Yes, He Is A God: A Black Theology of Kanye West

Making fun of Kanye West for having a ginormous ego is a national pastime in the United States. Everyone's been at it lately, from Jimmy Kimmel to President Obama. Because I'm an inveterate contrarian and a consummate overthinker, I want to weigh in on this, spurred by insights from Ayesha A. Siddiqi's marvelous series of tweets on racism's role in responses to Kanye. I argue that not only is “I am a God” theologically defensible, it's a critical moment in Kanye's black theology – a black theology that white America really needs to heed and learn from.

“I am a God” is theologically defensible

In my WASP-y context, we don't usually say this out loud, but if your Christology is as high as mine it's true. In Christ, we are made divine; so as a believer, as part of the Church which is the body of Christ, Kanye is (a) God. For the dominant groups in society, that's not really something to brag about, because it ends up conflating church and empire into idolatry – I have no time at all for John Lennon's claim to be bigger than Jesus – but for marginalized people, it is a powerful way to reclaim agency and pride in the face of systemic forces that try to strip you of both. Kanye is quite open about the fact that the inflated West ego is a construct that helps him battle depression and self-loathing, demons that for him are entangled with and exacerbated by the systemic racism he faces daily as a black man in the United States.

Posing as the face of Jesus is an audacious statement, and – contrary to the kneejerk denunciations of blasphemy – is deeply rooted in Kanye's self-identification as a Christian. The Christian's ontology is a constant oscillation between the power to do all things through Christ (Philippians 4:13), and the fact that this power is sourced in and only in Jesus. This ongoing, dynamic destabilization is found in Kanye's career and public face, between the empowerment of “I Am A God” and the cry de profundis of “Jesus Walks” (my favorite Kanye song, and, IMO, some of the best theology you will ever hear in three minutes of popular culture).

Kanye's Black theology

Kanye's reclamation of the face of Jesus from a white supremacist society is a statement of a black theology in the vein of James Cone. Cone's Black Jesus is squarely on the side of the oppressed against the oppressor, redeeming both Jesus and blackness from a white supremacy that has distorted both. The black theological tradition of which Kanye is a part also includes the womanist theology of Kelly Brown Douglas, who rejects the theology of submission as more harmful than useful to black women today, and instead proudly affirms the subaltern

Kanye's is also a deeply embodied black theology, squarely embedded in the physicality of being a black man and how that challenges white supremacy: most especially when it comes to sexuality, so often a source of terror for white people (especially white women). Sexuality and (black liberationist) spirituality are entwined throughout Kanye's oeuvre, as in “Hell of a Life” – “No more drugs for me / Pussy and religion is all I need” – or the controversial “Put my fist in her like a civil rights sign” line from “I'm In It.” Or consider the couplet “I wanna fuck you hard on the sink / After that, give you something to drink” in “Bound 2,” which carries certain Eucharistic resonances in the midst of a verse that mentions Christmas, church steps, and the wonderful line, “After all these long-ass verses / I'm tired, you tired, Jesus wept.”

Of course, there's an incredibly problematic reduction of women to sex objects in a lot of this, but white guys calling out black guys for sexism is all too often at best paternalistic and at worst straight-up racist, so I'll direct your attention to this wonderful roundtable of insights by seven women. For now, let's focus on the upside: he's affirming his right as a black man to exist in a white supremacist society, to take up physical space in the world, to be a fully realized human being who is proudly sexual (in the face of centuries of demonizing black men's sexuality), proudly rich and famous (in the face of systemic material oppression), justly proud of his talent (in the face of a white entertainment industry that seeks to belittle him while simultaneously elevating white men of far less talent who have done despicable things).

And make no mistake, Kanye is a transcendentally talented human being. I truly believe he is the premier artiste of our time, a man whose boundless creativity speaks to the spirit of the age, whose gloriously eclectic taste in samples shatters all the walls we try to erect between “original” and “derivative” work.

Kanye is a public theologian

Kanye doesn't just rap his theology, he lives it. Whether declaring on live TV that the president doesn't care about black people, or taking the mic from the person most emblematic of US whiteness in order to speak up for a similarly godlike black musician, Kanye's not afraid to speak truth to power, and what does he get for it? White America's ridicule.

Instead of mocking this impossibly talented, awesomely provocative artist, we should be analyzing why exactly we find his theology so challenging. When we find ourselves calling him arrogant, he reminds us: For a black man in a racist society, what's the difference between humility and servility? 

Source.

One of Kanye's outstanding analytical talents is his connection of the personal with the systemic. As much as modern US society tries to maintain the public-private split, Kanye unveils the untenability of that distinction and the ways in which it functions to maintain an oppressive status quo. This makes him the foremost public theologian of the early twenty-first century, and on some level it truly does make him (a) God.

Deconstruction and Taylor Swift's 'Red'

Do you remember the first time you heard Taylor Swift's ubiquitous single “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”? I do. After reattaching my mandible, I laughed until I cried, and then listened to it eight more times in a row.

So, naturally, when the album dropped this week, I just had to give it a spin. Okay, a bunch of spins. And it is my contention that Taylor Swift's new album is a remarkable work of smart, self-aware, post-structuralist deconstruction.

This is what a post-structuralist looks like.

How does Taylor Swift's new album enact the destabilizing process of deconstruction? Let me count the ways:

1. It's called Red. Obviously, this harks back to King Crimson's classic 1974 prog-rock masterpiece of the same name. By recalling a landmark record of cerebral, instrument-heavy progressive rock, Swift teases the listener with evocations of a style of music quite unlike her own, perhaps inviting us to reconsider whether there is really so much difference between seventies prog and aughts country-pop. (We also are reminded of Krzyzstof Kiéslowski's Trois couleurs: Rouge, a film which focuses on the French Revolutionary ideal of fraternité and has been described as an “anti-romance,” thus hinting at the record's deconstruction of romantic categories.)

