I had an epiphany yesterday and I credit Dr. Sexson and his Bible Lit class. I found a better film to represent my "distractions/needful thing" argument better than "Music and Lyrics" at the same time. And it comes from the world of comics. Does it get any better than that?
The movie I am referring to is Spider-Man 2. Yes the sequel. I did not show this in class because a) I did not think of it until now b) I don't think we had 2 hours to watch the entire film. But many of you have seen this movie. It came out when most of us were still in High School. And it ranks somewhere on the top 25 highest grossing worldwide movies of all time, so the rest of this blog is based on the assumption that you have seen Spider-Man 2 (if not, you should!)
Tobey Maguire plays Peter Parker/Spider-Man and his life is full of distractions. He lost his job; his aunt can't make her house payments; his best friend feels betrayed; and the girl he loves is gonna marry some other guy. Oh yeah... and he has to save people as Spider-Man from burning buildings and bank robbers. He is overwhelmed with these responsibilities and he losses his powers. He goes back to being regular old Peter Parker. But then Doctor Octopus kidnaps his girlfriend.
It's a great movie and entertaining throughout, and if you watch it, you can see how it fits into the distractions vs. needful thing argument. Plus there is a wonderful scene where Peter sits down with Octavius (Doctor Octopus) and his wife for lunch and he remembers when they met in college, he was the big science student and she was an English major reading him T.S. Eliot! (Definitely one of my favorite parts of the film.) But now I must address the epiphany I had about this movie (and we have to finish the plot)
When Mary Jane (The love interest played by Kirsten Dunst) is taken by the villain, Spidey gets his powers back, and saves the day. Now ever since I first saw the movie in 2004 I thought that this was because of his love for her and, being the hopeless romantic that I am, I assumed that she was his needful thing. The epiphany I had is that she is NOT the needful thing. She is a focal point that allows him to concentrate on what is truly needful and eliminate the distractions. When her life is in danger, all of the distractions go away and he realizes that he needs to be Spider-Man; not just to save her life, but for everyone else who depends on him (like the people on the train.)
If he does not act, people will die and his life has no meaning.
It does not really matter if Mary Jane or Joe Average need to be saved, he will step up and do it because of the guilt he feels over not saving his Uncle Ben. In this film and in many of the comic stories he wants to give up being Spider-Man, but he can not. He needs to be Spider-Man for himself even more so than for others.
I was so glad that Dr. Sexson called me on being a slave to the needful thing. I focused so much on freedom from distractions that I did not bring up how you can, and probably will, become a "slave" to your needful thing.
My experience is with X-Men. I read Uncanny X-Men #331 last week. Then 332. The story was continued in Wolverine #101, so I pulled that out and read it. Went back to Uncanny #333, and I will read 334 after that and so on. I did not know how to put a positive spin on the word slave, but I guess I should just accept it. It is just a word. If you wanted to you could say "obsessively devoted." (but that just sounds worse.)
I started reading X-Men from the beginning last fall. That means the first issue written by Stan Lee back in 1963. Since August 2009, I have read well over 700 X-Men back issues (meaning not the current ones being published during that time which could be over 100 comics)
Now we get to the tricky part : what happens once I've read them all? There are only 530ish of Uncanny X-Men issues, 240 X-Men, 200 X-Factor, 280 some Wolverine. I'll probably catch up to what Marvel is currently publishing within the next year, so then what can I do? I think I'll read them again! Or go through Spider-Man. Avengers. Something...
I've learned that most people, myself included, are distracted by distractions. In the film City Slickers, Billy Crystal needs to find the one thing that matters because everything else pales in comparison to that one thing. The difference between a strong or a weak reading of The Bible is the number of distractions you allow to come between you and the text. However, this applies to everyday life as well. What matters most is finding that one thing.
I will now illustrate this point by using an example from everyday grocery shopping. I have a shopping list of only one thing: milk. I walk in the doors of Wal*Mart (for illustration purposes; and they have great prices on milk!) and I notice that there is a sale on Christmas Cookies, so I pick up a box and continue on my way. Then I see a doughnut in the bakery that I have to have since I did not eat breakfast. I finally get back to the dairy section and pick up a gallon of milk, but the aisles are packed with Christmas shoppers so I detour around them and head over towards electronics and see a sweet deal on TV's and Blu-ray players! You know where this is going. I entered the store with one thing on my mind and left with several items because I was distracted from my true calling: a simple gallon of milk. This has happened on occasion to even the most determined of us. It is important to remained focused on the task at hand; after all, if you have lived through the above example you know you just forfeited hundreds of dollars on impulse shopping.
