Musings on Les Misérables

Not that there’s anything to be said that hasn’t been said before.  And better.  And no, I haven’t seen the movie yet.  (One day more!)  Just to philosophize:

1. Never, ever, ever cut Eponine.  (Ahem.)  The point of life is to love, not necessarily to be loved.

2. Javert is right: Justice is absolute, so absolute that God Himself cannot set it aside.

3. Javert is wrong: Mercy is not opposed to justice.  Justice gives mercy its meaning.

4. Life is pain: “At the end of the day you’re another day older.”  See also: title of musical.

5. Life is joy: “Your world may be changed in just one burst of light.”

6. Ah, but Love Himself did die:

7. And therefore, Tomorrow Comes.

Incarnational Horror

As I’ve been re-watching Joss Whedon’s short-lived Dollhouse, a very important thought has occurred to me:

I must have Adelle DeWitt’s wardrobe.

I mean, I know that, employed by the insidious Rossum Corporation, she runs the Los Angeles Dollhouse, where she persuades desperate people to sign their bodies over to her for five years so they can have their memories and personalities wiped and, as tabula rasa “Actives”, be imprinted with any identity that a client is willing to pay for.  I didn’t say I wanted her job.  Just her pencil skirts.

Joss Whedon is no friend to religion, but he is a writer, and a master of character, and that means he has an abiding interest in the soul.  He is also a master of philosophical horror: while he’s certainly not afraid of blood, it’s always the idea that really scares you.  And beneath the comedy - “We said we wouldn’t dwell on that.  He’s dwelling,” complains genius-geek Topher Brink when his experimental technology accidentally imprints an Active as a serial killer - Dollhouse is very definitely horror.

The show was created as a vehicle for Eliza Dushku, who plays the Active Echo.  Before she was Echo, she was Caroline, a crusading idealist determined to expose the Rossum Corporation.  (They whys and hows of her transformation are revealed - alas, very disappointingly - toward the end of the second season.)  And while Echo may not remember any of that, someone else has taken up the cause.  FBI agent Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) has been chasing rumors about the Dollhouse, and when an anonymous source points him to Caroline, his investigation starts to worry Rossum.  Meanwhile, Adelle is seeing something develop in Echo that goes beyond her imprints.  Something that comes to look more and more like self-awareness.

(Spoiler alert: That’s the premise.  From here on out, I make no promises.  Everything is fair game.)

Dollhouse neatly turns Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum on its head and asks, “But who do I think I am?”  Its very structure questions our perceptions of reality: a supporting character introduced in episode one is revealed soon after to be an Active.  Then the show goes along nicely until episode six, in which a major character is revealed to be an Active.  And then in episode twelve, yup, you guessed it, a supporting character is revealed to be an Active.  This last case is particularly poignant, as the reveal is made not just to the audience, but to the character, who, despite having worked for the Dollhouse, had never once questioned whether she herself was “real.”

Which begs the question: What is real?  The imprints are complete to the last detail, and if a human being is just a mind and a collection of memories walking around in a body, then it should follow that an imprinted Active - say, Echo as brilliant hostage negotiator Eleanor Penn - is just as real as Caroline ever was before she signed up to become Echo.  The point is hammered home in a late first season episode, “Haunted,” in which a dear friend of Adelle’s uses Echo’s body to return from the grave and solve her own murder.  This is not a composite identity whipped up in Topher’s computer.  This person actually lived, and to all intents and purposes she is living now.  So why, in an exquisitely unsettling ending, does Adelle have to watch her friend “die” again as she leaves Echo?

With its constant focus on the search for Caroline, the show argues from the start that a particular personality belongs in a particular body.  And indeed, one of the turning points for Adelle is her discovery that Rossum intends to offer certain favored clients “upgrades”: permanent transfers to a “better” body.  She is adamant that they can’t do this to her Actives, who only signed up for five years and who are entitled to get their bodies back at the end of those years.  (Lest one doubt her sincerity, a second-season episode, “Stop-Loss”, deals with the end of a contract.)  Thus the show is, in a way, profoundly incarnational.

But then it takes things a step further.  One of the taglines was “You can wipe away a memory, but can you wipe away a soul?”  Is there something in us beyond memory, beyond character, that cannot be taken out of the body (except by death, of which more in a moment)?

The answer is slowly teased out in Echo’s growing self-awareness, and in the beautiful Victor-Sierra romance, but then receives a definitive confirmation at the end of the first season, when the rogue Active Alpha is revealed.  We have known from the start that Alpha escaped the Dollhouse after slicing up its resident doctor and several Actives.  The assumption was that he had simply gone insane when 40-odd (in some cases very odd) personalities were simultaneously dumped into his head in an equipment glitch.  But when he is brought onto the case, Paul Ballard doesn’t want to profile any of those personalities.  He wants to know who Alpha was before he was Alpha.  Despite all of Topher’s protests that it doesn’t matter, Adelle gives Paul the file: “Alpha” was a convicted criminal, in prison for attempted murder, and when Paul tracks down his victim, the scars on her face are an exact match to the scars inflicted on the Dollhouse’s physician.

As if all that weren’t enough, two further complications present themselves.  First, as Echo becomes self-aware, and as she joins forces with Paul to bring down the Dollhouse from within, she wonders what will happen if and when Caroline comes back.  Will “Echo” die?  And from what she learns about Caroline, does she want to go back to being that person?  Paul, who has fallen in love with this maddening but indomitable woman, asks how she knows that she hasn’t been Caroline all along, but Echo is unsure, and her inner turmoil puts a distance between them that Paul cannot bridge.

Second, Echo discovers that she has a very rare ability: like Alpha, she can hold multiple imprints at once, but unlike Alpha, she can control and summon them at will.  This makes her an enormous asset, but it further complicates the question of who, in fact, she is.

It’s a lot to play with, and Whedon’s questions are far more satisfying than his answers.  In fairness, he reportedly had a five-year story arc planned, only to be informed in the middle of production that he would only get two.  But while I can look past the fact that season two is rushed, I can’t look past how much of it is wrong.

