The Defining Literary Work of the Age

The Defining Literary Work of the Age March 23, 2017

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So I guess Disney remade Beauty and the Beast. The story, from what I can gather, is that a young woman who likes to read is persecuted by a village that hates that sort of thing, whereupon she has to go live in a castle owned by a human animal hybrid. There are lots of talking dishes, and some songs. And the young woman saves the Beast from himself so that he gets to be human again. All these sentences should end with question marks because I haven’t seen it. I tried to, way back in the 90s, but as soon as the songs started and the pictures started talking I had to run for it. Not only do I hate all movies, I really hate animated movies where people sing. And also, it was scary. And weird that the girl falls in love with the Beast who I am pretty sure kidnapped her. It’s like the prequel to fifty shades of gray–ugh. And count me out.

So I guess the new one came out, and it is possible to already see it because Cat went and found it to be exactly as good as I expected. She writes a good and fair review and you should read the whole thing. But the money quote, and why I think every decent human should boycott Disney, is

“Not that it matters. Disney’s gonna make money hand over fist with this one, quality notwithstanding. One of the recurring conversations among artistic Christians is why we don’t have more good Christian art in this day and age. This movie, friends, and the happy reception it has had, and will have, among good salt-of-the-earth believers, is why we can’t have nice things. Most people don’t want good Christian art. They want Disney nostalgia turned up to eleven.”

It really does seem, as I wander around the Christian sphere, that nostalgia is The Thing. The remembrance of past moments remade, redrawn, re-sung. Bigger and brighter, or course. That goes without saying. But if you haven’t given up and gone full bore dystopic zombies (or is that last year? I can’t keep up) you are really just reworking the music and movies of the decades before.

Not to entirely change the subject, but follow me on a rabbit trail. The children and I are nearing the end of the Iliad, which we have diligently been pursuing for some long weeks, what feels like months. The lists of names are biblically long, joined together with all the tongues being cleft in twain and the skulls being shattered and the long conversations in the middle of battle. The children keep remarking, ‘There’s no way, if they are really fighting, that they have time to be talking like that.’ Still, it’s the foundational literary moment of western civilization, and therefore I’m finding it pretty nice, particularly the cadence of reading it aloud.

‘What’s the defining literary work of our age?’ I asked Matt. I mean, after the Iliad you had the Legends of Arthur, which gripped the imagination and articulated the hopes and dreams of many generations. What do we have now?

He thought maybe Lord of the Rings, but I said I thought not. Then he decided it must be some weird combination of Game of Thrones and Fifty Shades of Gray. But really, when you think about it, and where all the money has gone, wouldn’t it have to be Disney? Aren’t Belle and that Lion Cub the touchstones for the children of this age?

Which depresses me not a little, because not only is the original music not all that interesting, the characters and writing are flat and…I better stop because I think I must be about to offend the entire Internet.

And surely this must be why some people think the Shack is real theology. I’m just trying to help you feel hopeless is all.

It’s not that Christians don’t want to think deeply, it’s that nobody wants to. And that’s a terrible indictment of the reality of our lives. As my sarcastic child likes to say (and he did steal this from somewhere or other) ‘We have all the knowledge in the world at the touch of a finger and the thing we most want to do is watch cat videos…can I please have an iPod 6?’

‘No you can’t can’t have an iPod,’ I always say, ‘unless you can buy it yourself.’ He goes away looking sad and I sit and feel bad about how much I like cat videos.

Christians should boycott Disney not because it’s immoral but because it’s vapid and in bad taste, because it makes so much money off of our desire for a cheep, easy, nostalgic thrill. Christians should stop giving money to things that make them dumber. Christians should stop spending time on books that are badly written and theologically as deep as a warm mud puddle. Christians should not spend money on dumb Jesus movies and all the posters and paraphernalia that go with them. Our favorite poem should not be the Serenity Prayer. We should not get a tingly feeling over Footprints. And our favorite copy of the Bible should not be the coloring version.

Gosh I’m being a jerk today. I better go try to be a less judgmental person. I’m going to try real hard, but I’m not going to succeed because failure is kind of my thing. Pip pip!


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