The Community of Culture

La Soledad, Carlos Saenz de Tejada

When we speak of "culture", we are often referring to a sort of status quo, the condition of education, technology, science, and the arts that we experience in our daily lives. We often refer to "culture" as if it is something without agency, something "out there", without considering our own participation in its formation. It may be for this very reason that we often fail to challenge our own actions, our own way of life, our stock viewpoints -- we see culture as an accumulation of practices and values that may be verbally dispensed and objectively discussed, but which have little interrelation with the manner in which we order our existence. 

Notwithstanding, the word "culture" carries certain connotations. We make judgements about culture because it may contain positive or negative elements. It may be a "culture of death", which is an oxymoron for, according to the frighteningly powerful Google machine, our usage of "culture" derives from

• Middle English (denoting a cultivated piece of land): the noun from French culture or directly from Latin cultura ‘growing, cultivation’; the verb from obsolete French culturer or medieval Latin culturare, both based on Latin colere ‘tend, cultivate’ (see cultivate). In late Middle English the sense was ‘cultivation of the soil’ and from this (early 16th cent.) arose ‘cultivation (of the mind, faculties, or manners)’; sense 1 of the noun dates from the early 19th cent.

Hence, we comment upon practices that are retrogressive for culture, that facilitate the accession of the inhumane, the violent, the brutish, the ignorant. (Recently, Brett McCracken commented upon the attitude in American culture (another oxymoron? not always) of "fame for fame's sake" and the prostitution of art for recognition of the ego (e.g. Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, etc.).)

If we make assertions of value in reference to culture, then we recognize that humanity is responsible for culture, and thence that we are individually responsible, for our part, for the state of culture. We recognize, too, that "culture" is not merely a label for what is, but a concept defined by continual movement toward excellence in all things human (e.g. education, technology, science, the arts).

Matthew Arnold, the 19th century British critic, describes culture as "the pursuit of light and perfection", and explains that "light and perfection consist, not in resting and being, but in growing and becoming, in a perpetual advance in beauty and wisdom" (Culture and Anarchy).

Immediately great names come to mind: Plato, Homer, Virgil, Dante -- the list goes on. The list goes on indeed ... but why do these cultural monoliths stand so solitary against the dark background of history? Why does not a great host of luminous figures swarm around them, equal or greater to the tide of human depravity and squalor?

The modern world is not devoid of cultured minds: Karol Wojtyla, Walker Percy, Arvo Part, Krzysztof Kieslowski. Yet they stand in almost diametric opposition to the crass flashing of famous names in headlines and on the little black boxes of misinformation that constantly invade our homes. Their names are not heard so loudly nor so very often as those which strive harder and harder not to be forgotten like  the finite novelty of autumnal leaves.

Perhaps because they are taproots, hidden and essential. One must dig to find them, and one must get dirty. And one must not leave the soil disturbed.

Why is the community of culture small? The community of culture is the community of the human. The human calls these facets of himself "culture" in order to distinguish them from the spoiling diction of faddism that pervades postmodern society. The human must constantly distinguish himself from that which fades. The human does not fade.

You often hear older people, when they mention the names of actors, films, musicians that no one else knows remarking upon how this particular knowledge dates them, how it is a sign of aging, a movement toward obscurity, disconnection from youth. But the youth are equally old if they speak of what their parents do not know or do not care to know.

The old betray their youth by not caring about Kardashian or whoever's next on the altar of sensationalism. The youth betray their age by caring. To be human is to learn and cling to excellence. That is a perpetual youth, a perpetual becoming, an ever-widening beauty.

And so our culture may be called a "culture of death" in many ways, one being that it clings not to the excellent, which is universal and enduring, but to the ephemeral, which is just that.

If you find yourself lonely in such a milieu, consider this.

Are you infatuated with the esoteric (pride)? Do you wrap yourself in fantasy to deny reality (e.g. the infamous MMORPG, niched obsessions, etc.)? Do you choose to be? Or are you lonely because the way of enculturation is difficult -- the road obscure, the company often silent, the goal something as seemingly unattainable as sainthood?