I will now skip over the reveal of Rossum’s mysterious founder/evil genius, as it is so clumsy, so unnecessary, and so damaging to what has gone before that I am pretending it didn’t happen.

But take the Attic.  It’s a fantastic concept: the place where “broken” dolls are sent.  Topher compares it at one point to the feeling you get when a word is just on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t quite articulate it - but always, with every single thought.  As a threat hanging over Echo’s head, and as a philosophical vision of hell, it’s tremendously effective, but sooner or later, logic begins to intrude.  It does seem needlessly complex and expensive to store all of these Actives, maintaining life support and the minimal level of consciousness to create the horror.  Ah, but then Echo is sent there, and she discovers that the Attic is actually Rossum’s mainframe computer.  All of those brains, trapped in infinite loops as they struggle to escape their worst nightmares, are the processing units.  I rejoiced, because that fit the tone of the show, set a new problem, and even gave a nice little grace note to a supporting character who had been sent to the Attic in season one.

And then, two episodes later, Echo blows up Rossum’s mainframe without, apparently, a second thought.  I’m all for saving the world, but at a bare minimum, collateral damage should be acknowledged, even if there is no time to address all of the philosophical issues involved.

Finally, let us take Paul’s death.  The second one, that is.  (I did mention that there would be spoilers, right?)  I long one day to write a character death as sudden and as piercing as this one.  Quite simply, he is there and then he is gone, and Echo, with a hundred personalities in her head, finds herself utterly alone.  Magnificent.

Or it would be, if that was where they had left it.  Earlier in the season, Paul has been “mapped” for an imprint, which winds up saving his life when Alpha destroys his mind the first time.  But there can be no reconstruction from a bullet in the head, so all Echo can do is take the imprint herself, finally uniting their minds.  “You did say,” she reminds him, “that you wanted me to let you in.”

Now, let me be clear: this plays.  Chokes me up every time.  But if the soul is something that cannot be wiped away, then neither can it be imprinted.  Echo has, in essence, become the Dollhouse’s last client.  She has chosen her fantasy.

It is a fantasy that strikes a deep chord.  Love, after all, desires more than proximity.  It desires union.  In the world of Dollhouse, where death is the end, such union can only ever be an illusion.  Hence, we are asked to rejoice with Echo because she has found and settled for the most she can get.

But I do not rejoice, because she shouldn’t settle.  I believe that the deepest longings of our hearts can be satisfied, were created to be satisfied.  And this ending is wrong precisely because it comes so close to being right.  It is a distorted echo of the Beatific Vision.

Random Beauty

End of Liturgical Year Edition:


A Prayer in Old Age

Bring no expectance of a heaven unearned
No hunger for beatitude to be
Until the lesson of my life is learned
Through what Thou didst for me.

Bring no assurance of redeemed rest
No intimation of awarded grace
Only contrition, cleavingly confessed
To Thy forgiving face.

I ask one world of everlasting loss
In all I am, that other world to win.
My nothingness must kneel below The Cross.
There let new life begin.

- Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

Still Digging

I had the opportunity on Wednesday night to see The Great Escape on the big screen.  And, as has happened many times before, Steve McQueen and his baseball glove proved to be exactly the reminder I needed.

Because you can get out of the prison camp (in spite of the fact that the tunnel is thirty feet short of the trees), and you can steal a motorcycle, and you can get so close to freedom that you're arrested tangled in the barbed wire at the Swiss border, and you can be brought back to the camp only to learn that fifty of your friends - men with whom you have worked, and suffered, and drunk moonshine - have been murdered by the Gestapo, and you're facing a looong time in the cooler, but darn it...

You still have your baseball:

And the tunneling will start anew.

When Faith is Not the Answer

Or: We Keep Asking the Wrong Questions

Before I begin, let me be clear: I am not truly suggesting that faith is not the answer.  Faith is always the answer - or, more precisely, God is the answer.  But this is a case where precise theological truth and common usage are not only different, but often opposed.  Case in point: the film adaptation of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

A couple of years ago, I sat in a theater, trying to beat down my Inner Critic, who is nearly always convinced that she could have adapted this thing better herself.  I give her free rein after the movie, but I generally figure that the writer who actually did the work gets a chance to make his case first.  So when the Dawn Treader writers felt it necessary to add a mysterious and sinister green mist that swallows people up, I tried to play along.  The novel is episodic, and while it has a unifying quest, there's really no sense of urgency, and urgency is something you want on screen.  The intent was not wrong, so I accepted the mist as a placeholder, confident that Inner Critic could find something better later.

And then we got the scene where the cute little girl, whose father has been taken by the mist and who has stowed away on the Dawn Treader to look for him, confides her fears to Lucy.  And Lucy sympathizes, and then assures her that her father will be all right: she just has to "have faith."

At that moment, Inner Critic gave the movie an ultimatum: Her father had better be dead.  (Inner Critic speaks in italics so as not to disturb her fellow audience members.)

He wasn't, of course, and there was a sentimental, mist-defeating denoument.  But why was Inner Critic so keen to orphan a harmless movie character?

Because I desperately wanted, for once, to see a faith-themed movie that was truly brave.  To see a movie that had the courage to say no, faith does not "fix things."  Faith does not guarantee a happy ending.  We sometimes have this idea that if we just believe in God, all will be sunshine and roses, when in truth, we're more likely to wind up with a crown of thorns.

The sunshine-and-roses approach is, first of all, simply not true.  I am confident that I have no need to give examples.

Second, it is - or quickly becomes - selfish.  I know someone who is convinced that God's will for her is whatever will give her pleasure in that moment, and for whom "God will take care of me" means that He will rescue her from the consequences of bad decisions and poor planning.

Third, and most insidiously, this attitude can become self-idolatry.  "I am so special that obviously God wants me to be happy."  And if that one is easy to dismiss, try this one: "I am so special that obviously God wants me to succeed."

