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Lisbeth Salander vs. The Powerful idea

February 13, 2012 in Faith and Culture, Staff Posts with 0 Comments

Lisbeth Salander

Lyle Enright thinks it’s crazy not to take Lisbeth’s craziness seriously.

There’s something that I’ve noticed is often lacking when Christians talk about culture – namely, culture. There are several publications (I will not name-drop) that are more than happy to tell you how many f-words need to be spat before a film becomes anathema and just how much breast is considered “damning.”

Well, Relief doesn’t believe f-words will cost you your salvation or that Genesis 2 should be X-rated; discernment isn’t so simple. Take 2011’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, an adaptation of the novel by Swedish author Stieg Larsson directed by David Fincher. It has profanity, nudity, brutal violence and human dysfunction pouring out from all sides. From a “Christian” (or, if you’re feeling snarky, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) standpoint, one might wish to write it off as “bad” and so avoid it, but I’d like to focus on what the material and its themes mean in a fuller, more implicative light: what, exactly, does the film say about our world, our culture?

It’s a question worth asking considering how popular Larsson’s posthumously-published “Millennium series” has become since the first installment was printed in 2005. Young people and adults alike have turned page after gripping page through the stories of Lisbeth Salander and her encounters with murder, white-collar crime, trust issues, relational tension and (light this one up as the arguable theme throughout the series) sexual abuse. These are stories that are not afraid to examine the repercussions of some very dark and, despite the desires of many to believe otherwise, very real circumstances that combine to make a single young woman’s life nigh unbearable. To watch Lisbeth for even half an hour in Fincher’s film leaves you wondering just how this girl can cope with what happens to her.

Well, she doesn’t cope; she acts: after being raped by her ward and brutalizing him in retaliation, Lisbeth visits him one more time to remind him that she holds his reputation in the palm of her hand in the form of video evidence of his abuse. She demands that he fill out her psychological evaluations in more flattering ways, except that she does not seem to mind that he consistently calls her crazy. “Because I am crazy,” she announces.

This is the film’s stand-up-and-cheer moment – I know because that’s almost what I did. There is no other moment quite like it, nothing that comes as close to driving you to your feet on behalf of this be-inked heroine. As such, considering and coming to realize what  you’re cheering for can be an almost mortifying process.

The fact is that Lisbeth has in a significant way placed herself in this situation; she has allowed herself to be abused for the sake of collecting evidence against her abuser. In a world where violence is cycled and recycled, Lisbeth has allowed herself to a part of the system for just long enough to discover the way out: “I am crazy.”

It is a paradigm that seems to be making its way into modern entertainment with more and more gusto. In this post-modern society, “The Madman” is the one who holds the secret truth, the way out. Even Nietzsche’s Übermensch has been replaced by The Joker. Indeed, if you were to take that archenemy of the Caped Crusader (courtesy of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, 2008), victimize him to the point of sympathy and recast him as a twenty-something young woman but leave the personality largely intact, you would not be very far off from the character of Lisbeth Salander.  Why does this work?

Because insanity, says the philosophical climate of the day, is the way out; it is what breaks the cycle and allows us to not only cope with but transcend this karmic world that constantly victimizes us to be forever scarier than the things that scare us. It is a very bleak, very final way of looking at things.

But another way of going about it occurs to me – something with the same result but by drastically different means. Say what you will about U2’s Bono (I in no way wish to begin deconstructing and analyzing his character or beliefs here), he has a very appropriate last word to share on this topic:

“The universe operates by Karma,we all know that.  For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction:[but] Grace enters the picture to say, I’ll take the blame, I’ll carry the cross.  It is a powerful idea: Grace interrupting Karma” (Bono in U2 by U2. London, 2006. Page 300).

Lyle Enright is an editorial intern with Relief. He will graduate in English from Trinity International University this spring.

Christianity and Yarn Barf: A Yarnie’s View

February 6, 2012 in Faith and Culture, Staff Posts with 0 Comments

Relief intern Jazz Eisinger plays at spinning her own parables.

Okay, so this title might be a stretch, or at least unnecessarily unpleasant. Never fear – whatever images of fiber-induced vomit you may be entertaining will be much worse than what I’m actually talking about.

