Harry Potter and the Illusion of Media Neutrality

For those of you who were doing the internet equivalent of waiting in line at a book store for "Year 3" of my blog series, the doors have opened! As has been my trend, this post will have even less to do with Harry Potter. However, I defy you to find a more enjoyable hobby than making up blog titles of the "Harry Potter and the..." flavor. As such, I have no choice.

As the title does suggest, I did want to throw out some food for thought regarding the perceived neutrality of media. As an upfront clarification, please note that by "media" I do not refer to the nightly news or such ilk, but rather the media through which human experience is expressed (e.g., music, poetry, movies, television, etc.) As is my custom, my main focus is Christian worship music. I've begun four sentences so far with "as." Good writing? As for my opinion, I say yes. As.

In "The Purpose Driven Church," pastor Rick Warren makes the statement that no musical style is intrinsically "good" or "bad." There is no such thing as 'Christian music,' only 'Christian lyrics' (p.281). I detect traces of such a philosophy undergirding the use of different musical styles in worship. Rock music isn't intrinsically "bad," so we can just take that cultural form, add Christian lyrics, and produce perfectly acceptable worship music, yes?

I don't know if the equation is quite so simple. The reason, as suggested by my title, is that there is no such thing (IMHO) as a "neutral carrier" when it comes to media. Consider music: Would it be appropriate to sing "Jesus Loves Me" to Ride of the Valkyries or Beethoven's Fifth? How about superimposing Alanis Morrisette's "You Oughta Know" lyrics on top of the music to Disney's "Hakuna Matata"? The ideas are are laughable. It follows that music indeed has intrinsic meaning. It is not neutral in its message, waiting for meaning to be assigned to it by the listener (post-modernity, anyone?).

We could even dive deeper and consider the background of such music. What if Anton LaVey pioneered a new style of music that came to great popularity. Would it be acceptable to co-opt said form and add our own Christian touches to it? Rock n' Roll has its roots in youthful rebellion, and other sensual matters that aren't always in line with Christendom. Should this affect how we use it?

What of television? Here is a device whose raison d'etre is entertainment. Does this not affect, even subconsciously, how the viewer interprets and responds to the messages it conveys? In a blink, we switch from some horrific human tragedy in a news clip to a sitcom. Does this not somehow cheapen the human tragedy? Moreoever, if somebody sits in front of a TV, whether to watch "The Simpsons" (ahem) or the Jesus film, aren't they subconsciously expecting to be entertained? Should we care about this?

Of course, Christianity has a long history of borrowing from local culture. Much in classical Christian art employs pagan symbology (e.g., the halo), and the Christian calendar is filled with holy days that were once pagan holidays (e.g., Christmas). Even more, you could drive yourself crazy with this stuff: Levi's jeans were originally developed as clothing for gold prospectors, and in the 50's and 60's blue jeans were often associated with rebellious riff-raff. Shouldn't this inform our choice of dress? Hmmm. This shifts the question a bit. Of course, nobody cares (or knows) the history of blue jeans now, and they've become acceptable attire for Christians. When and how can we draw this line? Is there a statute of limitations?

Back to the matter at hand, what about praise music? Should we sing a praise song in a minor key? To rock music? I can't propose a blanket answer, but I will propose that we do well to at least consider such matters. I feel American Christians tend to err on the side of being too cavalier about adopting cultural forms in Christian expression: "Contemporary music at church? Sure! It'll better connect with the congregation and evoke stronger emotions from them! Entertaining sermons with stunning visuals and drama? Sure! It'll keep everybody's attention!"

My suggestion, then, is a thoughtful pause before the "sure!" The forms we choose carry baggage with them, and we may need to address it in our teaching. At a minimum, we should think about it. The emotions felt during the worship may be in response to the music, not God. The engagement during the sermon may be because of the presentation, not the content. If so, we miss the mark, hence we ought to proceed, as my Spanish teacher would say, "con cuidado." If I were to peanut-butter any statement across this whole subject, I'd say that everything we do should be purposed towards keeping God at the center of it all. We don't want people standing on the Golden Gate Bridge to fall so in love with the architecture that they fail to cross, and reach the more important destination.

More to follow, I guess, but for now, Harry has boarded the Hogwart's Express, and is headed home for the summer. Who knows what adventures await next post. Ah, half-baked ivory tower musings...Whatever would I do without you?

As.

Debate Apology

As an apology and peace offering for my lame computer-related posts, I submit the following photo (taken with my Mac's built in camera, no less). The shirt says, "Future Rock Star," and it looks like something theophanic in nature is happening behind my wife. Or, it's just her angelic glow. Or, it's solar glare. Or, a large quantity of magnesium powder was just ignited in my yard. Or, it's the beginning of an X-Files episode. Or, my home-spun nuclear reactor just melted down. You decide.