This last is, I think, the Catholic artist's great temptation, and there is just enough truth in it to make it really dangerous.  We see that the world sorely needs Christ's beauty - and it does.  We believe that talent is indicative of a calling - and it is.  So we abandon ourselves to Christ to be used as His instruments - and we should.  But unless we are very careful, we start to consider ourselves invincible: "GOD wants me to do something."  Yes, He does.  But maybe sometimes - not necessarily all the time, by any means, and we'll never know until we try, but sometimes - what He wants us to do is fail.

I recently read something that makes this point exceptionally well.  It's called Surfing With Mel, and it's… I'll let the subtitle explain:

A Story in Script Form by

Matthew Lickona

based upon

A Story in Epistolatory Form by

Joe Eszterhas

regarding

A Failed Film Project by

Mel Gibson

based upon

The Book of Maccabees by

God

(Please be aware: The language is what you would expect in a script about Mel Gibson and Joe Eszterhas.  If the preceding sentence didn't convey what you should expect, you may not be the target audience.)

There is no happy ending here.  There is the ugliness of sin, and a faith that brings no joy.  Faith here is not something that fixes problems, but something that cannot be escaped.

To return to theology, of course faith promises a happy ending.  In eternity.  But in a fallen world, let us not "have faith" because of what it will bring us.  Let us have faith because our faith is true.

Portrait of the Artist?

I just finished reading a basically sound book, Gigi Rosenberg's The Artist's Guide to Grant Writing.  But I'm still stuck on a sentence in the middle: "An artist statement reveals your philosophy, why you do what you do - your themes, your processes, your obsessions, and all the other details your audience needs to know."

Now, to be fair, I would not for a moment deny the importance of an artist statement to grant writing, which is the subject of her book.  And a little later on, she has a very valid point about how the process of writing such a statement can help you understand and focus your own work.  But why does "your audience" need to be told about "your themes, your processes, your obsessions"?

Is it the artist that matters?  Or is it the art?

There is a great line in 1776.  (Okay, there are, at a very rough estimate, 2,347 great lines in 1776, but for our purposes right now there's only one that matters.)  Thomas Jefferson has drafted the Declaration of Independence, and now every member of Congress has to put in his two cents about wouldn't it be better if you included this, or took that out, or changed this word, or…  Through it all, Jefferson sits there, silent, agreeing to every change.  Finally, in exasperation, John Adams demands when Jefferson is going to speak up for his own work.  And Jefferson answers:

"I had hoped that the work would speak for itself."

Art is self-expression, yes.  But that is its process, not its purpose.  It's the difference, if you will, between agent cause and final cause.

Which brings me to my favorite painting, Rembrandt's The Painter in His Studio.

Given that we don't even see the painting here, just the artist, it might seem an ironic choice for this post.  But the painting is so much bigger than he is.  And the painting is in the light (one could argue that it is creating the light) while he is in shadow.  And Rembrandt didn't provide us with an artist statement.

Looking at this, I think of St. Augustine.  In a sermon on John the Baptist, he wrote:

John is the voice that lasts for a time; from the beginning Christ is the Word who lives for ever.  Take away the word, the meaning, and what is the voice? … When the word has been conveyed to you, does not the sound seem to say: The word ought to grow, and I should diminish?  The sound of the voice has made itself heard in the service of the word, and has gone away, as though it were saying: My joy is complete.  Let us hold on to the word.

If you're in a good mood...

Don't read this post.  Seriously.  Stop now.  Go make art while the sun shines.

When I'm feeling useless, untalented, and generally waste-of-time-and-space-ish, I go and read this.  All the way through.

And then I get back to work.

Not All Tears Are Evil

The reliably insightful Simcha Fisher has me thinking about sentimentality and pain, about the difference between manipulation and earned tears.  I love a movie that can really hurt me, burrow into my heart and shatter it and then stay there, somehow making it more whole.  But how does a story do that?  And how does it make sorrow more than a reflex?

A few suggestions:

1. The pain must be more than thwarted desire.  I think this is why most "chick flicks" don't work for me: The be-all and end-all is that, in the end, they get each other (laughs) or they don't (tears).  I need something more than that.  Some sense, however tiny, of sacrifice.  Some hint, however faint, that the love we are seeing is a reflection of a higher love.  Romantic love can be selfish, and it's not that I'm opposed to happy endings (see the first item, below), but giving needs to precede receiving.

2. Surprise me, if you can.  At the very least, do not tell me how to feel.  Jose's death in For Greater Glory does not move me as much as Fr. Vega's "I will always be a priest" speech, and I think that's because of how they were each filmed (or I have some serious issues, take your pick).  Jose's death is all slow-mo and close-up, the equivalent of screaming at the audience "This is important!  This is moving!!  Be moved!!!"  It indicates a lack of trust in both the moment and the audience.  I wanted to be moved, was fully prepared to be moved, but my contrarian nature rebels at being commanded to be moved.  On the other hand, for Fr. Vega, the marvelous Santiago Cabrera just says the words, calmly giving us a glimpse of a soul torn in half.

3. (Closely related to #1)  Tell me something more than "Life is sad."  I know that.  We all do.  I have problems of my own - I don't need to cry over fictional ones.  There is nothing profound or brave about telling me that life is pain (unless you follow it with "Anyone who says differently is selling something.").  Loss is the ultimate truth.  Except that it isn't.  And if you can make both of those statements at once, and show me that they are both true, then I will gladly cry.

So here follows, in no particular order, a list of some moments that do this for me.  I have made no attempt to describe them.  The point is that they are parts of a whole that give the whole meaning, so to describe them would be to write the movie again.  If you've seen any of them, hopefully you know what I mean, and if you haven't, I won't diminish them by summary.

(Aside: I have limited this to film because that's what I write, and therefore what I analyze, not in any way to suggest that literature or other media can't have the same effect.  They can and do.)

Lost, "The Constant": "Penny, you answered."

Serenity: "My turn." (I know I've mentioned this one before, but it belongs on the list.)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: "Okay."

