The Girlfriend Experience

Steven Soderbergh has managed to build an enviable career - he gets to make fun, huge projects like 'Ocean's Eleven', and alternates these with smaller, self-consciously serious films such as 'The Underneath', 'Kafka', and 'The Girlfriend Experience', which I saw this afternoon at the Chelsea Clearview next door to the Chelsea Hotel, in, as you might expect, Chelsea.  Name of the lead character of this movie?  It's an easy guess - my sense is that Soderbergh's protagonist, played by an adult film actor called Sasha Grey is supposed to represent an entire social cohort as well as an individual soul.  In that regard, naming her after a part of New York City known for its cultural creativity and sociological excess seems not only obvious but just right.

'Just right' is how I felt about most, though not all, of the film - Grey is a sex worker who hires herself out for something more than sex: she approximates relationships, for an hour, or a night at a time.  She has a boyfriend called Chris at home, who's also trying to sell his body - he's a personal trainer.  It would not be unfair to say that her job eventually creates domestic tension.

The story is set against the cultural shift that was the US Presidential election of just over six months ago.  Let me say it again: Just Over Six Months Ago.  In that sense, it already feels dated; although that's not a criticism, just an indicator of how quickly things change, or give the appearance of changing.

And so, it's about the moral impetus of privatised capitalism (if I wanted to sound less pretentious I might translate that as 'it's about what happens when the love of money drives our sense of pleasure and satisfaction'), the status anxiety that is the shadow side of telling each other that we can achieve anything, and then defining that 'anything' purely in terms of materialism or celebrity, and something else that might sound even weirder: a hidden yearning for a return to pre-industrial society.  One where it's easy to imagine being part of a community that actually did share its possessions, that actually did offer people much of what they needed, that simplified relationships, didn't idealise the nuclear family, didn't force people to create insatiable appetites for things.

Now I know it's easy to overstate the benefits of the past, the good old days and all that.  So let me say this: I know that disease and violence were characteristic of the pre-industrial age, as much as any romanticised notion of extended families living together in pastoral bliss.  But I also strongly suspect that the rates of depression, disappointment, and inability to sit still and think for a few minutes that seem to be characteristic of our contemporary culture have something to do with how we interpret what it means to be human.  If we believe that the ultimate end of our lives is only to become fully self-actualised individuals, then the wider community will suffer.

What Chelsea in 'The Girlfriend Experience' does for a living is not the main point of interest here: she could just as easily have been an actor or a model or a salesperson on the floor of Macy's; because the movie is suggesting that we are all prostitutes; or at the very least, we are all subject to the impersonal forces of an economy that has abandoned gift exchange in favour of fast buck selling to the highest bidder.  Or at least an economy that thinks it has the upper hand; it has pulled the wool over its own eyes.  Because behind the stories of companies too big to fail and 'where's my bailout?', communities everywhere are rediscovering what a social structure based on mutuality could look like.  We are only enslaved by money if we put our wrists in its shackles.  Chelsea is a slave.  So is Chris.  So is everyone in this movie.

So, while it's gorgeous to look at, and amusing when it's observing the games people play (casting film critic Glenn Kenny as a self-appointed sex reviewer is funny and smart, and not just because he's great in the role), 'The Girlfriend Experience' is depressing.  And if it represented what life is really like, instead of the delusions that we know can be cast away, and are in fact just waiting for us to see through them, we'd all have reason to be depressed too.

Just War on the Radio

'Beyond Belief', Ernie Rea's BBC Radio Four discussion programme on religion and ethics is weekly listening for me, along with my good friend William Crawley's 'Sunday Sequence'.  They're among the best radio shows on the BBC, partly because of the personalities and characters of their hosts, and partly because of the fact that they devote substantial time to issues that matter.  Just heard a recent 'Beyond Belief' - a discussion on the ethics of war; it's not the most elegant conversation but is worth a listen. Last week's Beyond Belief on Just War theory.

Crawley's interview with Richard Dawkins.

Sunday Sequence homepage.

Happening This Week

We spent yesterday with Walter and June Wink, courageous peace workers and thinkers; last night I read something of Walter's that feels like a good way to begin today, whose fathomless mystery of course cannot and must not be underestimated: 'There is no such thing as objective powerlessness.  Our belief that we are powerless is a sure sign that we have been duped by the Powers.'

A few things for this week:

We've a new Podcast about 'The Hangover' and 'Up' at The Film Talk.  'Up's pretty gorgeous, with some true cinematic magic, although flimsy motivation for the villain and the merciless manner of his despatch were disappointments.  'The Hangover' divided us - if it's commenting on a certain kind of American male selfishness and idiocy, that's all well and good; problem is, I think it's celebrating it.