The "Eternal" Debate, Part MCMLXXVI

This really isn't the 1,976th part of the "eternal" debate, but I so rarely get to use Roman numerals, I thought I'd give it a go. The number has significance, too. Can anyone guess? Correct guesses will win the prize of an honorable mention on this very blog! Think of it! Tens of people may see your name on the internet! TENS!

After much extraneous and self-indulgent background, I shall proceed to make a few comments on the Mac vs. PC question:

1) Mac's are sexier. Sorry, but the ID at Apple is second to none, and PC's just aren't there. The GUI is gorgeous, and the computer itself begs to be displayed as if it were a piece of furniture.
2) PC's are cheaper. And by "cheaper," I mean waaayyyy cheaper. I could have bought 2-3 new PC's for the price of my iMac.
3) Mac's are frozen. What I mean here is that if you're an upgrade addict, ever lusting after the latest nVidia-spawn, buying a Mac is like going cold-turkey. All I could upgrade on my iMac was the RAM. This can be evocative of a "yawn," "sigh," or "whew," depending on your tastes.
4) Mac's are game-free. If you're in to PC-gaming, avoid Mac's like you avoid the ghost monsters in Pac-Man. Mac's aren't not exactly "game-free," but the available software out there is severely lacking compared to PC's.
5) Mac's can pretend to be PC's. With either Boot Camp (included with Mac's), or a cost-effective VM like Parallels ($80 and excellent) you can run Windows as if your Mac was a PC. And it runs very well. So, if you're like me and have a $400 license for BibleWorks that only runs on PC's, you'll want one of these.
6) Mac's tend to have everything you want. ...and nothing you don't. 90% of all the hardware and software that you'll need or want is already there, and there aren't fifty icons for stupid AOL offers, service plans, trial versions of corny software, etc., on your desktop.
7) Mac's work. You'll have to mess around with them a lot less, and won't need an degree in IS to get them humming. And they do hum, by the way. Since they're gone Intel, they outrun most PC's. I've read that the fastest laptop to run Windows is a powerMac. Weird.

Anyway, my bottom line is to consider what you do with your home computer. If you're like me, you do the following:

(1) Word processing
(2) Music management/playing (e.g., iTunes)
(3) Personal photos
(4) E-mail
(5) Internet

If that's about it, then get a Mac. With the exception of (1), Mac does all of those tasks way better and sexier than PC's, and it's tons more stable. As for word-processing, most folks out there are MS-Word junkies. You can get openoffice.org (for very short money, or no money at all if you're cheap) to fill that need and it'll be nearly seamless. I haven't played with Mac's "iWork" software, so I can't make a call there. My first impression is that it's too "template-y" in that it tries to do too much for you, not unlike the stupid MS-Office paperclip: "It looks like you're writing a letter..." Yes. It does. Now get off my desktop.

If you do CAD work (OrCAD, Pro-E, etc.), love PC games, or some other hard-core business-ish stuff at home, skip the Mac. The only exception is in graphical design/publishing. Mac's rule that space, too. Oh, and recording. Mac's rule musical recording, too. Even the rookie stuff like GarageBand rules.

In all, I'm very happy with my pricey purchase. It's fun (yes, fun), easy to use, stable, and has nearly everything you want ready and auto-configured at first power-up. What's more, I won't have to mess with it until it dies, or I come into money and want to blow it on a faster processor. A final caveat would be to remember that if you're a PC-user, you will have to travel up a learning curve of sorts with a Mac. Just expect that going in. It's easy, and the provided tutorials are great, but you'll have to learn some things again.

Swimmed, Swam, or Swum?

This is technically a "Random Things" post, but Danny got all, "Hey, quit stealin' my ideas!" on me and I was all, "You just stole it from Dr. Parrot anyways," and he was all "Yeah, but he stole it from Martin Luther," and I was all "Don't be bringin' m'boy Luther into this, yo," and he was all "Psha!" and I was all, "Whatev...L8R luza," and he totally, like, didn't have anything to say. Pfft. Anyway, I've decided to forgo rational numbers for the following list of random things:

Pi) Does anybody know the proper, simple past tense for "swim?" I don't. I think it's "swam." Since I'm a border line olympic-level swimmer now (see this post), I figure I'm going to need to use this word more often. E.g., it hurt when I swam today.

Euler's constant, e) Season finale of "The Office?" Wicked. Awesome. Season finale of "The Simpsons?" Solid. The "man scrunchy" bit got big laughs from me. The rest was good, quality Simpsons, but not great.