When you stay focused you can get it done faster and more effeciently. But is life nothing more than a race to the finish? Northrop Frye posed this question when he asked “How do I live a more abundant life?” In Luke 10:38 we see a rather unusual occurrence: Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, “Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me.” And Jesus answered and said unto her, “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” Is that The Bible's way of saying “stop and smell the roses?” Jesus tells Martha that she is troubled with too many things while her sister Mary has found the one thing that matters to her. Sure the dishes need to be done, but are they really more important than spending an evening with Jesus? This story appears to reward the slacker, much like the story of the prodigal son. In it the son who left home to party and drink and chase women (I would assume) returns home and is given a feast, while the son who stayed home and tended the farm and the animals was never treated in such a fashion. He asked his father why they would celebrate so for his brothers return. His father replied, “He once was lost and now is found.” (though not in those words.) These parables are an attack on the readers expectations. I learned in nursery rhymes that if you do not help old mother hen bake the cake you can not have any when its done. Does not every church in America say “God helps those who help themselves?” So why does The New Testament tolerate, maybe even encourage, the behavior of Mary and the prodigal son?
I for one spent hours upon hours “doing the dishes,” this semester which is my way of saying I was overloaded with homework. Let that be a lesson to anyone wanting to take 19 or more credits in one semester, use the summer session! Of course, being a business major and specifically in the accounting program, I had: more fake tax work than should be legal in most countries; loads of busywork from audit and cost courses; a few group projects more than necessary in financial statement analysis; and the most pointless assignments imaginable in the college of business capstone course. Dr. Sexson pointed out in the first few weeks of class that we all have the same number of hours in a day, so it simply becomes a matter of prioritizing and unfortunately I prioritized many of these burdensome things over my complete reading of the Bible. I did however, read the entire Book of Revelation. (Perhaps my one needful thing in this class that I knew before going into it.) Personally I just had to read this portion of The New Testament and come to the class lecture to hear what Dr. Sexson had to say. We could have easily spent everyday of this course talking about this one book, but again, we must prioritize and spread the wealth. These final pages did provide me plenty of ideas to write about in my blog posts; I only wish now that I would have given the other books the same attention that I did Revelation. But I can not dwell on the past and I will not worry about the future. After all the concept of time is only an illusion. The only moment we have is right now. What I learned in this class, from Dr. Sexson and my father, is that the future is inconsequential to what we do now. I have an infinite number of possibilities at every moment I have. Perhaps The New Testament is not rewarding lazy behavior so much as it is encouraging us to enjoy life every once and a while. Remember The Shinning? “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” If you want to avoid going crazy you have to step away from the type writer and find something fun to do. Or take you hands out of the sink, stop doing the dishes, and enjoy the company of your guests.
Frye asked how to live a more abundant life and Crystal responded with the needful thing. But what is it? The phrase “to each his own,” comes to mind. My personal necessity is entertainment. I do not view it as an escape; more like a vivid journey your mind takes while your body remains where it is. In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Haroun is repeatedly asked what the point is of stories that “aren't even true?” What these characters are getting at is that fiction only distracts you from what is important. I argue that the only distracting fiction are the bad ones. How can you tell if it's bad? Dr. Sexson had a quote last year (I apologize for not knowing who said it) that “If you feel depressed after a piece of literature, then there is either something wrong with it or more likely you.” I might have to disagree and say that if you do not not feel anything after reading a piece of literature, then there is something wrong with it or you. Storytelling conveys a plot and characters and settings to the readers, but it has to elicit an emotion to be any good.
After this class, I learned to find my needful thing and to spend everyday enjoying it. For me, I need to be a part of the give and take of storytelling. Whether its William Shakespeare's Tempest or Scott Lobdell's X-Men. The greatest Greek tragedy or the worst Hollywood horror film. A feel good party song or the saddest break-up ballad. Or indulging my own award winning writing skills.
