It’s all fun and games until the Holocaust

I avidly follow Patton Oswalt on Twitter, one might say I follow him religiously.

Yeah, I’m a fan of this guy.

He recently tweeted about this piece written about him on Salon, calling him out after the greatly inspirational piece he wrote about the Boston Marathon bombings, because when the whole Daniel Tosh-rape comment thing went down last year, the writer was disappointed in the usually progressive-minded Oswalt’s response.

Oswalt responded to the article, posting two responses written by comedians: one agreeing with the Salon piece and one in disagreement.

The Salon article, I have to say was spot on. Oswalt seemed annoyed by it, and I can understand why to a degree. Though I agree with the content, the timing was maybe not the greatest. It had the effect of winning the presidential election and some heckler in the crowd going on a tirade about how you cheated on a test once when you were in high school. Or like getting a promotion at work and your lover saying, “yeah, that’s nice and all, but remember the time when we got in a fight about buying silverware, and you yelled at me? You don’t do it all the time but you did it once and it was awful.” In other words, you waited until he did something good to bring up a mistake he made, a big one though it might have been.

The guy who disagreed on the other hand is what made me want to write something about this. First, he starts off his piece by making a rape joke. I understand he’s trying to be ironical or something, but I think he’s already ruined his point.

He’s black and he says he doesn’t get upset about the “n-word.” It’s good for him that he’s able to keep a level head about that issue. But does that mean a black person who hears “n—–” in a joke that they don’t have the right to be offended? Of course not.

I mean, what if a white comedian got up in front of a black audience and opened by saying “what up my, n—–s!” Is that cool? I’m pretty sure the audience would not be cool with that. What if he did it in front of a white crowd? I bet he’d get lots of laughs, but I think many people would have a problem with it.

Hilarious (sarcasm)

As I’m of mixed race — half Asian, half Caucasian (I put the Asian in Caucasian), I followed Jeremy Lin pretty closely back when the news was all about Linsanity before he moved to Houston and everyone forgot about him. I even wrote a piece about him. This was in response to ESPN using the headline “Chink in the Armor.” In case you don’t want to read all of it, the main point was that I personally wasn’t particularly offended by the word, though I understand the anger from the many people who were. I was more offended by Lin’s treatment as the Asian-American superstar. ESPN did everything they could to highlight his Asianness that they almost forgot he was only an above-average player, and they overlooked some easy Harvard jokes, since that was his alma-mater.

Point being, we know there’s lots of racism going around, we hope it’s not as bad as we think it is, but things like this just serve to confirm our fears.

It’s the same thing with women and rape and misogyny.

You can say all you want about how people should “get over it” and “can’t you take a joke?” and “I should be allowed to say whatever I want.” And on and on, and you say it like it’s some great original point that no one’s heard before, like you think they’re too dumb or “blinded by bitterness” to get it or whatever, and if you say it once more maybe they’ll get behind your logic this time.

And if you do that kind of stuff, I’ll coin a term for you. You’ll hence be known in this piece as a “Toshbag.” Don’t be a Toshbag bro.

You can say that you have freedom of speech and nothing should be off limits because that’s what comedy is about, but look at it a different way, Toshbag. Make some jokes about the Boston bombings. How about the Newtown shootings? Why not have a laugh about those women in Cleveland who were raped by that disgusting disgrace of a human being for ten years? I’m pretty sure there’s that one Toshbag in every office who’s made a revolting joke about Newtown and the Cleveland women, and people rightly revile them for it. But Boston’s pretty much off limits.

What about the Holocaust? Would you go in a room full of Jews and make a joke about taking a shower or something? What if you went up to Elie Wiesel and told a Holocaust joke? If someone didn’t shoot you, that would be career suicide, except to your fellow Toshbags who would think you are awesome for it. “That Holocaust survivor needs to lighten up and see the humor of it!”

I know anything to do with the Holocaust is always an extreme example. But what if you made a joke about kidnapping in front of one of those Cleveland women? Or what if you told that knee-slapper you came up with about Newtown in front of one of those kids’ parents. Better yet, tell a joke about the Boston bombings around that survivor who lost both his legs. Real funny stuff, huh?

Assuming there are women at your comedy show, which is a real accomplishment for most comedians (I kid … kinda), there’s a good chance one of them has been sexually assaulted sometime in her life, since academic statistics put it at one in four women having been raped. While it might not be as traumatic an experience as living through the Holocaust, a sexual assault is a victim’s own personal Cleveland experience that they have to live with every day. I know this because I know people who are survivors of sexual assault. So, I think that should be something to take into consideration.

I saw the episode of Louie, where Louis CK explains away his telling a woman he hopes she gets AIDS from someone in the audience, because she dared to be vocally upset at his telling of a rape joke. I like Louis CK, because he seems like a good guy for the most part, but his explanation of her ruining his night and telling a sad sack story about how this is the only part of his life he enjoys, and she ruined his act by talking, is just so insensitive and ignorant. It makes the woman out to be as if she raped him by daring to say she didn’t like his rape joke.

If a comedian gets heckled or someone in the audience is looking at their cellphone during the act, bomb away on that person, because that’s pretty fucking rude. But even if you tell them you hope they die, it doesn’t come off as serious because no one’s going to murder them after the show. To wish rape on someone is another story. There are enough Toshbags in the audience that chances are, one of them will find it a little too funny and later might take it a little too seriously, if not with that woman, with his own girlfriend or someone he meets at the bar later.

So, I don’t think it’s the end of the world if some things are off limits.

