If you don’t think the two pursuits are exclusive, take it up with Freud, who says as much in his treatise Civilization and its Discontents.

“The idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system,” he said. “We will therefore turn to the less ambitious question of what men themselves show…to be the purpose and intention of their lives…happiness.” Freud asserts that religion’s goal of objective purpose is an illusion; reality demonstrates that everyone pursues happiness.

[Religion] is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. It is still more humiliating to discover how a large number of people living today, who cannot but see that this religion is not tenable, nevertheless try to defend it piece by piece in a series of pitiful rearguard actions.

This is Freud’s first critique of religion, leading into the next: religion is not only wrong, it imposes ‘wrongness’ on everyone else.

Freud thinks there is not a universal route to happiness (i.e. pleasure). The paths are subjective, and they are all legitimate. For example, concerning sex, homosexually or heterosexuality are valued equally: if it brings pleasure, it is legitimately pursued. Even aggression towards others, such as the desire to murder, is not ‘wrong’. Civilization, for its own sustainability, has to suppress these instincts.

However, only instincts that threaten civilization should be suppressed–the ‘harmless’ ones like incest or polygamy, Freud says, are suppressed only because of religious imposition.

Examining moral standards, such as ones against heterosexuality, promiscuity or incest, Freud tasted ‘arbitrary!’ in his mouth. Still, Freud never claims that these arbitrary religious rules, in their pursuit of purpose, directly contradict pursuing happiness. Religion “spar[es] many people an individual neurosis” and, in that, could possibly bring an individual some level of happiness.

He doubts it will last long: if a believer is ever slapped awake from religion’s “mass-delusion,” he will see that “all that is left to him as a last possible consolation and source of pleasure in his suffering is an unconditional submission.” In other words, a splash of cold water, and the faithful will collapse into a nihilism.

Freud’s charge against religion is not that it does not bring happiness—he can no more say that to believers than believers can say that to incestuous polygamists. His accusation is that believers do say such things–they impose their ideals of purpose and happiness on non-Christians, culturally repressing what Freud considers natural expression of libido, (for example, incest or polygamy).

Because religion seeks ‘purpose’ over ‘happiness’, bigheaded religious disciples, thinking they’ve stumbled into the truth, feel justified in stripping away “sinful” means of pleasure. In doing this, the “lullaby about Heaven” diffuses the libido, the source of love and hate (which are essentially ‘lust’ and ‘aggression’), ending the life-creating struggle between love and hate. Expressions of love and hate suppressed, civilized humans cave in on themselves and become their own means of unhappiness through guilt and misanthropy.

To summarize: Freud thinks that religion’s illusion of morality leads to guilt over natural pleasure-drives, which leads to humans hating themselves.

What happens if Freud is arraigned in his own courthouse—does he escape Felixocentrism? (Yes, I made that word up—don’t impose on my happiness.)

Maybe the answer is up to us. If we read Freud and ignore him, he escapes his critique. But, unfortunately for Freud, if we actually fill his prescription, he’ll falls into one of two contradictions.

One contradiction is this: if Freud is right that our primary and legitimate aim is pleasure, than believers must derive pleasure from imposing their beliefs. Freud, by condemning the imposition, is imposing on what he simultaneously calls legitimate behavior.  His theory could theoretically stand, but he has broken his own rule.

The other dilemma for Freud arises from an alternative perspective on the same scenario. Again, Freud says that pleasure-pursuits are all legitimate. Assuming that believers derive pleasure from ‘ethical tyranny’, Freud’s condemnation of religion’s ‘tyranny’ can only escape hypocrisy if his theory is false, and ethical imposition is illegitimate.

Either way, if a Christian changes her ethical standards on Freud’s account, she undermine the authority of Freud himself. And that, I’m afraid, is Freud’s non-libidinal rub.

