Ships in the Night

Cycle of Terror, Graydon Parrish

Many of us are very concerned with our surrogate morality of politics.



From this base we mobilize against the enemies of our rights, gracing our elegant platitudes with the Constitution's old lace. Thus we are kept secure and fervent for awhile. We cannot be assailed in our perfection of doctrine. Is there anyone more doctrinal than one American trying to prove a legal point to another. 

It's not a question.

We often hear we should respect the office of the president even if we do not respect the man. This is perhaps not so clear or shocking as the greater fabric of propaganda that feeds the American desire of divine imperial right, of secular sanctity. Jupiter and Jefferson, Neptune and Ben Franklin.

Our Pantheon, like any which is untrue, is manipulable, subject to the requirements of the time. Our views and values shift, some towards decay, others toward growth and fertility. I am not suggesting that allowing our political system to change as development requires is inadvisable. But allowing our political construct, which is intrinsically changeable, to become the basis by which we measure the human good -- to allow popular consensus to override the necessity of moral considerations -- is deranged.

Since when has the populace en masse been a moral authority. It has become the surrogate morality.

Those who support gay rights may very well have a legal basis for doing so. But considering a woman may choose to sue a family if her child hurts himself of his own fault on said family's property, or considering the hypocrisy of asserting the "right to choose" whilst forcing religious institutions to forgo that right, who should place his faith in the republic?

It becomes more and more apparent that supporters of gay rights are not a minority. They are making slow headway toward the achievement of their ironic goal. This is the public thing. It is a part of the ideological doctrine, and it will be enforced.

So why debate the issue on the legal plane? Why discuss in the arena a question of fundamental import to the understanding of the human person and his dignity. The sanctuary in the stock exchange.

I don't believe that the majority of those concerned with the effects of homosexuality on the cultural -- and indeed the personal -- sphere give two little lumps of refuse about what is legally sanctioned in the United States of America, or any other state for that matter. The question has political implications, sure, but it is, at its root, a theological discussion requiring a holistic approach.

Hence the absurdity of claiming a political institution such as civil marriage as a sort of banner of moral rectitude. Civil marriage is ultimately an agreement between two human beings who do not necessarily understand the spiritual significance of human relations. Civil marriage is something surfeit, another part of that ideological framework that says freedom is doing what one likes. It even speaks to the machinery of capitalism, the form of the business agreement. Civil marriage is for one or both parties who are not yet capable of acknowledging the transformational significance of sacramental marriage.

Doubtless, there is meaning if the promises made are kept, but that meaning derives from the secular desire to give just as much as one must without sacrificing the farcical ideal of the autonomous self. Moreover, let us remember that the official acts with the authority vested by the state.

The state is a format. It is not an authority. It's the clothes we wear, and no one needs a talking hat (unless there are some magical, faerie qualities of which I am unaware).

In the end, if same-sex unions are permitted, nothing will have been proved. It will simply be fact. Arbitration du jour.

Deep ontological disturbance will remain beneath the animal accretions of the postmodern self who seeks to war in arrogance like a prancing bird of paradise in its alpha display. See me. Love me. That is my only cry though it is the burning song of hatred.

Finally, the postmodern homosexualist rests his argument upon the naught. If his rationale is "liberal" and "progressive", then it has foundations in youthful inexperience and discounted sophism. If it is based on the state, then it is simply unseasonal (if he is trying to prove the goodness of homosexual acts). Freedom is meaningless if used to refer to a political "right". "Goodness" is meaningless if dressed in the same trappings. We determine the state. It does not determine us.

The only determination that is meaningful will be a discussion on a theological basis: what is the meaning of man? And the "progressive" "liberal" must join if he is to be considered. Otherwise, his cries are irrelevant, his attempted discrediting of religion (from a position of postmodern secular doctrine) laughable. The cart does not lead the horse: politics must nod to the wisdom of religion. Things go badly when they do not.