It is not merely the place of cultural icons to effect culture. It is the way of culture -- the way of the human -- to come out and speak, to stand one's ground among others and assert whatever merited authority one may possess. To share and to accept, certainly, but to be firm in the right.

At the base of the mountain is the battle against physical endangerment, which allows no possibility for culture. The battle against the enemies of culture (e.g. sloth, sentimentalism, political platforming, etc.) ranges in a thicker wood at a higher tier. It is even more essential to the becoming of humanity. Undoubtedly, it is a gift to be here. But it is a curse if we fail our nature and submit to the mediocre strummings, cooings, and ooings of pop folk or the abstract unartistic assertions of obscurantist "postmodern" writers or directors. They wrap the status quo in mysterious trappings and bring despair in the unveiling. Artist's shit (Cf. Duchamp).

There is always a subculture trying to be avant-garde. It is always subculture.

So let your heart be abused. Seek the shifting sifted community of culture that wants to be as best it can. People of culture see the world in its wholeness. They decry and forgive and bring in lost sheep. They acknowledge their own silly sheepishness. But they never stop striving after every ounce of unounceable eternity. They are sometimes artists, sometimes laymen, sometimes clergy, and often on low salaries. But they always try to get the world to listen with the lovingest things. At the same time, they do not reduce truth, beauty, goodness. They do not put pearls forth to be trampled by swine.

Critics called director Eric Rohmer's La Collectioneuse boring. They could not see it.

I therefore encourage you, my friends, not to forget the unity of all things, and how what is separate must be brought together, how the world fights itself but nevertheless tends to communion. To wait is not so bad as to despair and lose oneself to postmodern animalism. Do not fall to easy emotions. Be vigilant. If it were easy it would not be itself. Increase in the virtue of finding loneliness -- beauty awaits the contemplative and forbearing mind. Find and give the lovingest things. You may die cold, quiet, and alone like God.

II. Trois Couleurs: Rouge

Valentine, played by Irene Jacob, is beautiful, vivacious, passionate, assertive. We want to sympathize with her. Her personality is sweetened by a certain scent of innocence that causes us to desire identification with her, to simultaneously fall in love with her.

Indeed, her supreme beauty is central to this part of Kieslowski's trilogy.

A very important moment arrives, however, in the studio where she is photographed as a model. We see her sitting there, artificial wind blowing her wet hair about her face. And at the word from the photographer -- "triste" -- her beauty is transformed by an unutterable sorrow.

Although Valentine has suffered -- her brother a heroin addict, her mother an unforgiven adulteress -- we are given the sense that she has called forth this emotion from outside -- it is borrowed, learned, used for theatrics, but perhaps without completely genuine content.

And in rushes forcefully another theme of the film: external, supernatural movements that intimately interact with the willed movements of the film's characters. An overarching wellspring of meaning and purpose -- a silent smiling whisper in which Valentine, Auguste, and the old judge participate without creating.

We humans can name sorrow, joy, fear, but we cannot know them in their full intensity at any given moment. We can, however, experience little hints of that memory of humanity, what some call the historical memory or collective memory. In my mind, this refers to God, who after all is one of us in a way none of us can be. He is more human than we are, and he is the origin of every sense. Because of this, I think, we have access to feelings that are not our own, access to at least an awareness of the depth of human feeling, desire -- due to our necessary and constant connection with him: complete dependence, our drawing of life from him. We draw everything from him.

Such a beauty illustrated in this film. The old judge reflects upon his life, his decline in sourness and cynicism grown from an experience of betrayal. And who grants him knowledge of this?

As a voyeur, he seeks knowledge to which he has no right. But none of it grants him any insight into his own condition. It is precisely through knowledge gratis that he is able to understand himself, and to love once more.

The beauty and love of the hint. God is a life-hack. I beseech you to give yourself to these films. God love you.

