'Audience of One'

We've all had times when we knew, or thought we knew what we were doing was doomed to fail.  And we kept going.  Maybe we look back on these occasions as learning experiences, maybe they're embarrassing, maybe we ended up proving our pessimism wrong and actually won when it seemed that the likelihood of success was on a par with de Niro's hopes of getting to his island retirement at the end of 'Heat'.

Saw a fascinating little documentary last night, with one of the most unusual premises: Pastor Richard Grasowsky, the protagonist of 'Audience of One' saw his first movie at 40 years old, believes he then received a vision from God telling him to make the greatest film ever made - magnificently described as 'Star Wars' meets 'The Ten Commandments' - and so he tried to make it. His church appears to be put to the service of the movie, they go to Italy to shoot some of it, they rent an enormous studio, they hire actors who don't appear to know how to act, they pray and dance, they raise some of the money, they get sued by the city council, they pray some more, they behave without guile, they complete two shots of the movie (which show up in the DVD's deleted scenes and aren't too bad at all), and the further adventures of Moses Skywalker remains unfinished.

What's surprising about this film is the tenderness with which it treats the people on screen - it has become fashionable lately to only make fun of religious believers, but while 'Audience of One' has a good share of Christians making us laugh, it never mocks. The production company that Pastor Grasowsky set up is called 'What You See is What You Get' - and the documentary's director Mike Jacobs has taken this to heart: the church members are never portrayed as anything other than sincere, kind, good people; misguided, of course, and perhaps not harmless, but no less so than any other ideologically-driven movement that undervalues reason.  (In which category I include the New Atheists as well as fundamentalist religious believers; because both groups deny the evidence of alternative experience.  Sorry.  To readers who enjoy debating the merits of my religious adherence: I'm looking forward to discussing this movie with you.)

It's ultimately a sweet film, and the only one in which you're likely to hear an artist describe his vision for a particular film set as 'I want an ancient cappuccino shop/futuristic-ancient Starbucks deal'.

There's nothing like the passion that charismatic Christians can muster; but there may also be nothing like the apparent religious neurosis (that some might call arrogance) that takes over when people aren't able to subject their personal feelings to the 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral' (faith, tradition, reason and experience balanced against and with each other).   'Audience of One' doesn't look particularly deeply into the phenomenon of religious practices that allow Westerners to express their emotions in a manner reminiscent of fire-centered dances in National Geographic documentaries; but it raises the question: when we live in a world that tells us that the best thing a human being can do is to dream big dreams, what should we do when a friend's dream seems completely absurd?

Abortion, Murder, Terrorism/Language that Kills

Frank Schaeffer's contribution to the discussion about political responsibility in the US is significant: a former religious right leader acknowledging his part in the blame for creating the sparks that too easily turn into wildfires: "The reason this issue will never go away is that the Roe ruling was an over broad court decision that makes abortion legal even in the last weeks of pregnancy. Take away the pictures of all those dead late term fetuses and everything changes emotionally. Democracy and civil debate is messy but if abortion had been argued state-by-state abortion would be legal in almost all our states today and probably the laws would be written more like those of Europe, where late-term abortions (of the kind Dr. Tiller specialized in performing) are illegal and/or highly discouraged.

The same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as "murderers." And today once again the "pro-life" leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words. The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I'd like to say on this day after a man was murdered in cold blood for preforming abortions that I -- and the people I worked with in the religious right, the Republican Party, the pro-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church, all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words.

I am very sorry."

At the same time, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow's attempt to shock those who might feel something approaching ambivalence regarding Dr Tiller's murder, by portraying it as 'domestic terrorism', while understandable, comes close to mirroring the belligerence of those they are trying to denounce (O'Reilly, Limbaugh, etc.).  The use of terror terminology has a murky history.  I've written before that, for me, growing up in a society where the word 'terrorist' was bandied about as if it were as ubiquitous as sugar in tea, it served only to delay the inevitable: a process where we talked to, instead of killing each other.  Use the word 'terrorist' of an enemy and you make it much harder for political representatives to negotiate a less violent outcome.