2. Self-awareness. In the second verse of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Swift sings about a lover who copes with fights by “hid[ing] away […] with some indie record that's much cooler than mine.” The way she sings it, you can positively hear her rolling her eyes. Similarly, in the impossibly infectious “22,” there's a laugh-out-loud spoken-word moment as Swift sings, “This place is too crowded, too many cool kids,” and a voice in the background asks, “Who's Taylor Swift anyway? Ew.” Swift is well aware of her general perception as deeply uncool, and she's not afraid to laugh at both herself and her haters, breaking the fourth wall in endlessly recursive ways.

Swift also displays a strong self-awareness of the public scrutiny of her romantic decisions, and the fact that she is perhaps most famous for writing songs about breakups. “I Knew You Were Trouble” is fairly self-explanatory, and could be a sequel to “22”: “You look like bad news – I gotta have you.” There's a degree of maturity here, a sense of taking responsibility for one's own decisions while still lamenting the more regrettable consequences thereof.

3. Self-contradiction. From start to finish, Red is shot through with ironies and contradictions. Here are just a few hand-picked examples:

• In “22,” Swift sings about “dancing like we're 22.” Of course, Swift is 22 (holla at a fellow '89 baby! – though the Berlin Wall was still up when I was born, and had fallen by the time Taylor Swift entered the world), so these words seem puzzling until you remember that she's been in the public eye since she was 17. The years since high school, which I spent studying and privately figuring out my many issues, are the years Taylor Swift spent growing up very publicly and documenting it all in song. No wonder it takes a special occasion to make her feel like an ordinary 22-year-old.
• “I Almost Do” addresses an ex-lover for whom the singer still has feelings. These feelings are expressed through a striking inversion of the expected order of events. To tell an ex that every time you almost call them, you don't, would have the nuance of a kiss-off, an assertion of proud singledom; Swift sings instead, “Every time I don't, I almost do.” The hysteron proteron stresses the strangeness of this phrasing, which is much more memorable than its inverse, and highlights the singer's understanding that her feelings make no sense.
• On its own, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” is rich with irony: everything about the song, but especially the gratuitous “ever”s in the chorus and the repeated verbal tic “like” in the spoken-word break, suggests that the singer doth protest too much, and will very likely get back together with the song's addressee. This idea is heightened by the song's placement in the album's running order – in between the wistful longings for an ex expressed in “I Almost Do,” and the bubbly love song “Stay Stay Stay.” The segue from the closing “We are never ever getting back together” into “I'm pretty sure we almost broke up last night” raises intriguing questions: Are these songs addressed to different lovers? To the same lover at different stages of the relationship? Or is it that they simply are, coexisting in the post-structuralist tension of self-contradiction and inviting a neverending cornucopia of interpretive responses?

In short, this is a record of which Foucault and Derrida would be proud, and I strongly urge you to at least listen to the three standout tracks – “I Knew You Were Trouble,” “22,” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” – and to consider the multiplicity of hermeneutic possibilities as well as the layers of deconstructive tensions contained therein.

Remembering 2002: A Very Peter Gabriel Teenhood

Did you hear? Peter Gabriel is touring North America to mark the 25^th anniversary of his great album So. Naturally I am stoked to see my favorite singer in concert for a fourth time, because I am hip and trendy and down with the kids; but I am double-stoked because 2012 is actually a personal anniversary in my relationship with So.

People who had the misfortune to know me when I was in my teens could tell you that my defining characteristic as an adolescent was my deep, borderline-obsessive love for Peter Gabriel. (Like I said: hip, trendy, etc.) The wall above my bed was completely obscured by posters, newspaper clippings, and magazine articles relating to PG, as I abbreviated him; I faithfully wore my PG T-shirt and baseball cap every weekend; I traded bootlegs online (yes, children, once upon a time we used to trade bootlegs, via snail mail); I was consistently in the top five posters on a certain PG fan forum.

At its best, being a teenager is very dull – a stretch of life you just have to wait out so you can get to the good parts. You have to latch onto something to get you through it: casual sex, illegal drugs, chess club. I was really, really into Peter Gabriel.

One of the reasons is simple timing. After a decade of soundtrack albums and thumb-twiddling, PG dropped Up, his first proper record since 1992's Us, on September 24, 2002 – which happened to be about six weeks after my family relocated from Kenya to Scotland.

I had, of course, known that summer 2002 would be our last summer in Kenya. I was careful to commit it to memory: all the safaris, bumping along dusty roads on the roof-rack of the car, dutifully penciling down every critter we saw; blissed-out days spent reading voraciously beside the pool of a coastal villa; swearing eternal loyalty to the friends I still wasn't really used to having. Plus, Peter Gabriel. That school year I had been very into the Who, Pink Floyd, Rush, and Gong, so maybe it was toward the summer that PG fever struck me. I can remember sitting in my parents' car, listening to “Big Time” on headphones, and thinking: I am IN LOVE with this album.

Acclimatizing to life in the UK from Kenya is really, really hard, even if you're not 13. Peter Gabriel's music helped me get through a rotten time in my life. My prog-rock childhood had convinced me that good music was over; but the release of a new record from my favorite musician was like a little island of sanity in the midst of that chaotic combination of culture shock and adolescence. So was something from Kenya. Up was something from Britain. Peter Gabriel offered a way of exploring new territory while still being in touch with my past.

I love So. I've listened to it probably eighty billion gazillion times in the past decade, but to my ears it still hums with the echoes of a very different part of my life – a part that ended ten years ago. It feels very weird to be ten years out of Kenya, and weirder still to be ten years removed from the profoundly, awesomely ignorant little oddball I was when I was 13. Here are five things I wish I could go back in time and tell my 13-year-old self, to ease those troublesome years of high school:

1. Read this. Try not to be a douche about your shiny megatons of privilege.

2. Gender theory, sex-pos feminism, and QUILTBAG awareness. UK sex ed in the early-to-mid-2000s is entirely contraception-centric, with the admirable goal of reducing unwanted teen pregnancy, but you will not get any of the sex and gender education you so desperately need. You'll be much happier once you deconstruct the dominant cultural framing of all sexual activity as teleological toward PIV. Learn not to worry whether you're “normal” re: gender identity or sexuality.

