Prisoner of Laundry

Buildings in most equatorial countries have a greater degree of integration between inside and out than do buildings in colder climes.  There's no need to keep out the snow or the cold, so large indoor gardens, living rooms half in- and half out-side are standard.  This means that individual rooms of the house need a higher level of security because they are completely accessible from outside.  So heavy bars, multiple locks, and small windows are also common.

All that was the last thing on my mind when I went down to do my laundry.  It was dark, so I brought my flashlight.  It was about 20 minutes before supper time.  The laundry-room was probably a storage room in its first iteration.  It had steel doors and no handle, just a keyhole, like a shed, with a set of keys in it.  I traipsed in and let the door fall shut behind me with a satisfying little click.

I stood straight and realized my mistake immediately.  My first reaction was to laugh.  I tried the door.  Locked tight.  The lightswitch?  On the other side of the door.  Alternate exits?  None.  Well, there was only one thing to do.  I folded and organized my laundry.  In the dark.  I laughed.  A ridiculous predicament.  I was not seriously worried.  There are over a dozen people living in the Philosophy house where I'm staying.  Someone would be sure to wander by soon.

Of course the trouble with over a dozen people is that it's not really noticeable when one of them is gone.  So there I was, sitting in the basement, while everyone else was having dinner.

It was embarrassing to shout but I figured it would be worth a try.  However, people who live in Caracas are so used to people in the street shouting things at each other at the top of their lungs that they have long since adapted to tuning out the noise.  I'd probably have ignored the noise, too.

So I treated the situation as an intellectual problem.  First I tried twisting a coat hanger into a hook which I could slide through the crack between the double doors in order to hook and retrieve the key.  But no dice.  The doors was designed with a steel plate to cover the crack.  At least we could all sleep well knowing that our washing machine was protected by fortress-like security.

I attempted to pick the lock with two pieces of wire.  This lasted only a minute before it occurred to me that I have absolutely no idea how to pick locks and that I might jam up the only door out in the process of failing to do it, so I carefully extracted the wire and tried to think of something else.  My stomach gurgled.

I found two screws holding the lock mechanism in place and wondered if I could unscrew them.  I had no coinage to improvise a screwdriver.  But after a few minutes search I discovered the jackpot: a spoon.  A spoon with a nice, flat lip.  The screws began to turn easily under its pressure.  I thought how people would praise my resourcefulness as I recounted the hilarious story.

At that very moment I heard somebody bringing out the garbage to the garage.  Rolling my eyes I screwed the screws back in and banged and hollered.  It was not long before the hapless, helpless gringo was liberated.  We all laughed and I reflected that it was probably for the best that I didn't dismantle their door and require someone to fix it later.  And, after all, I returned safely from my period of captivity with fresh and well-organized laundry.  And had some late dinner.

So let that be a lesson for all of us:  You can take away our freedom, but you'll never take our laundry.

Come to think of it, that's a pretty terrible lesson.  I'm beginning to suspect that the 45 minutes I spent locked in the laundry room might have been a complete waste of time!  Who could have guessed?

Thoughts on Hunger Games

I think I am giving a pretty charitable reading of the thing.  It doesn't deal much with the plot and focuses on the themes of the movie.

It got me to thinkin', which is a good thing for a movie to do.  It didn't get me thinking about life or meaning... it got me thinking 'what is this beast'?.  It's not what a movie usually is.

Take Inception, Rope, or Groundhog Day.  In those films, the author(s) had an idea of what they wanted to say through the movie and they employed subtle or unsubtle devices to say it.  The films had a self-understanding that you pieced together by watching.  Such a process feels like getting to know someone and learning what they think and what they value.

HG doesn't know what it is.  It is abstract art... a expression of self and of emotion with no addressee and no self-understanding.  The movie is a pre-linguistic grunt, an *urnf* of inarticulate expression.  This has advantages and disadvantages.

I did not come to this view at first.  At first I thought that the film was a sort of ham-handed manipulation of teenagers by mirroring them back their angst and fears, 

Hey, teenager.  This is you.  You are thrust into a system you didn't agree to, bound by rules you didn't write.  It is a brutal contest to survive but the grown-ups, who are vacuous and disconnected, all act like its a wonderful and well-established state of affairs, telling you they hope you will survive and wishing you luck.  You are forced against your will to make friends and make people like you by behaving certain ways.  Some grown ups are useless and apathetic, some are sympathetic and help you, some are actively vindictive, stacking the odds against you for their sport from a secret control-room. 

