Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Hollywood Meets Tehran

When there’s an international crisis, I know I’d prefer to have Annette Bening and Alfre Woodard on my side – strong women with a reflective presence. I'm not kidding. So it’s good to see that they’ve gone one step further than just talking about peace or acting in movies that make people feel good about themselves. Right now, they’re actually in Iran, along with some other senior members of the Academy, as part of what might be considered one of the highest level cultural exchange programs since Ronnie and Mikhail went for a walk by the Ellioaa River.

You may think I’m joking, but I’m not: we’ve been so used over the past few years to being told that the way to be good citizens is to be suspicious of the rest of the world and go to the mall that the notion of an artistic exchange between Hollywood and Tehran seems nothing short of, well, nothing short of the kind of thing people who want to nurture the bonds that are formed through aesthetic experience would do.

Hopefully – and presumably – the Academy people realise that the exchange should work both ways - Iranian film-makers have produced some of the most indelible and humane cinematic images of the past twenty years – Makhmalbaf’s ‘Blackboards’ nurturing the parallels between vagabond teachers and the birds that swoop above them on their treacherous journey through the mountains (see the astonishing image above for a taster of why there's almost nothing more evocative you could choose to watch tonight), another teacher in ‘09/11/01’ drawing a circle in the dust to represent the clock that allows her pupils to take a minute’s silence in honour of the dead in the Twin Towers, the various attempts by the protagonist to make and receive cell phone calls in a place where they don’t belong in Kiarostami’s ‘The Wind Will Carry Us’.

Predictably, the nation’s cultural captains have used the visit as an opportunity to denounce what they see as the decadence of US movies – I suppose I can understand people taking offence at the portrayal of Iranian forebears as barbaric in ‘300’ – though I was offended by that film’s vision of humanity itself as nothing more than a warrior species, whose bloodlust is not just to be celebrated, but seen as the better part of strength. But those images did not begin (nor will they end) with '300' (despite the fact that the myth of redemptive violence may have first been written down in that part of the world - have a look at The Epic of Gilgamesh).

And, come on, guys, if you’re going to be offended by the ‘Ayatollah’ character in ‘The Wrestler’ first spare a thought for spandex wearers, peroxide tinters, and stapler afficianados everywhere: the film is riffing on what got US wrestling fans riled in the 80s: are you seriously suggesting that having a guy dress up as an Iranian religious figure who gets his flag broken in a toy fight is less disturbing than burning an effigy of a US President? Could we not just agree that we’re all in this satire game together; and sometimes it goes too far?

But this is all bluster when compared to what I’d most like to see come out of the LA tourists’ visit to Iran: just as there is more to US cinema than cutting and burning, there's more to Iranian culture than the images evoked by President Ahmadenijad's public pronouncements. There’s a profound humanity to cinematic work that has emerged from Iran – whatever else happens as a result of Hollywood plus Tehran, hopefully some more of it will be seen.

Radio discussion on theology and homosexuality

Interesting story on BBC Radio's Sunday Sequence this week - two guys talking about being gay, 'ex-gay', 'ex-ex-gay' and generally challenging how the Christian churches have treated them. The discussion will be available to listen to on-line til this Sunday.

Jeremy Marks, a man I've met and who is kind and gracious used to run a ministry called 'Courage', that believed it could offer gay Christians the opportunity to change their sexual orientation. Over time, he came to believe that this paradigm was unbiblical, bigoted, and contributed to the reasons why the rate of suicide attempts among young gay men is significantly higher than among men who aren't gay. In 2001 he made a public apology, and now offers 'Courage' as a space for 'gay and lesbian Christians who are seeking a safe place of friendship in which to reconcile their faith and sexuality and grow towards Christian maturity'. It's a remarkable shift - and Jeremy Marks is a remarkable man.

Michael Davidson, another man I've met, and who is also kind and gracious, has just established a ministry in Belfast called 'CORE' that appears to run on the same terms that Courage used to - offering space for gay and lesbian Christians who consider their same-sex attraction 'unwanted'.