This is not a question that the state can answer or was designed to answer. The impending legislation is asinine: posterior end first. Again, the state can rise, fall, remain with a limping mediocrity -- this has no bearing on the question of what is right, what is good, what is fitting. Parties on either side of this debate must not be afraid to abandon the town hall (if it becomes a center of propagandizing) for the churches and universities.

I would start with an in-depth consideration of John Paul II's positive explication of human sexuality, which is not based on a fervid desire to discount the validity of homosexuality, but a desire to understand man. Hence, you will not find the popular phraseology you seek. Bring your anti-ego.

He starts from the beginning. Head first.


See Susannah Black's Brave New Cold War

Love in the Cold

"Many false prophets will arise, and many will be deceived by them; and the charity of most men will grow cold, as they see wickedness abound everywhere ..." (Mt. 24.11-12)

Having visited all who will with plenty of time to spend, Love turns her face to the lilies, for at least they will never turn their bright joyful heads away from her.

The cold doors of stone towers are invisible to her, their secrets forgotten. The walls of cities do not discriminate, and Love is lost in the tumult of passions good and ill.

So frequently do we strive for honor in the great effort of ecstasy, pushing outward against the senses that at once bind and make us onto more liberal frontiers -- seeking Truth, Goodness, Beauty. But what marble pillars. What frigid stones, though mountains, of thought.

Truth, Goodness, Beauty -- noble ideas to be pursued. But constantly we forget the force that drives us toward them. Too often we forget the cabman, the selfless rickshaw runner who silently bears us to and fro.

Goodness: why certainly it contains Love. But why "Goodness" and not Love? Does not Love contain Goodness? Justice, the favorite of Aristotle -- does not Love fulfill it, complete it, make it bear fruit?

And Love abounds more than these. It is Love in the artist that makes him sing bright colors onto barren sheets of white. Love culls melody from fiddle and flute. Love tears forth the tears of Whitacre's David: "Oh, Absalom!"

And Love quiets with a mothers soft forgiving arms the first sorrow of newfound sin.

At the end of Trois Couleurs: Bleu, Krzysztof Kieślowski depicts the lovemaking of the wayward, mournful beloved and he who loved and pursued her throughout her pain. Preisner's soundscore comes soaring through the scene with lyrics from 1 Corinthians 13.1: "I may speak with every tongue that men and angels use; yet, if I lack charity, I am no better than echoing bronze, or the clash of cymbals."

With the deadly egotism of savored sorrow, she had used him in her need. She had fled his warmth and honest generosity of soul for the tower of the dead. Felix culpa. In the coldness she found Love.

What simplicity.

How easy to let the power of the sea strip away the last timbers of our sorry rafts; how comforting to relax our grip.

How true and good to die.

How beautiful is art that crucifies its maker. The testament of his great love -- blindness for Monet, for Raphael. An early death for Rilke, Keats.

A desert for Teresa of Calcutta.

How many names would be added to the history books if we forsook the scales that make the dirt look like the sky, make our soiled feathers seem to fly with wings of bonded wax.

The mother stands there with a washcloth waiting and soft forgiving arms.

Goodness waits on Love.

The Pilgrim and His Guide

We are displaced people, always looking for a home yet never quite finding one.  Oh we may very much feel at home when we step into our leather-trimmed cars and are wafted away to our warm brick houses in the middle of autumn, or when we sip pumpkin-flavored-something in front of a crackling fire in the company of those we love.  Yes - it is easy to feel at home.  

Yet how quickly is man reminded of his place in the universe when he gazes upon the sun falling into the sea against a golden sky, or when he hears the serenade of a violin over a solemn piece played on a piano, or of course, when the eyes of the beloved meet his for a split moment in time.  The comforts of the world begin to fade as his focus is moved upward, higher, above and beyond his very self, so that he wants to escape the material fetters that bind him and soar to the caller, to unite himself with the falling sun, the saddened song, and the very body and soul of the beloved.  