Star Trek (2009): "Tiberius? No way, that's the worst."

The Prestige: "Jess, look at me. I will come for you."

Finding Neverland: "I'm not Peter Pan. He is."

Scrubs, "My Screwup": "Where do you think we are?"

The End of the Affair (1999): "Maybe there's no other kind." (I am not giving this movie an unqualified endorsement, but this scene works.)

And now for a sub-list (not exhaustive) from Doctor Who.  I'm working on some theories about why this show gets me so often, and so well, but for the moment, let it suffice that it does:

"Father's Day": "No, love. I'm your dad. It's my job for it to be my fault."

"Doomsday": Silence. The Doctor and Rose, a wall and a universe apart.

"The Family of Blood": "Could you change back?"  "Yes."  "Will you?"  "No."

"Last of the Time Lords": "It's just a bullet, that's all, just one little bullet."

"The Fires of Pompeii": "Save someone!"

"The End of Time": "Was she happy?"  "Yes. Yes, she was. Were you?"

"Amy's Choice": "It can't be. Rory isn't here." (This one comes close to contradicting #1, though I think it works well enough with #2 and #3.  Any Whovians out there who have thoughts on this, please discuss!)

Now it's your turn.  What moments are on your list?  And why do they work for you?

The Uses of Bad Art, Explained by Good Art

(Wherein Sharon agrees with J.R.R. Tolkien, who doesn't need the help.)

My awakening to screenwriting came through two sources, both of which I encountered at that impressionable age around thirteen.  One was a rather sublime movie, which may be the subject of a future post. (Kevin Jarre, requiescat in pace, and thank you.)  The other was a TV show - Mission: Impossible.

Not the 1960s classic, though I have since found and loved that one, too.  No, the too-brief '80s revival starring Peter Graves, Thaao Penghlis, Tony Hamilton, Phil Morris, and Jane Badler.  (If anyone read that last sentence and thought "What about Terry Markwell?" - to such an one, if such there be, I can only shout "Comrade!")

Mission did two main things for me as a writer.  First, it taught me to plot.  This was not a show where you could just throw your characters into an interesting premise and see what happened.  It was a giant puzzle, only comprehensible when the last piece clicked into place.  First and foremost, it was the structure that mattered, and when years later I read the Poetics - "We maintain, therefore, that the first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot; and that the Characters come second." - I thought, Well, yes.  As Mission creator Bruce Geller said, "They are what they do."  And because of that structure, it was ultimately a show about the complete mutual trust of five people.  Everyone did his part, knowing absolutely that the others were doing theirs.  Not a bad metaphor.  (In case it isn't obvious, this is why I'm not a fan of the Cruise/DePalma/Koepp/Zaillian/Towne reboot, which systematically destroyed that theme.  The new creative team has made good progress in recovering it, but I have yet to see the Mission movie I really crave.)

The second thing Mission did for me was get bad.  Now, at their best they had never been perfect.  There was always far too much infuriatingly unnecessary exposition - it is never a good idea to have one of your characters say "Our plan is working!" - and the teaser seldom did anything other than say "the bad guys are bad," which we were pretty much going to figure out from the rest of the episode.  But I digress.  From generally sound plotting in the first season, allowing for some nice ensemble acting, they drifted in the second season into sloppy structure and sensationalistic premises.  Eye-opening for a budding writer, as it was an object lesson in how much the script matters.

Then, toward the end, they did an episode that was not just sloppy, not just unbelievable.  It was wrong.  I sat through it thinking "Max would never behave that way, and Shannon wouldn't fall for that, and none of them is so stupid as to…"  I got mad.  So I rewrote it.  And oh, it felt good.  I'm still proud of that story, as a matter of fact.

But where did all that righteous indignation come from?  After all, it was their show, not mine.  The characters were whatever they said, right?

As often happens, Tolkien supplies the answer.

One of my favorite passages in The Silmarillion is the creation of the Dwarves.  Please excuse a lengthy quotation - it's worth it:

Now Ilúvatar knew what was done, and in the very hour that Aulë's work was complete, and he was pleased, and began to instruct the Dwarves in the speech that he had devised for them, Ilúvatar spoke to him; and Aulë heard his voice and was silent.  And the voice of Ilúvatar said to him: 'Why hast thou done this?  Why dost thou attempt a thing which thou knowest is beyond thy power and thy authority?  For thou hast from me as a gift thy own being only, and no more; and therefore the creatures of thy hand and mind can live only by that being, moving when thou thinkest to move them, and if thy thought be elsewhere, standing idle.  Is that thy desire?'

Then Aulë answered: 'I did not desire such lordship.  I desired things other than I am, to love and to teach them, so that they too might perceive the beauty of Eä, which thou has caused to be.  For it seemed to me that there is great room in Arda for many things that might rejoice in it, yet it is for the most part empty still, and dumb.  And in my impatience I have fallen into folly.  Yet the making of things is in my heart from my own making by thee; and the child of little understanding that makes a play of the deeds of his father may do so without thought of mockery, but because he is the son of his father.  But what shall I do now, so that thou be not angry with me for ever?  As a child to his father, I offer to thee these things, the work of the hands which thou hast made.  Do with them what thou wilt.  But should I not rather destroy the work of my presumption?'

Then Aulë took up a great hammer to smite the Dwarves; and he wept.  But Ilúvatar had compassion upon Aulë and his desire, because of his humility; and the Dwarves shrank back from the hammer and were afraid, and they bowed down their heads and begged for mercy.  And the voice of Ilúvatar said to Aulë: 'Thy offer I accepted even as it was made.  Dost thou not see that these things have now a life of their own, and speak with their own voices?  Else they would not have flinched from thy blow, nor from any command of thy will.'

Our desire to create is itself a gift of our Creator, and a part of that gift is that our creations take on a - very limited - life of their own.  Or perhaps it would be better to say a truth of their own, a participation in Truth itself.  They thus become things that we do not entirely control, and it is our job not so much to tell them what we want them to do, as to discover What They Are, or are meant to be.  And the most important part of our job is to offer them back to God, with the prayer that they will serve His will.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Mission movie to write.