And I know everyone hates taking criticism, and it’s a knee-jerk reaction to defend yourself, even if you make a mistake. Even if you know you said something wrong, you’d rather save face by proving that you weren’t wrong to begin with than to admit you were wrong, apologize and move on. For male comedians, the backlash you get when you defend rape jokes might be annoying.

But for a woman who dares to speak up when she “steps out of line” to correct someone who’s being a Toshbag? Good God, it’s open season on her. She will get everything from rape threats to death threats from their fanatical, die-hard fans. Believe me, I’ve seen more than one Twitter spat between a famous person, the one who criticizes him and a rabid flock of fanboys. It is terrifying.

I’ve read enough forum comments on news stories about gender. Oh man, Toshbag commenters will literally tell the author what they want to put where, if you catch my drift. Especially if it has to do with sexual assault, double especially if it has to do with assault in the military. Believe me, I spend my day reading crappy news sites, and even though I know I shouldn’t read the comments, I have that morbid curiosity that makes me want to read them even more. I’m rarely disappointed by the lack of good taste I find.

Ha ha ha … hunh, sob

And yes, people joke about horrible things that we shouldn’t because sometimes it’s our way of coping with it. I work at a newspaper, and it’s an endless flow of the worst things you can imagine a human might be capable of, and probably a few things even too sick for your own imagination. When a Christian heavy metal singer gets arrested for allegedly trying to hire a hitman to kill his wife, the situation is so awful that you can’t help but laugh at it. As one of my former coworkers put it, either you cry, or you laugh until you cry.

But I doubt the big ol’ Toshbag is really holding back any tears for the people he tears apart.

That’s another thing. You don’t have to look at things as totally off limits. Fresh tragedies might be taboo because generally, everyone is trying to heal by taking their minds off those terrible events. But there can even be good jokes about rape. An easy way to determine what’s OK is by who gets the shit end of the joke. If you’re shit-canning a rapist, you’re obviously much better off than if you’re a Toshbag shitting on people who get raped. That just seems simple.

The point of comedy should be that everyone can get a laugh out of it. I know not everyone has the same tastes (inexplicably, there are people in the world who don’t like Edgar Wright’s movies), but if people are being hurt by “humor,” then it’s not humorous. Despite the hilarity of Jack Black kicking Will Ferrell’s dog off a bridge in “Anchorman,” it’s not funny to actually kick puppies. Black face isn’t funny. Rape victims should have the right to go to a show without having to feel triggered by Toshbag “entertainment.”

I’m not a comedian, so I don’t claim to know where they come from. But I am a fan, and anyone in entertainment is just another person unless they have people who will pay to see them perform.

And I don’t know why, but you so rarely see a man write to condemn rape jokes and misogyny in entertainment. So, not that I don’t think women can defend themselves, because they most certainly can, and honestly, they probably don’t need me standing up for them. But there seems to be a dearth men who are willing to stand against rape jokes, so I thought I’d throw my ass out there.

Patton Oswalt is one of my favorite comedians because he’s brilliant and one of the few who gets it right almost all the time. This just happens to be one of the few times he doesn’t. I don’t think he’s a Toshbag.

“Why do I get the feeling you’re going to be the death of me…”

Doesn’t it just make you want to vomit?

I’m finally getting back to a project I started about a year ago, and that is to finally get around to watching these Star Wars movies I keep hearing about. I wrote about part one a while ago, and I just caught Episode II: Attack of the Clones recently.

So, the sequel to the first Star Wars movie: twice the action, twice the thrills, twice the awkward romance, right? As we all know, sequels suck by definition. And the worst part about sequels is when they suddenly start to inject a love story where it wasn’t particularly welcome.

But for a sequel to an average, run-of-the-mill sci-fi story to try to go the love angle, hoo boy, bad move. And we all suffer for it.

So, there was something to this movie about a shadowy plot to try to kidnap or kill or maim or do whatever unpleasant things to the now Senator Amidala (she was queen of planet Naboo back in the first movie, but she’s moved up in the galaxy). Whoever it is who has bad intentions for her starts by putting these giant icky millipede-like bugs in her bedroom while she’s sleeping. Luckily, Anakin, who apparently can use this mystical Force thing to spy on her in her bedroom, was paying attention. He deftly flies into the room flashing his deadly lightslashing blade thing and slices the bugs in half, narrowly missing his love Senator. Seriously dude, you couldn’t have used slightly less deadly force to squash a couple bugs.

Sexy!

But most of the movie deals with the torrid romance between Anakin and Padme. And when I say torrid, I mean they have all the chemistry of a banana slug trying to woo a manatee. At first Padme gives him the cold shoulder, saying stuff like she can’t do this because, what would people think if a politician hooked up with a Jedi? But Anakin goes all emo saying things like, you’re tormenting my soul!

As Anakin has been enlisted as Padme’s chief of security, it seems like her goal of trying to keep out of that hot pit of love is being sabotaged by wading right into it. We can see through your love games, Miss Senator, and the only one you seem to be fooling is Anakin. So, she proceeds to take him to a lovely planet where they do such unromantic professional things as harmlessly staring at the beautiful landscape together and innocently having a picnic together alone in the middle of a field with no one else around. I wonder if that’s how President Obama treats his top Secret Service guys?

Natalie Portman modeling the bosom-heaver

Eventually, as they’re just nonchalantly chillin’ together in her sleeping quarters, her bosoms heaving in her heaving bosom-accentuating outfit, Anakin truly expresses his inner-anguish to her, and she blows him off again, saying things like, it’s forbidden, we couldn’t even do it in secret. But in due time, she’ll give into the emo.