In all of this, there exists a painful truth: as long as man is living within his mortal coil, he cannot fully unite himself to the Beautiful.  This is why we are pilgrims.  This is why we cannot call planet Earth as we know it our home.

Do not misunderstand me - there is much delight to be had in the journey, and it is very good indeed to live in the present and enjoy the company of loved ones while sipping pumpkin-flavored-whatever in front of a crackling fire.  The people we love are not a means to an end, nor is food and drink merely sustenance for our journey.  Such a view is utilitarian and saps the joy out of living.  Nevertheless, man exists as homo viator, a pilgrim man, and will always live in angst until he reaches the very heart of Heaven itself.  In fact, unless we realize that we are sojourners, we can never truly live peacefully and joyfully in the present, for the man that denies that he is made for another home painfully grasps at material goods to no avail.  It is only the homo viator that can truly love the created world.

And thus we are on the move.  Yet we move only because we have been disturbed by Beauty.  And as we follow the path that Beauty guides us along, we notice that she serves a threefold purpose: she is the pointer, she is the sustainer, and she is the goal.

As the pointer Beauty makes us aware of our displacement in the world, and thus begins our journey.  As the sustainer she lets us rest in her bosom, giving us motivation upon motivation, manifesting herself among and within the universe (the sunset, the song and the beloved point us beyond themselves, yet are also beautiful in their own right, and can therefore be loved on their own accord).  And lastly, as the goal, we consume Beauty entirely as it consumes us.

Once contained and containing, we will dance with the Beautiful and her two sisters, the Good and the True.  The three who cannot be trichotimized, the three who cannot be described as a single element, are the final resting place for the tired pilgrim.

Good reader, you have seen her, you have heard her song.  Now let Beauty be your guide.

Violence and Cinema

Part I: The Death of Boromir

It is an obvious enough cultural fact in America that movies often gain attention for their thrilling action sequences, displays of prowess in war, and, of course, for the streams of blood extracted from a stylized severance of human limbs – Cf. “300.”

Short of displacing all violence from some puritanical desire to save the virgin eyes of children – short of creating the idea of some farcical utopia in which there is no suffering – it is beneficial to discuss the proper place of violence in art. In this post, we will focus specifically on the motion picture.

However, ancillary to this discussion is a clarification that still remains unclear. Many aesthetically educated folks – and here I include myself, if only as an acolyte – detest utterly the idea of an association of art with morality. In the case mentioned above, concerning an irrational fear of violence for the sake of preserving an unreal innocence, we might refer to the early days of the Focus on the Family reviews of newly released films. In these reviews, the question was whether or not the story had a good “moral” at the end or whether it had too much “sex” or “violence,” not whether or not the film was “beautiful.”

Apparently, there is a social separation between “morality” and “beauty.” The separation arises from bad “Christian” – scare quotes – films like “Fireproof.” “Fireproof” is supposed to be a morality tale about a married man addicted to pornography who has a “come to Jesus” moment. But I think it is immoral – both because it lacks beauty and imagination and because it has a design upon the viewer that has little to do with love. The filmmaker seems to have been more concerned with telling everyone that “pornography is bad” whilst wagging his pulpit finger at a bored and tired audience than with producing a beautiful work of art in the Western tradition. Obviously.

It is this understanding of morality that gives pause to the aesthete as he attempts to reconcile the two. But when he realizes that morality is something far other than moralizing, that virtue defies his attempts to contain it, he has no problem with admitting a trinity: goodness, truth, beauty.

And so to violence.

In order not to reduce violence – oh and the excitement! – to mere hacking and thrashing, I would like to proffer an example from Terrence Malick's “To the Wonder.” This latest of the Texas filmmaker's accomplishments portrays the relationship of two lovers, one a young Parisian mother, the other a Kansas environmental analyst. They meet in France, go to Mont Ste.-Michelle, fall in love. She follows him to America. They live in a builder home in the grassy fields under a Kansas sky. The relationship is fraught with cultural tensions, doubtful romance, the utter brokenness of these individuals as they strive for fulfillment and meaning, attempt to find it in each other.