3. It's okay to feel things and want things. You don't have to empty it all into your fiction, and you don't have to let other people dictate who you can be. Life will never be easy, but I promise you it will one day be a million times more interesting than it is right now.

4. Mother is right more often than you think, and she is wrong more often than you think. If that sounds contradictory, welcome to having a Jewish mother. You'll never get used to it.

5. Most of all: EVERYONE IS FAKING IT. ALL THE TIME.

Prog-Rock Theology

When I was a child, I had a much easier time relating to people of my parents' generation than my own. Other kids were cruel and demanding, and half the time I had no idea what they were talking about.

Did you ever read that book About A Boy? With the nerdy twelve-year-old who listened to his mother's records and was isolated from his peers and their pop culture? When I read that book, also at age twelve, I identified with the protagonist to a painful degree. This was a text that understood how important pop-culture touchstones are: how, if your touchstones are completely different from those of the people around you, you might have a very hard time making friends.

The book ends with the nerdy kid declaring his hatred for his erstwhile favorite musicians and going off with his friends to, like, listen to Nirvana or something (it was written in the mid-nineties). I myself have never reached the point of disavowing the dad rock I grew up on – I adore the Who and Pink Floyd and Peter Gabriel and Rush, and I have no intention of ever apologizing for that ever – but I have discovered the value of generational touchstones.

I embarked on this process maybe seven or eight years ago, when I relinquished the shackles of parental indoctrination and started to take television seriously. Since then, I've been an unabashed pop-culture junkie, and (coincidentally or not) I've also found it a lot easier to make friends my own age.

Just because you're compensating for who you used to be, however, doesn't mean you lose continuity with that person; and sometimes you experience moments so thoroughly of your past that you have to pause and take stock of how you got from there to here.

I had one of those moments the other day, during a classmate's presentation on the religious element in Jethro Tull's Aqualung.

This classmate, being of my parents' age, spoke of the personal resonance of a record that came out at the very moment when she, as a young teenager, was beginning to seriously question the faith of her religious upbringing. At a time in her life when she was querying the assumptions she'd always taken for granted, and finding the institutional church frustrating and inadequate for her needs, Aqualung was a locus of meaning and a source of spiritual significance.

This makes perfect sense to me. I too began to question my religious upbringing at age eleven or twelve, and I too found enormous meaning, far beyond anything I could have hoped to articulate, in the music I loved at that age – specifically, in English prog-rock concept albums of the 60s and 70s:

Tommy

Dark Side of the Moon

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

Tales From Topographic Oceans

I don't know if I consciously made the connection at the time, but all of these records tackle explicitly religious or existential themes. They're fundamentally about the Big Questions, and, for a young teenager obsessed with Big Questions of identity and purpose and the nature of life, they provided a site of engagement with these questions in a way that the formal religion in my life at the time did not.

After I had spoken up in class to this effect, three other people of my own generation spoke in turn, and they all said that their experience had been the exact opposite. Church had been, for them, a haven of meaning and spiritual nourishment in the face of the relentlessly superficial pop music of their childhoods.

I realize that this sample is skewed. I'm studying at a seminary, so naturally there will be a higher than average proliferation of people who do ultimately have use for the institutional church. But it's still interesting to me that the prog-rock concept albums of my dad's record collection could provide a space for doing theology in a way that the bubblegum radio pop of the nineties and early aughts apparently could not.

Alternative Seasonally Depressing Playlist of Sadness

'Tis the season to be jolly and joyous, and all that, but for some of us it's actually rather melancholy. Maybe it brings up painful memories, maybe the family gathering's full of tension and misery, maybe the family gathering's taking place 5000 miles away from you, or maybe you just get really bad SAD. Regardless of why (or even whether) we're glum, we can all agree that cheesy holiday songs are the absolute last thing we need. So I've knocked together a little playlist for an hour or so of anti-festive wallowing: Anna's Alternative Seasonally Depressing Playlist of Sadness.

Over the Rhine, “Latter Days”

A friend who's had an unbelievably awful year introduced me to this song recently, and no wonder. It's five and a half minutes of pure aural heartbreak. Hardened sociopaths have been made to tearily beg their victims' forgiveness by this song. Cthulhu himself weeps when he hears this song. “Latter Days” reduces me to a quivering ball of jelly, bawling on the floor under my desk as I clutch my knees to my chest and rock back and forth.

Roxy Music, “Avalon”

Okay, this one's solely on you, Max Brooks. DON'T JUDGE ME THIS IS THE MOST MOVING PART OF THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE YOU WILL UNDERSTAND WHEN THE MOVIE COMES OUT (IF THEY DON'T KEEP THIS BIT IN THE MOVIE I WILL BE EXTREMELY DISAPPOINT)

Diana Ross, “If We Hold On Together”

Oh my God, Littlefoot's mom.

XTC, “This World Over”

My family's Christmas letter this year began: “Although the world sometimes seems to be in imminent danger of falling apart economically, climatically, and developmentally...” We're all a little obsessed with the end of the world, and as we enter 2012 it seems entirely appropriate to get emotional about it. (Any song that reduces my beloved London to “a sea of rubble” is hitting me where it hurts.)

Joy Division, “Eternal”

Call a friend before you listen to this, the apex of a brief, talented, and incredibly depressing musical career. Seriously, buddy system.

Coil, “Broccoli”

I don't even listen to this song. I almost didn't link to it, because it's just too cruel. When I hear it, I'm reminded of listening to it on the London Underground after watching Grave of the Fireflies, and nobody needs to be reminded of that.

Joni Mitchell, “Both Sides Now”

Duh.

Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, “Praying Is A Heartache”

Cut from the same cloth as “Latter Days”, “Praying Is A Heartache” is SYGC's most beautiful song and the highlight of their 2009 album ...And the Horse You Rode In On. Yeah, I'm going to keep shamelessly plugging SYGC until somebody agrees with me that they are just the tops.