There's a thoughtful reflection on reversing your perceptions about who is 'in' and who is 'out' from Nadia Bolz-Weber at Queermergent

One of the most elegant and moving films of recent years, Clint Eastwood's 'Gran Torino' is out on DVD Tuesday - there's never been a figure in cinema like Eastwood.  He's been making some of his best movies in his older years; and if, as has been suggested, 'Gran Torino' is his last on screen performance, then he's going out in a manner completely under his control: an atonement for the violence of his earlier years, a vision of community restored, an assertion that it is being responsible that makes us human.

If you're in the NYC area on Thursday, I highly recommend going to hear the Dave Dellinger memorial lecture hosted by War Resisters International.  It's presented this year by Nicolson Baker whose astonishing book 'Human Smoke' up-ends readers perceptions of the Second World War, doing more than any previous work to challenge the myths of redemptive violence associated with that conflict.  Lecture's at 7pm Thursday; I'll be there - let me know if you're planning on it and I'd be glad to meet up.

For Belfast friends, this Friday sees the release at QFT of a new print of Kubrick's 'Barry Lyndon' - if I were home I'd be on University Square on Friday, and would return at least once more to see this magnificent work of art.  It's over three hours of extraordinary imagery, biting wit, and a central performance that makes Ryan O'Neal one of those actors who never needed to make anything else to be assured of a place in film history.

As for my day, I'm meeting with Ian Cron to discuss a retreat we're working on together, and trying to get some thoughts together about a couple of writing projects - one of which I'm very excited about if it ends up actually happening.  Hope we all have a good day.  Keep in touch.

Andrei Tarkovsky

The Heart - From 'Stalker' by Andrei Tarkovsky

Over at The Film Talk, my co-host Jett Loe and I are very excited at the prospect of watching the films of Andrei Tarkovsky; the Russian director whose work represents a rare fusion of art and spirituality:

Jett: 'If there were one film to take to a desert island and the only one I could see for the rest of my life, it would be 'Andrei Rublev'.  It's an astonishing, engrossing film that feels like it was shot in the time it was set.  In the 14th century.'

Gareth: 'I probably haven't had a more transcendent experience with a film than when I saw 'Solaris''

Next month, our friends at Film Society of Lincoln Center in NYC will present a week of cinematic mysticism with a complete retrospective of Tarkovsky's feature films.  We're going to record a podcast about Tarkovsky in a couple of weeks - and look forward to the extraordinary delight of watching all of his movies before recording.

We'll save the discussion of the meaning of his films for later; though their power probably can't be overstated, so I'll allow myself one comment: Andrei Tarkovsky's films leave me feeling as if cinema really does matter, make me excited to be alive, and remind me of the privilege of being human.  I feel more alive just thinking about them.

If you're in the area we can't encourage you enough to visit FilmLinc.  And if not, while DVD will be a poor substitute for the enveloping experience of watching this most spiritually expansive director's works in a cinema, I'd still visit the Mummy in Belfast's Ulster Museum even if I couldn't get to the pyramids.*

*Full disclosure: Much as I wish we had the budget to house me in New York for a week so I could sit at the Walter Reade Theater in the presence of Andrei Tarkovsky's films, only one of which I've actually seen in a cinema.  Alas The Film Talk ran on a shoestring even before the economic crisis...  So if you can't be in NYC for the season, don't feel lonely - we're in solidarity with you, watching at home.  Actually, it occurs to me that, given how Tarkovsky's films are as much about the interior journey of the individual human as they are about the macro-spiritual nature of the universe, ultimately each of them needs to be seen twice - once on the biggest screen you can find (try the Max Linder Kinopanorama in Paris if you're ever there), and once alone in your cave.  Doesn't particularly matter which order you do it in.  We're always living on at least two levels at the same time.  Or space.  Or the space between spaces.

The Trick is Not Minding

Kim Mitchell writes in response to my post on Glenn Beck and the end of the world: “I really appreciate what you had to say in this article about needing to have discernment and allowing any conversation or interaction between people be a chance to let God speak to both of us…So, may I ask how you’ve come to the conclusion that Revelations is “not a dime store almanac for future events”? Please do not read any sarcasm or condescension into my question – I really want to know.