The teenage mirror view of the movie makes the ending unsatisfying.  Your only option is to threaten suicide and force them to change.  A stupid response to an incomplete, self-interested picture of growing up. 

However, the movie is not merely teenage angst.  I'm really starting to see it as the emotive expression of the fears of a society which lacks personal maturity.  Our society is afraid that we never really grew up... and that the harsh rules of survival lurking below the surface will break upwards and snatch us.  We feel subconsciously that we didn't earn our bread and that the law of the jungle will have its do eventually. 

On the one hand, we are the decadent wealthy and we hate our superficiality and hypocrisy.  On the other hand, we are the brave and honest and confused children, plunged back into the state of nature and afraid of the pain and horror that exist there.  The movie is wise to leave this duality unresolved.  The ending is nicely left in a dual mode.  On the one hand, our heroine's final decision is the attempt to assert some kind of identity in the face of everything.  On the other hand, the world dresses it up as a hollywood love story to make it acceptable.  The movie expresses (without asking why) discontent with the way narratives are always tied up in neat little bundles that don't really apply to the unspoken depth of the situation.  Society doesn't like it either.  We want meaning but don't want an artificial story.  However, if you want a real story, you must face the possibility that, terrifyingly, there is no meaning.  Society, we, feel trapped in between.

This response is much more mature than Avatar because it wants, without knowing how, to go forward: to discover what it means to be human.  Not really any clues on what that might be, though.  Although I think it is interesting that being human seems to have something to do with being more willing to die than to kill another human.  People want to be that but can't see how its possible. 

For a more brilliant and self-understanding exploration of this problem of self-sacrifice in the face of violence and the desire to be human above raw survival necessity, see Trigun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLRpi2_QdA0&feature=relmfu  or Firefly http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303461/.  These don't merely express the emotion but have some helpful hints on how to live with it.   Whedon and Yasuhiro extend their hands in friendship, inviting the audience to try and answer these questions in a non-superficial way, together.  The solutions are only attempts, striving for meaning while preserving the challenges against it and inviting the reader to come along on the journey.  These struggles and potential solutions are often drawn from philosophy, history, art, music, religions both eastern and western, etc.    

Alas, whatever kind of society is speaking through HG, it doesn't really like any of the above and mistrusts them.  HG remains a yolp, it doesn't speak to anyone, just shouts into the darkness.  The director does a good job of this, leaving long pauses, letting events speak for themselves, letting the audience feel what is happening. 

This approach does also mean that a lot of potential complexities remain unexplored. 

Peta, the love interest, reunited with our heroine almost instantly after it is announced they can leave together if they win, in spite of the fact that he was working with the baddies.  I wondered if his wounds were self-inflicted and that it was all a trap to lure heroine into trusting him.  But all of the intrigue fizzled and went nowhere.  Which is good for conveying emotion and bad for conveying meaning. 

Which is pretty much my summary of the movie.  Expressing a deep-rooted feeling is difficult and good for you for developing a more complex emotional life, movie.  But you haven't tried to speak with me.  And art helps us explore what it means to be human together.  This movie was not for me.  I'm not sure whether that makes me or the movie self-interested :>

Tell Jesus how you're feeling. Then ask for help.

Feeling “Jesus, I am feeling...”	Gift from Jesus “Jesus help me with the gift of...”
Afraid	-courage -hope -remembering the people I love -naming my fear and facing it
Worried	-hope -taking things one step at a time, -asking Jesus' help with the thing I am worried about and then trusting him
Sad, depressed	-remembering that Jesus is sad with me -remembering that nothing will stop Jesus from loving me -remembering I won't stay sad forever
Tired	-rest and peace -gratitude for nature -a few deep breaths to relax
Frustrated, angry	-patience -laughter -looking at things from someone else's point of view
Happy	-gratitude to Jesus for life -desire to go try something new
I have done something good	-gratitude to Jesus for my gifts to others -remembering that God created me good
I don't know how I'm feeling	-remembering Jesus loves me no matter how I feel -asking what I should do to be closer to Jesus
I just need help	-calm -remembering that Jesus is always helping me because he knows what I need before I ask

Jesuit Vampire Hunter

New Comic!  Click here to enlarge

Congress Video

Last summer I was part of the Jesuit congress, a meeting celebrating 400 years of Jesuits in Canada.  There was lots of meeting and praying and discerning (and singing) as well as a visit from the Fr. General of the Jesuits.

