MarkT

In Defense of Avatar contra "pasta" Mark Driscoll

{ 6:20 PM, 2/3/2010 } { Posted in The Arts } { 0 comments } { Link }

My comment at the end of this article.

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Friday, February 26, 2010

mark driscoll hates avatar (REALLY HATES IT

I found this video of Pastor Mark Driscoll at his YouTube.com account. Apparently, Mark HATED Avatar. And he wanted everybody to know how much he hated it, so he posted this little video of him telling his church how much he hated it.

In this sermon clip he pretty much calls Avatar a Philistine, an enemy of God! His exact words are "[Avatar is the] most demonic, satanic film I've ever seen."

Wow. He must have seen it in 3D.

Mark goes on to tell us that Avatar contains a "false Jesus, false savior, a false resurrection, a false Heaven..."

And Sigourney Weaver smokes!! But he doesn't mention that.

I wonder if Mark knows the movie is fiction. I mean, it's just a hunch, but I'm not convinced that he realizes James Cameron knows the movie is false.

I mean, did Mark see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Does he know the Lion isn't real?! And that Frodo is make-believe, too? How about The Fonz? He seems to definitely believe in The Fonz.

Eventually, Mark says... "People are just stunned by the visuals. Well, the visuals are amazing because Satan wants you to emotionally connect with a lie."

I will admit, when I watched the Smurfs as a kid, I did want to live in a mushroom house.

Mark goes on to say that "Nobody has ever accused him of being a fundamentalist!"

Really?! I find that really hard to believe.

But if that's the case, let me be the first: Pastor Mark Driscoll, you're a fundamentalist. You're like the late Jerry Falwell with tattoos, a faux-hawk, and a tendency toward belittling women.

But you know, at least Jerry knew he was a fundamentalist. He owned up to it. He didn't try to trick anybody into thinking otherwise.

Toward the end of the video, as a way to prove he loves creativity and the arts, Mark tells us how rich he is by listing off how many home theaters and Tivos he owns, and then adds, "Our film crew was just down in LA at Universal Studios shooting on the Spartacus set... getting footage for our Good Friday service..." (There's a punch line somewhere in all of that, but I won't go there...)

Anyway, to be fair, I didn't like Avatar, either. But not because I thought it was Satanic. But because the story and dialogue was awful.

If Mark is right about Satan playing a role in making Avatar, then it would have been a better movie, I think.

What do you think? Is there really that much difference between the world views of Avatar and that of movies like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?

from
http://jesusneedsnewpr.blogspot.com/2010/02/mark-driscoll-hates-avatar-really-hates.html

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I've seen Avatar 3D. It is one of the best art films in a long time and deserves a viewing by every Christian.

I note there is NOTHING from Christians that comes anywhere near it as a work of film art. The closest is the secular adaption of J R Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" (which itself is far superior to the adaption of C S Lewis' Narnia. Though Protestant Lewis was brought to Christianity by Catholic Tokien - and they remained friends for a while - in later life they had a falling out and Tolkien despised the preachiness and shabbiness of art in the Narnia tales. Over time, Tolikien has been proven to be correct. Tolkien's art speaks more powerfully than Lewis' kitsch.)

Avatar is parable of modern times confronting the major problem of our fear of the Other which is dominant in USA style Fundamentalism. It tells a truth without preaching. It is a fairy tale where truth wins in the end.

The Na'vi are representative of the Other that Fundamentalists seek to demonise and destroy. The Na'vi and those who Fundamentalists wish to evangelise with their "good news". The Na'vi don't think that the "good news" is very good at all. (See comments further on.)

Pandora is how Earth could be if the "Pandora's box" of unthinking Fundamentalism had not ruined the past 200 years.

Jake Sully is us - crippled by unthinking Fundamentalism that has destroyed our legs - the mind that God gave us. He was a "jarhead dropout" but becomes enlightened by interacting with the Other. In his interaction with the Other he can walk. Bound to the "sky people"(aka Fundamentalists) he is a cripple.

The military on Pandora may think that they are "not in Kansas anymore" yet their rationale is very much Kansas Fundamentalism opposed to science, culture and art.