1. Forty “Bad” Books, according to the “experts”.

2. I Stopped Denying People: Ex- Bank of America CSR Tells All

3. Godzilla Haiku

4. Miniature Worlds

A friend of mine, staring at the map of Mordor that hung on the wall in our bachelor apartment, once asked how Sauron could feed all his orks. Another friend and I quickly pointed to the sea of Nurn and explained that there was an agricultural region on its banks and that additional foodstuffs could be imported from the tributary states in the south. It wasn’t the answer he expected.

5. Schrodinger’s Barbershop

6. Pray for Michael Spenser.

7. BABIES!

8. — CAN YOU HEAR IT?

9. Why Tim Burton’s auteur approach makes soulless movies – (“Hmph!” says Robin)

10. Our own Renee Bolinger has insight on the costuming in Burton’s new film “Alice in Wonderland”

11. Could YOU pass the old radio announcer’s test?

12. Mad Men Barbie Dolls.

13. “Extinct Modern Technology Presented Like Fossils” (my, how time flies!)

14. “Compassion for all,” our society claims…. what they’re really thinking: “some people deserve our contempt.”

15. Neil Patrick Harris in upcoming Smurfs movie. Really.

16. The morning paper, in 3D! Big deal!  I’ll be impressed when they release the morning paper in IMAX.

17. It is about to become illegal for private institutions to offer federally guaranteed student loans.  Want to know when Congress will be voting up or down on this specific takeover of the student loan industry?  They won’t be. They’ll be voting for budget reconciliation and this new law, in addition to the healthcare proposal, will be a part of that vote.

18. Google has unveiled its latest project; it’s moving beyond mobile apps and creating a marketplace for “business to business” apps.  In a word: genius.  Will the app marketplace flourish as its mobile counterpart from Apple has flourished?

19. Thomas Nelson Publishers CEO, Michael Hyatt, has some great advice to first time writers:

1. Educate yourself. 2. Read blogs written by agents. 3. Write a killer book proposal. 4. Have someone review your proposal. For details on these and the rest of his advice, check out his post.

20. Paint by Numbers toilet paper.

21. From Gotham to Metropolis—acclaimed Batman director Christopher Nolan to lend his talents to new Superman franchise.

22. The Art of Manliness teaches us how to use manly slang from the 19th century.

23. The sequel to “The Phantom of the Opera” opens this week in London. Here’s an early review from The Guardian.

24. Protestant Poetry in Conflict: “For And Against Cromwell” by Peter Leithart.

25. Curious about Literary Theory?: “A Primer on LitCrit”

26. Getting College Men to Get More Involved.

27. Sixty Symbols: short videos that explain 60 physics and astronomy symbols.

28. Fast Food sweets.

29. Proof that we live in the future: Spray-on Liquid Glass

30. Starbucks is 39, and having a mid-life crisis.

31. Why do we obsess over the Oscars?  Because we’re watching ourselves, not the actors.

32. The only thing bi-partisan about the current healthcare legislation is the opposition to it.  Charmaine Yoest, President of Americans United for Life, is right: If the President wanted to pass healthcare legislation tomorrow, he could; he just needs to quit trying to force taxpayers to fund abortions.

“It’s now becoming clear that Barack Obama is willing to put everything on the table in order to be the president who passes health-care reform. Everything, that is, except a ban on federal funding for abortion.

Last September, the president promised that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.” Yet the legislation most likely to move forward in Congress would be the single greatest expansion of abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision…

The president’s plan goes further than the Senate bill on abortion by calling for spending $11 billion over five years on ‘community health centers,’ which include Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortions.

The bottom line is that the president wants to deploy words that sound soothing like ‘balance’ and ‘adjust.’ Meanwhile, the courts are rendering precedent with stark words like “mandatory.”

When confronted by House Minority Leader John Boehner about abortion funding during the health-care summit last week, the president dropped his head and looked down at the table. How revealing.”

33. Post Office declares that images are overrated; issues supremely non-offensive blank stamp. Hey, it could happen…

But like it or not, reality television is popular, and as such, is a “shared text” of our culture—for good or ill. And reality shows are also becoming shared texts for cultures as well. In Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates, the spread of reality shows along the lines of “American Idol” or “Britain’s Got Talent” is producing some surprising—and oddly, pleasing—results.

