Yesterday--A Belated Review of the Film

 Full of spoilers, but you've already seen the movie, haven't you?

https://youtu.be/0ONU_H0EjIg?si=bHoc2FBtFEY8fAIe

Beauty Is Our Duty

 

Today’s gospel reading:

"You are the salt of the earth.
But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?
It is no longer good for anything
but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
You are the light of the world.
A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.
Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket;
it is set on a lampstand,
where it gives light to all in the house.
Just so, your light must shine before others,
that they may see your good deeds
and glorify your heavenly Father."

This is a critical passage in the Sermon on the Mount, following immediately after the Beatitudes, in which Jesus identifies his flock, the good people of the earth. It is, therefore, the very core of the Christian message.

No sermon I have ever heard gets it right.

What does it mean to be the salt of the earth? What good deeds cause your light to shine?

Not moral deeds, like helping old ladies cross the street, or volunteering at a soup kitchen. You might think so. Everybody seems to think so. But this interpretation is not tenable. For in the same sermon, a few verses on, Jesus says 

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. ... But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Matthew 6: 1-4.

Now, obviously, God is not going to contradict himself. The deeds he is speaking of doing in full view of as many as possible, letting your light shine like a city on a hill, are obviously not these deeds of righteousness. For all that it is good to do what is morally good, this is not what he is speaking of here.

What else counts as a deed?

Simple hard work? Hard manual labour? This does seem to be the meaning some take from this. But most jobs do not seem to shed light over the world, or give it more flavour. And Martha was told that Mary, in not pitching in with the housework, had chosen the better part.

What is it that gives savour to the world? What introduces taste to the world? What makes the drabness of the world seem brighter?

The obvious answer is beauty. Beauty brings grace, light, and savour to our lives.

Which is to say, Christians are commanded to produce art. By these fruits you will know them.

It is what we can do, as individuals, to genuinely improve the world. By having an attractive front garden, we are giving joy to every passerby. By painting flowers on the wall of the laundromat we operate; by singing in the choir; by composing rhymes; and, ideally, by letting our light shine as far as possible, by doing it in as public a way as we can. Unlike deeds of charity, best done in secret, in the case of art, exposing the work of beauty to as many people as we can increases the value of the deed.

Jesus is also telling us we have it in us to be artists, if we are God’s people, those described by the Beatitudes. It is significant that Jesus says “you are salt,” not, “you can be salt,” or “you should strive to be salt.” Necessarily, if you are one of God’s chosen, you have been given this gift, the ability to create beauty. 

It is your duty now to use the talents you have been given. See the parable of the talents, Matthew 25:14-30.

You should also cloth the naked, feed the hungry, and visit those in prison. This is also commanded. But this is not enough to justify our existence.  “The poor you will have always with you.”

The Rage in Our Hearts

 

Asmodeus, the Demon of Wrath

I had been asked to review two short story manuscripts recently. Both had the same odd and disturbing flaw: they had the main character slaughter an animal, gratuitously, and in detail, early in the story. 

This did nothing to further the plot. Either incident could have been removed without affecting it; in fact, they distracted from it. 

If it was meant to establish character, it was bad practice: it alienated the reader from the protagonist. If the reader does not identify with the main character, they are no longer interested in what happens to them, and tune out. Even if you want to tell a sympathetic story of a killer, you start by showing them being nice to a puppy.

And what an odd thing for two random stories to have in common.

I suspect this shows what lurks in the hearts of men currently. When you compose a story, you start by letting your imagination run free. When these two authors did so, this is almost the first thing that came up.

Pent up male rage? That sounds plausible on its face, given how men are repressed currently. Both authors were young men. 

But rage does not work that way. It does not get stronger if not expressed. That’s Freud; Freud has been disproven. If you repress an emotion, it goes away. If you express it, it grows. Over time, it can become a settled vice—or virtue. 

Once it becomes a vice, it becomes part of our programming. When we let our minds go, it will come out, unbidden. Even, eventually, against our interest. It begins to seem to have a will of its own, which is why vices are traditionally imagined as demons. 

This is why, to be a good writer, you need to have nothing to hide; you need to be a fundamentally decent person. Artists are, in my personal experience, always naive innocents in person.

Yes, there are all those stories about bohemian types being libertines. I suspect this is to discredit the enterprise.  And often the writer or artist will play along with it, for cover. Jim Morrison was supposed to be the ultimate womanizer, for example. And yet—no paternity suits. I go with W.B. Yeats, who said you can either live the life of a poet, or be a poet, but you cannot do both. 

I think our society as a whole these days is nursing the demon of anger. It is behind all these claims of victimization and oppression. It is also nursing the demons of lust and pride. There are even parades.

The gravest sin any more is pointing out someone else’s sin.

The next worst sin is not sinning yourself.

And this may explain why the arts are moribund.

Pandemonium in the Magic Kingdom

 

Why did Disney commit suicide by going woke instead of tending to its core business of entertainment? It is an abiding mystery. Why did the BBC series “Call the Midwife” go woke? For that matter, why did Anheuser-Busch seem to deliberately alienate its core customer base, with its Dylan Mulvaney sponsorship?

The conventional and natural answer is that these corporate bodies were taken over by some educated elite which had lost touch with the general public; who were trapped in an information silo, and had no idea everyone did not agree with them.

No doubt that is a partial explanation; thanks to media and internet censorship. But it does not seem to be enough to account for it. After all, their core business was still to entertain, or sell beer; there should have been no reason to get involved in politics. As soon as you do, after all you are sure to alienate somebody. Even without opposing voices, the causes they champion are in defiance of reason or common sense. And in principle, even with censorship, the internet should have been making it easier for creatives to poll or solicit the views of the general public: improved communication. Now ordinary people can run their own podcasts or blogs. Censorship of the internet is a rearguard action. 

The Disney and Bud Light crew must at a minimum have been trying to avoid listening to the public, even though it was their job to do so. They had their fingers in their ears. Why?

Guilt. One wants to block out opposing views when one anticipates criticism, and knows it is deserved. Ultimately, guilt over jettisoning “conventional morality,” and most especially, over endorsing abortion. And so, fearing condemnation, the creative elites have been avoiding listening.

But there is another layer to this. Creativity works by inspiration. Inspiration is not something you can turn on and off. It comes from God, or if not from God, from some ambient spirit. In other words, a demon. If you are concealing guilt, and refusing to repent, you have cut off that conduit to God. You may her nothing, and be obliged to recycle old material just substituting some simple gimmick. Or you may instead begin to hear from ambient spirits; and rejoice in no longer being barren of ideas. But they do not have your or humanity’s interests at heart. “As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods, They kill us for their sport.”

Guilt and doubt has turned off the taps for the creative class; so art in general has been moribund for decades. The Disney creatives are unable any longer to come up with compelling stories; the comedy writers can no longer come up with punch lines; the ad copywriters can no longer come up with interesting angles. Instead, coming into this void, the signals they are picking up are malicious, vices, seeking ultimately to destroy their careers, their employers, and the culture.

Creative types are not adept at questioning or testing the spirits. You do not argue with inspiration. And so they are easily possessed.

All hell is breaking loose.