The "Hometree" in Avatar is a symbol of THE tree in the garden of Eden. We are now living in exile from Eden. Eden has been destroyed by greed, technology, financial markets, war mongering and the USA war machine with their "In Oil We Trust" ... and Fundamentalism. The Luddites were correct.
Technology destroys some very basic principles of humanity, truth and compassion ( "grace" in Christianese).

More importantly Eden has been destroyed by the unthinking USA brand Fundamentalism which ignores the cultures of other civilisations and which tries to force their man-made dogmas upon those who have far more wisdom than in the whole of fundamentalist history since the 1800s. Evangelicals
have preached a "good news" that was "bad news" for the majority of civilisation. It has excluded the Other - like the Na'vi - the women, gays, lesbians, those who are not Anglo-Saxon, the artists, the intellectuals ... many of whom have fled the church to preserve their sanity and integrity. Those who are better educated are less likely to be members of their local church. The blame for the destruction of contemporary Eden can be squarely placed at the feet of unthinking anti-art Fundamentalists.

Eywa is God but not a "Jesus type" God - human and able to do tricks with wine, bread and fish - more like the God that Paul Tillich derscribed as the Ground of all Being. It is this type of God that Fundamentalists cannot fathom yet is the basis of conrtemporary thought in such books as Karen
Armstrong's "The Case For God (What Religion Really Means)" (The Bodley Head: 2009)

The Hallelujah Mountains are like "pie in the sky".

Toruk is the tamed Dragon of Revelation who is no longer a "boogey man".

The "tree of voices" is the collected wisdom of the ages in the sense of Jung. It more like the real "logos" envisaged by Philo.

Jake's partner is Grace - grace is something that Fundamentalists do not understand. She is thus made an enemy of the more powerful forces of the "sky people" (aka Fundamentalists).

"pasta" Mark Driscoll is a Jesus Jingle writer - not an artist - just a Christianese Kitsch robotic producer. His diatribe against Avatar shows in his inablility to appreciate good art. He would have made a good right hand man for Savonarola and the Bonfire of Vanities which burnt Botticelli's art amongst many others.

The above is only one possible reading of this magnificient film ... but it is one that Fundamentalists ignore to their own peril.

Read a synopsis of the movie at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/synopsis

Ecclesiastes and Vanitas Art

{ 3:43 PM, 11/2/2010 } { Posted in The Arts } { 0 comments } { Link }

'Vanity of vanities, ll is vanity,' lamented the author of Ecclesiastes (1:2), 'One generation passeth away, and another generation comth; but the earth abideth forever.' And yet, Christian moralists would suggest, not all things are equally vain. In Christian lands, during the sixteenth century, a new subject of art developed and seized the imagination of the art-buying classes for the following two centuries. 'Vanitas art', named in tribute to Ecclesiastes, was hung in domestic environments, often in studies and
bedrooms. The canvases featured a table or sideboard on which were arranged a contrasting muddle of objects. There were flowers, coins, a guitar or mandolin, chess games, a laurel wreath and wine bottles: symbols of frivolty and worldly glory. And among these were placed the two great symbols of
death and the brevity of life: a skull and an hourglass.

The purpose of these was not to leave their owners depressed by the vanity of all things. Rather it was to embolden them to find fault with specific aspects of their experience, while at the same time to grant them licence to attend more seriously to the virtues of love, goodness, sincerity, humility
and kindness.

from Alain de Botton "The Consolations Of Philosophy & Status Anxiety" (Penguin:2004)

Vasari - "Lives of The Artists"

{ 3:36 PM, 11/2/2010 } { Posted in The Arts } { 0 comments } { Link }

To return to the Last Judgement: Michelangelo had already finished more than three~fourths of the work when Pope Paul went to see it. On this occasion Biagio da Cesena, the master of ceremonies and a very high-minded person, happened to be with the Pope in the chapel and was asked what he thought of the painting. He answered that it was most disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully, and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather for the public baths and taverns. Angered by this comment, Michelangelo determined he would have his revenge; and as soon as Biagio had left he drew his portrait frorn memory in the figure of Minos, shown with a great serpent curled around his legs, among a heap of devils in hell; nor for all his pleading with the Pope and Michelangelo could Biagio have the figure removed, and it was left, to record the incident, as it is today.