In today’s installment of “Lunch with TED” Cynthia Schneider examines how highly popular merit-based competitions in the style of “American Idol” are changing tribal societies. Contrary to what you might assume, the shows aren’t promoting Western ideology, but local language, traditional music, and poetry. It’s also a great opportunity for women to gain a voice and prominence in societies that have traditionally disenfranchised females. In a beautiful, ironic twist, these shows are bringing about a renaissance in the arts, and elevating the status of women as well. As Schneider says, “reality TV is driving reality.”

Surely the world could have survived without another depiction of the misguided Emma ensnaring herself and others in the convolutions of her well-intentioned but short-sighted matchmaking. There remains an audience for every new adaptation, however, no matter how similar it may seem to the multitude already in existence. Though this could be ascribed to Jane Austen’s being a more savory version of pulpy romance novels, or the pervasive cultural appetite for quantity over quality, I prefer to see it as evidence that Austen’s work bears repeated representation.

Austen’s attention to the microcosm of relationships within a small social sphere in 18th century England continues to entertain and instruct her many devoted fans. This is highlighted in Laura Linny’s introduction to each of the mini-series’ three segments, where she marvels (somewhat heavy-handedly) that Austen continues to compel without the magic or superpowers that we tend to prefer in entertainment; though, thanks to Seth Grahame-Smith, we don’t need to choose between them.

Austen bears further adaptation because no representation exhausts all that her sparkling wit and subtle satire has offered us — this is why Shakespeare’s plays can bear to be performed endlessly, and why we can read and reread Emily Dickenson’s poems. Classics reward repeated attention, and making a televised mini-series is one way of paying Austen the attention she merits. This particular adaptation proves my point well.

With Romola Garai as Emma, the image of Austen’s heroine as pert, pretty, and blonde is cemented, confirming the precedent of Paltrow and Alicia Silverstone. In fact, there is hardly an actress in the entire film who is not pert, pretty, and blonde, which can lead to confusion for those not well acquainted with the plot. Garai captures the carefree impetuosity of Austen’s Emma, which earlier adaptations have stifled in efforts to enforce her superior social status and lady-likeness: Paltrow’s stilted performance comes to mind. Though she might be indicted for overacting, Garai’s natural insouciance carries her through, and makes Emma’s good-natured blundering believable. She routinely talks — or, rather, fumes —  out loud to herself, a cinematic trick which works to convey Austen’s omniscient narration of Emma’s thoughts more seamlessly than a voice-over.

This adaptation is particularly strong in its use of cinematography to convey to the viewer the carefully crafted ambiguity of the scenes which embroil Emma in such confusion. For a viewer privy to the plot, this offers plenty of dramatic irony; for a viewer new to the story, it enforced Emma’s perspective. The ambiguity of glance, speech, and siltation makes Emma’s belief that Mr. Elton favors Harriet believable, though his preference for Emma is obvious for those who know to look for it. Later, when Emma looks on approvingly at the romantically feckless Harriet, who appears to her to be gazing with admiration on Mr. Churchhill, we see that she could also be looking at Mr. Knightly, whom viewers know to be the real object of Harriet’s affection.

This version succeeds in drawing out themes latent in the Austen’s text which are likely to be overlooked. It develops a poignant contrast between Emma Woodhouse, and the more peripheral characters Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill. Emma, though bereft of her mother at an early age, grew up in comfort and prosperity and is now the self-sufficient mistress of her father’s house. Both Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax, likewise orphaned early, were forced to leave their homes and live as dependents on friends and relatives. We see the precariousness of their social positions, how they must ingratiate themselves to those irksome to them in order to maintain economic stability. The film conveys well how arbitrary the fortune of Austen’s characters is, how a death or a marriage in the family could force an individual into poverty or secure her material comfort. Though this version emphasizes Frank’s caddishness, we genuinely pity his plight.