“Each days a gift and not a given right” -Chad Kroeger
Today's individual presentations were amazing. But I want to pay attention to two very special ones that really touched me. Ben's is the first I need to talk about. I have not seen any of those movies. But The Silence sounds like one I might have to go out and rent. Lust. Intellect. Love? That has been going through my head for years. It can be very confusing. Then there was Nate's presentation. This reminded me of an email I got from a friend in high school. (I think it was a forward, like the kind you send to eight friends and then you win the lottery, but it actually said something) The email told the story of a father who wished his daughter "enough" when she was boarding a plan. A man asked him why he wished her enough and not all the best. He said: I wish her enough bad days so that she truly understands and appreciates the good ones. I wish her enough money to eat but not so much as to be wasteful. I wish her heartbreak so that she will not take someone special for granted. (and a few more that were along the same lines but I can't remember an email from 2001) And this reappeared to me in Nate's words: that without one we don't know the other.
PS: Tuesday night I was watching Craig Ferguson and his guest was Salman Rushdie, who I remembered as the writer of Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Among other things, he spoke of his newest book Luka and the Fire of Life. Might be a good one since I did enjoy Haroun.
Yesterday when we brought up dreams again it reminded me of a dream I had last week. I do not remember many of the details, but I still want to post what I can. I was at some kind of court hearing. I believe it was to decide the interpretation of the Bible and how it would guide the laws from here on out. Sounds fairly normal since many of our western laws (such as don't kill anybody) come from the Bible (don't kill anybody.) However, this was some kind of outer space alien hearing. (I apologize for going here again, but the closest thing I can compare it to is Star Wars, like in the Phantom Menace when all of the aliens in the senate are arguing... it was like that.) NOBODY in the "court room" was human. But here we were, trying to determine which of the Bible's rules we were going to follow and spread across the galaxy. (I think it was the Bible because one of the aliens had my little green copy of The New Testament that I bring to class.) Unfortunately, some of the pages had been ripped out of it. This really upset the leader of the gathering. He demanded to know who tore out pages of the sacred text. Of course, it was the same person who interrupted the proceedings the entire time by making frequent outbursts of nonsense and pointless sounds. Everyone was upset at this person. So who did the leader punish? The guy sitting next to the obnoxious asshole!
This man accepted his punishment (which was pretty severe, something like cutting his hands off or being put to death on the spot.) I was confused and even angry that he was going to be punished and the actual culprit was walking away with out even a slap on the wrist! He was the one who tore up the Bible, why don't we cut his hands off and leave the other guy alone? I asked the leader and he said, "Because he stood by and did nothing to stop him."
Talk about unexpected. Somebody being punished not because he tore up the sacred text or because he interrupted a crucial conference, but because he failed to stop another from doing so when he had the chance. (Kinda like a Spider-Man guilt trip... oh no, Uncle Ben... sorry, again.)
I woke up soon afterwards and every time I think of the dream it reminds me more and more of the parables that just attack your expectations and make you question... well... right and wrong.
George Lucas has absolutely nothing to do with the Bible beyond the fact that it was one of many inspirations for his most noted series of films and arguably the most popular film franchise of all time, the Star Wars Saga. In all honesty, can you think of someone who hasn't heard of Star Wars? But back to my point, I watch the Star Wars movies all the time and try not to question "where did Lucas borrow that from?" because it ruins the movie experience. However, while I am just thinking about the movies, (and the Bible in general since this class began), I think I finally made some connections.
As I said in my earlier post about pop culture drawing on the Bible, Anakin Skywalker is born to a virgin mother. Okay... and? Well, isn't that the start of the New Testament? Then I began thinking of the original trilogy (which stars Harrison Ford and Mark Hammil) and I made a comparison: The original trilogy (from the seventies and eighties) is to the Old Testament as the new trilogy (the films released since 1999) is to the New Testament. No, its not just "New" and "Old," I think the movies parallel the Testaments in certain themes of similarities.
For example, in the Old Testament God visits Adam and Eve when he wants to, has a chat with Abraham, commands Noah, and speaks with Moses (even lets Moses see his backside). God has debates and discussions with people (even Job to some extent) while in the New Testament, I do not think that God directly interacts with anyone. So here comes the comparison, when old Ben Kenobi dies in the first Star Wars film, he directs Luke Skywalker throughout the remainder of the story on his quest to defeat the Galactic Empire. Luke's connection to the force allows him to directly interact with Obi-Wan. In contrast, no one in the new trilogy ever speaks to a "higher being." (Except possibly Yoda, who claims that Qui-Gon can communicate from beyond the grave at the end of the last film, but we do not see this, Yoda only tells us) Much like the New Testament, there is plenty of faith in "the force" but no communication with it.