Peter Gabriel, “A Different Drum”

This song doesn't even have words. The lyrics are all, “oh-whoa-whoa-whoooooa...” If music can evoke the transcendent, “A Different Drum” definitely does.

Denim, “Don't Bite Too Much Out Of The Apple”

Ever suffered a distance-enforced break-up? If you're someone I know, probably – we all seem to have done it. Relive that pain. Wallow.

House of Love, “Man To Child”

Stop it. Just stop it. The world doesn't need more emotions, House of Love; it needs fewer, so quit trying to create them.

Antony & the Johnsons, “You Are My Sister”

You don't need to have a sister to be moved by this song. You don't even need to be a sister. As long as you have a friend close enough to be considered an honorary sibling, I defy you to listen to this song without at least getting a little something in your eye.

Adele, “Turning Tables”

Forget the sappy, overexposed, overrated “Someone Like You”. “Turning Tables” is the Adele song with the most raw feeling behind it.

Wicked cast, “For Good”

This is, like, the song for our jet-setting generation. If you've ever cursed the very existence of friendship because one party or the other always leaves, give this song a spin and shed a tear or two. Nobody's judging. Even those tedious people who say they hate musicals get verklempt at this song.

Dixie Chicks, “Wide Open Spaces”

Ever had a mother? Ever left her? Yeeah, good luck keeping those eyes dry, buddy.

Four Short Records I Love Extremely Much

I often hear that the millennial generation doesn't listen to whole albums. Apparently the advent of iPods and lolcats has shortened our attention spans and – look, a plushie Cthulhu!!

Or maybe it's because records these days are just too long, ever since CDs expanded the possible length of an album well beyond the 45 minutes afforded by vinyl. Like, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a great, great record, but it's 68 and a half minutes long! Who has that kind of time?

Luckily, there are some very excellent records out there seemingly designed specifically for the ears of the easily-bored millennial. None of the following albums last as much as 40 minutes, start to finish, but they are all super great and brilliant.

Felt – Forever Breathes the Lonely Word (1986) [32 minutes]

Okay, obviously this record was not designed specifically for millennial ears, because it is all old and stuff, but it is so FRICKIN' AMAZING that I couldn't leave it off the list. Just – I don't care if you never do anything else I tell you; go listen to this record. If you're not in love within the first 30 seconds of “Rain of Crystal Spires”, you're beyond all help.

Stand-out tracks: “Rain of Crystal Spires”, “All The People I Like Are Those That Are Dead”

Scotland Yard Gospel Choir – Scotland Yard Gospel Choir (2007) [26 minutes]

You know those times when you sort of imprint on a record, and you get a little obsessed and you just want to inhale every moment of it? It happened to me when I was sixteen with Orange Juice's You Can't Hide Your Love Forever (44 minutes with bonus tracks, so it doesn't make this list, but you should definitely listen to it); and it happened when I was twenty with Scotland Yard Gospel Choir. Bonus hipster points for being a self-titled second album.

Stand-out tracks: “Everything You Paid For”, “Aspidistra”

Soda Fountain Rag – It's Rag Time! (2008) [30 minutes]

Fair warning: this record is super-twee. The label's called yesboyicecream, for God's sake. But if twee's your thing (and, let's face it, looking at the list so far it's very obviously mine), I defy you to listen to Soda Fountain Rag without a huge goofy grin all over your face. The songs are catchy, very adorable, and – especially “Army of Silent Kids”, “Escalator”, and “Oh Brother!” – apparently about my life.

Stand-out tracks: “Don't Kill The Clowns” (live – not great sound quality, but you can still tell how terrific the song is), “Go!”

Tim Kasher - “The Game of Monogamy” (2010) [39 minutes]

On paper, this is everything I would hate: straight white dude makes an entire album of navel-gazing about his divorce, like he's the first person ever to go through that. But this self-confessedly solipsistic little offering is, well, really really good. (See? Proof that I don't hate straight white dudes. Just boring straight white dudes.)

Stand-out tracks: “No Fireworks”, “Cold Love”

Public Humiliation Time!: My First Movie Review

This week I've been sorting through all my junk. The plan is to go minimalist: everything unnecessary goes in the trash. I own a lot of unnecessary stuff, so this is proving a mammoth undertaking.

Embarrassingly, I've found a whole pile of inane scribblings – both schoolwork and personal creative writing – from my teenage years. The cheesy Tolkien rip-off that consumed my free time when I was 13... An awful, horrible letter I sent to the Guardian when I was 15... “Lines on the Resignation of David Blunkett (15/12/04)”... As I reread the forgotten writings, I can feel my extremities curling with humiliation like leaves of wilted lettuce.

I know that time travel will not be invented within my lifetime, because if it ever is the first thing I would do is travel back to 2004 and give my younger self a good hard slap to the face; and, sadly for my unbearably pretentious teenage self, this did not happen.

I'm afraid the most hideously embarrassing stuff went straight in the trash; but among the things I saved is the first full-length movie review I ever wrote. This was pre-blog and pre-Facebook, and thank you God I never had a Livejournal or anything like that, so I only have one, handwritten copy, which has never been seen by any eyes but mine. Because I am too lazy busy to create all-new content right now, I thought you might like to see how my writing style has or hasn't changed over the past seven years.

From probably around 2004, this is my review of the 1975 movie Tommy – unedited, unexpurgated, and with minimal editorializing. I hope it amuses you as much as it embarrasses me.

* * *

You've heard the stories... now confront the truth.

Hey, you know how when you hear that something is really, really bad, you find yourself feeling mild curiosity tempered with disbelief – as in, how could something really actually be that terrible, and you just have to check it out? Well, don't bother. Seriously. Tommy is every bit as bad as legend would have it, perhaps even more so. It redefines the term “godawful”. If you look up “egregious” in the OED, this film will be there. Repugnant, hideous, traumatic, belief-defying, gruesome, seizure-inducing are a few of the other adjectives that spring to mind... pass me a thesaurus, somebody... But then of course the film of the rock opera was never going to be quite a pleasurable undertaking.

