Anthony Bradley on the White Messiah motif in recent film

The following article appeared recently in the online edition of World Magazine.  The article can be found here: http://online.worldmag.com/2010/02/03/white-messiah-films/

“White Messiah” films

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Written by Anthony Bradley

February 3, 11:20 AM

The movie The Blind Side, which depicts a white family’s successful adoption of an at-risk black male, has stirred the charge of “racism” for many in the black community. The word “silly” comes to mind as the most charitable word I would use in response to such a charge. A movie depicting a re-told true story recounting what the white Tuohy family actually did for a kid in need, who happened to be black, does not contain what we normally think of as racial dehumanization. It seems that many blacks are confusing “racism” with our distaste for “White Messiah” movies.

The Blind Side—which yesterday picked up Oscar nominations for best picture and best actress (Sandra Bullock)—is not racist, however it does depict the often told story of white people coming to the aid of some indigenous, needy ethnic person. My guess is that many white people appreciate movies like this because they help defend against the constant charge that all problems in America have a direct causal link to white people. Movies like The Blind Side tell the world that, even with America’s complicated history, all white people are not bad people.

Ironically, such movies are convicting to many middle-class blacks because, outside of family members, they are just as unlikely to take in at-risk black males as whites. If suburban blacks had a regular cultural habit of doing what the Tuohys did, it would change America.

Alternatively, movies like Avatar, which also is up for the best picture Oscar, elicit suspicions of racism because they depict a common Hollywood fiction that white people are here to save the universe. A couple of weeks ago, The New York Times’ David Brooks explained the racism of Avatar:

“Avatar is a racial fantasy par excellence. The hero is a white former Marine who is adrift in his civilization. He ends up working with a giant corporation and flies through space to help plunder the environment of a pristine planet and displace its peace-loving natives. The peace-loving natives—compiled from a mélange of Native American, African, Vietnamese, Iraqi and other cultural fragments—are like the peace-loving natives you’ve seen in a hundred other movies.”

Must it always be the case that a white male comes to save the day (again)? Perhaps this may explain the movie’s popularity. There are those who believe that Avatar affirms white supremacy—the same kind of white supremacy that juxtaposed Christian missions with the African slave trade and colonialism in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere, for example, in India, South Africa, and Haiti. Brooks explains that this type of white supremacy:

“. . . rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.”

While movies like The Blind Side are clearly not racist in the least, fictional films like Avatar may explain the growing consternation of stories involving minorities that depict white people as the heroes. I guess this means we need more Will Smith-as-hero movies than Keanu Reeves ones. Who knows? The debate continues.

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I commented on the author’s facebook page with the following:

I don’t understand what David Brooks is talking about when he says “journey to self-admiration”. I read Avatar as another attempt at release from guilt through self-loathing. Media imperialists have as much a sense of noblesse oblige as any 19th century Brit ever did. So when Disney or Al Gore or James Cameron crank up the sanctimony and make a … See Moremovie like Pocahontas or An Inconvenient Truth or Avatar, they are condemning and trying to exculpate themselves at the same time. Maybe Brooks has this sort of exultation-through-self-effacement in mind when he says “self-admiration.” Either way, I think stuff like Avatar is one of the closest corellates to Pharisaism (outside of Pat Robertson) that you’ll find in modern society.

More on the Avatar-Pocahontas relationship at http://failblog.org/2010/01/10/avatar-plot-fail/.

Seven Thoughts on Evangelical Christianity’s Relationship with Poetry, as Occasioned by a Review of the Poetry of Advent

The following is adapted from a class on the poetry of Advent taught at Greentree Community Church: 