And all this is written with the panache of a man who truly seems to believe he’s rewriting Shakespeare, but has all the smoothness of the nerdy guy at a frat party awkwardly and creepily telling a girl she’s hot. It’s clear here that George Lucas has no aptitude for writing or directing romance.

Still more romantic than Anakin’s emoness.

Meanwhile, the plucky Obi-Wan Kenobi is trying to keep that rascally little Ani out of hot water, first going flying through the Imperial city in a flying car. Of course, that’s only after Obi-Wan dives out the window while a robot is spying on Padme, and rides it high in the air in this seemingly bottomless city. For the experienced Jedi, he’s obviously demonstrating his level-headedness, lack of impulsiveness and willingness to defer attention with this hotshot move. The look on his face after he dived out the window truly says “I’ve made a huge mistake.” Then he has the nerve to lecture Anakin on the very lack of control and measured thinking he just exhibited, after Anakin saves his beardy ass?

The movie sets up these two as an intergalactic Bad Boys 2-style buddy cop duo, but then splits them up for the majority of the movie. While Anakin goes off to get all frisky with protect Padme, Obi-Wan goes off on his own quest, to see why someone erased some negligible data from the galactic library. You didn’t know that he doubled as a nagging librarian when he’s not Jediing.

He runs into a guy who’s been making clones. The guy’s name is Jango (no ‘D’) and he’s a bounty hunter. He’s been making these subservient clones, who according to the processors at this weird facility, lack the ability to even question orders. This is not going to end well. Obi-Wan confronts this Jango (last name, “Fett”), and Jango totally, loses his head over it! Not really, he’s pretty cool, until it’s time to leave. Then they start a fight on the landing pad that, long story short, quickly escalates into a dogfight through asteroids in space. It is here that Jango blows up all the rocks, but Anakin sneakily escapes from this not-so-cunning bounty hunter.

Jango keeps his head on and heads off to his next destination.

Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan is one of the few bright spots in the film, as he’s a totally capable actor, who outshines the poorly written dialogue he’s been given and his nonsensical character, who is supposed to be all smart and cool, but loses his head and is easily tricked.

Meanwhile, Anakin and Padme decide they’re gonna go for it, and give in to the temptation to pursue one another in Christensen love.

But then they get captured. And Obi-Wan manages to get captured by the same people.

T’would be the most epic battle.

Count Dooku, who is played by the senior master-class actor Christopher “Saruman” Lee, who has to be wondering how he ended up doing this garbage, suddenly shows up about halfway through the movie, and he’s still all kinds of evil.

The three “heroes” end up in this Roman gladiatorial sort of arena and kill all these crazy monsters with the help of that bad motherfucker, Samuel L. Jackson, who seems to have wound up in this series, solely to inject himself into some crazy sci-fi series. And then, little green man, Master Yoda shows up with his slave clone army, and it’s on like Chaka Khan. And Padme gets clawed at by this weird wolf-dog type thing, tearing her outfit in a way that conveniently exposes her midriff.

Jango said “what?” one time too many.

In the middle of it all, Sammy confronts Jango, and Jango totally loses his head, literally! Sammy lops it clean off, and wins this round with people named Jango. Jango’s baby clone boy picks up his father’s severed head and looks pretty sad.

The Jedi chase Count Dooku back to his evil lair, where he totally just takes Obi-Wan out of the game, and also ping-pongs Anakin off the wall by shooting lightning out of his hand, and then lops off poor Ani’s lightsaber arm.

Then, Yoda shows up and we get the epic showdown we’ve all been waiting for, the little green dude against the guy who’s name sounds like a turd. And it is awesome! Yoda’s like a little green whirling dervish, and he’s all over the place. Dooku doesn’t know what to do with him. But eventually, he escapes and that’s it, folks. Some guy tells Dooku they’re working on this secret weapon and shows him a printout of some kind of sphere of death. I’m guessing that’s what the third movie is about.

Finally, we see that Senator Palpatine, who was much more involved in the first movie, has amassed his massive army of clone slaves. I smell a coup on it’s way…

Meanwhile, Padme takes Anakin’s now prosthetic hand in marriage, and shhh! The secret marriage has begun! I bet they’ll have some crazy kids.

There are some moments in the middle of the film that are intriguing, despite my near total write-off of the movie. Anakin shows that he is allured by the apparent power of evil, as he posses such a great power, but he’s not so cool with the responsibility part. See, he came back to see his momma on the dusty planet, but she gets captured by these primal people, and long story short, she bites some of that dust. So Anakin goes crazy and makes all those tribal people eat all the dust on the planet.

Padme later tries to console him, while he is inconsolable for his actions in slaughtering these animalistic people. She basically says that no one is perfect. To a Jedi, who basically attempts to live a life of perfection, this is quite the profound statement. It also shows that Anakin is on a downward spiral, that I assume will eventually lead to him giving into his anger and becoming one of those bad guys like Lord Count Dooku-man.

But all-in-all, this movie sucked. It was a lot of characters doing things out-of-character, played by capable actors without a capable director. It’s obvious that Mr. George Lucas had a few interesting ideas he wanted to get across, but didn’t really know how to do that in an entertaining way. Meanwhile, he spends way too much time on long drawn-out action scenes involving these characters who we’re given little reason to care about, seeing as there’s no real protagonist or hero figure that we want to even cheer for.

“You won’t like me when I’m angry. Because, seriously, I get all whiney.”

Anakin comes across as this whiny emo boy, but we’re supposed to see him as some sort of vague savior, though it’s not really clear from what he’s going to save us from. He’s also a tortured soul, who is not going to turn out as the savior we’re hoping for, as few ever do.