Another theme unique to this adaptation is Emma’s chafing at her home-bound life. Her worrywart father, enjoyably and believably played by Michael Gambon, is tyrannical in his fear of the outside world, and throughout the film Emma wonders what she is missing by having never been away from Highbury. Her marriage to Mr. Knightly is an even sweeter conclusion in the film, thanks to this added subplot, when he surprises her with a honeymoon at the seaside, which she has never seen.

Though not accurate in every detail, this most recent version of Austen’s beloved novel manages to do what a good adaptation should. It adheres to the spirit of the text, teasing out themes which are likely to be overlooked and which were not explored in previous adaptations. It gives flesh to her characters in a way that allows the viewer to see them in a different light, to learn different things about them. Though it may be long and involved for someone not well-versed in the Austen canon, for a true fan, this most recent adaptation leaves nothing to be desired, and materially adds a new voice to the body of films already available. The BBC’s Emma is available for purchase online here. I encourage you to watch it, and allow a different perspective on the classic text to send you back to it better informed.

This week in class we watched movies and read books with the theme “You have great power.”

We watched:

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Chris Columbus, 2002)

Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002)

Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)

Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones (George Lucas, 2002)

“Doctor Who” (Boom Town 1.11, Parting of the Ways, 1.13)

And we read:

Superman for All Seasons (Spring)

Kingdom Come (Chapter 1—Strange Visitor)

One of the conversations I found most interesting during class this week (and a topic that we do not discuss in the podcast) was the topic power usage. We often think of power as something that is either positive or negative, but power qua power is a neutral tool. Power can be wielded in such a way as to do good or to do evil. What actually makes a hero a hero is not that he has power, but that he chooses to use that power for good and not for evil.

One more non-podcasted thought: story creators often have trouble determining just how much power to make available to their characters. This is the problem of the transporter in Star Trek—there are only so many situations into which the writers can put Kirk that cannot be solved by simply beaming him out at the last second. This is also one of the most difficult problems to solve with Superman—when you have a character that is nearly invulnerable there are only so many problems he can have. Hence, Superman needs Lex Luthor to make him interesting—Lex is a character that presents a challenge that cannot be solved by Superman’s physical invulnerability alone. Too much power is a magic bullet which renders the plots uninteresting and predictable; too little power is no longer a hero myth but rather a garden-variety action flick. Writers need to be careful to strike a balance between hero and villain to make them well matched. No one wants to read a story about Dumbledore dueling a muggle.

Seeing as this is the third podcast based on a class entitled “Heroes and Saviors,” John and I thought it was only fitting that we start to define what a hero is. In this podcast we look at some of the different categories of heroes, examine the doubling that frequently happens between the hero and villain of the same story, and wonder what draws us, as the audience, to some heroes rather than others.

As always, please feel free to join our conversation by commenting below or emailing John and I at picturingtheword@gmail.com.

Happy listening!

Let’s start with the basics. The painting is oil on canvas, approximately 3 feet high and 4.5 feet wide. At that size, your computer monitor simply can’t do it justice; if you’re ever in Boston, visit the Museum of Fine Arts and see it in person. Its surface is heavily textured by thick paint application, primarily in the lighter-colored areas. The color palette is reminiscent of sunset–in fact, at first glance only the troubled shock of blue on the left suggests that this is not a peaceful scene.

Click on the image to see it larger

Subject Matter

Now look a little more carefully at what Turner painted. The top half of the painting depicts an evening sky with a storm moving in from the left. Close to the center, the sun sets while a ship with all sails furled (except the jib) heads toward the coming storm.

Below the ship, we can make out several birds, some white capped waves, and what appears to be human hands. The image in the bottom right corner is gruesome: a chained foot thrashes in the midst of a dense crowd of apparently ravenous fish or sharks, accompanied by a few more gulls. The skintones, chains, and title of the piece identify the unfortunate humans as slaves-in-transit, tossed to lighten the ship as it faces a typhoon.