Of Darkness and Dawn

I am an absolute and total physical coward.  Seriously.  I had a blood test before my wedding, and then one about six months after, and at the second one the lab technician remembered me and how close I had come to fainting the first time.

So, naturally, I write a lot of war movies, I've read everything I can find about Saint Isaac Jogues, and one of my favorite scenes on film is the climax of The Last King of Scotland.  (For those who don't get that reference, and feel inclined to check it out, you have been warned.)

I am deeply ashamed of my cowardice.  And that's why I am so fascinated with violence on film.  Because I agree with Flannery O'Connor that violence wakes us up, returns us to reality, and because I believe that we show who we truly are by how we handle suffering.

I don't get courage.  I don't get how people can handle pain.  So I feel drawn to every example of pain I can find, in the hope that by seeing it and writing it, I may learn it to some small degree how to cope with it.

Which brings me to The Dark Knight Rises.  It seems to me that Christopher Nolan's violence is so hard to watch precisely because it is personal.  The midpoint, the anticipated fight scene between the Batman and Bane, is not the big, exciting showdown of a comic book movie.  It's not "cool."  It is messy and dark and brutal.  And the Nolan brothers' genius is in putting Selina Kyle into that scene as an observer.  As she realizes that she is watching Bane break, not the Batman, but Bruce Wayne - that maddening man with whom she has danced, and flirted, and dueled - she also realizes that she has hurt - maybe killed - not a symbol, but a person.  And she realizes who that person really is.

The Dark Knight trilogy is, ultimately, about pain, and most of its grace is grace refused.  It is Harvey Dent, after all, who promises us that the dawn is coming.  For the Christian, that is the ultimate truth, but it is equally true that no one of us is guaranteed that dawn.  We have the terrible power to flip the coin.

In fact, one can argue that the entire creation of the Batman is grace refused.  In an interview published with the screenplay for Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan said of Bruce Wayne: "There is this hollow quality to him.  He's damaged goods…. Christian manages to make him funny and charming, and there is a good sense of humor there, but you never forget what happened to him as a child.  It hangs in everything he does.  There's a burnt-out quality, in moral terms."  Contrast Bruce's refusal to move on  - from his parents, from Rachel - with the future Alfred wants for him.  Even though he channels his anger to do good, Alfred suggests that it would be healthier if he just let it go: "I never wanted you to come back to Gotham.  I knew there was nothing here for you but pain and tragedy."

Darkness is the absence of light.  These are films that make us feel that absence very keenly.  And when the dawn peeks through - when a man wraps a coat around a little boy to tell him the world hasn't ended - we want it that much more intensely.

On Beauty and Batman

In his inimitable style, Bad Catholic in an interview explains why the modern world will be saved by beauty:

Q: Another favorite topic of yours is Beauty. Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said that “beauty will save the world.” Why is beauty so important and how can we harness its power?

It’s very simple, actually. There are three Transcendentals, three infinite goals that man naturally strives for. He strives for Goodness (that which he should obey), Truth (that which he should believe), and Beauty (that which he should admire.)

To the Christian worldview, these three Transcendentals, in their perfection, are God Himself. God is goodness, truth and beauty. (This, by the way, implies that goodness=truth=beauty (Keats was right!) but I digress.)

In their imperfect form—that is, in all man’s pitiful attempts to be Good, to know Truth, and to reach Beauty—God is pointed to. They are each images of God. Now our culture got rid of the Good with the introduction of moral relativism—it has been limited to the self, to the I Am The Arbiter of My Own Morality. It got rid of Truth with the public school system—my truth is not your truth, and I promise that statement is true. So we’re left with Beauty as the our last hope to avoid damning ourselves to a delightfully vague and relative Hell.  (Emph. mine.)

It reminds me, rather of Barbara Nicolosi's lecture on "Haunting Moments" in film: those parts of a film that catch your breath away, that transcend the film itself, that become holy because they are true, and good, and beautiful.  She gives many examples - one of my favorite ones being from that delightful Danish film, Babette's Feast (watch here from about 1:38 on...but make sure you put on captions!)- but I might also add the "I pardon you" moment from Schindler's List, Samwise Gamgee's "There's good in this world, Mr. Frodo - and it's worth fighting for!" (or pretty much anything Sam), or a host of others.

So I'd like to talk quickly about two superhero movies which - I'm going to presume - everyone in America (or enough of everyone) has seen.  That is: Spiderman and The Dark Knight Rises.

WARNING!  SPOILERS!

I saw Spiderman first - although no where near its release date - since I was nervous about yet another superhero movie.  I find that too often these sorts of things just become an expensive and dull way to watch someone else play an Epic Video Game - but all of the summer fare this year (the wonderful Avengers very much included) has at least been thoughtful.

Back to Spiderman.  A friend of mine finally convinced me to see it, citing the excellent acting as sure bait to get me to the theatre.  Nor was she wrong.  The trailers inevitably give the Everything Is Action edit, but the film itself is less about the stunts (although those are many) and more about the relationships between Peter and the various people in his life.  Most luminous, for me, was the final haunting moment: when Peter, battered from his final fight with the monster he created, manages to remember to bring home the eggs that his Aunt had asked him to get.

It's a simple, small, silly human thing.  And it's true.  Every day we battle our work, our boredom, our feelings of being trapped or caught, of not loving as much as we could, of financial or family woes, or just plain being tired - we battle them, and we bring back the eggs.

A battered Spidy looks better to me than the pristine Batman.

However, in The Dark Knight Rises, I was hard pressed to find a moment of beauty.  In the wake of the terrible shooting in Colorado at the midnight premiere of the latest Dark Knight movie, I therefore found myself approaching the film (in a movie theatre!) with fear and trembling.  I went with my father, located all the exits as I entered, and planned on hitting the floor should a gunman come in.