Irene Jacob on Rouge and Kieslowski:

Thoughts on Louisiana, Culture, and the Humane

Consider this my "hello", and as much an exposition of my tentative self as I can give on the interwebs.

Book Review: "Voyage to Alpha Centauri"

Cinder blocks.

Cinder blocks are analogous to the accidental properties of Michael O’Brien’s novels. Yet his latest, his 10th, “Voyage to Alpha Centauri,” is relatively small compared to his earlier works, clocking in at only 587 pages.

It’s a shame that these books look so daunting, as a majority of our twittering, texting masses will never read something that doesn’t grant them instant gratification. Yet for those who are patient, willing to take the time to embark on his latest adventure, will find themselves traveling through space at 0.5 times the speed of light. Man’s destination? The system of Alpha Centauri, our closest neighboring star.

Many have commented on this novel, some saying that the same story could have been told with 200 pages cut out of it. While this may be the case, I for one did not feel the novel drag. O’Brien is a master artist, not an author of popular fiction. Every word carries meaning. Indeed, if you allow yourself to be immersed, you will feel as though you are a passenger aboard the Kosmos (mankind’s massive city-like ship, over a kilometer in length that embarks on a nineteen year voyage into space).

Written as a journal, the reader enters into the mind of the two-time Nobel-prize recipient, Dr. Neil de Hoyos, whose work in physics have allowed the possibility of such a voyage to occur. He’s a skeptical fellow, allowing his intelligence to act as a wall against the inner longings of his very human heart. He lives with regrets, he’s angry, and he walks with a limp. Yet he and the 600 other passengers hope that in leaving their fallen, totalitarian home planet, they will be free from their dystopia, somehow, some way.

As the story progresses, the milieu becomes very dark, and the terrible truth of man’s inability to escape himself and the shortcomings of his people stare in the face of Dr. Hoyos. The central theme under all the action, discoveries, and conspiracies really got under my skin; try as they might to transcend humanity’s ugliness, the voyagers still carry the faults of their people - our people - within themselves. Evil lies in the hearts of men.

And yet the story ends with incredible hope and joy. When I finished the book, I had to take a day to unwind myself, to float back down to Earth. I was saddened that the journey was over, but I cannot wait to discuss it with my brother, who has just started the book on my recommendation.

You can buy the book here: http://amzn.to/1pUA31S

You can also check out O'Brien's other novels (and his wonderful articles and paintings) at his personal website: http://www.studiobrien.com

The Fight and Flight of Street Art

In Poland. By Natalia Rak.

As a rule, respectable people are inclined to think of street art as vandalism, and in many cases they are right to do so. For the most part, they are thinking of graffiti in its depictions of gang signs, obscenities, or general absurd ugliness or mundanity: "The Dell," "Klue," "F*ck what they think," etc. We are apt to judge objects by their worst traits, as we do each other.

But, primarily suburbanites, we offer ourselves little exposure to the world. The graffiti we encounter is generated by those not so unlike ourselves as we like to think -- suburbanites, perhaps disgruntled teens or young adults who just need to shout and get out.

In the cities, the centers of business and the pretentious avant-garde, where the battle for the soul rages more fiercely and the opposing voices clash and shatter against one another, there is a presence that knows it cannot reach its audience with mere mediocrity or annoyance. It knows that it must put up a fight to be seen, to be felt, and to transform. Extraordinary and intrusive -- it can be no less.

In Lodz, Poland. By ETAM Cru.

Beyond the merely sexy and suggestive, beyond the mere representation of culture or its values as they stand, there are some artists who are weaving a new tale, telling a new story, teaching by gift, service.

Such beautiful, complex works of art on the building walls are the artists' heart on a plate. One does not destroy such things unless through guilt, self-hatred, agony -- and such marks (such cuts on the face of Our Lady of Częstochowa, for instance) are the sign of a war on beauty, a war on the self.