Jeremy and Michael discussed their differing perspectives on the BBC; and what was extraordinary was how generous they were with each other. I disagree with Michael's theological perspective on sexuality, and it needs to be said that 're-orientation therapy' has been subject to sustained criticism from psychologists and others; but his genuine desire to reduce the volume of this too often fractious debate, and to not condemn people who disagree with him is moving and offers a contrast to the way these questions are often handled.

Rewarding the faithful.

I've said before that the main value of awards ceremonies is that they allow for the possibility that some good films will get a new audience; and everybody likes prizes. The decadence and indulgence that seems to accompany the show - who cares who designed your dress? why are you dating so-and-so? is it anyone's business - I can do without; but it's hard to care about the movies without caring about the movie industry.

So, for anyone in the UK who's up late, anyone in the US who wants another commentary on the show on top of what they'll get on ABC, or in any other time zone with nothing better to do, Jett Loe and I will be live blogging the OSCARs over at www.thefilmtalk.com

What We Owe Jade Goody

Two years ago, when the UK reality TV star Jade Goody was being scapegoated for all British racism, historic and contemporary, I wrote the following:

“I wonder if our society will ever be ready to treat public figures as human beings. A 25 year old woman with a difficult family background, whose public persona, lest we forget, was carefully nurtured by the huge corporation responsible for ‘Big Brother’, made reference to the ethnicity of someone she was mocking on television, possibly because she is not mature enough to hide what others in the public eye might. She became therefore the target of violent threats, and eventually physically collapsed under the stress of being made to pay for the un-acknowledged guilt of a nation. There has been little or no serious discussion of the meaning of racism in our culture, nor what we might together do to address our own bigotry. One has to wonder if the hugely disproportionate reaction does not reveal more about repressed post-colonial self-loathing on the part of the British people, perhaps especially that held by its tabloid editors. If you have not have heard of her medical distress, it may be worth asking why some sections of the media were happy to report her public mistakes, but not her personal tragedy. We seem caught in a cultural paradox, where certain kinds of public vulnerability are not only welcome, but seen as a path to credibility; while other forms of honesty appear to prove Seamus Heaney’s adage that ‘whatever you say, say nothing.’”

Now, with the announcement of her terminal cancer, there seems to be nothing left to report but her tragedy. There’s a sense, as the news of Jade’s sorrow is absorbed by the public (and the media mavens who made her first a figure of fun, then hatred), of a quiet guilt descending. The sort that a bully might feel after seeing the impact of their actions, realising the fact that no matter what they might have previously thought, the power dynamics in which they were involved have produced immutable proof of something ancient but almost always true: that two wrongs don’t make a right.

I wonder if it’s too much to ask that we might see this woman, Jade Goody, as something more than a figure of fun, or of accusation, or even of pity. Could we instead ask ourselves if the dehumanization of our culture might finally have exhausted any right to sustain itself? That instead of trivializing her further, we might let our sister Jade Goody have some peace to be with her loved ones; and instead of using her illness as a reason to feel some kind of emotional catharsis, we might consider ourselves privileged to have the chance, the space, and the health to reflect on how we ourselves (and I mean to start with me) will respond to the questions of humiliation, finger-pointing, prejudice (not only the racism she was accused of, but the bigotry she faced because it was convenient to label her ‘stupid’), and the human brokenness that her sad story evokes?

Millard Fuller: The Practice of Prophecy

Millard Fuller, co-founder with his wife Linda, of Habitat for Humanity, the housing charity that has built hundreds of thousands of homes for people who otherwise might not have the means to buy, has died at 74 years old.

Obituaries and tributes elsewhere will detail his life and work; I had the privilege of meeting him and Linda once, and their graceful humility made the kind of impact that leaves you thinking simply, 'I wish I could be like that'.

All I would wish to add to what will surely be detailed and worthy tributes is the following: Millard Fuller, through Habitat for Humanity and the Fuller Center did something that most of us would like to, but miss: he took an ancient teaching that everyone ostensibly agrees with - love thy neighbor - and actually put it into practice. And when I say practice, I mean he made a practical, easy-to-comprehend and live strategic response: he built houses with and for people who couldn't afford them, and made it possible for those marginalised and disenfranchised by our society's way of doing things to live with a greater measure of dignity. Prophetic statements are better fleshed out with prophetic acts. Millard Fuller's life shows us how.