House<\/em> to remember that the term \u201cfunctional addict\u201d isn\u2019t purely an oxymoron.<\/p>\nNo, I\u2019m not talking about the\u00a0sentimentalizing\u00a0nor glorifying of\u00a0alcoholism\u00a0but rather the spiritual fetishizing of it.<\/p>\n
Alcoholics have \u201cmoments of clarity,\u201d or at least some purport to having some. In a postmodern age that longs for but doesn\u2019t believe in transcendent insight (because it doesn\u2019t believe in transcendent meaning) there is a perverse (doesn\u2019t matter how you parse that word) jealousy towards those who have the feeble counterfeits of the religious experience. in a period steeped in the mock epic and the mock heroic, the moment of clarity may not pass for the religious experience, but hey, it\u2019s the closest thing we\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n
Of course railing against the evils of postmodernism is as tired and as gauche as wagging ones finger at all the secular humanists, so let me hurry to add that I really blame the University of Iowa, which, it seems, ever since Flannery O\u2019Connor has been churning out MFAs whose cardinal rule of writing appears to be that epiphanies must always, only fall in equal measure on the unjust and the undeserving. (If you instinctively said, \u201cYes, Ken, but we are all undeserving,\u201d pat yourself on the head, give yourself a gold star and go to the head of Sunday School class.)<\/p>\n
Raymond Carver is less overtly spiritual in his work than is O\u2019Connor, but his characters are no less grotesques. Hers are misshapen by (spiritual) pride, arrogance, racism, bitterness\u2026in short, original sin. She is in that long line of literary Puritans descending from Hawthorne who haven\u2019t yet forgotten that evil comes from within. I think you pretty much have to believe that in order to buy into the notion of violent grace\u2013that the most loving thing one could ever do is to confront another with his or her own ugliness.<\/p>\n
Carver\u2019s works always strike me as a more desperate descendant of John Cheever. Alcohol may be the thing that makes us lose our grip on reality, but it is spiritual pollution (usually in the form of consumer gluttony) that infects us with the sickness unto death. Because no one has the power within to throw off the shackles of possessions (and because the postmodernist doesn\u2019t really, honestly believe there is any power from without either to deliver those in bondage or empower them to participate in their own transformation) the luckiest man is the one who drinks enough to lose control and end up having everything that is not really good for him anyway taken away by force.<\/p>\n
None of that is to say that Carver is a bad writer or that Everything Must Go<\/em> is a bad film. \u00a0Just that there is, for all the film\u2019s self-aware (and somewhat self-indulgent) plotlessness, a routine series of movements going on here that will be intuitively familiar to anyone who has ever read \u201cCathedral\u201d or \u201cAre These Actual Miles?\u201d It\u2019s not even that I object to the condemnation of consumerism as the root of all evil. It\u2019s just that when it gets filtered through a \u201cman vs. nature\u201d or \u201cman vs. himself\u201d rubric the one who is reaping what he sowed ends up looking a little too much like Job for my taste. At least in, say, Glengarry, Glen Ross<\/em>, the critique of capitalism contains the admission that it makes actual people (or facsimiles of them) into actual assholes. Will Ferrell\u2019s Nick Halsey is one of those alcoholic equivalents of the prostitute with the heart of gold. Sure he may throw stuff through windows and cuss you out if you won\u2019t sell him beer on credit, but his piss don\u2019t stink, and hey, when all is said and done, he said he was sorry.<\/p>\nThat must be evidence that he\u2019s further down the path of enlightenment than all the rest of us right?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m not here complaining about the too pretty alcoholic, like Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas, who somehow manages to make you forget how really unpleasant is the experience of trying to remember that someone is made in the image of God after you’ve once woken up to the smell of their dried vomit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1555,"featured_media":11197,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[576,577,421],"class_list":["post-3193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-dan-rush","tag-everything-must-go","tag-will-ferrell"],"yoast_head":"\n
Everything Must Go (Rush, 2010)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'm not here complaining about the too pretty alcoholic, like Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas, who somehow manages to make you forget how really unpleasant is the experience of trying to remember that someone is made in the image of God after you've once woken up to the smell of their dried vomit.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Everything Must Go (Rush, 2010)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I'm not here complaining about the too pretty alcoholic, like Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas, who somehow manages to make you forget how really unpleasant is the experience of trying to remember that someone is made in the image of God after you've once woken up to the smell of their dried vomit.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"1More Film Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-05-13T05:23:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-07-26T20:17:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/440\/2014\/07\/everythingmustgo-300x199.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"199\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kenneth R. Morefield\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kenneth R. Morefield\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/\",\"name\":\"Everything Must Go (Rush, 2010)\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-05-13T05:23:29+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-07-26T20:17:50+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/#\/schema\/person\/ca89005780d7511d688a76da7b0fe815\"},\"description\":\"I'm not here complaining about the too pretty alcoholic, like Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas, who somehow manages to make you forget how really unpleasant is the experience of trying to remember that someone is made in the image of God after you've once woken up to the smell of their dried vomit.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Everything Must Go (Rush, 2010)\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/\",\"name\":\"1More Film Blog\",\"description\":\"Inconspicuously Christian\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/#\/schema\/person\/ca89005780d7511d688a76da7b0fe815\",\"name\":\"Kenneth R. Morefield\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0c6043332b82de93c9e6bacec2c2e437?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0c6043332b82de93c9e6bacec2c2e437?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Kenneth R. Morefield\"},\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/1morefilmblog.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/author\/kenmorefield\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Everything Must Go (Rush, 2010)","description":"I'm not here complaining about the too pretty alcoholic, like Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas, who somehow manages to make you forget how really unpleasant is the experience of trying to remember that someone is made in the image of God after you've once woken up to the smell of their dried vomit.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Everything Must Go (Rush, 2010)","og_description":"I'm not here complaining about the too pretty alcoholic, like Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas, who somehow manages to make you forget how really unpleasant is the experience of trying to remember that someone is made in the image of God after you've once woken up to the smell of their dried vomit.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/","og_site_name":"1More Film Blog","article_published_time":"2011-05-13T05:23:29+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-07-26T20:17:50+00:00","og_image":[{"width":300,"height":199,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/440\/2014\/07\/everythingmustgo-300x199.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Kenneth R. Morefield","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Kenneth R. Morefield","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/","name":"Everything Must Go (Rush, 2010)","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-05-13T05:23:29+00:00","dateModified":"2014-07-26T20:17:50+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/#\/schema\/person\/ca89005780d7511d688a76da7b0fe815"},"description":"I'm not here complaining about the too pretty alcoholic, like Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas, who somehow manages to make you forget how really unpleasant is the experience of trying to remember that someone is made in the image of God after you've once woken up to the smell of their dried vomit.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/everything-must-go-rush-2010\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Everything Must Go (Rush, 2010)"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/","name":"1More Film Blog","description":"Inconspicuously Christian","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/#\/schema\/person\/ca89005780d7511d688a76da7b0fe815","name":"Kenneth R. Morefield","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0c6043332b82de93c9e6bacec2c2e437?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0c6043332b82de93c9e6bacec2c2e437?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Kenneth R. Morefield"},"sameAs":["http:\/\/1morefilmblog.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/author\/kenmorefield\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1555"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/440\/2011\/05\/everythingmustgo.jpg\")
<\/a>Enough of my cinephile friends, particularly those with religious interests, speak of \u201cthe myth of redemptive violence,\u201d to make me think that phrase has entered the popular lexicon. I\u2019m hoping that the phrase \u201cthe myth of instructive alcoholism\u201d joins it pretty soon.<\/p>\n