We kind of want to like Obi-Wan, as Ewan McGregor seems like a cool guy, but they just don’t really give him enough to do. We’re instead forced to try and care about this “forbidden” romance (though it seems like Padme is the only one who’s forbidding it) that’s so poorly written that the audience couldn’t care even if it wanted to.

And the annoying hero from the first movie, Jar-Jar Binks shows up a bit, but has little to do in this one. It makes you wonder why they spent so much time focusing on his character in the first movie. If you wanted him to be a fringe character for the rest of the series, then don’t give him so much time in the origin tale.

In the end, I’m surprised the movie studios were confidant enough in this series to make a third movie (let alone a fourth, fifth and sixth) though the story would obviously be incomplete without them. Unless you’re planning on watching the entire series, I can’t really recommend that anyone sit through this crap. The first one, though mediocre, was at least competent storytelling. This was not even that. I enjoyed the brief glimpse we had at Anakin’s descent into evil, which is probably going to culminate sometime in the next few movies. That could be really cool if they do it justice. And Obi-Wan is likable, but I wish they have given him more screen time, as he was the most competent character overall, though even he had some problems.

Other than that, this was a steaming pile I don’t recommend except to those who want to watch the entire series. But then again, I gave you a rundown of the whole thing, so if you really don’t want to, you don’t have to.

Near the beginning of the film, Obi-Wan jokes to Anakin, exasperated about his shenanigans, “Why do I get the feeling you’re going to be the death of me?” After watching this movie, I think everyone probably wanted to ask George Lucas the same question.

I gotta give Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones two heaving Padme bosoms and a lightsaber with a severed arm attached to it (that comes to a total of four) out of ten. I could use some new hope that this story will get better as it progresses.

I have no idea what this means or is referring to, but it looks a whole lot better than the garbage I just watched.

Argo Bargo

The 2012 Argo. The movie did a terrible job on accuracy, if this is what it was supposed to be about.

I like talking about films, but I don’t really care for doing reviews, because by the time I’ve seen a movie, it’s probably already been out long enough for anyone who’s been planning on seeing it has already seen it. But when a relevant issue stands out to me, I like bring my perspective.

I finally watched Best Picture of 2012, Argo, earlier this week. It was a good film, probably not my favorite of the nominees I’ve seen (that honor probably goes to Les Miserables), but one I’d recommend to most people … with a caveat, of course.

In case you haven’t seen the film, Argo is about the Iran hostage situation in 1980, where some Iranian revolutionaries took over the U.S. embassy, taking the workers there hostage. Six Americans escaped and fled to the Canadian embassy. The CIA worked to get these six out of iran because they were afraid those six would be killed if they were found. So they collaborated with some people in Hollywood to create a fake movie and have those six pose as film crew to sneak them out.

Watch angry Palestinians try to blow up the Super Bowl! The remake was released last year, but it was called, “The Dark Knight Rises.”

As with any American film that has anything to do with the Middle East, you have to just go ahead and assume there’s going to be lots of racist crap there, and this film doesn’t disappoint! The viewer is afforded very little understanding as to why these Iranian citizens are upset at the Americans. The violent actions those people took are probably pretty true to life, so there’s no sugar coating that, but without the context as to why they are so angry, they are presented to the American viewer as the same savages we’ve been presented with time and time again, dating back to the 70s with movies like Black Sunday.

I understand that the film is not about them, it’s about the crazy plan the CIA used to free the hostages. But nearly every time Middle Eastern people (or any people south or east of Europe) are presented as rabid, angry, violent people, who we are made to assume are that way, possibly just because they live in the desert. They are basically treated like zombies with no true emotional or intellectual quality, other than that they are mad angry because they are.

Tangentially, Ben Affleck also cast himself as the figure in the main role, who in real life was Hispanic.

But in a time where a movie like Act of Valor came out in theatres just a few months ago, it’s just not socially responsible to continue to present foreigners in this manner. And where fellow Best Picture nominee Zero Dark Thirty presented torture of a Middle Easterner as important to our black ops war efforts. And the dozens of other movies over the years about the Gulf War. And where this guy who set fire to an Ohio mosque last year, said during his testimony that he believes that most Muslims are terrorists. He says most of the fuel for his actions came from Fox News, but you have to think that others are probably getting a lot of their news from TV and movies.

There are films out there that seem to explain a bit better the Middle Easterner’s condition like Paradise Now, (which you can apparently watch on YouTube in nine 10-minute parts) but I’m sure very few have heard of that. There’s also Three Kings, which at least demonstrates that Middle Easterners have a reason for being angry. Then, there are also plenty of films actually made in the Middle East that you could stream on Netflix that would show people from that area in a non-military context. Fancy that! They are really just people afterall.

Iran is now suing Hollywood on the basis that Argo is defamatory, malicious propaganda. Their case has no chance in hell of going anywhere. They want Argo to be taken off the market, for which I can sympathize with their plea. At the very least, I’d like to see something of a disclaimer at the beginning of the blu-ray explaining that these events are dramatized for the sake of making a dramatic movie. I know no one pays attention to those things, but it would at least be a show of respect for another culture, as well as history.

Despite my complaints, I enjoyed the film as a whole, as Alan Arkin and John Goodman are featured prominently throughout the first half, and the stuff they put on film is always a slice of fried gold. And it’s an interesting story.

I recommend the film, but keep in mind that Iranians are people, not the wild animals they’re depicted as in Argo.

“Argo fuck yourself!”

Yes I Can, Because Frank Sinatra Let Me

Mmm, don’t you just wish you had some right now?