Composition: Spectacle of Action

The sharpest color contrast–a red-orange abutting a light blue–occurs at the left edge, suggesting the typhoon’s violence. It also draws the eye to the ship, the only feature the described with precise, sharp angled lines. From there the eye is drawn to a tension between two whites: the vertical setting sun, and a whitecap below the hull. Following the sun, we are plunged into the ocean by the red-orange streak that marks the sunset’s reflection. Here, tossed and jostled, our progress is arrested by several hands thrusting up from below the water’s surface. The eye drifts right, discerning with ease the ungodly marine feast on human flesh.

This corner (bottom right) is a gripping horror; a macabre spectacle that magnetically draws the eyes to its presence. Turner links this horror to the ship by painting each with a clarity and detail not seen elsewhere in the image. You both know and viscerally feel that the fleeing ship is responsible for the awful deaths in the lower right corner.

Metaphors: Red as Guilt

At this point you’ve looked more carefully at this painting than most who see it in person, but there is more. The way a painter depicts a subject is not accidental. Especially in oil paintings at museums, it’s a good bet that every mark has meaning: artists whose pieces find their ways to a museum don’t mistakenly toss colors and strokes around a canvas.

Here’s a good question: why is Turner’s painting so very red? It certainly didn’t have to be. First off, it’s a seascape–those are usually blue. Second, Turner didn’t have to make the typhoon red; usually they are depicted just as darker clouds.

As a color, red-orange suggests anger, danger, passion, fire or destruction, even guilt. Physically, it raises anxiety levels by causing tension in the viewer’s retina, an effect is amplified by the presence of its complement, blue-green. The redness condemns the action, depicting it as a bloody and guilty business. The title claims that those thrown overboard were already ‘dead and dying’, but the painting does not therefore excuse the slavers. Rather, it asserts the victims’ humanity, shows their desperation, and condemns those responsible.

Historical or Art-Critical Background

The image is easily read as anti-slave trade–the title can be as well. It comes from an unpublished poem, ‘Fallacies of Hope’, which hung alongside Turner’s painting when first displayed:

Aloft all hands, strike the top-masts and belay;
Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds
Declare the Typhon’s coming.
Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard
The dead and dying–ne’er heed their chains.
Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope!
Where is thy market now?

Obviously the image’s overt content supports the abolitionist movement. Yet the painting is concerned not just with the hopelessness of the slave’s condition, but with the poverty of the human condition. Terror permeates the painting as the weak are tossed overboard in the crew’s desperate attempts to prepare to face the elements. While grasping hands express the agonies of the slaves under water, those still on board the vessel are far from safe. They sail into the oncoming typhoon, with uncertain results.

The horrific practices of the slave trade are a far cry from the conditions in Hawaii.  Still, Turner’s painting is an eloquent statement of human helplessness and terror in the face of the elements.

At surface-level, the play is a ball of fluff—a cute comedy where everything ends neatly and everyone gets married. On a closer read, though, we find that Shakespeare juggles weighty questions in this ‘ball of fluff’ like ‘what is it to be human?’ and ‘how do I ‘find myself’?’ The various characters in the play (namely Jaques, Rosalind, and ‘everyone else’) depict three different answers to these questions—beyond that, Shakespeare leaves us to untangle identity’s mysteries.

Corrosive melancholy drips from Jaques’ words. “All the world’s a stage,” he declares, “…And all the men and women merely players.” The woodland existentialist makes his cynicism clear: in using ‘merely’, he implies that our ‘stage’ is meaningless. After all, as his soliloquy continues, every life ends in nothingness—“sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything.” To ‘What or who am I?’, Jaques responds, ‘You are a pawn. Dust. Puppet of a cosmic stage.’

I can hardly find fault with the cynic when I consider how most of the characters go about finding identity: they don’t. Rather, they seem to say, ‘we simply are what we’re thrown into’. Not exerting any will over their own lives, they trip obliviously through events. To accuse them of being ‘merely players’ is easy: from exile to love to religious conversion, the characters are reflexive, their identities in constant flux because derived from immediate fortunes. In this, they cut themselves off from pursuing human ethics: a typically requirement for ethical behavior is the cognitive choice of action rather than simply responding to externals.