Yarn barf, in essence, is the coiled and knotted ball of nastiness that comes out of the middle of the yarn ball. A yarnie (or crafter, if you prefer) will pull out the center to find the end of the ball for a project or to wind the yarn into a more manageable size. However, though the strand was wound into the ball of yarn once, it doesn’t come out as easily all the time. There are often knots, tangles, and even the occasional Gordian knot that befuddles one into believing that the continuous string is out to thwart itself.

What to do? There are three main approaches: patience, skill, and force.

Patience involves simply using the yarn, pulling the strand through the mess until it resolves itself. This is by far the slowest but often the preferred method.

Skill requires a good set of eyes and nimble fingers to untangle the knot. This also takes patience, but also a willingness to loosen the yarn from itself and solve the problem one part at a time.

Finally, brute force is sometimes the only answer. A pair of scissors will alleviate the problem quickly, but also causes a break in the line, which will show up in the final product.

So how does this relate to Christianity?

Simple. As Christians, and even as the Church, we often disagree within ourselves or with God. One person fights with another, and soon others are brought into the fray. Someone fights against God’s will, thinking that their own direction looks better – and only succeeds in creating a bigger mess.

And yet, grace prevails. God is creating a product far greater than the knots or tangles, and he’s been forming the pattern since well before you were born and he’ll continue long after you’re gone. Despite our best efforts to thwart him, he is faithful to untangle our messes and create something beautiful.

Question for Thought:

Does thinking in terms of a creative God inspire or change your perception of him?

Jazz Eisinger is an editorial intern with Relief. She will graduate from Trinity International University this spring with a degree in English.

The Way of Grace: Malick’s Tree of Life

January 30, 2012 in Faith and Culture, Staff Posts with 0 Comments

 Relief intern Jacob Slaughter can’t stop thinking about this “filmmaker’s film.”

“There” says the Mother to her three sons, pointing into the sky as the theme from Bedrich Smetana’s Vltava (Moldau) elegantly guides the viewer through the earliest years of a child’s life. “That’s where God lives.”

When Terence Malick’s film The Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival last May, I was excited. Somehow the movie had worked its way into my cultural radar, and I was glad to hear positive commentary on the overall quality of the piece. To my mind Malick, like Cormac McCarthy, is one of those recluse creators who makes exactly what he wants and follows no one’s schedule but his own. Since 1973 he has directed and written only five movies, but these movies include Badlands and The Thin Red Line.

It is understandable why he is not a household name. His movies cannot be passively watched and enjoyed; they demand something which many people nowadays are unable or unwilling to give: attention. Malick’s style of filmmaking is like cinematic poetry. He is a filmmaker’s filmmaker.

Reviews of The Tree of Life exemplify this disconnect between critics and audiences perfectly. Websites that rely on content created by critics rank this film as among the best of the year. Websites that have primarily user-created content show that audience’s opinions are more polarized than I have ever seen. We’ve all said it about some piece of art before, but I think The Tree of Life is a modern example of the old cliché at work, “You either love it or hate it. Nothing in-between.”

I think it is a film better experienced than described, so I will avoid giving an intricate summary or an in-depth analysis of specific symbolism. From my own experience I can simply say that this movie has constantly been on my mind since I first saw it last summer, waiting to be watched again, once I get some time away from mountains of homework.

The movie starts with a quote from Job 38: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? . . . When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” We are introduced to a family in pain, a family experiencing the loss of one of their own. We are given insight into the mind of the Mother as she mourns the passing of a child. We hear the thoughts of the oldest son Jack as he tries to come to terms with the death of one of the people closest to him. This particular death is more than just a human tragedy, it is the cause for a religious depression. As they struggle to understand, they ask the inevitable question:

“Why? Where were You?”

The response? A twenty-minute sequence of the creation of the universe that contains some of the most awe-inspiring images in recent cinematic history.

Yet, that is not the whole response. There comes a sudden shift from the large and cosmic to the subtle and deeply personal history of the family. Through one of the better examples of montage, Malik takes us through the experiences before birth until that point of childhood in which we begin to understand the world on our own.