Then there's the killings. In the original trilogy, the forces of good obliterate not one but two Death Stars. Each the size of a small moon and home to millions of Imperials (the bad guys). Sure they are not as wholesome as you, but do you have to kill them? It looks very similar to the flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah where God, the force of good, destroys everyone even the innocent few to destroy the majority of them that are wicked. Much like Satan then (who I believe is responsible for ten deaths in total of the Bible), Darth Vader kills far less people than Luke Skywalker and the Rebels. (Okay, we all know that Princess Leia's home planet of Alderaan is obliterated by the first Death Star, but that was Grand Moff Tarkin, not Darth Vader, he only made Leia watch it happen.) Vader kills the guy on Leia's ship at the start of the movie, then Obi-Wan, and Biggs later, maybe another pilot or two. But that puts his total somewhere between 3 and 5 for the entire first movie. Then he chokes the guy in The Empire Strikes Back but not a lot of bloodshed after that (correct me if I'm wrong) and he kills the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. His complete body count in the original trilogy has to be less than ten! So Luke kills millions the first time around, Wedge and Lando do it the second time and Darth Vader manages only a small handful of murders. (This confuses me both in Star Wars and The Old Testament.) I guess in the new trilogy, you can argue that the "good guys" go off killing the "bad guys" because they are separatists much like in the New Testament when the Christians label the Jews as the enemy for no other reason than they are different.
Finally, does the Battle of the Heroes on Mustafar seem apocalyptic to anyone else? We have the ultimate good (Obi-Wan Kenobi) battling to vanquish the ultimate evil (Darth Vader) with rivers of lava and fire pouring down from a blackened sky. I hadn't thought of it before, but that sounds a little like the end of the world.
I would also like to point out that the phrase "In my beginning is my end, and my end is my beginning" is referring directly to Star Wars, even if it was written decades before the first films release. I say this because Lucas released the very first film as Episode 4, did 5 and 6, then made 1, 2, and 3 so that the beginning is the end and the end is the beginning.
While I was reading Revelation, I began taking notes because certain themes were repeated over and over again. These repetitions interested me because they were so prevalent in the text and because I did not know that they were.
1) The most prevalent theme I found in the Book of Revelation was that of numbers. Whether its four horseman, seven seals, three gates of the east, three gates of the north, three gates of the south, three gates of the west, seven churches, 666, twelve stars, or "a hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel;" this part of The Bible is full of numbers.
2) the second most prevalent theme interests me the most, so I'm going to hold off on it for just a minute.
3) Third is all the sounds that go off. There are, (what, trumpets?) sounding every time something bad is about to happen. I'm sorry I did not make better notes here and pull out actual examples, but when I read it, I got a very real impression that there was noise going on throughout the book. Thunder, voices, etc.
4) I also found books very important and repeated ( Revelation 5, 22, and end of Revelation 20)as well as lightness/darkness (It was just mentioned so much that I could not isolate any one or two passages in detail.)
2)Here is the second most prevalent theme, but the most interesting to me: animals. Not just referring to Jesus as a lamb either, like real intense descriptions of animals or people with characteristics of animals. Obviously I took notice of the horses but there are plenty of others to choose from.
Revelation 4:7 - And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him,
Revelation 9 discusses scorpions, locusts, and lions (and horses and humans again)
Revelation 13:2 -And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. (okay, so dragons are not REAL animals any more than serpents can talk to people)
Right, so: numbers, animals, sounds, light (and dark), and books. I found these themes in abundance in the last book of The Bible. What did you find?
Well, I read the Book of Revelation and found that, like many books of the Bible, what is in the Bible and what is common knowledge about the Bible are two very different things. For example, the Four Horsemen:
Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death This interpretation replaces Conquest with Pestilence. This interpretation is generally espoused by those unfamiliar with the actual Biblical texts from which the Horsemen are derived. And, though apocryphal, it is this interpretation which is most commonly used as the inspiration for popular culture's uses of the Four Horsemen concept. The origins of the name "Pestilence" as a distinct Horsemen are unclear, though certain Bible versions, such as the Jerusalem Bible do refer to Death--rather than Conquest--as "Plague" (a synonym for Pestilence).