But why is the "vandalism" of graffiti necessary? It is not "necessary," per se, but imminent, just as the destruction of countries, cities, lives is imminent in any war. Modernity made its war on the person long ago, and street art fights back with love. The world tears out her hair, and he crowns her head with flowers to assuage the loss. Street art now is a true revolt. It is the mother who, suffering, says no to the child.

It is true that many artists today, more than ever, are isolated within their world. The selective social media that effectively operates our daily lives makes sure of this. But the artist does not want to be seen by other artists only. Even more than this, he must not be seen by other artists only. The artist is for the world. Like Christ, he draws when there is nothing left to say, even if he must draw in the sand, or on a concrete slab.

One of Andre Amador's Playa Paintings

The hardened law is what must be broken, taught, and with such non-aggression as a flower in its gun barrel, a sad human face on its corporate morgue.

The world was made of and for color, light, play, and passion deep as the blue of the deepest sea. And to combat it with handcuffs or paint-overs is to bend the natural law and to hasten one's own death. The cities need "illicit" art because they have become dungeons. And even art that hangs limp on gallery walls can suffer the glare of the evaluative modern mind. Churn, spit, rotate -- that is our definition of sophistication. And when the museum-infected red square #24 plays in service of that mind, laying out a sea of blood to be filled with the self's own manufactured ideals of libertinism and commerce ... it too has gone to the gallows and hung itself.

Lodz, Poland. The site of a wondrous artistic phenomenon. Murals of gigantic proportions appear in panoply upon the broadsided buildings throughout the city, with subjects ranging from the grotesque to the pastoral -- all done with skill. And, strangely enough, embraced unreservedly.

by Aryz

From the Huffington Post: "The public/private partnership and the addition of the artwork has attracted business and investment, and of course urban exploring tourists who can follow a map to see the works within a couple of hours. As a model for employing the talents of street artists to create public art in service of the re-invigoration of a city, this one appears to be very successful at respecting the work while adding value to a neighborhood, district, city, and community." (Full article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jaime-rojo-steven-harrington/large-murals-transform-lodz_b_3428241.html)

The immediate subject of all art is life, regardless of what is portrayed. It is a commentary and a question, an appeal and a message. It should always inspire the sort of activity mentioned in the above article. Unfortunately, it often encounters a different response:

In Greenpoint, NY. By Banksy.

Thanks be to God, the same intelligent minds whose art is destroyed in the service of an arbitrary and disjointed sense of order know just how to respond. When small arms fail, send a missile.

In London, England

by Banksy

As Banksy says, "Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better-looking place."

I am certainly not promoting unrestrained hooliganism, nor am I condemning the justified burial of offensive material -- unless it offends for the right reason. One retains one's right to his property if he is a good steward of it. For instance, the Lodz venture might be considered good stewardship: if you find yourself in possession of a great ugly gray block of concrete, it is a good decision to fill it with something beautiful. 

However, if you place your animal in insufferable conditions ... or you do the same to humanity by denying its better voices, you have lost your rights. You are a failure as a steward to the earth, and what is government but an appointed steward to act for the best interests of humanity. At this point, someone else must assume the throne. And authority is not given the steward to deny the return of the king.

In "The Duty of Society to the Artist," E.M. Forster provides a helpful illustration of the conversation between an artist who wishes to paint a mural and a city official. The city official is very happy to pay the artist, but wants to know exactly what the artist shall paint (for it must, of course, thinks the official, be of service, of usefulness, to the state). The artist does not know what he shall paint. He needs to begin. He needs to create, experiment. He is not an engineer or a chemist. He is an artist, and the artist makes out of love, not out of mere design. His creations do not have a purpose, per se, but a meaning. They are not schemes, but the story of life itself, manifesting the reflective nature of man toward himself and the cosmos. They are appeals to the deepest and truest sensibilities of human nature, and thus allow the elusive Real to be actualized as the imagination takes hold and seeks to make itself like unto beauty.

But the city official shakes his head. He does not understand, nor does he care. He is a vandal, unknowing.