I admit. I commiserate with Jaques acidic misanthropy: malleable people bug me. Even when they have strong desires, the desires are imbibed. In a way, As You Like It echoes the ironic image of a million Americans wearing name-brand shirts that boldly state ‘INDEPENDENT’. I can point at it and say, “I don’t want that. I don’t want my identity to be ‘pawn’.” If my life were entirely dependent on external influence, I think I’d fall into a kind of despair.

But is Jaques the alternative?—the man who detached from society in order to see it ‘objectively’ and became, as a different character notes, “nowhere…like a man”? He doesn’t despair about his life being externally caused; he has a despair of ever having that despair! We look at aloof Jaques, polar opposite of the manipulated majority, and see that while being a puppet of fortune is bad, isolation is worse. True identities are largely dependent on involuntary givens.

As Gandalf says to Frodo, we don’t get to choose where or when we live, but only what we do with the time we’ve been given. The majority of the players in As You Like It don’t impose will on the given—they simply absorb it. Jaques tries to reject all givens, but he ends up isolated. He affects the events of the play so little that Shakespeare could exclude him in the earliest manuscripts without much alteration from the later versions.

Still, Shakespeare doesn’t leaves us directionless in the ‘insanity’, as G.K. Chesterton called it, of “the man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else.” A different character provides a satisfying example of embraced identity…Rosalind. While she fully lives in her community, Rosalind also uses her wit and desires to impact her surroundings. She is committed to the given–she engages with life as presented to her–but Rosalind is not addicted to it. She knows herself because she sees the given and accepts it, doing what she can to improve it: she is not tossed blindly by fortune, nor does she pretend she can escape fortune.

We Christians claim to ‘live in the world, but not of it’. Rosalind demonstrates that principle in action. Not fighting suspension between reflexive and rational, Rosalind gains full human identity by embracing both. Unlike Rosalind, though, I hope Christians find better use of time than matchmaking. Unless, of course, the match was made in heaven..then participation is required.

1. It’s rare for a company to admit to child labor, much less do their own investigation — let’s hope systemic solutions will quickly follow.

2. How to use that most feared of all punctuation marks – the semicolon.

3. The Hurt Locker has suffered bad press, but is subject to only one of many Oscar smear campaigns.

4. Never forget that God is watching.  And so is google.

5. Hillary Clinton and Mother Teresa: Perhaps it’s time for Mrs. Clinton to finish the great work she started.

6. Michael Hyatt – CEO of Thomas Nelson, the world’s largest Christian publishing company – thinks we should embrace Google books.  Were it anyone other than Google, we might agree:

“I came to the meeting skeptical but left convinced that Google has already addressed most of my major concerns. Based on the information Google provided to us—and with thanks to Tod Shuttleworth for his excellent meeting summary—I believe authors, agents, and publishers should embrace Google Book Search rather than fear it:

7. Google Book Search creates greater book awareness. Google, the most popular search engine by far, helps put books in front of people who might not have thought a book could be an answer to their query. They are, after all, using Google to find something. As authors, agents, and publishers, we believe books are a great place to find an answer. However, if they don’t show up in the Google search results, consumers are will seek their answers elsewhere.”  Click here to read the rest of Hyatt’s reasoning. 

8. Wired Magazine, on the iPad.

(HT: Todd Shuttleworth LINK: http://www.todshuttleworth.com/*)

9. Don’t you wish your wedding invitation was hot like theirs?  Invitation as video game ala Super Mario Brothers:

(HT: BoingBoing LINK: http://boingboing.net/)

10. Francis Cianfrocca on the End of Easy Fixes:

And the biggest problem of all is how our children are educated. They’re all learning the old-fashioned Sixties view, formulated best by Howard Zinn, of an American society founded in its soul on injustice and oppression, rather than freedom and shared prosperity. Our children are taught to fight against our society rather than to take a responsible place within it. For them, American history begins (and nearly ends) with the struggles over slavery and women’s rights, not in the colonization of the New World and the revolution against England. This is going to be very difficult to change.