1. For the most part, Evangelicals read the Bible as historical narrative with an occasional sprinkling of moral proposition.  But almost a third of the Bible is poetry.  Poetry is not meant to be read the same way as prose, and when you try to do this, you cannot fully understand what you are reading.  It follows that a reader who endeavors to know the Bible well would benefit from a little thinking about poetry.
2. A very large portion of the art that deals directly with Biblical themes is about the nativity.  Something about this event inspires artistic reflection, and I think it can also be said that there are truths about the nativity that may only be encountered through artistic reflection.
3. Art communicates directly to all parts of us—mind, body, and spirit.  This is why art is able to convey concepts in ways that other forms of communication cannot.  Art is powerful because it can blow your mind, punch you in the face, and whisk you away to some ethereal plane all at the same time.
4. Evangelicals have grown suspicious of art due in part to the fact that for the last several generations, one of the most popular subjects of art has been the negation and/or vilification of faith.
5. Some of the most influential currents in current Evangelical culture distrust art precisely because it communicates directly to the body.  For example, part of the reason Christians were so afraid of rock and roll was because they were afraid that an art form whose message connected so immediately and powerfully with the body without being mediated by the mind could be dangerous—just look at the uncontrollable, below the belt pulsations it produced in Elvis Presley.  But this sort of dualistic perspective is absent from the Bible’s earliest depictions of the universe.  Genesis describes the body as a product of the good creation, not the fall.  If the body is not evil, then there is no need to fear that the inarticulate characteristics of art might awaken some latent evil in us.[1]
6. The Evangelical marketing machine steers the faithful away from art.  Evangelical Christians may well be one of the most accurately defined, aggressively targeted, and easily manipulated demographics ever.  If you quizzed a handful of parishioners in any Evangelical congregation in America, I would bet that the majority of them would confess to having felt at some point or another a sense of spiritual duty—perhaps even bordering on moral obligation—to see The Passion, to read The Prayer of Jabez or the Left Behind series, or to consume some other “Christian” product.  There’s no comparable sense of responsibility to “non-Christian” (not necessarily works by non-Christians or works that don’t deal with spiritual themes, but works that aren’t products of media outlets that are branded as “Christian”) books, movies, music, or whatever.  It seems to me that a straight line can be drawn from the sale of indulgences in the Middle Ages to the therapeutic consumption of Christian pop culture today.  I wouldn’t go as far as to say that there is no value in anything that this culture produces, but I would argue that it would do more for your soul to read Moby Dick than The Purpose Driven Life.
7. People in general—not just Evangelical Christians—avoid art—particularly certain types of art, including poetry—because they think it’s confusing or complicated or boring.  But enjoyment is one of the primary purposes of art.  Good art is incredibly satisfying, but it does ask something from you.  Enjoying a filet at a great steak house is different than grabbing a cheeseburger from the McDonald’s drive thru.  Poetry, like all art, asks for a little bit of an investment.  We can refuse the cost because we’re having a perfectly fine time making our mud pies, or we can ante up and enjoy a holiday at the sea.

 

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[1] Poetry, like music, uses rhythm and sound to bypass the mind and directly engage the body and spirit.  This is why someone like Robert Bly, intent on recovering a primordial wildness he believes to be sleeping in the collective memory of men, would look to poetry as  tool of great value.  As best as I can tell, Bly was suspicious of the formal elements of poetry early in his career because he viewed them as governors on poetry’s wilder capabilities.  But as his career progressed, I think he came to understand that form often communicates the heart beat that the body and spirit recognize and respond to before the mind is even aware of what’s going on.

Dams and Rivers

My grandpa’s brother built the Hoover Dam.
They hung him from a hundred-foot-long rope
And dropped him in the empty chasm where he
Blew away the canyon walls with sticks
Of TNT.  They had him on the scaffold
When they poured the concrete in the form.
The wind moves fast along the Colorado,
Fast enough to sweep my grandpa’s brother
Off the scaffold into a drying sea
Of concrete.  My grandpa used to always say
That once they started pouring, they couldn’t stop
Or else there would be cracks in the dam wall.

The Hoover Dam is a miracle of modern man.
The Colorado River has spent millions of years
Carving out a path through the western
United States, but the concrete behemoth
That bears the name of the thirty-first president
Stops it in its tracks.  The Hoover Dam
Is an engineering masterpiece.  It rises
Seven hundred feet above the river
And at its base is wider than the length
Of two football fields.  If even the tiniest
Imperfection existed in the wall,
The persevering Colorado would wash
The mammoth canyon plug away to sea.

My grandpa had a drinking problem.  He passed
Away when I was in the second grade.
My father is a lazy drunk.  He weighs
Around three hundred pounds and lives alone
In a double-wide collecting disability.
I’ve been working for a couple years
At a little brickyard on the river.  My day
Consists of moving loads from kiln to dock.
Every morning they lay that weight on me,
And I feel every ounce till I’m in bed.
Every day’s the same, and it feels heavier
The older I get.  They say it only takes
A drop—then it’s over.  Doesn’t matter
If it’s been two years or twenty,
Nothing’s dry anymore.

Post-holiday thoughts from W.H. Auden

A little after Christmas reflection from the narrator of Auden’s “For the Time Being”:

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes–
Some have got broken–and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Leftovers to do, warmed up, for the rest of the week–
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted–quite unsuccessfully–
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobediant servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry
And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much more narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,
We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;
“Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake.”
They will come, all right, don’t worry; probably in a form
That we do not expect, and certainly with a force
More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God’s Will will be done, that, in spite of her prayers,
God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.

Know Thyself

A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to.