We can do with no more vandals. Plenty of vandals have made our love run cold, placed it under fire of scientism's laser beams. I say let the love pour out upon the city streets. Let the snowy-capped mountains be moved to the weirdly Mordor-esque towers of New York and Chicago. Let Banksy be Banksy. His money's where his mouth is and he can bank with mine anytime (with some -- or many --reservations, of course). 

At least let the artists go back to the streets without timidity. Art is to be seen, remarked upon, rejected if need be. But it must be seen. 

Go out and make fishers of men. Go out and be praised and shamed, for is this not your calling, the very essence of your work? Its public nature, its communal nature? Go out and paint the stars back into the sky. Go and replant trees in the most unjungled of concrete jungles; remain to water the feeble saplings. Go out and paint icons of the kings of men, and dare the world to mutilate its very face. Go out and dare. Go out and make fishers of men.

Bydgoszcz, Poland. Mural by Pener and Sepe.

The Sincerity of American Self-Loathing

Marcello Pera

The Italian philosopher and senator, Marcello Pera, in his essay "Relativism, Christianity, and the West," has written about the perhaps inappropriate self-loathing of Western Civilization -- its recantation of former beliefs sincerely held, its illness of toleration, its apologies for colonial wrongdoing.

Recognizing the legitimate problems present in the negative side effects of Western colonialism, Pera defends the great good that the West -- that's us -- has brought about in suffering countries. I am reminded, for example, of a statement by George Obama, Barack's brother, to the effect that South Africa is a well-organized state because of Western influence, while Kenya is in a condition of chaos because that influence is no longer present.

George Obama, who lives in an 8x8 shack, appreciates the benefits of Western culture. We know that his brother probably shares this opinion, if only subconsciously.

But this is the European picture of Westernesse that I am talking about, not the American.

The European West is necessarily insincere in its self-loathing. Or at least hypocritical.

On the one hand, it sustains large-scale humanitarian efforts, while on the other, it condemns its own self-righteousness -- particularly in the universities, where cultural contextualism is the new "Marseilles." Europe is embattled with itself, and we can only pray that its Christian roots win out in the end.

America, however, is an entirely different story. America is the dumber younger brother nevertheless attempting to emulate the older in his singular inner turmoil. America is addicted to the attractive aloofness and arrogance of its inattentive idol. It's why we like French things.

America puts on airs. It has pretensions to Europeanism, but it is hopelessly ignorant of the ideological troubles faced on the European continent, and so it is hopelessly doomed to ape them ineffectually. And this unrootedness of America, this disconnection from heritage, is bound up in the very reason for our founding: flee the system.

Unfortunately, when we fled society and culture for the wilderness, we fled society and culture for the wilderness.

Here, capitalism has lifted its dress for the bestialism of the frontier. Moneyed bestialism then decided to try on culture. And when the nouveau riche donned their borrowed spectacles, they found themselves disjointed and uncomfortable, but nevertheless unwilling to lay down that assumed arrogance that sweeps over the abyss with waxen wings.

Moneyed bestialism then aped the great empires of the continent, but instead of civilization left mostly burnt forests and oil interests. And when it had found that this was no longer the trend, it turned on itself -- not knowing why -- and began to slap its own wrists for all the wrong reasons. There was no sincere questioning of morals, only an arbitrary reformulation of morals to more adequately conform to both moneyed bestialism and blind idol-worship.

Idols, of course, are not the real thing. Europe, with its cognizant self, may pull out of its self-loathing with a redemptive re-imagining of the Western spirit and the values of that spirit.

America, alas, may be both solitary and sincere in its self-loathing when the "I-less" want overtakes it.

Flamme, Citron, Fear of Death

Flame and Citron (2008) (or Flammen og Citronen, if you prefer) is a film about 2 Danish Resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Europe.

In the main, they are sent on assassination missions, eliminating prominent Danish Nazi collaborators -- mostly military figures. When a female Nazi is involved, Flamme must clean up after Citronen's failure of emotional resolve. Hard times.