As you may have deduced, my precautions were unwarranted, and I was subjected to no worse terror than having a total stranger sit a mere single seat away from me.  The nerve.

However, while I was watching the movie, I found myself perhaps more disturbed than if a merely physical assault had battered at me.  The third Batman movie centers around the villain Bane who is built up as someone having ideals very much like the extremists of the French Terror.  (One visual where Bane appears to be knitting something at a mock court was not lost on this lover of all thing French Revolutiony, Mme. Defarge!)

The violence in the film, however, verged on the pornographic.  I can't quite put my finger on why it felt so invasive - perhaps the spectre of the Colorado tragedy hung over my head - but I would put forth that the violence was worsened because the movie (and, I feel, the whole trilogy) lacked grace.

Sure, there was some attempt at light in the person of John Blake (later Robin) played by that excellent Nolan hat trick actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  However, John Blake's adulation of the Commissioner proved to be ill-founded; his attempts to save the children failed; and in the end he gave up on working through the system of the law.  Ergo, our one true hero in the film gives up on the mechanics of grace within the chronology of the film (if not the possibility of grace post-film).

Moreover, Batman himself is Ivanhoed - that is, out of the picture literally and figuratively - for the majority of the movie.  And those times he is crucified, as every good action hero should be, he comes across a somewhat unwilling victim, so that his "final act" feels more selfish than salvific.

Where does this leave the Avengers?  Somewhere inbetween.  I don't know that it's a beautiful movie (neither is Spiderman, for the record - he's just more beautiful to this author in comparison to his fellow summer fare), but as written by that Doge of Dialogue, Joss Whedon, it's at least light-hearted, and surprisingly less atheistic than his usual offerings.  It even, perhaps inadvertently, has a haunting moment, when an elderly German man refuses to bow to Loki, the Norse "puny god" of mischief.

Loki: In the end, you will always kneel.


Elderly German Man:  But not to you.

Man will be saved by beauty - although beauty comes in many forms.  It comes not only in the roses, but in the thorns.  It comes not only in the risen Christ, but in the ravaged Christ upon the cross.  Beauty is in the wrinkles, and the jokes that aren't funny, and the woman who gets up at five with her children, and with the man who goes to a job he hates for a family he loves.

The job of the artist, then, is to hold a mirror up to nature - to show man his beauty by showing man His scars.

Are You Playwright Enough?

There's an exciting NaNoWriMo-like challenge starting tomorrow for all playwrights:

31 Plays in 31 Days is the challenge for playwrights to produce a play a day (one page minimum) during the month of August.

I'm terribly excited by the idea.  I've known a few other playwrights who've managed to do a play a day for a year...trying to make a month is about enough for me!

Today's the last day to sign up officially (I think) so make sure you send your info in!

Click

Em, you've got me thinking about moments.  Because that, to me, is the key to your last post: at every moment.  We don't live our lives in sweeping arcs or themes - we live them right here and now, one choice at a time.  And we never know if this choice will be our last.

(Everyone feeling cheerful now?  Good.)

It's enormously tempting to think in arcs and themes.  That's why there's all that allegory in the world.  It's also why my characters often talk too much.

When I like a movie, I tend to think, "Well, that was a satisfying elucidation of the necessary relationship between love and sacrifice."  Or words to that effect.  But when I love a movie, it's because I was grabbed by "the part where…"  The moment.  (For any Joss Whedon fans out there, I have two words: "My turn.")  And I want to do that for somebody else.

Fortunately, I married a photographer.  He doesn't have pages of dialogue to get the effect he wants.  He has the snap of a shutter.  And, just as important, he has the chance to edit.  To crop.  To put it in black and white.  To frame.  But he's still working with just one moment.

Watching him do that is endlessly fascinating.  It brings into focus (heh, heh) the central question that I should be asking as a screenwriter: What am I looking at right now?

He makes me see.

So let's learn from each other.  What does your particular art do best?  What does it capture, and how?

What Exactly IS Catholic Art?

My senior year of college, I attended a Gregorian Chant concert in a Church near my alma mater, Franciscan University of Steubenville.    I was, at that time, just on the verge of graduation, about to earn my "utterly useless" degree in English Literature and Drama, with absolutely no job prospects or plans.  (Not unlike at present, really.  Well, perhaps a little less unplanned at that time.)

The single question I was asked the most, by my dear drama professor, by the President of the College, and even more by complete strangers was: "What was I going to do after school?"

I always admitted that I had no idea.  I'd find out. (1)

Consequently, I was in no mood when a older woman whom I'd never met turned to me after the concert and, finding I was about to graduate, asked the dreaded question.  Groaning inwardly, I smiled and said that I was going to become an author.

"Oh!" said she.  "A Catholic author?"

"No," I said, my perturbation beginning to show through, "an author.  Mostly fantasy novels, I should think."

She furrowed her well-meaning brow as though I had responded in Swahili.

"Ye-e-es," she said, "but a Catholic fantasy author, right?  I mean, you all go to Franciscan University, don't you?  So, you're going to write Catholic novels, right?"

"No," I said with, I'm afraid, very little restraint.  "I have absolutely no intention of writing 'Catholic novels,' whatever those are.  I am a Catholic, yes, and I will write novels.  But they will be fantasy novels, not Catholic novels.  I would hate to write a Catholic novel!"

At that point, thank God, someone rescued us and said that the car had arrived.

However, as rude as I became (and I apologize after the event for my 20-year-old fanaticism), that well-meaning woman's words have remained with me and nettled me ever since.

Several years later, while promoting my (admittedly) Catholic fantasy novel, Niamh and the Hermit - brought to you by God: Making His Followers Eat Their Words Since Time Immemorial - I attended a Catholic author's panel at Boskone.  There, one of the panelists was a priest and scientist at the Vatican Observatory.  In the midst of much opening tom foolery among the panelists and general bonhomie from the conventioners who had all come to the panel directly after Mass, the rather obvious question was put forward:

What makes a Catholic author a Catholic author?