Okay, so we open with a shot of a guy standing before the setting sun; little war love story, tum-te-tum – nothing too offensive yet: incomprehensible, yes; ghastly, not yet. At least, until the singing starts. Remember the record? And remember how the music was, y'know, not very good, well, quite crap actually, but we suffered its existence because we knew it and were kind of fond of it in the way one grows fond of a genital wart*. Well, imagine that music, melodramatized in the extreme, mutilated to sound kitschy and “musical”, and then murdered by a bunch of severely annoying uber-celebs in dodgy costumes whose “acting” consists of impersonating a constipated beaver. Prety much the same can be said for the, and I use the word with caution, plot, which at best has more holes than a fishing net and at worst is total nonsense. I think – I think – they've tried to improve upon the original concept, by giving it an almost-structure, which goes something like this:

Kiddie Tommy is about five or six when his missing daddy turns up and is murdered by mummy and step-daddy. He witnesses the encounter and (on account of the persuasive powers of the two miscreants) is struck deaf, dumb, and blind. There follows a lot of dumb stuff, supposed I think to be insight into his mind, which would be kind of cool in a dumb sort of way if done with today's SFX, but, since it mainly involves moving bits of cardboard around in front of lightbulbs, just looks crap. Mummy takes him to a freaky healer dude, who fails to wreak miracles; step-daddy takes him to Tina Turner, who prances around like a demented drugged-up banshee (oh wait – she is one**), gives him acid, and sends him on a baaaaaad trip. This was the part at which I first completely lost the will to live, a feeling that was to recur regularly over the remaining 80 minutes (o gods!) – or rather to throb continuously throughout, like pus seeping from a gangrenous wound. Urrrrrrgh.

Neither faith nor drugs having accomplished anything, somebody seems to decide that a sever shock will do Tommy good. When Cousin Kevin pulverizes him, there is relief in the vicarious fulfilment of a fantasy that involves doing much the same to pretty much everyone involved in the making of this excrescence of a film. Parents do not learn from this episode the folly of leaving vulnerable Tommy with dodgy relatives and proceed to give kiddie-fiddler Uncle Ernie the go-ahead to do whatever he wants. Then somehow Tommy gets into a junkyard, only there are two Tommys, and he climbs a bunch of cars, and then one Tommy disappears, and then the cardboard and lightbulb from earlier reappear, and then he's standing on a car playing pinball, and oh don't do this to me my head hurts... And Elton John stumbles out of Santa's Grotto, picking up the old woman's shoes on the way to the film set, where he loses to Tommy at pinball. Someone might have told him he's meant to play pinball, not a piano. And then...

Oh god, I can't go on describing the events in detail, it's making me too bloody depressed. Suffice to say that most of the rest is just as scary, meaningless, and dreadful as what has gone before. This film is a grisly carbuncle, a putrid pustule, a fetid ulcer on the bottom of all mankind's most execrable experiments in cinema. I still can't believe I spent 110 minutes of my short lifespan – better spent watching paint dry – on this excruciating mess.

Or, as I've been trying to say all along: yes, it really is that bad.

*1999 me and 2011 me are united in contempt for 2004 me. Tommy the album is awesome. And, leaving aside the belabored nature of the simile (get used to that), what does me of any age know about genital warts??

**OUCH! What the fuck, 2004 me? What did Tina Turner ever do to you? Apart from be in a movie you hated?

A Song Of "A Song Of Ice And Fire"

You know how I've written about Game of Thrones a couple times, and it's probably quite boring for people that haven't read the books or watched the show?

Well, I've finished book 3.5, A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold, and I decided to do something nerdy, fanpersonish, and yet I hope accessible to non-fans: I recorded a song from the book. It's a folksong/hymn about the Seven Gods of Westeros, so it doesn't spoil any plot points - it just gives a little cultural and religious background to the series' setting.

Enjoy!

The Theology of Broadway's The Book of Mormon Part Four – Jews, Christians, Mormons, & Everyone Else: “I Believe”

Previously in Broadway's The Book of Mormon Week:
Part One – Cultural Imperialism, Suffering, & God's Comfort: “Hasa Diga Eebowai”
Part Two – Pascal's Wager, Reward/Punishment, & Mercenary Faith: “Sal Tlay Ka Siti”
Part Three – Cultural Relativism, Interfaith Relations, & New Religions: “Making Things Up Again”
Expect mild spoilers and offensive content. Detailed disclaimers can be found in the introduction.

This is it: the big Act Two showstopper, the emotional high-watermark, the great thundering anthemic number that will live on in sheet-music form long after posterity has dismissed the rest of the show as pedestrian or dated or something. “I Believe” is definitely the standout track of Broadway's The Book of Mormon as far as I'm concerned – both because it's a stonking tune and because it encapsulates the show's philosophy.

Kevin, after despairing of his difficult mission and confronting his demons in a very dramatic fashion, has an epiphany: he will stand his ground, walk into the valley of the shadow of death, and own his faith with all his heart. It's powerful, affirming, and very frickin' funny.

I believe that the Lord God created the universe,
I believe that he sent his only Son to die for my sins,
And I believe that ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America!

This initial juxtaposition of traditional articles of Christian faith with Mormon elements, which sound kind of goofy to a non-Mormon, confronts the religious viewer with the question: why that faith? Why do you privilege one specific holy text, or one particular reading of your holy text, or one definition of God over all others? Are the Mormon-only beliefs (that God lives on a planet called Kolob; that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri) really any sillier than the mainstream Jewish and Christian beliefs that Mormons also espouse?

The trouble with the relativist perspective is that it's not clear where, if anywhere, to draw the line. Are all religions equally true, or at least equally acceptable? What about a cult? What about a faith invented and adhered to by only one person? Most of us would agree that a religion that causes people harm is not okay, but who decides what constitutes harm? John Shore's definition of harm caused by religion would differ from Christopher Hitchens'.

