February 2006 Archives
iTunes is currently offering a free download of Dolly Parton's Oscar-nominated song "Travelin' Thru". It's not my favorite thing she's done--pretty well-worn territory lyrically--but significant because of its context in a movie about an MTF transsexual. Oddly enough, this is one of her more overtly religious songs, drawing a connection between the traditional born-again experience and the experience of claiming one's gender identity. Maybe a little cutesy, but very much in line with Dolly's history of using the language of her Baptist upbringing to talk about progressive Christian theology.
Questions I have many, answers but a few
But we're here to learn, the spirit burns to know the greater truth
We've all been crucified and they nailed Jesus to the tree
And when I'm born again, you're gonna see a change in meGod made me for a reason and nothing is in vain
Redemption comes in many shapes with many kinds of pain
Oh sweet Jesus if you're listening, keep me ever close to you
As I'm stumblin', tumblin', wonderin', as I'm travelin' thru
Celtic Christianity often makes reference to "thin places", a concept that has its home in a particular kind of thinking about God, as Marcus Borg explains:
This way of thinking sees God, "the More," as the encompassing Spirit in which everything is....In words attributed to Paul in the Book of Acts, God is "the one in whom we live and move and have our being." God is a nonmaterial layer of reality all around us, "right here" as well as "more than right here." This way of thinking thus affirms that there are minimally two layers or dimensions of reality, the visible world of our ordinary experience and God, the sacred Spirit.
"Thin places" are places where the fog is lifted and we see things as they really are. The universe is shown. Christmastime is thought to be one of those "thin places." It's a story about God becoming human, about word becoming flesh, about the division between different layers of existence being bridged. It's a time when "joy and wonder is in the air," blah blah blah.
Last week, I took my final oral exams. It was intense. I didn't know whether one is supposed to dress up for these things, so I went business casual--jacket and nice shirt but no tie. I moved away from Walla Walla in December, so I had to drive back for the exam. I borrowed my parents' car because it had a cassette player so I could listen to my new Dolly Parton audiobook on the way. I am sure I will write more about this, but Dolly Parton's autobiography My Life...and Other Unfinished Business is absolutely incredible. I laughed! I cried!
I arrived about 2 hours early, giving me enough time to buy a soy latte, print off a copy of the thesis, wrestle with the industrial strength electric stapler in the library, conclude that the stapler is very much broken, get the librarian to try to fix it, wrestle with it some more, nearly impaling myself with giant staples--at this point I was imagining myself being rushed to Walla Walla General Hospital and having to call my thesis committee to come gather around my hospital bed to facilitate my oral exams while a team of surgeons yanked stray staples out of my internal organs...happily, though, I was able to get the damn thing to sort of stay together in one slightly mangled document. 100 pages, 28,000 words, including notes.
Then I remembered that the committee would probably ask me about my methodology. The weird thing about studying religion is that it's a field of study, not a discipline. You can apply tons of different methologies to the field; sociology, political science, historiography, biography, anthropology, psychology, etc. I tend to favor a polymethodological approach, which allows me to bring together elements of everything. But the thing about polymethodological study is that you sort of have to have one methodology dominate, otherwise you can just ramble on a long time and not really make any arguments. Wendy Doniger calls this "polymethodoodling all the day", which is among my favorite stupid academic-study-of-religion jokes. Anyway, I had sort of opted to make "cultural studies/cultural criticism" my dominant methodology. But I realized that I didn't really know how to define cultural studies, so i quickly reviewed it---thanks, Wikipedia!
We met in Melissa's office. Melissa is my thesis advisor. Such a rad lady. Unfortunately she gets her furniture from thrift stores, and i ended up in an old easy chair with worn out springs. I sank really deep into it, low to the ground, which made the process kind of intimidating because it made it seem like all three members of the thesis committee were a foot taller than me.
But it turned out to be a really mellow experience. 45 minutes of Q&A went super fast. I was expecting to get grilled and to have to aggressively defend myself, but they mostly wanted to talk about their favorite parts of the thesis and have me elaborate on them a little. I fumbled my way through methodology questions and I even got to use that Hannah Arendt quote about storytelling my nice ex-boyfriend told me about. I passed "with distinction". I'm not sure what that means, exactly, Maybe it's just like the little gold star that Ms. Reisinger used to put on my multiplication tables back in third grade when I got a perfect score. Anyway, this means college is 100% done. Kind of a big deal, I guess.
Anyway, I want to publicly thank everyone who's helped me with this thesis. Everyone who let me bounce ideas off them and shared suggestions and insights, everyone who encouraged me and remained patient with me as this weird project became the center of my life and I became incapable of having a conversation about anything else. You know who you are. I love all y'all.
I am pleased that I will now have more time to regularly update this blog. I am also pleased that I will be moving to Anacortes at the beginning of March. 2006 = Major Life Changes!
