially if you have no good ideas. Will definitely strike as you confront that blank page and realize that you could write literally anything. Seriously - "hammock pancake cheesecake folderol, bebop in the clown's competitive jugular" is probably a sentence in somebody's novel this year. What if you're reduced to that? Get used to this feeling. It will be your constant companion this month.

3. Exhilaration
Oh my God, this is IT! Inspiration is striking you like lightning at all hours of the night and day! You are the greatest writer the world has ever known, and this novel is the most scintillating work of literature ever conceived! Every sentence that flows from your fingertips is an ambrosial delight! Every new plot and character development is being emailed straight into your brain by God himself! This stage will not last very long.

4. Despair
Why are you wasting your time on this steaming pile of feces? You are the worst writer the world has ever known, and this novel is a suppurating pustule on literature's rear end. You will never write anything worthwhile. You are wasting an entire month, shirking your duties and biting your friends' heads off in an overcaffeinated frenzy, and all you have to show for it is the febrile drivelings of a witless dunderhead. You should just give up.

5. Insanity
Cheesecake folderol in the clown's bebop flibbertigibbet!!! Everybody's doing it!