from Vasari's "Lives of The Artists" (Translated by George Bull, Penguin; Middlesex, England: 1965; p. 379)

Last Judgement: Michelangelo

{ 5:57 PM, 7/2/2010 } { Posted in The Arts } { 0 comments } { Link }

"Horror show for the whole family" - Alice Cooper, Christian

{ 11:27 AM, 29/8/2008 } { Posted in The Arts } { 0 comments } { Link }

Kelsey Munro
August 29, 2008 - 8:48AM

If you want a barometer of how much popular culture has changed in the past three decades, consider this: now even Alice Cooper considers his act family entertainment. ....

"To me, now, Alice Cooper hasbecome sort of family entertainment," he says. "When we come to town, we'll do state fairs and things like that, and grandma and grandad, mum and dad and the kids all come to see Alice Cooper."

He chuckles. "I think they tell [the kids] up front, 'Well, you know they are going to hang him, and there's going to be a lot of blood up there!' But I don't think any more blood than is in Macbeth or any Shakespeare play."

....

The urbane Cooper, 60, draws the Shakespeare comparison afew times during our conversation about his latest album, Along Came A Spider. These days also known as a family man, golfer, restaurateur, radio DJ and unlikely Christian, Cooper is a complex figure, far removed from his hammy image as a
heritage rock star with a penchant for bleeding eyeliner and boa constrictors. He sees no contradiction between his faith and, say, the storyline of his 25th album. In it, he sings from the perspective of an
imaginary serial killer, an "arachnophobic psychopath" who wraps his victims in silk and souvenirs a leg from each. ("I thought that was a nice touch," he says drily.)

"As human beings we hate real serial killers, we hate the Charles Mansons and people like that," Cooper says. "But we kind of like the fictional ones. We like our Hannibal Lecters and our Jokers and our Jasons, because we know that they can't hurt us."

Cooper says neither his album nor his act is anti-Christian and he avoids satanic themes.

"When I think 'satanic' I think a lot of Shakespeare - Macbeth, having to do with the occult and witches - whereas I never really touch on that stuff," he says. "The stuff I usually touch on is mental illness. I always tried to keep Alice as a character that is not earthly as all, doesn't apply to our rules. He's insane ... but he's not satanic. I don't think there's anything about him that is anti-Christian at all."

These days the Alice Cooperstage show is the wholefamily's business. His wife of 32 years, Sheryl, was theoriginal ballerina on the Welcome To My Nightmare tour in the mid-'70s and still plays roles in the show. Their two daughters, Calico, 27, and Sonora, 15, both ballerinas, are also part of the
show. (His son, Dashiel, 23, is in a band, making their first album with Cooper's record producer.)

"It's fun to tour," Cooper says. "We just leave the house and go out for five months or so. Sheryl says, 'I feel like I ran away and joined the circus."'

....

Along Came A Spider is out now.

from
http://www.smh.com.au/news/music/horror-show-for-the-whole-family/2008/08/29/1219516704509.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

"Larry Norman" by Steve Turner

{ 10:07 AM, 22/3/2008 } { Posted in The Arts } { 0 comments } { Link }

Larry Norman

He combined the rhythms of Elvis and the words of Christ to create Jesus
Rock

Steve Turner
Wednesday February 27, 2008
The Guardian

Larry Norman, who has died at the age of 61, was a pioneer of what became
known as Jesus Rock, which combined the rhythms of rock'n'roll with the
social and spiritual observations of Christianity. Norman, who was
instinctively an outsider, was resigned to the fact that his music would
cause offence to the church and the music industry, and once summed his
position up as "too secular for the Christians and too Christian for the
secularists".

Yet it was his hybrid that provided the template for the development of the
multimillion dollar contemporary Christian music industry, a genre that now
outsells jazz, classical and new age combined in America.
Norman was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, but moved to San Francisco as a
child. He claimed that he thought of the possibility of Jesus Rock as early
as 1956, when he was as excited by the sound of Elvis Presley as he was by
the words of Jesus Christ. It occurred to him that the two could be
combined; as a boy of nine, he would invent Christian lyrics to fit the
music of Elvis hits.