Broadway's The Book of Mormon doesn't really address this issue. As a show written by atheists about religious exclusivists, it fails to delve into the deeper questions of truth and meaning that might be asked by a post-modern or relativist believer. There is, I think, an ethical difference between presenting as fact stuff you believe to be true (Jesus' resurrection) and presenting as fact stuff you believe to be false (Joseph Smith's magical AIDS frog), even if the underlying lessons are good ones; but you wouldn't know it from this show.

As a teenager, my motto, which I though was incredibly clever and witty (okay, I still think it's pretty funny), was “all generalizations are bullshit”. Little did I know, this is a highly deconstructionist statement. The relativist idea that “there is no absolute truth” is itself an absolute statement, and therefore must be false under its own premise. It's a Zeno's paradox of meaning. Zeno's paradox is all very well, but when you want to get somewhere you take a step; similarly, when you want to communicate you accept that meaning exists. If you believe in God, at some stage you pick a stance on the issue of truth.

I believe that God has a plan for all of us,
I believe that plan involves me getting my own planet,
And I believe that the current president of the church, Thomas Monson, speaks directly to God!

Kevin says, “I can't have even one shred of doubt”, but many thinkers believe doubt is a key component of faith. In Robert Anton Wilson's Schrödinger's Cat trilogy, two faith groups are asked , “What is the opposite of faith?” One group replies, “Doubt”; the other, “Certainty.” No less godly a figure than Mother Teresa was tormented by doubts throughout a life of service and humanitarianism.

Is it even possible to will yourself into faith? One of the major criticisms of Pascal's Wager is that you cannot force yourself to believe something. (I think one could argue this point, but I won't go into it just now.) But this song is not so much about Kevin willing himself into faith; it's more about accepting and claiming the upbringing and culture that will always be a part of him: “I am a Mormon, and, by gosh! A Mormon just believes.” To him, “you cannot just believe partway – you have to believe in it all”. He has always believed in Mormonism as a synthesized whole, not as an extra bit tacked on to Christianity, and those of us interested in interfaith dialog would do well to remember that.

I've talked before about atheist smugness; Broadway's The Book of Mormon mostly avoids this by being an exuberant celebration of faith that doesn't shy away from difficult questions. Trey Parker calls it “an atheist’s love letter to religion.” After all, from the rationalist-atheist perspective he and Matt Stone espouse, irrational beliefs sustain us all, whether it's faith in God, belief in human goodness and love, or simply hope of any kind.

* * *

That brings us to the end of Broadway's The Book of Mormon Week here at Gay Christian Geek! Thanks for reading; I hope you've enjoyed it (and are not as heartily sick of these songs as I now am). Quick shout-out to Richard Beck's terrific blog Experimental Theology, which gave me the idea – if you'd like to see it done properly, take a peek at his superb series on The Theology of Calvin & Hobbes.

The Theology of Broadway's The Book of Mormon Part Three – Cultural Relativism, Interfaith Relations, & New Religions: “Making Things Up Again”

Previously in Broadway's The Book of Mormon Week:
Part One – Cultural Imperialism, Suffering, & God's Comfort: “Hasa Diga Eebowai”
Part Two – Pascal's Wager, Reward/Punishment, & Mercenary Faith: “Sal Tlay Ka Siti”
Expect mild spoilers and offensive content. Detailed disclaimers can be found in the introduction.

It's interesting to me that the decline of faith in the west hasn't removed the cultural impact of religious identity. I think it's particularly noticeable among Jews: my cousins near London host an enormous Passover seder and a Rosh Hashana meal every year, and are very active in their local synagogue, and not a one of them believes in God. Atheist Muslim friends, atheist Catholic friends, even atheist Protestant friends have spoken to me about how their family's religious background shaped their experiences of growing up and their characters today.

Recently I had to fill out a form that asked me to state my denomination of Christianity. I thought long and hard about which subgroup I identify with most, but in the end I couldn't narrow it down any further than “Protestant”. I'm very sure, however, that I'm Protestant; I can't even imagine myself being Catholic.

My faith is Protestant with a strong bulwark of Jewishness; my upbringing was Protestant with a strong bulwark of Jewishness. From the values and ideas instilled in my formative years to my present-day beliefs is a straight line: how can I help but be a cultural relativist?

And so I hesitate to call any religion “made-up”. People, if they have any belief, more often than not have the beliefs they were brought up with, and it seems too arbitrary for one religion to be correct and everyone born into a different faith tradition to be at an instant disadvantage with respect to the truth. But religions rarely take well to the new religions that spring up to usurp them. It's at the heart of the Jewish resentment of Christianity, the Christian fear and hatred of Islam, and the tendency of pretty much everyone to make fun of Mormons.

You're making things up again, Arnold:
you're taking the Holy Word and adding fiction.

At this point of the show, ill-informed Arnold is confronted by the villagers with some awkward questions. Lacking the Biblical knowledge or theological understanding to argue his points, he simply invents stories about God curing Joseph Smith's AIDS and declaring female genital mutilation an abomination. Of course, the punchline is that, to a couple billion people, Mormonism itself is “recklessly warping the words of Jesus”. Is that fair? Is it true that “a lie is a lie” – no mitigating circumstances considered?

I'm making things up again, kinda,
but this time it's helping a dozen people.

At the heart of the show lies the question, “Is making stuff up really so bad if it helps people?” I'll return to this question from an ethical perspective tomorrow, but for the moment let's consider the theological implications.

From an exclusivist religious perspective (of any faith), clearly the answer is “yes”. If you believe you have a monopoly on the truth, then you likely feel a duty to share it with others and save them from their false religions. (This is why, as many problems as I have with them, I find I can't judge evangelicals too harshly; they truly believe that they're doing the right thing.)