Viewing the film, few of us would even wince at the death of a Nazi colonel or SS officer. Most of us would sit still, applying a grim sense of justice to the scene, happy that an enemy to humanity had been neutralized.

We do not fault Flammen and Citronen. We do not fault Flammen for his anger, his frightful impetuousness, his coldness of execution, for he sacrifices his more human capacities for the sake of others, for the sake of those who suffer. Even for an uncertain future, he sacrifices sweetness and light for blood and death and danger.

We do not fault Citronen. His wife and child are poor and hungry, but we only reproach him a little. Indeed, his wife takes up with another man because Citronen is never home, always away in hiding or on the warpath. But he is noble enough to say, "Take care of my wife and child."

Why do they fight? Why kill? We all know. We have heard the stories, seen the dream-like horrors. We do not forget. We have hated the Nazis in our turn. We do not forget. We have seen the tortured, corpse-like human bodies shuffling in the cold. We have seen the corpses. We do not forget.

Those who survive hold on to the flame, the torch of indignation, of sorrow, of love, of despair, of newfound hope, of wisdom hard-won. We have heard them. We have listened attentively. We do not forget.


We forget.


There is a deeper horror that even as I write surfaces once more, insidious, in our minds.

And how do we meet this horror? With swift relentless unfailing justice toward a real and present monstrosity? Or with diplomacy and statecraft. Do we treat with hell?

We treat with hell.


We forget.


We have swallowed the lie that words can win the day. I believe they can. But someone must be listening.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was willing to be arrested, abused, killed for the cause of a better life for African Americans -- not for their lives en masse, but for equal rights as citizens. Not for clothing, not for food, not for water, not for shelter, not for life and breath -- for equal rights as citizens.

Our glorious generation has achieved a complacent sidewalk counselorship. Yes, we are those on the sidelines who watch and say a few words, impotently waving our signs, hiding behind a false piety that says "Prayer is all you need!" without proaction. We treat with hell.

We say that "We are the pro-life generation!" with cries and shouts and smiles and free concerts in Washington, D.C.. But we care only -- really -- for our own lives. We are pro-life in that regard. Our rationalizations are petty and false. We say that we act in this way in the name of "compassion" and "charity," that we are the "peaceful" demonstrators amongst the carnage.

When compassion means sloth, when charity equates to a failure of love in a failure to act for the prevention of murder (and thus the salvation of the would-be murderer), there is no peace. When the mills grind day after day as we plod -- we asses, we dumb chattel -- along the sideline begging our betters -- yes! for they are cold, and we are lukewarm -- to please obey natural and divine law, there can be no peace. There is no peace. There is no peace. There is no peace.

And to pretend to Culture in such a world?!

If the wars are not fought -- if we do not at least stand firm in peaceful civil disobedience: blocking entries, closing down buildings with whatever measures necessary -- then there will be nothing left when the self-loathing of the West has wreaked its havoc upon the last child in the womb (or out).

We fear death. We do not see it, and so we avoid its screeching call for justice. We avoid. We wimper.


There is no peace. There is no peace. Awaken.





Addendum: I do not advocate the murder of abortionists.

The "Sea Peoples": American Philistinism

Edgar Degas, "David and Goliath"

"Philistine" is a lovely pejorative that has unfortunately gone out of fashion -- or at least out of the common ken.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a "philistine" is "3. ... An uneducated or unenlightened person; one perceived to be indifferent or hostile to art or culture, or whose interests and tastes are commonplace or material; a person who is not a connoisseur."

Perhaps the very reason for the mysterious disappearance of such a germane descriptor is that we are so inundated with Philistia that we cannot see it, like a fish in the sea. Only a Noah will float.