“There are two ways through life,” the three sons are told, “the way of nature or the way of grace.” As Jack and his two brothers grow up they have these two ways exemplified by their Father and Mother, respectively. This conflicting duality will be a part of Jack’s own journey to understanding the faith of his parents in an attempt to make it his own, and the bulk of the film functions as Jack’s bildungsroman.

The film ends with a vision of the afterlife, a moment of reconciliation between loved ones on a beach in which all that can be seen is the never-ending horizon. The scene makes sense, after all, “That’s where God lives,” as Jack was told earlier.

The last words are uttered by the Mother, “I give him to you. I give you my son.” While the meaning is explicitly an acceptance of her son’s death, I think the Biblical framework allows for one to see a secondary implication: a John 3:16 reassurance of the love of God for not only the world, but for the individual. In light of that Son, the Mother is able to trust her own into the hands of God.

As I said, I’ve just skimmed the surface of what is to be realized throughout The Tree of Life. I’ve barely mentioned any of the symbolism at play throughout the film, but hopefully you are intrigued enough to experience it for yourself. I am willing to admit that I may be inserting aspects of my own biases onto the piece, but you can’t watch The Tree of Life without engaging with the Christian faith. While Malick may not have set out to make “Christian Art,” I cannot think of a better work that portrays the tension between God’s unimaginable immensity and his love and interaction with the individual through the world He created and the people placed in one’s life.

Do yourself a favor: see this film.

Jacob Slaughter is an editorial intern with Relief. He will graduate from Trinity International University this spring with a degree in English.

Poetry & Presence – Michael Martin

December 13, 2011 in Faith and Culture, General, Writing and Publishing with 0 Comments

5.2 Poet Michael Martin offers notes on a poetry manifesto.

I used to think that Guillaume Apollinaire was the author of the single greatest line in the history of literature: “I know that only those will remake the world who are grounded in poetry.” I’m not so sure anymore. The word “poetry” has lost its savor. I’m not sure if the aura of professionalism promised by the MFA is to blame, though there is something within me that groans at the thought of poets updating their websites, planning their career trajectories, networking for the big grant money. There must be more to poetry than that.

I don’t write poetry for the sake of having a career or for satisfaction of writing “poet” on my income tax forms. I write poetry in order to wrestle with the problem of God in the only way that seems to work for me. The academic study of theology, of religion, or of hermeneutics, I think, generally avoids the problem of God. This avoidance comes about primarily through the tyranny of the thesis statement: the need to come up with an argument. Poetry doesn’t need an argument. In this, it is not unlike negative theology, which also refuses to be forced to define, abstract, and, above all, name that which cannot be named. So perhaps I come to terms with God by not coming to terms with God. The poems “Visions of Vladimir” and “Words written during the suffering and subsequent death of John Paul II, the Pope of Rome” both figure ways in which I try to contend with this problem.

The best poetry can hope for, I think, is to open us to presence. This is why I am so interested in religious poetry, which, in the best cases, opens us to the presence of God, to the mysterion. I am very fond of Simone Weil’s story about reciting her translation of George Herbert’s wonderful poem “Love” every time she had a migraine. She wrote to a priest she knew about this experience, explaining, “I used to think I was merely reciting it as a beautiful poem, but without my knowing it the recitation had the virtue of a prayer. It was during one of these recitations that, as I told you, Christ himself came down and took possession of me.”

I do not pretend that my two offerings in Relief 5.2 will figure that for the reader. Rather, they are documents of my attempts at discovering God’s presence through a phenomenological attendance to the world which I then try to render into language. What this betrays, of course, is that my view of the world is underwritten by a belief in the sacramental participation of God in creation. God is not purely transcendent. Christianity, in addition to affirming God’s transcendence, tells us that God is also immanent: that God abides in all creation. But remaining aware of this presence is not always easy. We often read about God’s “absence,” but I have the feeling the absence is mostly on our account. In these poems I try to make myself aware of God’s presence in the midst of my own absence.

Michael Martin‘s poems “Visions of Vladimir” and “Words written during the suffering and subsequent death of John Paul II, the Pope of Rome” appear in issue 5.2 of Relief. Find his full bio here.