So, because these things are more complicated than the tax code, let me say this, with apologies for not being able to find a way today to keep it brief:

1: The word 'murder' has become devalued.  So has the word 'terrorist'.  We need to be more careful when we use them.  Murder is far more serious than our popular culture allows - you only have to look at how the Phil Spector trial, which centered on the fact that the record producer regularly threatened women with guns, and then eventually destroyed a life by shooting a woman in the mouth, had its moral seriousness reduced by calling it a 'circus', where Spector's hairstyle received as much air time as his victim.  What was her name again?

2: It is appropriate to use 'terror' language to refer to any act part of whose purpose or consequence is to create terror, no matter who carries it out.  In that light, the attacks on 9/11 and the murder of Dr Tiller both can be called acts of terrorism.  But so is the bombing of Hiroshima by the Allied Forces.  And the interning of civilians without trial by the British state in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.  And the blowing up of bus stations or the targeting of police officers and soldiers by the IRA.  And any other act part of whose purpose or consequence is to create terror.  Whether or not you think this means that the word can be so broadly applied that it ceases to have any meaning, or that this definition may actually permit a more serious discussion of violence and how it is used (by non-state groups who call it 'freedom fighting', and by the state which calls it 'justice') is extremely important.

3: In this light, calling the murder of abortion providers 'terrorism' may be accurate, if only to shock those who feel ambivalence toward it into realising just what it is they are not condemning strongly enough.  But it may also have the effect of driving an even deeper wedge between groups of human beings who, if the rhetoric employed by their public representatives is to be believed, already hate each other.

4: However, using the word 'terrorist' as a noun to describe the totality of a person is not helpful, for the reasons I mentioned above: ultimately, violent conflicts are solved only either through negotiation or the total destruction or disempowerment of one party and its supporters. You can disagree with this statement if you like, but I doubt that you will be able to give me a example that disproves it.

It would be better to talk in general about terrorism, and specifically about abortion, and the murder of Dr Tiller, in the way Frank Schaeffer does.  There are things we can agree on in this context: that it would be better to have fewer abortions is perhaps chief among them.  People who are so angered by a political or moral matter that they want to kill its protagonists will not be calmed down by being vehemently denounced.  The person who killed Dr Tiller may well feed their rage on the kind of language being used by Olbermann and Maddow (two journalists whom I greatly respect, and am merely disagreeing with on this occasion - their talent for serious engagement with the issues, does, I hope, allow for such disagreement to occur without disparagement).  Let's have a conversation about what is really happening here:

An ancient myth is being played out: you kill me, I kill you, neither of us really knows why.  We inhabit a culture where violence is taken for granted.  It's on the air so much it feels like it's in it.  Acts of violence occur at the end of a continuum that begins with how we talk about being human.  Moral denunciations, even when focused on people who do awful things, need to be handled with care.  Bill O'Reilly isn't going to change if only enough liberals would shout at him.  People aren't going to stop killing people they disagree with if only our culture could isolate them further than they already are.

I have strong feelings about the Limbaughs and O'Reillys out there; sometimes it's difficult not to feel something approaching hatred for what I see as their insidious impact on the world; how they seem to start fires, and then run away.  But that's not going to get us anywhere; in fact, it may only serve to fuel their rage, although I don't imagine they're listening to me.

It would be far better to start with something we can immediately do something about: how we talk about what it means to be human, the reality of the fact that we are already prepared to accept certain forms of 'legalised terrorism' from the state, and, most of all, whether or not we are able to take the same kind of share in responsibility as Frank Schaeffer for the cultures we are nurturing.

David Lynch Interviews the Nation

David Lynch's Interview Project is quite something - a year-long endeavor in which the results of the director's mentored team crossing the country, asking strangers to talk about their lives will be broadcast.  On evidence of the first interview, up today, with Jess from Colorado, it's going to be a site I return to repeatedly during the year it will add new content.