A decade later, caught up in the mood of the west coast music explosion, he
formed the band People, the name supposedly a jibe at a trend for animal and
insect names. In June 1968, they made a Billboard top 20 hit with their
cover version of the Zombies' I Love You, but broke up shortly after
releasing their debut album for Capitol. Norman had wanted it to be called
We Need a Whole Lot More of Jesus and a Lot Less Rock'n'Roll, but the
executives wanted I Love You. The record company won.

Larry, always uncompromising, saw this as a victory for big business over
artistic vision and for secular pop over spiritual rock. From then on, he
ploughed an often lonely furrow as a solo artist who tried to combine the
thrill of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones with the spiritual insight of
writers such as CS Lewis and GK Chesterton.

He was helped by the emergence of the Jesus movement, for which he became a
figurehead. Not only were American churches taking note of counterculture
complaints, but many hippies were becoming Christians, and rock music was
the natural forum of expression for these changes. Norman's songs, such as I
Wish We'd All Been Ready, Why Don't You Look Into Jesus, The Outlaw, The
Great American Novel, I Am Your Servant and Why Should the Devil Have All
the Good Music, were as vital to this new community as Give Peace a Chance
and Street Fighting Man had been to the counterculture.

His first album, Upon This Rock, was released in 1969 by Capitol, which by
then had surmised that Jesus Rock might be worth investing in. By 1972, he
had transferred to MGM, where he began the most fertile period of his
career. He created a trilogy of albums - Only Visiting This Planet, So Long
Ago the Garden and In Another Land - that told the story of creation, fall
and redemption. During this period, he played to full houses in such venues
as the Royal Albert Hall, London, and Sydney Opera House. His big fan Cliff
Richard later covered his songs and claimed that Norman was proof that
Christian views could merge with rock.

Although never innovative as a musician or singer, he was a mesmerising
performer who knew the value of every word and gesture on stage: he borrowed
the movements of Charlie Chaplin, the pace of Woody Allen's delivery and the
forceful logic of Lenny Bruce to create a stage act that drew the audience
into his world. Usually, he was accompanied only by his acoustic guitar, but
he sometimes toured with pick-up bands.

He was also a powerful lyricist who could turn complex theological ideas
into simple statements. He was well known for songs with a strong and
deliberate sense of propaganda, but was also a master of obliqueness,
preferring to see his songs as threads in a tapestry rather than as
individual pictures of Christian doctrine.

His work in the 1980s and 1990s was uneven, underfunded and derivative of
his earlier material. In 1981, after moving to Oregon, he began to record
exclusively for mail-order albums on his own label, Phydeaux. Records by Bob
Dylan such as Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love, and the emergence
of U2 in the 1980s, made his splicing of rock and religion less uncommon,
and the Christian music market that he had helped create didn't find him
slick enough, sweet enough or overt enough. As he once noted, he wasn't
there to provide "a comfortable experience".

His personal life was erratic. He tended to alienate even his closest
friends, had a reputation for stubbornness and unreliability, and was dogged
by ill health. He suffered a head injury during a bad plane landing at Los
Angeles and claimed to have been poisoned by the KGB during a tour of Russia
in 1988. In 1992 he had a heart attack and from then on he was a frequent
hospital patient. He recently lost the sight in his right eye.

By choosing to work outside both the church and the music industry, Norman
limited his audience. However, in 1995 he was the subject of a tribute
album, One Way: The Songs of Larry Norman, and in 2001 he was inducted into
the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. For a concert in his home town of Salem,
Oregon, in 2005, he was joined on stage by Black Francis of the Pixies, a
longtime fan.

· Larry David Norman, musician, born April 8 1947; died February 24 2008

From http://music.guardian.co.uk:80/obituaries/story/0,,2260140,00.html

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MarkT

In Defense of Avatar contra "pasta" Mark Driscoll

Ecclesiastes and Vanitas Art

Vasari - "Lives of The Artists"

Last Judgement: Michelangelo

"Horror show for the whole family" - Alice Cooper, Christian

"Larry Norman" by Steve Turner

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