11. Mitt Romney’s 12 Hour Flip Flop

12. Every 10 Year Old (Boy’s!) Dream

13. But I by Backword Steps would Move

And on and on the list could go, showing how the roots of modern debates are sunk deep within the soil of ancient philosophical reflection.  It’s not that one shouldn’t study the modern debates.  Quite the contrary, I’ve suggested we should begin with the modern debates.  It’s simply that by moving backward toward the Greeks, we can show how our current questions and disputes are in important ways an echo of even more basic questions and disputes that have been going on for centuries. The point of drawing the students’ attention back to the foundational issues, then, is not to dismiss the moderns, but to help our students see that, as Aquinas (echoing Aristotle) once remarked: “a little error in the beginning leads to a great one in the end.”

14. TMCM: Productivity Gone Too Far

15. Income Inequality and Your Brain

16. So….um, Leno is back.

17. Trade as One offers daily blog posts explaining the connection between our purchases of normal products and slavery around the world, as well as pointers for how to swap your regular purchases for more ethical choices.

18. What do John Edwards, Tiger Woods, and the Wolfman have in common? Jeffrey Overstreet knows.

19. SPU’s Response to the Academy Awards reminds us of The World That the Oscars Forgot.

20. Best movie post EVER: Image Journal’s top 100 films of all time. Read ‘em and weep, AFI!

21. Downright Lovecraftian: “blood” waterfalls in Antarctica.

22. Battlestar Galactica cubits for sale.

23. Making Coraline Cookies.

24. God pairs up with Star Wars for Power Turbo Boost!

25. Twelve Tips on Making a boss mix-CD. (‘boss’ as in ‘friggin awesome!’)

26. So long as 33 Things has an ongoing ‘clock’ motif…

27. You’ve always looked and modern art and scoffed, “Psh. I could do that.” But is it as simple as you think? NYC’s MoMA gives you a guide to viewing modern art.

28. We’re 21^st Century Evangelicals: It’s Time to Reclaim the Evangelical Social Justice of the 19^th century that we lost in the 20^th. But How? An Evangelical Manifesto, written by great modern Christian thinkers such as Os Guinness and Dallas Willard, presents some profound ideas:

“To be Evangelical is to be faithful to the freedom, justice, peace, and well-being that are at the heart of the good news of Jesus. Fundamentalism was world-denying and politically disengaged at its outset, but Evangelicals have made a distinguished contribution to politics—attested by causes such the abolition of slavery and woman’s suffrage, and by names such as John Jay, John Witherspoon, Frances Willard, and Sojourner Truth in America and William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury in England.”

29. How the Past dreamed of the Future.

30. Mars…in Florida?

31. Earth photos live from the International Space Station.

32. Humanitarian Video Gaming.

33. I’ve just been discussing this with my professors, actually: Making sure your life does not become your profession (especially in academics!)

For the second class, we watched:

Superman (Richard Donner, 1978)

The Last Son of Krypton from “Superman: The Animated Series”

Pilot from “Smallville”

Superman on Earth from “The Adventures of Superman”

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (George Lucas, 1999)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. (Chris Columbus, 2001)

We also read Looking for God in Harry Potter by Hogwart’s Professor John Granger. Professor Granger kindly informed us that he has an updated book, How Harry Cast His Spell, which he wrote after Deathly Hallows was published. Unfortunately, we did not know this until after we had already read the first edition, but for all of you who are interested in reading Granger’s work on Christendom’s influence on the Potter novels, we highly recommend his second edition.

In the second podcast, Danielle and I explore three main questions:

1. Why do we retell stories? Why, for example, are there four gospels? And why do we continually remake the same basic story, like Superman?
2. How does upbringing shape a hero? One of the most common factors in a Hero’s life is a childhood trauma (often being orphaned)—this factor is present in the lives of Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and even Superman. Is a traumatic childhood necessary to be a hero?
3. A follow-up question we had to how the childhood of a hero shapes his or her character is would Superman have supported the gulags in Soviet Russia? This controversial discussion plays into a larger question of if/how/why myths change as a result of cultural shifts.