Phi, the "golden ratio") How safe or advisable is it for Christian(s) to co-opt other (esp. secular) cultural forms of music, art, etc.? I smell a post coming on this one.

The sqaure root of 2) The boy is officially mobile. Heaven help us.

The "Eternal" Debate part I

The eternal debate? Surely this post is concerned with some theological issue? Ha! Victory is mine! You have been tricked (punk'd, even) by my misleading title.

No, the "eternal" debate concerns the mundane, though ever-sexy world of computers viz. the "Mac or PC?" question. I'll pause for you to sigh, check your watch and see if you really want to squander the next 10 minutes of your life on such trivia, realize that tonight's Melrose Place re-run doesn't start for another 20 minutes, shrug your shoulders, and keep reading.

First, a little background. For those of you who do not want any background, just wait for part II:
Like most people in my generation, my first computer encounter involved an Apple IIe. I still remember some Logo commands from 4th grade, actually (PU = "pen up"). The Apple IIe was therefore synonymous with "computer" for me through 7th grade.

My family moved to Connecticut in the summer of 1988. Around the same time, we purchased our first PC: It was an IBM clone with an 8088 processor running at 8MHz. It had a 20Mb hard drive (that you had to "park" before powering off) and 256k of RAM. Since I was the new kid in town, I didn't have many friends for a few months (sniff), so I became well acquainted with my PC, and MS-DOS v.3.2.

As such, I was "born" a PC-man, through and through. That summer of '88 is the one I credit with sparking my interest in computers, software, electronics and (8 years later), electrical engineering. Over the next two decades, I would have many different computers, many self-built, all of them constantly upgraded, rigged, tinkered with, etc. DOS was my first love, of course. I adamantly opposed GUI's until they became the de facto standard for PC's. I had a brief summer romance with an original Macintosh in '89, but we ultimately parted ways. It was a classic "summer camp" romance that had to die when camp was over and our parents took us home.

In college, I was a PC evangelist. I hated Mac's and frequently (nerdily) made fun of such "fake computers" with my engineering buddies. We'd also had arguments over who had a better calculator. Seriously. Such arguments really happen. They aren't just exaggerations and jokes that other people make about nerds. I was also strongly anti-Windows '95 and fiercely pro-OS/2. Sadly, I lost that battle. College also required frequent use of ULTRIX (DEC's version of UNIX) and VAX systems. Since these were DOS-y in nature (more properly, DOS was UNIX-y in nature, since the latter preceded the former), I quite liked them.

After college, I softened on Mac's, though in a very post-modern, "they're right for you, but not for me" kind of way. I continued to use a UNIX/PC mix at work, and continued to scoff at all things Apple, albeit to myself.

Fast-forward to 2003, when I purchased what would be my last PC: A Gateway 450SX laptop (P4 @ 2GHz w/ WinXP). This PC took me through seminary, and began a slow death about a year ago. As such, I now type to you on my new(ish) iMac. This of course raises several questions: Why did a die-hard PC-guy convert? How do I like it? Which is better? Well, Melrose Place is starting, so I'm going to sign off and answer these questions in my next post.

Harry Potter and the Repetitious Blog

I submit the second post (of seven?) in the "Harry Potter" series. I'm not one for beating dead horses, or live ones even, but I'm rather enjoying making up the titles. My original post is here, for those seeking the context that I summarize below.

The question that started this all concerned whether or not Christians should ban, forbid, or disregard certain media. My answer, for those who could read between the lines, was "no" with a "but." The "no" stems largely from the fact that I believe Christians must thoughtfully engage their culture (n.b., "thoughtfully"). The "but" finds most of its basis in stumbling blocks: We have to be watchful of what we ingest, and how much.

The matter of media becomes much more complicated with respect to children, of course. As I watch my son grow up, I'm already thinking ahead to how I balance protection with allowing an instructive bump or bruise. Of course, with the Harry Potter books, I find them as harmless as any other fiction I've read. I will be quite comfortable letting Henry read them when he's of age, and will lose little sleep over him deciding to become Wiccan as a result.

I thought in this post I'd comment a bit more on the comments (I got TWO of them!) I received, particularly the matter of children (or adults) picking up on subtexts within a story. My anonymous commenter expressed certainty that children wouldn't pick up on religious subtexts within books (e.g., Potter, Narnia, His Dark Materials).

I think this is a tough nut to crack, so I'm not as certain. As Danny mentioned, their (our) worldview is shaped, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically, by our culture, and what our minds ingest day to day. If a child (or adult) reads many books with a strong anti-authority or anti-institution bias (e.g., His Dark Materials, Catcher in the Rye) it is quite possible that s/he may begin to develop a suspicion of authority in part thanks to these books.