There's a new interview every three days; Lynch's perspective on the world has produced some of the most compelling films of the past three decades; and despite a reputation for darkness and, let's face it, being more than a little offbeat, there's always compassion just under, or right on the surface.  The first interview in this project is deceptively simple: an old guy talks about regret while trains and traffic go by.  But there's a world etched into his face; a social history of the broken parts of the post-war era; a reflective man who doesn't seem able to get his feet on a stable path.  There may be more to this series than just people talking: it might just be Lynch's America, all-in-one, free, shot from slightly distorted angles, more alive in the margins than the heart of the machine would ever want to admit.

Questions of the Day

Now that I've seen 'Terminator: Salvation', some queries occur to me:

If I were a cyborg, why would I donate my heart to someone who has dedicated his life to killing my friends?

If I owned the rights to one of the most interesting mainstream dramatic movie ideas of the past three decades, what could I do to remove all sense of humanity and tension from it?

Is there any chance we might get a movie in which the world is saved without chunky guys shooting people to do it?

Lars von Trier's 'Antichrist': Theopoetry or Cosmic Joke?

Once upon a time, as a graduate student. I spent three years studying people who believe the pope is the antichrist, a mythical figure referenced (with surprising infrequence) in the Bible, and who over the centuries has inspired some of the strangest speculation and religious behaviour.  From the 12th Century mystic Joachim of Fiore who changed the date for the end of the world as often as his undershirt, through the fact that Isaac Newton believed that his discovery of logarithms would speed up the calculation of what the Number of the Beast meant, to apocalytpic frenzy at the time of the French Revolution, right up to more recent doomsayers such as Hal Lindsey (the bestselling ‘non’-fiction author of the 1970s), who may have felt rather conflicted when 1988 came and went without the earth being destroyed, and now Glenn Beck, who seems content to encourage eschatological surmising about President Obama.  They’re all wrong, of course; and it’s obvious that end-times guessers have tended to be socially bigoted too.  Certainly it’s the case for some that naming the antichrist has been, as one of its foremost students has said ‘an obsession’.

And now along comes Lars von Trier, a director whose work indicates for most critics either genius or madness; or he may be a court jester; or someone who is projecting his depression on screen.  What I think is this: ‘Dogville’ was compelling but did not describe the world as I experience it; ‘Breaking the Waves’ grasped the horror of grief and suggested that life on earth is a stepping stone, a preparatory ground, a purgative moment before eternal grace takes over.  I think if I re-watched either of them, my opinion might reverse itself.  Last week, at Cannes, he added his name to the not-so-illustrious role of those who have appropriated ‘antichrist’ for themselves.

His film, imaginatively entitled ‘Antichrist’ has caused the kind of controversy not seen at the festival for some time.  People are  terrified, embarrassed for the actors, overwhelmed, distraught, disturbed, angry, entertained, unintentionally made to laugh, or provoked to think about the nature of existence.  It seems that some reviewers both love and hate it at the same time.  It’s not certain whether von Trier is using the title literally - if he really intends to comment on the notions that captured Joachim, Isaac, et Hal; but the word can’t be divorced from its history.   ‘Dogville’ and ‘Breaking the Waves’ seemed to me to be produced by a person disagreeing with himself - putting Willem Dafoe, one of the most striking Jesuses on film in a movie called ‘Antichrist’ seems entirely in keeping with von Trier’s way of playing the audience.  I’d like the film to be a serious exploration of grief and suffering - the accounts in so far suggest it is anything but; in fact, it may be the big screen equivalent of the kind of painting you sometimes see being done in a television documentary by one of the severely traumatised patients in a war veterans’ home (although he and his cast look happy enough in the photo above).   On the basis of the words written about it already, and the track record of the director, I both can’t wait to see it, and am not sure that I will be able to watch it.

Three reviews below:

Roger Ebert

Variety

Empire