When I was in Columbus recently for a They Might Be Giants concert, Sarah and I stopped at a restaurant called Pera Fresh Istanbul Food near The Ohio State University’s campus. I like trying food from different cultures, and so I thought this would be pretty good. It was.

But it was slightly strange to me because it was more of a fast food restaurant where you pick your bread, a meat and then your choice of veggies. It was similar to Subway or Chipotle, but for Mediterranean food. The menu isn’t a choice of popular cultural favorites, which I was hoping for, it was just letting you make your own food creation instead.

I told Sarah that it’s a sign that our culture is getting lazy in that, restaurants don’t offer something that they created anymore, they letting the customer do all the mental work. Especially for food that isn’t common in the U.S., I don’t mind someone holding my hand to show me what’s good. I assume chefs in other countries have a better idea of which foods are more tasty together, which in my mind would be better than me just picking a bunch of stuff not knowing if it tastes good together.

So much of our culture places emphasis on customization. ITunes allows people who like music or TV shows to purchase single songs instead of whole albums or single episodes instead of an entire TV series.

For people who play videogames, something that’s popular now are sandbox games, like Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto, where there is a story to follow, but when you’re not working on the story, you can go explore and do whatever you want, including creating 2,500 cheese wheels (see below), creating your own stories that are often more interesting and engrossing than what the writers came up with. You create better anecdotes to tell your friends and an experience that you streamline for your own personal entertainment.

Likewise as I thought with the restaurant, I said this is more of an example of laziness with developers and writers, as they aren’t very good at coming up with their own story. I could make the food Chipotle or Istanbul serve myself, because all you have to do is take a tortilla and fill it with whatever you want, and it would be the same or possibly even better. I can’t make my own videogame or music album (well, I could write music, but it would not be good), but I could use my imagination and come up with something better and save myself the money.

 

 

This was Sarah’s response to my observation.

Sarah responded that it’s not just laziness on the part of creators. People don’t take the time to make their own food, and it’s much more convenient to make others do it even if you have to pay for it. And people want to come up with their own stories and ideas. It promotes creativity to the player of a game or the person who creates a music playlist. It allows the consumer to both create their story and play through it.

That made sense to me. It is good that we are given the means to create our own art. But at the same time, I am lazy. I like to be creative, but using creativity drains me instead of sustaining me. I watch a movie or TV because I want someone to tell me a story. I want games to engage my mind, but not to the degree that they exhaust me. I can only play sandbox games for so long because when I get tired of creating on my own, I don’t continue. The hook to me in stories is to find out what happens next. If I have to decide what happens next, then eventually, I will run out of mental energy. At that point, I’ll move on to something else.

I may be one of the few, but I still like to listen to music in albums because it represents a more focused train of thought. I don’t like greatest hits albums because, though the songs are all “hits,” for lack of a better word, they usually come from different points in time and just sound odd next to each other. I’m not sure I’d want to listen to an entire PSY album just because I like Gangnam Style, but that’s an exception.

Eventually, I’ll decide to stop spending $6 for a Chipotle burrito and decide I can do it on my own, cheaper, healthier and fresher.

But then again, I work 40 hours a week, and I want to spend little time outside of my job doing actual work, so I’ll probably keep buying burritos there.

I write this because I’ve seen the shift in culture over the years from a time when everything went by the rules, offered little input from consumers and basically told them what their few options were to total customizability.

Kickstarter is a prime example of the shift our culture is experiencing. Now, the customer gets to choose what actually gets produced. Bands have started funding their albums through KS, movies and games get funded through KS. But if your album doesn’t get enough funding, it doesn’t get made. I like that we now have more freedom to choose these things, but it’s another sign that the world is shifting sometimes drastically to cater to consumers.

What do you think? Do you prefer to be given the free reign of total customization in the things you consume? Or would you rather have someone create packages of options for you to choose from? I would guess that most people prefer the option to customize things that they have deep concern or interest in, but would rather have help with things they find boring.

But I’m hoping to learn something from people’s responses.

My brothers and sisters

A phrase I’ve heard thrown about quite often in Christian circles is “your brothers and sisters in Christ.” Recently, someone accused me of “thrusting” my last post in the faces of my brothers and sisters in Christ, which was used to make me look bad.

That aside, I wanted to take a look at what that phrase implies for Christians and how they treat others.

First of all, other than Jesus referring to his disciples as his brothers and sisters, the phrase does not appear in the Bible.

I could understand how the phrase could be used in a time in which Christians were persecuted as a sign of solidarity and a display of community among fellow believers.

In the U.S., however, Christians hardly live under persecution. There are certain Christians who believe that they are persecuted because the public and the government don’t buckle to their every demand. But despite the fact that the nation was meant to be a place of religious freedom, let’s just admit that Christians basically rule the land. According to the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life, 78 percent of Americans identify as Christian and 26 percent identify as Evangelical. In comparison, 18 percent attend mainline churches and 23 percent identify as Catholic. I’m not saying there aren’t Christians who are persecuted in the world, because there certainly are, as there are accounts of hostile, sometimes violent reactions to Christianity in some countries.

Getting back around to the point, I don’t think the phrase “brothers and sisters in Christ” is the stamp of solidarity it once was. Like the Jesus fish, which used to be a symbol used to help Christians identify each other in a time when an open and obvious display of faith was  more or less asking to be fed to the lions, yet now is seen ubiquitously on the rear ends of the cars of bad drivers, the phrase no longer carries the same meaning.