Now, again, this isn't intrinsically wrong. In my anonymous poster's words, "Isn't it better to allow, and even encourage, our children to read these books, even the most controversial, and then provide the opportunity for safe, frank discussion of the issues therein?" Yea and Amen.

What we mustn't forget, however, is that sometimes these "issues" are hard to get at, because they are subtexts: they're subtle, and often dovetail very nicely with the cultural milieu. They are the unexamined assumptions that litter our culture today: We don't really know whence they came, but they're always there, coating the lens through which we view the world. In this way, I would almost prefer overt assaults on Christianity over and against the subtle ones: they're easier to target and discuss.

This just to say (call it point #6), that with regards to media, we must be prepared to carefully examine the assumptions and subtexts in what our children read. Note that said assumptions aren't necessarily bad. Take Harry Potter: (1) There's a very clear line drawn between good and evil. Even more, Human egalitarianism is clearly associated with the "good" and cultural elitism is clearly associated with "evil." (2) The theme of friendship is honestly portrayed, complete with arguments and reconciliations. (3) Self-sacrifice for a greater good is a neon sign throughout.

So, read and watch everything, and let your kids do the same (age appropriate and within reason, of course!) BUT be ever ready to uncover and examine the unsaid but implied, good and bad. I would go so far as to say that we would do well to apply such advice to anything we encounter.

Finally, (call this point #7) I would add that we should be sure to watch our diet: Watch and read everything, yes, but be sure that you're spending copious time engaging with the Truth, too. Harry Potter will entertain, but God's Word will sustain. Assaults on our faith can challenge and strenthen us, but so also can the Word. Let's thoughtfully engage on both ends, and all across, the spectrum. Given our fallen world and hearts, I submit that the scales of our diet should tip towards "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable...or praiseworthy."

3.5 Random Things

[Chris Rock voice-over] Why 3.5? Because the man won't give me 95!

3.5: I joined a gym this weekend with the (high) hopes of starting to swim regularly. I'd much rather run, but a few years of that pretty much wrecked all of my joints. The plan is that I'll swim lots, the joints will get better, I'll run again, damage my joints, swim lots...sigh. Ah, the wheel of Samsara, she goes round and round (not really, but it was an appropriate metaphor).

3.0: Henry is a whopping 8 months old today, and is as close to crawling as you can be without actually crawling. Mom and I are bracing ourselves for significant changes once he's mobile.

2.0: We buried my grandmother this weekend, who passed away just one month shy of her 96th birthday. This was the first Christian family member of mine to go home, so it was an interesting mixture of sorrow for our loss and joy for her gain. She was indeed an amazing servant of the Lord. If it were possible to earn one's way into Heaven, I would think that she'd be in serious contention. She will be dearly missed, but praise be to God that she's enjoying His presence as I type.

1.0: Sesquipedalian (=one who likes to use big words). Great word of the day fodder, this one. To me it's also a great way to illustrate the Biblical concept of self-condemnation: If you call someone sesquipedalian, you're sesquipedalian. "Hello pot? Yes, it's the kettle. You're black." Another interesting thing about this word is it requires you to wear a monocle when saying it. At the very least, you need to be at a fancy party exchanging witticisms with other rich people between sips of an overpriced martini.

Generational Snobbery?

There is a provocative new book out that examines how the digital age "stupefies" young americans. I'm thinking the author has Generation Z or iGeneration types in mind. Ironically, you can get a simplified, superficial look at the book here.

The author, Mark Bauerlein, who is a professor of English at Emory University, makes some interesting observations. I can't say I agree with his diagnosis of an entire generation ("Holy broad brush-strokes, Batman! This man just lumped millions of people into one narrow category without any nuances!"), I think his comments are worthy of consideration and discussion.

That said, the topic seems redolent of "generational snobbery," no? And this is part of the human condition, yes? Has any older generation every looked at a younger one with resounding approval? Couldn't a younger generation just return the favor anyway? For example:

"Hey baby-boomers, thanks a ton for the super-high divorce rate, exploited environment, spread of STD's, etc..."

I guess my point is that it's all too easy to point out "what's wrong with" younger generations. It's just as easy to point out the messes the older generations have left for the younger ones to clean up. Let's not forget that the older generations gave rise to the new, either. The fourteen year-old who IM's too much didn't invent the internet, after all. He (or she) wasn't even a zygote when such things started to make their way into the public forum.

What do you think? Is generational snobbery alive and well in America? Is there any value to be gleaned from it? I'm expecting several hundred comments.