The question was bounced around among the panelists, all of whom quickly agreed to that good priest's assessment:

"Basically, I think," said he - leaning forward into the microphone, with something of a glint of mischief and smugness and wisdom that put one in mind of Gandalf - "the difference between the Catholic novelist and any other novelist is that we all believe that each of our souls is, at every moment, on the edge.  Hence, the hero is always in danger of damnation...and the villain always in danger of salvation.  And isn't that the very essence of drama?"

His assessment (in which he is not alone) struck a chord in me.  As an author, I have found it to be true; as a director, particularly of the great Shakespeare's works, I find it doubly true.  As someone who once was that pretentious 20 year old graduate, I wish I had known those words then so that I could answer that woman, "Yes, of course! I'm a Catholic artist!"  As someone who's also read far too many bad "Christian/Catholic novels" (since I once ran the now-static Christian Guide to Fantasy), I wish more Catholic authors knew this.

Because what I was reacting to - and what many of my fellow Catholic artists have justly criticized is the idea that "Catholic art" is overtly Catholic.  It's the old friction between Lewis' Narnian allegories and Tolkein's Middle Earth. Only, Lewis' allegory is elegant, like Piers Ploughman. Too many modern "Catholic/Christian" artists' work is simply unwatchable/unreadable. It feels like fervent folks writing large with chalk and fortune-cookie Bible quotes. However, truly Catholic work is poetic, is sublime, is written in blood and clouds and mud and dust and the grace of every fallen sparrow. Take a look at Dostoyevsky again, my friends!

It's the reason why, if ever I got to meet that lovely, well-meaning woman again, I should say to her that all my novels and plays have been Catholic, and that I am a Catholic artist who sometimes writes fantasy and sometimes writes in iambic pentameter.

But what I'd clarify is that while, for example, Niamh is an overtly Catholic novel (in that the citizens of that world are simply Catholic, rather like Romeo and Juliet), my Letters of Love & Deception, is more covertly Catholic - since it's Regency a la Jane Austen, and therefore an Anglican world.  Yet marriage is defended in it; something that Catholics and Anglicans and just plain folk could use a dose of.

Similarly, although with the exception of my current play-in-progress, Becket (2), (OK, and obviously The Passion Play and probably Bearskin) I'd say that all my plays are more covertly Catholic.  They all affirm marriage, and the right relation of men to women; they all promote responsibility as the happiest and most satisfying of endings; they all point out the goodness of children; and they all have heroes in danger of damnation and villains in danger of salvation.



So there's one way authors (and playwrights and screenwriters and every sort of story tellers) might classify what they mean by being a Catholic artist.  But the question remains...what about fine artists?  What about musicians?  What about actors?  Game designers?  Architects? 

What is the particularly Catholic charism that infuses our arts?

Sound off in the comments below - and please feel free to leave links to your works and blogs so that we can know about the exciting work you're doing!  Also, don't forget to like us on Facebook and join in the conversation there!

FREEDOM!

Following up on the previous post on Freedom from the CAS event, I thought this homily by Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia was apropos.  As artists and citizens of the world, let us cultivate our crafts so that we can be truly "free" to live as we are called.

-------
Archbishop Charles Chaput is one of the most respected pro-life voices within the Catholic Church and he has proved that once again with a homily to close the Fortnight for Freedom event that has the Catholic community abuzz on the Internet.

Below is the full text of the address from the Archbishop of Philadelphia, given at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.:


Paul Claudel, the French poet and diplomat of the last century, once described the Christian as “a man who knows what he is doing and where he is going in a world [that] no longer [knows] the difference between good and evil, yes and no. He is like a god standing out in a crowd of invalids . . . He alone has liberty in a world of slaves.”

Like most of the great writers of his time, Claudel was a mix of gold and clay, flaws and genius. He had a deep and brilliant Catholic faith, and when he wrote that a man “who no longer believes in God, no longer believes in anything,” he was simply reporting what he saw all around him. He spoke from a lifetime that witnessed two world wars and the rise of atheist ideologies that murdered tens of millions of innocent people using the vocabulary of science. He knew exactly where forgetting God can lead.

We Americans live in a different country, on a different continent, in a different century. And yet, in speaking of liberty, Claudel leads us to the reason we come together in worship this afternoon.

Most of us know today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew. What we should, or should not, render unto Caesar shapes much of our daily discourse as citizens. But I want to focus on the other and more important point Jesus makes in today’s Gospel reading: the things we should render unto God.

When the Pharisees and Herodians try to trap Jesus, he responds by asking for a coin. Examining it he says, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” When his enemies say “Caesar’s,” he tells them to render it to Caesar. In other words, that which bears the image of Caesar belongs to Caesar.

The key word in Christ’s answer is “image,” or in the Greek, eikon. Our modern meaning of “image” is weaker than the original Greek meaning. We tend to think of an image as something symbolic, like a painting or sketch. The Greek understanding includes that sense but goes further. In the New Testament, the “image” of something shares in the nature of the thing itself.

This has consequences for our own lives because we’re made in the image of God. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the same word, eikon, is used in Genesis when describing the creation. “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” says God (Gen 1:26). The implication is clear. To be made in the image of God is more than a pious slogan. It’s a statement of fact. Every one of us shares — in a limited but real way — in the nature of God himself. When we follow Jesus Christ, we grow in conformity to that image.
Once we understand this, the impact of Christ’s response to his enemies becomes clear. Jesus isn’t being clever. He’s not offering a political commentary. He’s making a claim on every human being. He’s saying, “render unto Caesar those things that bear Caesar’s image, but more importantly, render unto God that which bears God’s image” — in other words, you and me. All of us.