The way it is used in common language among Christians, I feel it does more to reassure and solidify Christians as the elite group in society, the dominant ruling class that holds fellow Christians in higher esteem than the rest of the world, preferring to keep the others at arms length. I don’t know that this is always the meaning Christians intend for the phrase to hold, but I think it definitely carries that weight regardless.

As I alluded to earlier, Christians often seem to view themselves the victims of the oppressive secular world, and I think the phrase helps to reinforce that idea as well. It provides motivation to continue its dominant grip on American society while simultaneously reinforcing their self-given identity as the underdogs. The rich, white underdogs who are being oppressed by minorities, other religions, LGBT people and the poor.

I don’t say all this just to tear down religion and say it’s inherently evil, because I don’t believe that’s true. I just have a different vision of the way things should be.

I view the thrust (for lack of a better word) of Jesus’ message is one of inclusivity, as opposed to a common ideal of exclusivity. In the Social Network, Justin Timberlake’s character, whose name I can’t be bothered to remember, said the reason Facebook would succeed is because of exclusivity. If you create at least the illusion of exclusivity for a product, then everyone will want to be a part of it. Everyone wants to be part of the in-crowd because with it comes the perception that if you’re part of a group that you are a member of the elite class. That’s what Facebook does. It’s still the cool thing to do, even though everyone else does it. Look at how GooglePlus used the same principle when it started to get the publicity buzz it had.

The thing most people probably don’t remember about Facebook, unless they watched the Social Network, is that it was exclusive to certain American universities. People clamored for it to come to their university. At the time that I reluctantly joined, it was required for users to have a college email address, as it wasn’t open to the general public.

But now, everyone is on Facebook.

Similarly one of Jesus’ main points was opening up a religion, which up until that point was exclusive to the point of one’s genealogy and culture, to all people, even Gentiles. Christianity was and is not meant to be an exclusive group dependent on race, culture or class status. And working toward the welfare of others should go beyond those who share our beliefs.

To take it a step further, Jesus opened his arms most widely to people who were the most rejected by society, in the prostitutes and tax collectors. It wasn’t based on what they had to give or what they did. Jesus made it known that they were welcome in the kingdom of God.

In the many instances that Jesus addressed the call to take care of the poor and marginalized of society, it wasn’t conditional. This is what we are called to do regardless of whether they are “taking advantage of the system.” If you want something from the Old Testament, try Proverbs 14:31, “Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.”

So, I don’t take to the phrase “brothers and sisters in Christ,” because it promotes an exclusive gospel. I think that if Jesus saw the world today, that he would tell us all people are our brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and even religion or atheism. I believe in an inclusive gospel, one that seeks to meet the needs of all instead of a select few.

And as a side note, I’m not trying to say that Christianity is the only means to achieve an inclusive world. I wouldn’t ask anyone to convert to Christianity, though I would promote a philosophy of peace and love, because I think those things are the most important. But I certainly think those ideals are attainable through other avenues besides Christianity.

To pull from another popular phrase in Christianity, it’s obvious to me what Jesus would do. Just look at what he did and said. That’s what Christians should do.

Oh, put the crown on the king

I wrote a comment on Sarah Moon’s post about King David, of the Bible, possibly being a rapist, and someone liked it so much that he said I should follow up on it.

King David, a stiff man with ivory-colored skin … wait, that’s a statue. He slept with so many women, but could he have been gay?

So, my initial reaction was “dammit, I didn’t really have anything else to say about that and I had enough trouble coming up with a single paragraph, but I guess if you insist, I suppose I could.”

Another reason for my slight trepidation is that me and the rest of the good folks here at Images and Words generally don’t go too deep into Biblical theology, because I like to keep it accessible for people who haven’t extensively studied the Bible but who have though about religion enough to have an interest in it. But I’ll make an exception this time and give my own take on the King of Sling.

In my experience in Christianity, King David is held up as something of a role model character. For Biblical literalists and proof-texters, I can understand holding this view, as the prophet Samuel literally calls David a “man after (God’s) own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). Thus, David is held up as not only an ancestor in the lineage of Jesus, but also as a Biblical hero. He’s not quite Jesus, but he’s held in esteem along with others like Daniel, Gideon, Joshua, Samson, Peter and Paul (all of whom have their own problems, which perhaps I’ll write about someday).

“All I wanna to do the YMCA, why ya gotta throw rocks at me? It’s just cuz’ I’m tall isn’t it?”

And in a certain context, I can see how people would view him that way. Everyone knows the story of David and Goliath. It was one of the first underdog stories. I mean, that was one those awesome Bible stories that people will remember from Sunday school, because there was action and a huge problem, named Goliath, that looked to be impossible to overcome. But God through Samuel told David that he was the chosen one. And he trusted in God and he didn’t even put his armor on, and God gave him the courage to slay the evil Philistine champion using just a sling and a rock and he kicked ass like God’s people do. Can I get a hell yeah?! (Hell yeah!)

No, Dee, I said “twisted shit.”

But as Sarah brought up, a major problematic issue with holding David as a role model is the fact that he definitely used his kingly powers to take advantage of Bathsheba and possibly raped her. Sarah didn’t even finish the story that David sent Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to the front line in the war where he got killed. And that’s after David first tried to hide the fact that he knocked her up by telling the guy to go be with his wife (read: have sex), so it would look like he was the father, and the guy said he wouldn’t because he couldn’t bear to go relax and enjoy life and his wife while the rest of the men are still at war. That’s some twisted shit.