At one point, the woman encounters another American man to whom she is drawn – a tradesman type, a rough. She sleeps with him in a seedy motel. She never smiles. It seems almost a moral experiment.

As an invested viewer, I watched this sequence in a fit of soulful agony. I could not bear the pain of the moment, but my eyes remained open. My heart clung to the asphyxiating beauty of the woman, of that beauty that seemed consummate in the love of the first man, and which was utilized like a well-greased tool by the second.

After the fact, she does not know what to do. She begins to walk confusedly on the side of the highway. The Kansas man finds her, finds out. In Malick's lack of verbal exchange, focus on physical expression, fragmented, frantic cinematography, the psychological struggle is an exquisite strain, as if someone had a grip on your veins.

But in all of this what is expressed? A beauty of wrecked potentiality. A beauty that must be sought and yet which is accessible if one will only choose to see. A beauty that cannot otherwise be portrayed to any believable extent.

We do not know perfection, and thus perfection must be shown by degradation, destruction, desolation. By opposites. Malick implies the possible anthesis. At the end of the movie, though a sort of reconciliation is achieved, the lovers part. We are forced to think of the alternate, but in homage to Malick, I will not state it here. It is the unspeakable, incomprehensible reality whereof this present life is but a shadow and a lie. If there is a lie, there is truth.

So what of violence in cinema? This too:

Boromir's brave breast went forth to meet the serrated point of the Uruk's shaft. Valor can have no expression without violence. And valor is beautiful. Violence is a foil to beauty, and like a foil it falls aside to reveal purpose behind it's veil.

But what if it cannot do this?

Part II: The Death of the Zombie

Violence without meaning, such as in the zombie thriller or the horror film – where guts and limbs and heads are split and crushed and splattered – lacks all imagination whatsoever.

What portends that visceral pleasure we experience when a gaping humanoid drags its festering top half across a field in pursuit of the not-yet-zombified protagonist? What is the significance of our cultural taste for violence of all sorts, especially mutilation of the human form?

→ The idea that all can – and so must – be subjected to our perusal for the selection of what brings most pleasure, excitement, artificial stimulation of the ego. Like masturbation. Violence in every instance is a display of misused power.

When Rick's group in “The Walking Dead” attempts to extract a bloated “swimmer” from a water well, the creature's body simply disintegrates and it's entrails fall one by one and plop into the water. The scene has no overarching significance. The group simply finds another water source. Thus, we must imagine that the design of the director was to draw upon some capacity for sadistic pleasure in his audience. Sadism by its very definition is an expression of a darker form of lust: the desire to have both the physical gratification available from sexual excitement and complete and utter power over the object of that excitement – in this case, a mutilated human form.

And so when scenes of violence – e.g. battle sequences – are placed before our eyes, such as those in Braveheart, where bodies are gratuitously mutilated for the visual feasting of the spectator, we are led to question the effectiveness of that human creation in reaching a manifestation of the beautiful or the sublime.

Sublimity through violence is a sort of intellectual damnation. When we are brought to such a state where our endorphins rush in a whirlwind of ecstasy at the sight of ruptured corpses – especially if we can figure ourselves in the place of the protagonist who ruptures them – then we blunt our ability to experience beauty, to experience the ultimate contrary of violence, which is the dizzying complex of the human person in all of his or her yearnings.

Meaningless violence, then, is ultimately an expression of self-loathing.

Therefore, the filmmaker who employs violence without implying its counterpoint is an enemy to culture, which is, after all, a human enterprise, the pursuit of the best that has been thought and said. In the representation of a violent annihilation of the human or the humanoid, the project of culture is annihilated. Self-loathing takes its place, a mis-anthropology that encourages the collapse of society, and all art with it.