And that raises some unsettling questions: What do you and I, and all of us, really render to God in our personal lives? If we claim to be disciples, then what does that actually mean in the way we speak and act?
Thinking about the relationship of Caesar and God, religious faith and secular authority, is important. It helps us sort through our different duties as Christians and citizens. But on a deeper level, Caesar is a creature of this world, and Christ’s message is uncompromising: We should give Caesar nothing of ourselves. Obviously we’re in the world. That means we have obligations of charity and justice to the people with whom we share it. Patriotism is a virtue. Love of country is an honorable thing. As Chesterton once said, if we build a wall between ourselves and the world, it makes little difference whether we describe ourselves as locked in or locked out.

But God made us for more than the world. Our real home isn’t here. The point of today’s Gospel passage is not how we might calculate a fair division of goods between Caesar and God. In reality, it all belongs to God and nothing – at least nothing permanent and important – belongs to Caesar. Why? Because just as the coin bears the stamp of Caesar’s image, we bear the stamp of God’s image in baptism. We belong to God, and only to God.

In today’s second reading, St. Paul tells us, “Indeed religion” — the RSV version says “godliness” – “with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it.” True freedom knows no attachments other than Jesus Christ. It has no love of riches or the appetites they try to satisfy. True freedom can walk away from anything — wealth, honor, fame, pleasure. Even power. It fears neither the state, nor death itself.

Who is the most free person at anything? It’s the person who masters her art. A pianist is most free who — having mastered her instrument according to the rules that govern it and the rules of music, and having disciplined and honed her skills — can now play anything she wants.

The same holds true for our lives. We’re free only to the extent that we unburden ourselves of our own willfulness and practice the art of living according to God’s plan. When we do this, when we choose to live according to God’s intention for us, we are then — and only then — truly free.

This is the freedom of the sons and daughters of God. It’s the freedom of Miguel Pro, Mother Teresa, Maximillian Kolbe, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and all the other holy women and men who have gone before us to do the right thing, the heroic thing, in the face of suffering and adversity.

This is the kind of freedom that can transform the world. And it should animate all of our talk about liberty – religious or otherwise.

I say this for two reasons. Here’s the first reason. Real freedom isn’t something Caesar can give or take away. He can interfere with it; but when he does, he steals from his own legitimacy.

Here’s the second reason. The purpose of religious liberty is to create the context for true freedom. Religious liberty is a foundational right. It’s necessary for a good society. But it can never be sufficient for human happiness. It’s not an end in itself. In the end, we defend religious liberty in order to live the deeper freedom that is discipleship in Jesus Christ. What good is religious freedom, consecrated in the law, if we don’t then use that freedom to seek God with our whole mind and soul and strength?

Today, July 4, we celebrate the birth of a novus ordo seclorum – a “new order of the ages,” the American Era. God has blessed our nation with resources, power, beauty and the rule of law. We have so much to be grateful for. But these are gifts. They can be misused. They can be lost. In coming years, we’ll face more and more serious challenges to religious liberty in our country. This is why the Fortnight for Freedom has been so very important.

And yet, the political and legal effort to defend religious liberty – as vital as it is – belongs to a much greater struggle to master and convert our own hearts, and to live for God completely, without alibis or self-delusion. The only question that finally matters is this one: Will we live wholeheartedly for Jesus Christ? If so, then we can be a source of freedom for the world. If not, nothing else will do.

God’s words in today’s first reading are a caution we ignore at our own expense. “Son of man,” God says to Ezekiel and to all of us, “I have appointed you as a sentinel. If I say to the wicked, ‘you will surely die’ – and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them . . . I will hold you responsible for their blood.”
Here’s what that means for each of us: We live in a time that calls for sentinels and public witness. Every Christian in every era faces the same task. But you and I are responsible for this moment. Today. Now. We need to “speak out,” not only for religious liberty and the ideals of the nation we love, but for the sacredness of life and the dignity of the human person – in other words, for the truth of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God.

We need to be witnesses of that truth not only in word, but also in deed. In the end, we’re missionaries of Jesus Christ, or we’re nothing at all. And we can’t share with others what we don’t live faithfully and joyfully ourselves.

When we leave this Mass today, we need to render unto Caesar those things that bear his image. But we need to render ourselves unto God — generously, zealously, holding nothing back. To the extent we let God transform us into his own image, we will – by the example of our lives – fulfill our duty as citizens of the United States, but much more importantly, as disciples of Jesus Christ.


http://www.lifenews.com/2012/07/05/archbishop-chaput-closes-fortnight-for-freedom-with-amazing-homily/

Catholic Artists Society - Meditation on Freedom

Friends,

The Catholic Artists Society, an organization started by a Catholic actor in NYC, seeks to encourage the ongoing artistic and spiritual development of artists and media professionals, so that their work may more perfectly reflect God’s glory, enriching and ennobling men and women, our society and our culture

At last Thursday's evening of recollection, Father Isaac Spinharney, CFR led a meditation on "Freedom", which is now available in audio version on their website.

Here is a short summary of Father's remarks on Freedom...

In keeping with the Fortnight for Freedom declared by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Father Isaac's meditation before the Blessed Sacrament centered on the nature of true freedom, starting with the scripture passage from Galatians 5:1 "For Freedom Christ has set us free. So stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery."

Posing the question, "Freedom...what does it mean?", Father Isaac discussed the relationship between religious freedom and interior freedom, drawing on the experience of Israel in the Book of Judges.

"How free are we?" Father suggested that a good barometer of our interior freedom can be found in St. Paul's list of the fruits of the Holy Spirit from Galatians 5: "Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-Control...Long-suffering and Modesty." We are free to the degree that these gifts and virtues are present in our lives.

Father then turned to an in-depth reflection on two principle keys to entering into the freedom and happiness for which we have been created, and for which Christ has prepared for us: authentic repentance, and forgiveness.

Finally, Father related these thoughts to the work and spiritual life of the Artist, who needs to cultivate a great deal of interior freedom in order to be open to inspiration, to create, and to particpate as a co-creator with God, the author and Creator of all things.

To keep updated on future events, and to receive mailings, check out the CAS here.

the
CATHOLIC
ARTISTS
SOCIETY
6012 Delafield Avenue, Bronx, NY 10471catholicartistssociety.posterous.com