Okay, first, please read this response to the controversy from the Progressive Muslim Union of North America (PMU):
As Muslim indignation at caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad spills over into outbursts of anger and violence, we find both sides of the conflict sadly lacking in ethical conduct.Many of the cartoons are deeply offensive, not so much because they portrayed Prophet Muhammad, but because they are hateful, slanderous, and inflammatory to the point of verging on racism, particularly the ones showing the Prophet with a bomb-turban, as the devil in disguise, or blindfolded and bristling with knives. These cartoons pander to the basest prejudices, defaming the Prophet’s character with gross stereotypes of Arab culture, equating the mistakes of his followers with his personage. The cartoonists had to know those images were going to be as provocative and insulting as Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” or Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” images. It is clear that they were meant not to open dialogue, as the editors who requisitioned them claim, but to provoke; it is hardly customary or productive to start a conversation by spitting in the face of the person you wish to talk to.
The actions of Prophet Muhammad’s followers, however, are no less an insult to him. They are completely out of keeping with the Prophet’s example and the teachings of the Qur’an. If one claims to love and follow the prophet, then one should do so, not go on a rampage he would have condemned, and whose rationale will be laid at his feet by those who are not familiar with his true character.
During his life, Prophet Muhammad was received with great love by many, but he also met with great resistance, as were most Prophets. He was insulted and cursed, at times physically assaulted, and yet, he did not return insult for insult, attack for attack. One such incidence occurred in Taif, where the citizens of the city set their children to throwing stones at him. Rather than seeking vengeance, Muhammad asked God to forgive the people of Taif, much as Christ asked God to forgive his tormentors, saying they did not know what they did.
This example is in keeping with the Qur’an, which advises Muslims to, “Keep to forgiveness and enjoin kindness, and turn away from the ignorant (Chapter 7, Verse 199) and which tells us "Invite all unto the way of thy Lord with wisdom and fair exhortation, and reason with them in the best of ways." (Chapter 16, Verse 125) Clearly, the groups of Muslims who are threatening violence against the cartoonists, who have burned and torn down embassies, who carry signs screaming “Death to those who insult Islam,” even those who boycotted Danish manufacturers and withdrawn ambassadors, have betrayed these injunctions, and abandoned the Prophet’s example.
The other principle that had been ignored by these would-be defenders of the Prophet is that Islam brooks no compulsion in religion, nor does it demand followers of other religions adhere to its religious sensibilities. “There shall be no compulsion in matters of faith” (Chapter 2, Verse 256) and “To you your way, to me mine,” (Chapter 109, verse 6) lay out Islam’s cardinal rules of tolerance and make it clear people who are not Muslim are not expected to follow Islamic religious rules. Even though many Muslims believe Islam prohibits portrayals of the Prophet, the Danish cartoonists aren’t bound by Islam’s rules. They can’t be blaspheming because they aren’t Muslims. (read the rest here. It's really good.)
A few further reflections:
1. The PMU is far too generous in comparing the cartoons to The Last Temptation of Christ, an internationally acclaimed piece of literature that became a thoughtful, nuanced film. None of these cartoons are likely to be recognized for their artistic merit; they have nothing particularly insightful or witty or interesting to say.
2. The sense I get is that people on all sides are being duped. The Danish Imams who traveled to the middle east looking to start a ruckus lied about what had been printed, claiming there were depictions of Muhammad as a pig and as a dog (both ritually unclean animals in Islam). And, of course, leaders in many Islamic countries already work to engender anti-Western sentiment as a means of controlling the populace.
3. Meanwhile, Condaleeza Rice is apparently trying to blame Syria and Iran for the rioting when in fact her pals the Saudis seem to have more to do with it (yes, just like Iraq and 9/11). This is brilliant. It's already pretty clear that the Republican party is working to manufacture and exaggerate more foreign "threats" in time for the midterm and 2008 elections. If you are able to frame the issue in terms of a threatened abstract liberal principle--"Islam vs. freedom of expression"--then you can foster Islamophobia among liberals, and get more of them to consent to your stupid "war on terror".
4. Actually, though, freedom of speech is not the main issue at play here. The oft-censored cartoonist Gary Trudeau weighs in:
Why has the U.S. news media (broadcast and print), almost universally refused to publish the cartoons?
I assume because they believe, correctly, it is unnecessarily inflammatory. It's legal to run them, but is it wise? The Danish editor who started all this actually recruited cartoonists to draw offensive cartoons (some of those he invited declined). And why did he do it? To demonstrate that in a Western liberal society he could. Well, we already knew that. Some victory for freedom of expression. An editor who deliberately sets out to provoke or hurt people because he's worried about "self-censorship" is not an editor I'd care to work for...Just because a society has almost unlimited freedom of expression doesn't mean we should ever stop thinking about its consequences in the real world.
As a member of the ACLU and Amnesty International, I'm pretty hardcore about free speech issues, and I'm wary of any admonition to "watch what you say," especially when the Bush administration has been using that line to preempt criticism of the war. On the other hand, I just watched Cry Freedom,(more on that later) which is partially about free-press struggles, and it made me think if you're going to go to the wall for free speech and free expression, it should be for something with a more substantive engagement with power, rather than seeking to be offensive just to prove your right to offend.