Unlike Sarah’s experience with her church’s stance on this tale, it was made clear to me by my youth pastor and other Christian authority figures in my life that David’s actions were obviously reprehensible, and they didn’t say anything about it being Bathsheba’s fault (though I suspect that followed the also problematic idea of women being too weak to be held responsible). The reason David should be called a man after God’s own heart despite his horrible sin was that he accepted the consequences of his actions, that being God’s punishment of losing the baby he conceived with Bathsheba, and he asked God for forgiveness and repented. That made David a good man.

That’s a whole lot of awful to unpack.

This idea that David was a sinner, yet still a man after God’s own heart, was used to show that even the “best” of us is prone to make mistakes. We are all evil sinners, deserving of hell, and this is proof of that. Not only are we all terrible people who deserve to die, but there’s also the possibility that we will sin, maybe even as bad as David did or worse, and because God will still love us and since we’ve dedicated our lives to Him, we might have to accept some consequences for our actions, but it will all be okay and we’ll still be good with God.

I mean, none of us is perfect, and we all make mistakes, like keeping the extra change the lady gave you at the movie theater, or lying to someone when it seemed more convenient, or getting angry at your spouse over something stupid one time and raising your voice. Doing these things isn’t cool, but stuff happens and we learn from it and try to be better the next time. Using these things to call someone an evil sinner when this is just part of human nature isn’t going to do anything but make them depressed, paranoid and probably turn them away from Christianity and the Church. On the other hand, if you rape someone or murder someone or hit someone with your car and drive away or commit domestic violence, it’s not okay to just ask God for forgiveness and assume that you’re good. The thing that many Christians don’t get is that there’s a vast difference between the things I mentioned in the former group and the ones in the latter group.

The other thing is, rethinking the David narrative reminds me so much of the way leaders throughout history and still today use God or the will of God to excuse the horrific things they do. And defenders of the leader will use this, saying we need to forgive those people because they’re sinners like all of us and they made a mistake and they’re really trying to follow God’s will, but there’s so much pressure on them and we need to give them grace.

The Philistines. Their only crime was trying to walk like an Egyptian. If there are any actual Egyptians reading this, I’m sorry.

I have to question why Christians view David as a hero. The big reason the Israelites wanted David to be king over Saul was that David killed 10 times as many Philistines as Saul did. Before that, his big claim to fame, his biggest hit, so to speak was knocking out Goliath by hitting him with a rock and cutting the guy’s head off with his own sword.

So, David was a war hero, another lofty ideal, possibly the loftiest, we hold in the U.S. Being a veteran in the U.S. almost makes one above reproach. And while the Philistines may have been just as oppressive a force as the Israelites appear to be at this point in history, the Israelites basically committed genocide in wiping them out.

So, it was David, the conquering warrior king, supposedly anointed by God, who committed the “trifling” sin of possibly raping another man’s wife and then having the guy killed, but it was okay because he suffered the consequence of God’s wrath because their baby died as punishment.

And this is the man after God’s own heart?

Like, uh, Jesus?

The possibly heretical question I have to ask now is, if David was the man after God’s own heart, then why wasn’t Jesus anything like him, in fact the complete opposite, aside from possibly sharing the same genes (depending on what you believe about Mary’s virgin birth).

The Jews during the time of Jesus were looking for a savior who would come back riding on a white horse and overthrow the Romans and set the Jews at the top of the world again, restoring them as God’s chosen people.

Someone kind of like King David?

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/new-tarantino-movie/n32896/

Someone kind of like Djesus Uncrossed? (which I was going to write about before everyone else did, thanks guys ) A Messiah returning on a white horse to slay all the evil Romans. And all the Jihadist terrorists, and gays, and baby killers, and liberals. But I digress.

Instead they got this guy who talked about taking care of the poor, wouldn’t even look at a woman lustfully, let alone have sex with her, let alone rape her, wouldn’t seek revenge on his enemies, said stop fussing about all those crazy laws we wrote like a thousand years ago and made known that the message of love and salvation was no longer open to only Jews, but to the entire world. The audacity!

I’m thinking they probably thought God must have made a mistake if this is the guy God wanted them to follow.

Which makes me think that, perhaps, David wasn’t even that great after all. I mean, a guy who has an admittedly mystical origin, being God’s chosen as spoken by a renowned prophet, killing the enemy’s champion warrior by himself, turning the tide of that war, proving himself a better man than the previous king before ascending to the throne himself,  made a pretty good name for himself. But then his great accomplishment is wiping out a civilization, despite the “hiccup” with that woman one time, but their other son became the next king, so obviously, God must have blessed him.

Crazy guy, that Constantine.

But that’s basically the story of Constantine too. Constantine, the emperor who made popular the symbol of the cross Jesus was crucified on (the cross was originally representative of a sword, look it up), was enamored with the idea of a religion where you could go to Heaven regardless of your actions (Paul said salvation was based on faith, not works, remember), rewrote the religion so we now aren’t totally sure what the original scriptures said, and used the name of God to justify killing lots of Muslims. Yeah, that guy.

What if David, instead of being the man after God’s own heart hero we should exemplify was actually just using God to excuse all the evil he actually did? He wiped out the Philistines, who by the way are treated horribly by whomever wrote those books of the Bible regardless of what the Philistines were actually like, who knows? He ascended to the throne, continued to conquer, defamed their enemies, and called it God’s will when they won. The Israelites proclaimed themselves God’s people, because if they weren’t they’d probably be dead, and if they were dead, they obviously weren’t God’s people. David took advantage of a man’s wife, possibly raped her, got her pregnant and was so contrite. Their baby died, as “punishment”, though probably more babies died than survived back then, so maybe it was just one of the ones who died. But he said God forgave him after he accepted the consequences. Maybe King David was just a fake, like Constantine a thousand years earlier, a man who was in control and rewrote history to make himself sound like the greatest man who ever lived, who in spite of his sin was able to overcome adversity to be a great leader, even despite his mistakes.