They made a video about it...

Eric's Top Ten Band Names from Phrases in Conversation: Countdown

Number eight!

Egregious Medievalists

With their debut Album, Frolic in the Pool

An experimental band that integrates rock music and traditional medieval tunes.  The lead guitarist, Marty of Tours, is famous for his psychedelic lute solos.  

Christology and Anime

Christology and Anime

The following are notes for a talk I gave at Regis College on Thursday, March 8th. The theme was suggested to me by the Jesuit motto, “To find God in all things”.

What is Anime?

After WWII, Japanese culture was highly influenced by American culture. In the 1960s, Japanese artists adapted and simplified the “Disney” style animations they saw at the movies and used them to tell Japanese stories.

In the 1980s, the popularity of manga, the comic-book form, skyrocketed and the process of animating manga series as TV shows became big business... big enough business to be noticed overseas; making titles like Dragon Ball Z familiar to westerne. Anime is known for its distinctive artistic style, its use of cartoons to convey serious literary themes, and frequent appeals to the zany, the magical, or the metaphysical.

What does this have to do with Christianity?

History of Christianity in Japan

Japan was the final frontier. Traveling from Europe to Japan in the 16^th century was the equivalent of traveling from the earth to the moon today... except space travel is a bit safer. Travel by ship carried enough risk of disease, malnutrition, pirate attack, and shipwreck that missionaries had about a 50/50 chance of making it to Japan alive. What religious order would be stupid enough to take on odds like that? You guessed it: the Jesuits. St. Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary, arrived in Japan in 1549. Christianity enjoyed great reception in Japan, especially among peasants, until it was outlawed decades later by the shoguns who rejected all things foreign. A few underground churches survived but Christian culture didn't gain much traction in Japan until after WWII... where it was accepted as part of a growing interest in American culture. The lasting contribution of American Christianity to Japanese culture? Christmas and weddings. They love Santa and presents, and they love dressing up and going to a church-like 'wedding chapel' where an employee dressed as a clergyman performs a “western style” marriage

But during the last century, the tropes and themes of Christianity worked their way into the mythology of the Japanese people. And where do the Japanese explore myth and story?

Three kinds of Imagery I want to talk about...

-Christian Symbols
-Christian Characters
-Christological Characters

Christian Symbols:

Appropriation of general Christian symbols to explore a theme.

These symbols convey emotions and a subtext of meaning... these might be images of the cross, death scenes that resemble the crucifixion, angel wings, resurrections, etc. The symbolism can be complex or quite simple. You can find examples of the simple use of Christian symbols everywhere: good characters may be drawn with halos or angel-wings; evil characters with names like “Kururo Lucifer” or “Gamora”.

But the symbolism can also be complex. A good example is the Christian imagery in the 1980s anime series Evangelion. The author is not interested in exploring Christianity, angels, or scripture. He is however interested in using these symbols to represent aspects of the story he wants to tell about human nature.

When an explosion happens in anime, there is often a column of fire. In Evangelion, an explosion that occurs when an enemy alien dies is topped with a horizontal line, making a cross-shape. The author is using the symbol of the grave. But the death of the aliens is not a simple victory. The protagonists are torn by the necessity of killing other creatures to ensure humanity's survival. The cross evokes the sacrifice of one celestial life to preserve the lives of sinners. So the Christian symbol helps the author convey and explore themes of his story.

These are symbols. What about characters who profess a Christian faith?

Christian Characters:

Characters who are explicitly Christian.

Professed Christians are rare, though not unheard of, in Japan... and so they are rare but not unheard of in anime. Such characters are almost never protagonists. They are usually a bit inaccurate, mythological, or exaggerated. They represent the exotic and the foreign in the story. 

 

One example is from a show called Saint Tail. The drama of her show centers around a high-school girl who is secretly a notorious cat-burglar. The Christian character is a 14-year-old nun-in-training called Seira Mimori. Mimori, is the close friend of the heroine; and ends up hearing her confessions. The show doesn't really explore any themes of Christianity and, as you can tell, doesn't much understand the practice of confession. The Christian character's Christianity simply serves to reinforce her role in the story as a representative of the good and juxtaposes the heroine's dangerous double-life walking the line between law and crime.

Christian characters can also represent cultural outsiders. A good example of this is Fr. Anderson from the anime Hellsing.