From the rationalist-atheist perspective, it's one fairytale or another. If you don't believe in God, what's the difference between zombie Jesus and a magical AIDS frog? Either you think it's reprehensible to tell anyone stories of the supernatural and divine, or you say (along with the show's creators) “whatever works”.

To the post-modern believer, however, this question sparks a whole host of further questions. Given the subjectivity of religious experience and the profound influence of cultural background, what can be legitimately considered “made-up”? To a Jew, Christianity is made-up; to a Christian, Mormonism is made up; to a Mormon, Arnold's new religion is made-up – who's right? What relation do facts bear to truth? Any lover of fiction understands that something can be made-up but still true (read Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ for a very interesting take on this, in relation specifically to Christianity).

Without venturing too far into the big spoiler territory, the show concludes (along with many, both religious and not) that, since we can't know what happens after death, we shouldn't dwell on it, but concentrate on living. The specifics of your beliefs aren't important, provided that you try to live a good life, help others, and improve this world in whatever ways you can.

It's hardly a revolutionary stance. But it might just be the best way of living in a world of many faiths and acknowledged cultural relativism.

Tomorrow: The Theology of Broadway's The Book of Mormon Part Four – Jews, Christians, Mormons, & Everyone Else: “I Believe”

The Theology of Broadway's The Book of Mormon Part Two – Pascal's Wager, Reward/Punishment, & Mercenary Faith: “Sal Tlay Ka Siti”

Previously in Broadway's The Book of Mormon Week:
Part One – Cultural Imperialism, Suffering, & God's Comfort: “Hasa Diga Eebowai”
Expect mild spoilers and offensive content. Detailed disclaimers can be found in the introduction.

While I was occupied with learning to make friends, preparing for the onset of puberty, and terrorizing the other little girls of Nairobi's international schools with the help of my never-defeated under-elevens netball team, my mother was confronting an adult's demons. After losing a lot of sleep over the abject poverty on our doorstep, she quit her job and devoted several years to the founding and running of a charity to feed and educate kids living on the streets.

One day, some of these kids started asking Mother about life in her country. “Does everyone in your country have a place to live?”

“Almost everyone. The government tries to provide housing for everyone,” she explained.

“Does everyone in your country have enough to eat?”

“Almost everyone. If they can't work, the government gives them money.”

“Does everyone in your country go to school?”

“Almost everyone. The government provides free schooling for everyone.”

“So everyone in your country is happy?”

I'm reminded of this story by “Sal Tlay Ka Siti”, in which a young Ugandan woman sings of her desire to go to the promised land that Kevin and Arnold described for her. With a devastating combination of humor and pathos, she conflates the Salt Lake City of the boys' description with the Paradise of her mother's stories:

I can't imagine what it must be like,
this perfect happy place:
I'll bet the goat meat there is plentiful
and they have vitamin injections by the case.
The warlords there are friendly:
they help you cross the street,
and there's a Red Cross on every corner
with all the flour you can eat.

Her new-found faith in “a land where evil doesn't exist” is predicated on the realization that “if I want to get there I just have to follow that white boy”; before long, she asks to be baptized. You could call it a mercenary faith: faith motivated by the prospect of gain.

Take, for example, Pascal's Wager. You'll recall its argument that choosing to believe in God is rational because, if God doesn't exist and you believe, you have nothing to lose; but if God does exist and you don't believe, you lose everything. The problem I've always had with this idea is its intellectual dishonesty. In the same vein, people have argued that an ethics born of genuine concern for others' wellbeing is somehow a nobler, more ethical ethics than one that relies on the reward of eternal life.

However, before sneering at Pascal's Wager and mercenary faith as intellectually dishonest, we have to take into account two important theories: the just-world hypothesis and Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

The just-world hypothesis suggests that humans have a psychological need for an appropriate reward/punishment system. I think we can all agree that we have this craving for justice, and that it's not satisfied in this life; that's why we have Law & Order: SVU, the idea of karma, and the concept of God's ultimate justice. (It's also, sad to say, why we have victim-blaming and a champion rationalization mechanism.)

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a pyramid categorizing and ranking human needs: from physiological needs, through safety needs, love/belonging needs, and esteem needs, to self-actualization at the top. The intricacies of this ranking are dubious, but it's fair to say that someone who has neither food nor a piano is not going to prioritize finding a piano. Which is to say: is worrying about the intellectual honesty of our faith not the privilege of the breaded classes?

Yesterday, I wrote that it's easy to say that souls are what matters when your body is comfortable, healthy, and safe. Similarly, it's all very well to debate the ethics of mercenary faith when the goat meat is plentiful. When you lay the innate human yearning for fairness over the lower rungs of Maslow's pyramid, belief in something better is often the result.

“Sal Tlay Ka Siti” asks the question of all missionaries: is your success perhaps less to do with the Lord's message and more to do with the wealth, health, and power you clearly enjoy?

It asks the question of sneering intellectuals: how can you in good conscience tell people they need to have “noble” reasons for their faith?

And it asks the question of everyone in the west: would you like a little perspective with those first-world problems?

Sal Tlay Ka Siti:
the most perfect place on earth,
where flies don't bite your eyeballs
and human life has worth...

Tomorrow: The Theology of Broadway's The Book of Mormon Part Three – Cultural Relativism, Interfaith Relations, & New Religions: “Making Things Up Again”

The Theology of Broadway's The Book of Mormon Part One – Cultural Imperialism, Suffering, & God's Comfort: “Hasa Diga Eebowai”

Part of Broadway's The Book of Mormon Week. Expect mild spoilers and offensive content. Detailed disclaimers can be found in the introduction.

When I lived in London, I attended a conservative evangelical church for two years. I am, as you might have gathered, neither conservative nor evangelical. Evangelicals are extremely keen on sharing their faith; in fact, they talk about little else. Nearly every week we were encouraged to bring a non-Christian friend to some church event (and, knowing how most non-Christians react to being invited to a church event, I can only admire such perseverance); and nearly every week we were asked to pray for “our mission partners” in South Africa or China or France.