My Sister’s Keeper

December 7, 2011 in Author News, Faith and Culture with 5 Comments

Chely Roach

5.2 CNF author Chely Roach is looking out for your uterus. But she’s also keenly sensitive to the need for grace amidst abortion and infanticide.

My sister often calls me Protector of All Uteri, uttered with a quasi-disapproving, slightly passive-aggressive giggle, as only an older sister can do. She also deemed my car The Uterus Wagon, a moniker that I am twistedly fond of; given from the multiple pro-life stickers it adorns, my favorite being a 3D ultrasound picture with the caption, I am an American. At one point they were magnets, so they could be removed when parked at the crisis pregnancy center where I volunteered. We had to appear neutral, ironically. My narrative in Relief 5.2, “Drowning the Albatross,” was born from the experience of attending a weekend retreat, which was mandatory before I could counsel clients at the center.

I am not sure if my sister has ever asked me why. Why I am so outspoken and passionate about the unborn, why I spent so many Saturday mornings counseling at the CPC, why I believe women are being destroyed by having the choice to evacuate their womb on demand.

Sometimes I wonder if she doesn’t ask because she intuitively knows the why, and just can’t bear to have it confirmed. If I had to guess, she probably assumes I have been brainwashed by ass-hat right wing conservatives, and that my passion is rooted in some morally elite, judgmental stance.

I can honestly say that I never judged a girl sitting on the couch in front of me. Some were tearful, some carried a hardened façade. Most were from churched families. And as we spoke—waiting for two tablespoons of urine in a plastic container down the hall to reveal their destiny like leaves in a cup of tea—I patiently, empathetically, endured their justifications and rationales. I will lose my scholarship…He will break-up with me…Our Catholic wedding for 200 guests is five months away …I will lose my job…I just bought my season pass to Six Flags…

But judgment never crossed my mind…God might’ve struck me down with lightning where I sat.

Neither did atonement…it’s foolishness to believe I can make up for my sin, even by helping others not fall into the same one.

God has given me a courage outside of myself to speak and write of this, and each time, I steal back a bit of Satan’s power over me. The paradox of this issue in our society is that we allow and accept it like it’s collateral damage to live the way we wish, but out of the other side of our mouths, look down upon and judge those who made the choice we all know in our hearts to be unthinkable. The inherent, expected secrecy of abortion adds to its perpetuation. The Christian community is no exception.

Nine days before Thanksgiving, a missing child alert spread through St. Louis and beyond. The news stations reported that Shelby Dasher, 20, overslept till almost noon, and when she went to wake her 13 month-old boy, Tyler, he was gone. Like so many others, I feared I might vomit out my own heart. In my gut, I knew the mother’s hands were somehow responsible. They found his body a mile down the road, and less than twelve hours later, Shelby confessed to beating the baby because he wouldn’t go back to sleep. She was arrested and charged with second degree murder.

That night, a candlelight vigil for Tyler was held. The local media greedily captured sound bites and quotes from anyone that offered, and my Facebook wall was covered with condemnations, prayers, and pictures of Tyler with Photoshopped angel wings in a veil of wispy clouds. She’s a monster…Evil…She should rot in jail…A special place in Hell for Shelby Dasher…

I mourn for Tyler. The city mourns for him. An innocent, precious life, snuffed out. There is no dirge somber enough.

I also mourn for Shelby. In a world that doesn’t. An immature, frustrated girl, who was blinded by ignorance, or demons, or both, to the support she failed to ask for in an unforeseen, desperate moment. I mourn for the girl who will carry the fully-deserved guilt, regret, and self-hatred from destroying the blood of her own blood, in a moment of weakness when motherhood was more than she could bear.

I am no better than Shelby. No less guilty. No less blood on my hands. The world sees a distinction between a 13 month-old infant and a 13 week-old baby in utero. God doesn’t.

Both helpless and innocent.

Both a gift.

Both created in His image.

Like Shelby and me. Potential roommates in that special place in Hell, if it were not for the only One who atones.

I am an American. I am a Protector of all Uteri.  I am my sister’s keeper.

Chely Roach‘s CNF piece “Drowning the Albatross” appears in issue 5.2 of Relief.
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