Regardless, Jesus said there is a better way, and that way is the one Christians claim to follow. So, yeah, Christians, let’s get to followin’.

Anyway, that’s my blasphemy for the week.

Speaking of blasphemy … Jesus made a point of hanging out with those 12 guys more than anyone else, could he have been gay?

Never fear

The other day, a Christian band I follow on Facebook, and I don’t know why I still do because I’m not really a huge fan of their music, wrote as its status, “Finish this sentence: I am afraid of ___________.” Naturally, I was humored by this and I wanted to respond by writing the name of the band. I was curious what other people wrote, and the first entry said “Disobeying God.”

I’ve spent a lot of time in Christian culture, so I know what this means.

A lot of non-religious people who grew up in Christian culture take a kind of self-deprecating approach and will say they fear God will zap their ass with lightning or jokingly say, “I’m going to hell for that.” I think this is generally funny and comes from a place of security in their belief or lack thereof in religion, so I think that’s cool.

But when an evangelical Christian expresses fear of anything to do with God, they really mean it. In talking about (dis)obedience, most evangelicals hold the belief that God has some special purpose for their lives, something they may be aware of or are still searching for. So to obey means to “follow the will of God”, which is to fulfill that calling, and disobedience would naturally mean doing the opposite of that.

The problem is, it’s fairly impossible to know what God’s will for their lives is. There’s nothing written down anywhere that they could point to and say it’s what God wants them to do. Oh, there are general things that are the worst of evils, like not tithing the right amount (the question of what is the right amount is another issue altogether) or being gay. God’s will according to evangelical circles is just an ambiguous life direction that’s kind of undefinable.

These people truly believe there is something God wants them to do in life. So, they spend a lot of their life trying to identify that if they don’t know what it is, and then trying to go about doing that thing if they happen to figure it out.

The upsetting part is, if things don’t work out the way they’re hoping, they start to think, “maybe God’s upset with me because I’m outside of His will” or sometimes, they see adversity as an obstacle in the way of completing their life’s purpose. It’s all very difficult to figure out and even harder to explain.

But to fear that when things aren’t going your way, that means God is upset with you and punishing you, especially when you don’t know what you’re doing in the first place, is a maddening experience (and I don’t mean like videogame football). Not only will it drive you insane, but it’s also very frightening, because you may worry that if God gets too upset with you, He’ll tear you asunder and send you to hell or have you get swallowed by a giant whale like Jonah.

Life is difficult enough trying to live up to the expectations of your boss and your family and your parents and paying bills and just trying to survive for so many people. The spectre of a God who will be disappointed if you don’t accomplish so many minute details in life or do the wrong thing at the wrong time or don’t do whatever it is that you’re supposed to discover that you’re supposed to do is just so much weight upon a life that is already weighed down by so much.

And the problem of fear of disobedience doesn’t just stop with the believer. It carries into their relationships with their family, friends and the rest of the world. Many parents who are disappointed with their own lives will project that same disappointment onto their children by holding them to ridiculously high standards and showing disapproval when they fail to live up to them. If a person feels like he or she is a disappointment to God, then they’ll project that onto the people around them. Not to mention that most evangelicals believe they’re supposed to convert others to their religion. You know those religious nuts that you hear go on and on about preventing “perverse” sexuality and think the nation is going to hell or whatever? You better believe they are worried about God being disappointed in them and the entire world.

It’s no wonder that in a country where a person’s image is so important that people, especially deeply religious people, will go to such great lengths to make themselves appear to be perfect and judge the rest of their world by their own standard they don’t even live up to.

And such a culture is rife for manipulation. It’s easy to use fear tactics to control a group of people. You can get a lot of people to do what you want them to do or believe what you want them to believe by saying God will be disappointed in them if they do otherwise.

In ancient times, religious people tried to explain evil and tragedy by pontificating on the supernatural. It was almost superstitious. But if you don’t have a great knowledge of the world, then how else do you explain a great flood or an earthquake, when you are aware it’s not the natural order of things. It’s easy to say, God must have done it, and those people must have done something to deserve it. Thinking that doesn’t make it true. But I could see how such thinking could cultivate a fear of God.

I can also see how it could easily be used to rationalize committing atrocities, like genocide. If one group of people doesn’t like another group of people, the first group can adopt the position that God is on their side and the other side and everything they do must be evil. And if you win, then it must have been God’s will.

But in a more educated and rational time, like the present, I don’t think religion should serve that purpose anymore. If there is a God who created the world and everything in it, then I don’t think it should be something to fear. I mean, if God orders the universe and makes it good, then what is there to be afraid of? I know there are a lot of theological questions to go with that that I don’t know the answer to, but I think that view of God would be much healthier.

I think a healthy fear of karma or something similar might be a positive thing. I think it might be natural to fear a life of mediocrity. Fear can be a good motivator if it leads to treating others well. But to be afraid of a vengeful God watching your every move who is ready to zap you when you step out of line, like a dog with a shock collar inside an invisible fence, I don’t think that helps anyone.

I’m writing this because I know what it’s like to be an evangelical Christian living with this view of life. I think I’ve managed to escape it, though I still find myself falling into this line of thinking from time to time. It’s freeing most of the time, but when I find myself thinking this way, it’s a difficult time.

If you’re going to believe in God, let it be a positive force that helps you work for the good of the world and the people in your life. But to spend a life worrying about “disobeying God” is scary, sad and even tragic.