5. This parallels many of the domestic "culture war" battles. Example: It doesn't really matter at all whether NBC airs that episode of Will & Grace where Britney Spears plays the host of a Christian cooking show called "Cruci-fixins." Christian Right organizations like the American Family Association want evangelicals to believe it's important, because to achieve their policy goals, they have to get evangelicals to feel they're under attack. And rather than seeking to understand the larger issues of power at play, too many of us are quick to defend a really stupid, often racist TV show (W&G even stole the "Crucifixins" gag from Arrested Development), caricaturing its opponents, and thus playing right into the AFA's hands.
As Eli Sanders notes, the way to deal with religious fundamentalism is not to "stand in front of the mob and shout 'Fuck You!'" Instead, it might be better "not to give the demagogues so much easy ammunition in the first place, and also to remedy the situation that now provides them such a large group of alienated, angry people to prey upon."
My thesis is done, I turned it in on my 25th birthday, and after I have orals on Tuesday, college is done forever. Hooray! You'll see some version of the final project up here at some point. Here's a bit about AIDS activism and the degaying of U2.
In many ways, the AIDS epidemic in Africa is an ideal issue for RELEVANT. First, the fight against AIDS is a cause to which many prominent musicians and entertainers from the secular world have lent their public support. By signing on to this cause, RELEVANT is able to associate itself with these celebrities and capitalize on their aura of cool. Bono, lead singer of the hugely popular rock group U2, has been a prominent leader on this issue and has particularly sought the assistance of evangelicals to join the fight. Bono agreed to a interview so he could talk about the importance of debt relief and fighting AIDS, and was featured on the cover of the March/April 2004 issue. Bono’s image has since been used repeatedly to advertise subscriptions to the magazine.
Second, AIDS is an issue where there is broad consensus, at least on the abstract level, if not in terms of policy goals. Unlike war, abortion, tax cuts, universal health care, and homosexuality, everyone agrees about AIDS; it is very bad. RELEVANT is able to fully embrace the hip progressive position, because there is no opposition except apathy. No one is likely to write angry letters to RELEVANT saying “I think AIDS is good! Cancel my subscription!” Christian advertisers are not likely to be scandalized; Bono had already been a cover subject for Christianity Today in March 2003. It’s a safe issue for RELEVANT to take a firm stand on.
That safety also comes with an aura of edginess. Because AIDS was associated with gays and intravenous drug users, evangelicals were slow to respond to the epidemic, and sometimes outright hostile to victims of the disease. Taking up this issue as an important cause rewards young evangelicals with a sense of rebellion against old-fashioned, vindictive conservative Christian attitudes. At the same time, by focusing on foreign elements of the crisis rather than domestic public health, and focusing on relief rather than prevention, RELEVANT is able to talk about AIDS without talking about controversies such as condoms or needle exchanges. And while Bono’s primary goals involve pressuring political leaders to take action, RELEVANT largely shifts the focus to the work being done by private charities.
RELEVANT, of course, never mentions that Bono has been criticized by some NGOs and leftist activists for encouraging multinational corporations to see the AIDS crisis as an opportunity to sow the seeds for new markets in developing countries, expanding globalization and opening these countries up to exploitative economic “development”. It also never mentions that the Bush administration has been has been described by Bono himself as one of the biggest roadblocks in addressing the crisis. Indeed, readers are given the opposite impression, when Bono is quoted as saying in “I believe the president is sincere in his convictions to put America up front in a way that hasn’t been done before on these issues.” RELEVANT fails to note that this quote was seven months old at the date of printing, and that Bush had since backed down on some of his promises. RELEVANT certainly never mentions Bono’s history of support for reproductive choice and LGBT rights.
To be fair, Bono hasn’t mentioned his feelings on these issues for a while either. 
U2 has made a calculated artistic retreat from the wildly creative if inconsistent 1997 album POP which saw the band playfully borrowing elements of house and techno music and indulging in campy Warholian appropriations of pop music and commercial imagery. Their 1997 POP-mart tour was themed around a critique of consumer culture; the stage was framed by a golden McDonalds arch, and a giant video screen featured the classic image of the ascent of man tweaked to include a man pushing a shopping cart as the ultimate step of evolution, The screen also displayed video footage of transgender performance artist Leigh Bowery bellydancing, and animated images based on the work of the late gay artist Keith Haring. Each night, the band would emerge from a forty-foot-tall lemon-shaped mirrorball, dressed as the Village People, to perform their hit “Discotheque”. That song, a synth-heavy departure from their classic sound, was based around a house beat of the sort popularized in gay dance clubs. 
However, by 2002, Bono was courting evangelical Christians for his causes; when U2’s Greatest Hits 1990-2000 was released, “Discotheque” was included only in a remixed form that had its squelching synths, filter sweeps and drum machines pulled out of the mix. The song now resembled stale Stones-y blues rock; it had essentially been degayed—stripped of any musical references to gay culture—and made more palatable for middle American evangelicals. The band also abandoned their campy, irony-laden stage show for straight-forward sincerity and scripture quoting. This suggests that just as evangelicals are changing the way they present themselves to better engage mass culture, mass culture may be changing the way it presents itself to better engage evangelicalism, though the motive in this case may have been noble.