And then there is the title of the podcast: You are a muggle! One of the things we discussed in class was that when we watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, we never realize that we are the muggles that Harry hates. When we are engaged in the story, we believe that we are wizards and that everyone else is a muggle. Surely we are not muggles! Yet it is important for all of us to notice that we are fundamentally different from heroes. Danielle and I can’t help but wonder, what does that tell us about heroes, and more importantly, what does that tell us about ourselves?

We hope you enjoy this week’s podcast. If you would like to join our conversation, comment! Or email Danielle and I at picturingtheword@gmail.com.  To find out more about us and our podcast, check out our About page.

Happy listening!

P.S.—If you’re interested in next week’s curriculum…

Watch:

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Chris Columbus, 2002, PG, 161 mins)

Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002, PG-13, 121 mins)

Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977, PG, 125 mins)

Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones (George Lucas, 2002, PG, 142 mins)

“Doctor Who” (Boom Town 1.11, Parting of the Ways, 1.13; 90 mins)

Read:

Superman for All Seasons (Spring)

Kingdom Come (Chapter 1—Strange Visitor)

This week’s Lunch with TED features David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative party in the United Kingdom and also likely the next Prime Minister.  Cameron believes, I think rightly, that the modern world is entering into a new age – the “Information Age.”  As with onset of the Industrial Age from whence we are coming, this new Information Age will bring about radical changes in the way we live our lives and self-govern as individuals and as societies.

As a conservative, Cameron believes at least two things to be true: First, that people, when given choice and power, will create for themselves the strongest and best societies.  Second, that governments should operate “with the grain of human nature,” that is to say that they should treat people as they are versus using government power to make them as you think they should be.  The Information Age, with its ability to quickly and easily connect people to one another and the information necessary to make informed decisions, is bringing about a renaissance in government where those who adhere to the aforementioned truths will be empowered to do the most good.

We are moving from a age of centralized bureaucracy to one where “genuine people power is possible,” Cameron contends.  Here in the United States, Cameron’s theory finds substantial support in President Obama’s use of the internet to raise money and disseminate information during his campaign.  Then candidate Obama was able to mobilize thousands of supporters and raise hundreds of millions of dollars in no small part due to his use of web technology to connect people to important information about him, his policy stances, and means by which people could quickly and easily contribute to his campaign.  Where pre-internet campaigns were fueled by centralized special interest groups donating big money and big manpower, campaigns in the Information Age will be fueled by millions of small time contributions of manpower and money coordinated by an information infrastructure more powerful than any in human history.

With the opportunities born of the internet and the rise of the Information Age, Cameron hopes to direct our attention to the question of how we can make the world a better place without spending more money.  This is an admirable and worthy problem to solve and you should watch Cameron’s talk to hear some of his great ideas about strategies for solving that problem.  However, I fear that Cameron might have missed an even bigger problem because he’s made a big assumption.

Cameron’s big assumption, and the assumption of many in the new media, is that information, or data, equals knowledge.  To memorize facts is to be educated and to be able to recall facts from across educational disciplines, from science to literature, is to be “well-rounded.”  If that is true, then “organizing the world’s data” and making it readily accessible and transparent to all will make widespread education on any topic possible; all people need to do is access the data and they will be educated to make informed decisions.  However, having the facts and knowing what to do with them are entirely different things.

If “people power” is to truly be the source and means of self-government for societies of tomorrow, then the people need more than just the facts, they need the capacity of discernment so that they might see the facts and know what is good, noble, and just.  Education, then, in this Information Age, must be about more than just “the facts;” teachers must do more than teach “strategies” for memorizing, or worse, searching for data.  If we are to educate people for self-government, then in addition to making information readily available, we must also emphasize the acquisition of those things that cannot be measured in data points such as wisdom, charity, grace, truth, and goodness.

I recommend starting with the Republic and the book of Proverbs.