One has only to review the "reviews" of Terrence Malick's To the Wonder to discover the inane blatherings of our very own American philistian moviegoers, who apparently equivocate between animal stimulus and good art. Take, for instance, this particular jewel presented graciously to the Amazon passer-by's innocent perusal. Please try to read this comment in its entirety, considering it a spiritual exercise in order to "know thy enemy":

"I'm educated, I went to college. I can appreciate works of 'art' and I have done. However, to watch this movie is to waste time and money on a kaleidoscope of someone else's brain vomit. If I hadn't read the synopsis, I very seriously doubt I would have had a clue what this movie was about. Scattered images and very little dialogue thrown together in a pathetic attempt to seem 'arty' [sic] when, in fact, it comes off as very contrived and forced. When filmmakers come up with this tripe, I can only imagine that they have simply forgotten the 'point' which is to entertain the viewer. I was not entertained. Only shallow people attempting to exhibit nonexistent depth are even going to pretend they enjoyed this viewing experience. However, if you marvel at seeing wonderful actors spin around in the sun and actually NOT act (or even speak audibly); if you enjoy watching a movie presented very similarly to a dream I had last night; or, if you are out to impress that cute blond in your liberal arts classes by feigning intellectualism -- then by all means, go for it."

Thank you, Kellie from Miami. You were very entertaining. I feel less shallow now. "Are you not entertained?," says Maximus. I was entertained. Are you entertained?

That the idea of the beautiful in a piece of artwork and the idea of entertainment held by many Americans are not synonymous, I think you will agree, but in the interest of culture I will provide some delineations. In doing so, I accept the risk of appearing to be one of those "shallow people attempting to exhibit nonexistent depth." ;)

Entertainment. When we seek entertainment, we are usually relying upon someone else's effort to make us laugh, smile, gaze in wonderment, recoil in mock horror. In so doing, we are asking that person or other entity to satisfy our expectations, to fulfill our pre-conceived notions of what will make us happy or afford us some distraction from the weariness of life. Entertainment never transcends the sphere of the immanent.

Ms. Kellie from Miami seeks the same. She would very much like to have all of her instinctual desires recognized and catered to by the filmmaker. She refuses to be brought out of herself in order to encounter a mode of experience that is superior to her own. No. That would make her uncomfortable, and we cannot have "educated" people being made to feel uncomfortable, especially if they have attended "college" and thus understand how to appreciate "'arty'" things.

Sorry, Kellie. Art is ecstasy.

Culture. When we seek culture (and I am referring to the Arnoldian scheme when I say "culture" -- see the final paragraph of "Violence and Cinema"), we are seeking something beyond ourselves. We are seeking something we have not attained, and in this seeking we accept that we must toil with difficult ideas, with difficult perspectives that will at first confuse us when they seek to liberate us from the animal and the mundane.

To take up the banner of Culture is similar to the Christian ideal of taking up the cross. It is a way of intellectual perfection that always looks for the more potently significant in life, even at the expense of the comfort and pleasure of an easy romance or a gratuitous battle sequence. In truth, the way of Culture is the way of the spiritual, of understanding the world and oneself as realities infused with spiritual magnitude, and of seeking to understand the meaning of that magnitude. The way of Culture, of perfection, is infinite, as humankind is infinite.

Thus, to the "'point.'" To be a philistine is to pin down, to ground, to crush things into a swallowable morsel for one's disposal. Yes, to be a philistine is to be a consumer both of products and of ideas -- to dispense with them, to put them in their place so that whatever small-minded existence one possesses may continue without disturbance.

(The idea of philistinism is thus easily pinned down -- it hardly wriggles -- while the ideas expressed variously in such a film as To the Wonder are not so easily placed, nor should they be.)

I dare say Ms. Kellie from Miami has put Malick in his place. For her, the eminent filmmaker with a long and fascinating career as an artist offers the world nothing but "brain vomit."

The person of Culture disagrees.

He can see for her the waves of the Florida sound begin to rise in tumultuous clamor, washing further and further their dross upon the shore. They will take her up with the zombies that dash toward the sealed ark, and she will float for awhile in a hell of thrashing bodies and silted water until she sinks, unaware like a fish in its sea.

But then again, she is a person ... with the sort of infinite potential displayed by Malick in his exploration of human capacities. She can change, though she be Delilah of the Sea Peoples.