 

Anderson is a priest secretly employed by the Vatican to hunt vampires. Awesome enough to be the hero of his own show! But he is not. He is actually an antagonist, because the hero of the story is a Vampire who helps humans. Anderson represents an uncomprehending foreigner: while he has ideals and honour these very traits lead him into conflict with the protagonist. Christianity is exagerated and used to convey the exotic.

In these cases, Christianity is used to explore the story. But there are rare cases when the story is used to explore Christianity.

Christological Characters:

Characters who are not Christians themselves but who represent Christ in the story.

Most heroes can be considered Christ-like characters because of the way in which they redeem the story and defeat evil through their actions.

However, there are a few characters who represent the person of Christ and their actions in the story reflect Christ's actions in salvation history. For instance, many heroes sacrifice their lives to save the lives of their friends; only to experience a 'resurrection' moment.

In my opinion, the most explicit Christ figure in anime is from the 1998 series Trigun. Trigun is primarily a western; as such it seeks out to explore the themes and archetypes of the great cowboy movies of the past few decades. As such, the exploration of a western gunslinger as a Christ-figure is very deliberate.

The hero's name is Vash the Stampede. It is revealed that while he is an extremely dangerous gunslinger, he has taken a vow never to kill; in a world where outlaws threaten innocent lives, Vash struggles to save the lives not only of the innocents but of theives and murderers. Vash works to redeem and change the minds of criminals and “sinners”.

At one point in the series, Vash is depicted as a young man watching a spider catch a butterfly... he wants to set the butterfly free. An older character kills the spider, explaining that without food, a spider cannot survive/ The law of nature is that one or the other must die. The older character states that the human mission is to save that which is beautiful from that which is evil... but the young Vash weeps and pleads that there must be a way to save both. His character is to reject the logic of death and survival and seek another way.

Vash's skill at fighting borders on miraculous; but he hides his abilities by behaving clownishly and foolishly (which lightens the action with a little comedy but also represents a self-emptying kenosis). Vash's partner and friend is a country preacher named Wolfwood who carries a huge cross. The cross is a secret stash of guns. The symbol of the cross represents the human belief that only violence is capable of opposing violence. (It is worth noting that Vash's name means “cow” and his partner's name means “wolf”).

The author uses the story of Vash and the old west as a metaphor for the problem of human suffering. The people of the old west and of Jesus' time were convinced that the solution was for God to punish and kill the evil people and invite the innocent to paradise. But Christ defied this logic; instead of using violence Christ comes to suffer. Vash himself suffers terribly as a result of his refusal to kill, enduring great injury while trying to save people who are trying to kill him.

The climax of the story involves a terrible moment for Vash, in which he resolves to kill an arch-villain who is bent on destroying the world. Vash is plagued by guilt, as if he has taken sin upon himself. He is dragged behind horses as a criminal, stripped, and humbled. He does not resist this treatment. At the last moment, though, he stops the villain without killing him, and carries the villain back home on his shoulders, resolving to care for him and teach him how to live rightly.

All of these moments are replete with Christological imagery: Vash wears red (standing for blood, life), he wanders in the desert, he has a transfiguration in which he appears to be a heavenly figure, he bears symbolic wounds, and he has an intuitive grasp of what people need in order to turn from sin and live. Lastly, the later episodes reveal that Vash is old enough to have been present when the world was a green paradise, and that his motivation is to remedy the wrong that turned the world into a desert wasteland and let humanity have a new future

The Christ-figure reveals the author's conviction that humans are caught in a cycle of violence... and that radical forgiveness and a salvific act of sacrifice are needed to show humanity the way to live. Not a bad Christian message.

There are many other archetypes at work, the message is strongly Buddhist and the lone gunslinger also represents the values of samurai ethics. But the Christological aspect of the character is strong and deliberate. This makes for a rich and fruitful context in which Eastern and Western ideas can play off of one another.

Concluding remarks:

Anime can be very strange. Like any artform, it can be used to convey either fatuous, destructive themes or deeply human and redemptive ones. It is our role as discerning viewers to seek out that which is most good and benefit from it. I hope that by my little analysis I have not imposed Christian themes onto non-Christian work. It is neither my job or my desire to bring Christ to these stories. It is my belief that, implicitly or explicitly, Christ is already present in all human narrative.

The Jesuit missionaries who first came to Japan were deeply moved by the culture and the people they encountered. They found Christ already at work in Japan. Their faith lead them to openness and receptivity. Our faith must lead us to the same; only then can we truly find God in all things.

PS: For complete episodes of Trigun on youtube, click below... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLRpi2_QdA0