I grew up with movies like A Distant Thunder and seminars from traveling “experts” with tribulation maps and have heard these people claim that the New Age movement and Care Bears were all signs of the “end times” – yeah, really, Care Bears. I came away for the movies scared – even though, as it was explained to me, I was fairly sure I wouldn’t be “left behind”. I spent time thinking the Devil might be able to fool me if he was so innocent looking as Care Bears. I have since come to my own conclusion – in a very small nut shell – that I don’t have to waste anytime worrying about when all that stuff is supposed to happen and that my responsibility is to be found loving God with all I am and my neighbor as myself regardless of my position on the time line of this world. And, in regard to what the Revelations are meant to reveal – in an even smaller nut shell – I’ve come to feel all those dream-like metaphors will be understood when they need to be.”

Thanks Kim - I too grew up with 'A Distant Thunder' and its sequel 'A Thief in the Night', in which, if I recall, the antichrist’s minions drive around the Midwest on motorcycles carrying portable guillotines to use on Christian necks; and I well remember a preacher saying he would 'stake [his] faith on it' that Jesus will one day return with traffic chaos and dead people in his wake. We were taught to be suspicious of almost everything - heavy metal, Coca Cola, and, yes, right there with you, Care Bears. This fear of the unknown was simply that: the anxiety of ignorance, mingled with a lack of confidence in our own identity.

There are many reasons for this - and we may get into them some day; but I wouldn't want to minimise the role of the socio-political tensions in the Northern Ireland of my youth as factors contributing to a fear-based experience of religion. As for why I no longer believe that Revelation is 'a dime store almanac'? Three reasons that I can think of just now. There are surely more; and I won’t know all of them – you’d need to ask people who know me what they think.

The first was a gradual shift in my understanding and experience of Scripture. I grew up among lovely, passionate, kind, often wise, beautiful people, most of whom also believed that the Bible gathers words that God literally told ancient Hebrew stenographers to type up. I didn’t know that there were other ways to read Scripture, that there are worlds to discover that you will never enter if you only read the Bible literally. Whatever else it may be, Scripture is poetry. It needs to be read therefore, as poetry; maybe it will become something else in the reading; but if we don’t begin by reading it as a genre of literature we may either write it off as insane, or end up taking the eschatological Kool Aid. This would be a tragedy, because I have a strong feeling that what we are supposed to be doing is to let the light shine in our darkness, realising that the darkness has not overcome it.

The second reason is linked: I realised that so much fear was, ironically enough, doing nothing but making me afraid. It took several years of good friendships, life experiences, a bit of therapy, and falling among people whose spirituality had become, or was becoming, a way of being rather than intellectual assertion. Questions about the existence of God or the meaning of doctrine or, especially, the end of the world just didn’t seem to fall within the category of argument or belief. These people – and you know who they are if you read this blog enough – are making space within themselves for what we still call God, despite the utter inadequacy of that word; they know that what that means is that they are allowing what is already happening in the universe to become realized in them: that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The third reason was encountering writers like Walter Wink and NT Wright who suggest that seeing Revelation as predictive in the way of a weather report reflects a mindset that characterised the medieval period: seeing the world like a three storey department store - hell in the basement, the here and now on the first floor, the afterlife upstairs; Revelation becomes then an ancient guy predicting the future 2000 years ago, and we get to live in the story right now, with the sands of eschatological time frittering away by the second. Wink, Wright, and many others make it far easier to see Revelation as macro-poetry: the world as it is: written to a violently persecuted church, but speaking today, a simple, but profound word: the light shines in the darkness, the darkness has not overcome it, and one day the darkness will disappear. Now, who knows what in practice that would mean? Who knows if my sense of this is correct? Who knows if ‘correct’ is even an appropriate theological category? Well, the anger and zeal of my earlier life was so destructive that I think I don't really mind.  Not that anger or zeal are inherently bad - we need them, in healthy proportions.  But whether or not I am certain about any of this?

For now, at least, the trick, as Peter O'Toole would say, is not minding. This may sound naïve or self-serving; but that’s not my intention.  I’ll say it clearly: it seems to me that one of the marks of mature humanity would be to stop minding most of the things that we use as reasons to feel pissed off, grumpy, unnecessarily angry, or somehow divided against other humans.  Every day presents reasons to get knocked off the path.  Every day.  We are not here to live in fear; and each day has enough opportunity to make us imagine all kinds of horror just waiting to pounce - the terrorising imagination of what Revelation might predict is just a larger, older version of this.  I spent too much time being frightened by Revelation; and then probably too much time also trying to argue with people who may be obsessed with it.  At this stage, however, I think the trick is not minding.