The whole concept of mission is very problematic for liberal or left-leaning Christians. On the one hand, mission workers did and do bring much-needed education, infrastructure, and supplies to destitute areas. However, mission's intertwining with imperialism, both economic/territorial and cultural, can't be ignored, and Christian mission can certainly be held responsible for many of Africa's problems today.

The plot of Broadway's The Book of Mormon sees two young Mormon men – all-American golden boy Kevin and nerdy comic-relief figure Arnold – sent on their mission to a village in Uganda. A lot of immediate humor is mined from the simple incongruity of the squeaky-clean, hopelessly naïve Mormon boys transplanted to a little war-ravaged African village. Refreshingly, the jokes are mostly skewed, not against the PRIMITIVE AND WACKY NATIVES!, but against Kevin and Arnold, due to the ways Africa defies their expectations (which, like mine when I moved to East Africa at the age of seven, are based almost exclusively on The Lion King).

“Hasa Diga Eebowai” is the song with which the Ugandans greet them on their arrival. It's a direct rebuttal of Disney's “Hakuna Matata”*: “There's war, poverty, famine, but having a saying makes it all seem better!” Kevin tries to tell the villagers that they mustn't say “hasa diga Eebowai” (=“fuck you, God”), because “things aren't always as bad as they seem.” Naturally, he has no idea what he's talking about.

*Though, to be fair, “hakuna matata” is in fact a common saying in East Africa.

God's presence might comfort Kevin in times of trouble, but the experience of God is subjective. When your “times of trouble” constitute the plane being crowded and the bus being late, it's perhaps a little presumptuous to tell a poverty-stricken war-torn AIDS-plagued community that your God will make them feel better.

Too often, rich Westerners like to ascribe greater spirituality to the poor, as if people living in poverty are unilaterally pure and Godly. I call it “Gap Yah-ism”: to salve our rich-person consciences, we ascribe to people in poverty other assets than material ones – “a sense of enduring hope, as if to say, 'You know, despite our differences you and I are one, we are kindred spirits'...” – trying to convince ourselves that economic injustice isn't so bad because material poverty goes hand in hand with spiritual wealth. Of course, it's true that God does comfort many people who are suffering, and it's true that, per liberation theology, the poor have spiritually privileged voices; but the danger arises when people think that this means poverty and suffering are not so bad after all.

Some Christian exclusivists believe that alleviating the troubles of this life is not as important as converting unbelievers. This lack of concern for social and economic justice was one of the major reasons I left my evangelical church in the heart of London's financial district: it's easy to say that souls are what matters when your body is comfortable, healthy, and safe. In reality, millions of people are suffering, and the breathtaking arrogance of telling people their suffering doesn't matter is exactly what this song is skewering.

“When God fucks you in the butt
Fuck God right back in his cunt.”

To a Westerner, it sounds appalling – I imagine that the vast majority of even secular Westerners wouldn't be entirely comfortable saying “Fuck you, God, in the ass, mouth, and cunt” – but that's the brilliance of the song: if we're so inured to the suffering of our fellow humans that “Fuck you, God” is more shocking than “Eighty per cent of us have AIDS”, doesn't that indicate our profound moral bankruptcy? If Christians – whose entire way of life is supposed to be based on the Golden Rule – care so little for suffering people, isn't it reasonable that suffering people should in turn reject Christianity?

“When the world is getting you down
There's nobody else to blame
Raise your middle finger to the sky
And curse his rotten name.”

There certainly is Biblical precedent for calling out God for heaping suffering on your head. Check out Psalm 88:

“O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me?
...I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.
Your wrath has swept over me;
your dreadful assaults destroy me.”

Psalm 88 doesn't end with words of faith and hope in God. It is a litany of despair and pain, and its final line is “darkness has become my only companion.” Contrary to many people's insistence, the Bible doesn't gloss over suffering or offer easy answers (read Job or Ecclesiastes if you want a real head-scratcher). Any honest theology must admit that sometimes God seems at best absent, at worst malevolent, and acknowledge the legitimacy of every response to this fact.

“If you don't like what we say
Try living here a couple days.
Watch all your friends and family die
Hasa diga Eebowai!”

Tomorrow: The Theology of Broadway's The Book of Mormon Part Two – Pascal's Wager, Reward/Punishment, & Mercenary Faith: “Sal Tlay Ka Siti”

The Theology of Broadway's The Book of Mormon: Introduction

The latest fixture of my iPod is the original cast recording of new Broadway musical The Book of Mormon. Obviously, I haven't seen it, but I've been enjoying the songs a lot, and that's why this week is Broadway's The Book of Mormon Week here at Gay Christian Geek!

I won't be talking about the show as a musical, because frankly there's nothing much to say. Lyrically and musically, it's about as complicated as A Very Potter Musical, and shares with that show an infectious pop sensibility that's far from Sondheim.

I will be talking about the show as a vehicle for its creators' philosophy of religion. Matt Stone and Trey Parker – best known for South Park, which is a little too preachy and a little too reliant on gross-out humor for my taste (though I admit that in small doses, e.g. highlight clips on YouTube, it can be absolutely hilarious) – have never shied away from mocking any faith group, even when legal threats were involved. Their fascination with Mormonism in particular is documented in a South Park episode and in the delightful, underrated Orgazmo. What do they have to say about it? What tone do they strike, and what points, valid or otherwise, do they make about organized religion?

I'll do my best to discuss all of this without getting too spoiler-y, for those of you holding out for the West End transfer (I admire your resilience, Michael!), but mild spoilers will be unavoidable. And, to give you fair warning, some of this stuff is incredibly offensive. If you have a problem with blasphemy, cuss words, or jokes lightyears beyond the boundaries of good taste, then this series of posts is probably not for you, and this musical is definitely not for you.

Disclaimers out the way, it's time to gird the loins of your mind (oh, how I love that phrase) and gear up for some serious overthinking. Check back tomorrow for Part One of Broadway's The Book of Mormon Week at Gay Christian Geek!