So let's start at the beginning of the four. We have:
The White Horse, wearing one crown (as apposed to several by the White Horse Rider of Revelation 19) and is bent on conquest and carries a bow, but no quiver. (if you read the full article, you can see some scholars view this rider as the Antichrist, while some call it simply conquest, and still others claim it is associated with civil war.)
The Red Horse, referred to as war, the rider carries a fiery sword which represents death on the battlefield.
The Black Horse, famine, and carries a pair of scales to weigh the bread during the years of famine.
The Pale Horse, named Death in the text, carries no weapon but rides with Hell following close behind.
Just a note, The White Horsemen of Revelation 6 and Revelation 19 can be viewed as the same, or two different riders. The choice is yours, but to me they look like opposites rather than one and the same. Revelation 6 depicts the rider with a bow for a weapon and one crown, bent on conquest. Revelation 19 describes a rider with a sword wearing several crowns upon his head "and in righteousness he doth judge and make war." He is named the word of God. Faithful. True. The King of Kings. And Lord of Lords. (Therefore the horseman in verse 9 can be viewed as the Antichrist while the rider from verse 19 is Christ. They are opposites. Enemies.)
So like several others before me, I was deceived by popular culture before I went looking for the truth for myself. (And yes, I guess this confirms that my X-Men reference to the Bible is based more in common perceptions of the Bible than the actual text itself. But what isn't?!) Finally, if I were going to end the world, I would do it with pestilence, war, famine, and death instead of using two different kinds of war, but that's not how the Book of Revelation does it.
I got in an argument over the weekend with my father and my brother. Not a very spirited one but we each felt that we were right. No one out of the three of us has read the entire Bible, but we disagreed on the definition of an important word from the Bible that does not come out of everyday speech (except for my brother,) and that word is Apocalypse.
I believe it is "an unveiling to the masses, by the devine, of the world as it truly is; not how they perceive it to be."
My father says "it is the end of all things living on the Earth." (To me more like Armageddon or Judgement Day, But before Dr. Sexson elightened me, or unveiled to me the truth, I used Armageddon and Apocalypse interchangeably.)
Finally, my brother looked it up on his Ipod because he was tired of my father and I arguing and presented the option that it means "The final conflict in which the forces of good vanquish evil from the Earth."
The word comes from the prefix apo- (which means away, off, or apart) -calypso (to cover or conceal) Therefore apocalypse is the departure of the cover, or the unveiling. But the unveiling of what?
"I guess we're just gonna have to wait and see." -Marge Simpson, The Treehouse of Horror V
As I promised in an earlier post, I would like to point out the Bible references I have encountered in my favorite form of literature, comic books and then take a brief look at movies and television that share similar homages to The Bible.
This is not all of them (I do not think you could find them all!) This is a small few that I have found and remembered long enough to share.
Everyone knows Superman. Clark Kent. Or back home on Krypton, he was known as Kal El. But did you know that Kal El resembles Hebrew words that translate to "The Voice of God."
The X-Man Angel was dramatically re-envisioned as Archangel when the character became Death, The Fourth Horseman of The Apocalypse; which draws heavily on The Book Of Revelation.
The X-Men villain Exodus was the chosen disciple to lead mutantkind on a migration to the stars
And my favorite Bible mention in comics comes from Ghost Rider, (which deals more with Christian notions of Heaven and Hell than with the actual Bible being as the Ghost Rider is an angel that thought he was a demon...) This is not a reference so much as an observation made through the character Johnny Blaze (who is Ghost Rider.) After learning that he is an angel, Blaze says he has begun reading the Bible and noticed that God kills millions and millions of people, while Satan (The Devil, The Adversary, etc. ) has only killed 10, Job's seven sons and three daughters and only after he makes a bet with God. Blaze says "Which one should we really be afraid of?" Now, being that I have not read the entire Bible, I do not know if this is true; however, In as much as I have read and following our class discussions I am inclined to believe this body count distribution as stated above.
(Now I want to read more of the Bible just to see if Blaze is right!)
Comics not doing it for you? Well look no further than Anakin Skywalker's virgin mother and you have a direct Bible influence on one of the greatest film series of all time, The Star Wars Saga.
Even outside of Western Culture, I have seen Japanese anime that use Cain and Abel as the central protagonist and antagonist of the series Trinity Blood.
With all of that being said, there is no doubt that the Bible has had a significant influence on every form of media, from paintings and sculptures to literature and cinema.
(okay, so dragons are not REAL animals any more than serpents can talk to people)
