{"id":7621,"date":"2016-02-25T15:30:18","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T19:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/?p=7621"},"modified":"2016-02-25T21:01:47","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T01:01:47","slug":"can-you-hear-me-now-the-lost-sheep-at-the-oscars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/can-you-hear-me-now-the-lost-sheep-at-the-oscars\/","title":{"rendered":"Can You Hear Me Now? \u00a0The Lost Sheep at the Oscars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Lent<\/a>The Red Carpet. The fabulous stars. Millions of dollars\u2019 worth of couturier gowns. Jewels that spend most of the year locked away in safes. The buzz about who came with a new man, whose marriage is on the rocks, who brought mom.\u00a0 And all this is before you enter the great hall where the Oscars will be awarded, for the Best Actors, Film, Scripts, Song.<\/p>\n

The whole thing reeks of money, power, bling \u2013 it\u2019s a palace of pretenses. But not one to ignore, for it is built on the money all of us have paid, ten dollars at a time, to see the stories we need, the endless American narrative that tells us who we are in this world.<\/p>\n

Who am I? It\u2019s the hardest of questions, and the answer is always ongoing.\u00a0 Who am I in the midst of this life I am struggling through? The movies are the national campfire, where we all gather to try to figure out a few things.<\/p>\n

We call it entertainment, this storytelling.\u00a0 But it is vital to being human. We are narrative creatures, we need our stories. Every candidate, every ethnic group, every lover, has to have one.<\/p>\n

This year the top eight films include one about the arrival of an Irish girl in America, one about breaking the story of child abuse in the Irish Catholic Church in Boston, and one about our national mortgage scandal.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one about drug-trafficking, one about a kidnapped, imprisoned mother and her child, two about survival by men left for dead, an astronaut on Mars, and a scout in the wilderness in settler days;\u00a0 betrayal is a theme in both films, real betrayal and resisting the temptation to betray.<\/p>\n

One film is about an unsung hero of the Cold War Days. And for the life of me, though I\u2019ve seen it, I\u2019m not sure what Mad Max: The Fury Road<\/em><\/strong> is really about \u2013 other than how hard it is to survive in a violent world where nature is ruined.<\/p>\n

The point is this:\u00a0 all these stories are about white people, about the pain white people feel, and God knows there is a lot of pain and it takes a lot of films to portray it. Each film asks that old communications question, Can you hear me now? <\/em><\/strong>And each Oscar is a Yes<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 Yes, we can.<\/p>\n

But what about African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Arabs, Native Americans?\u00a0 Where are their stories, and why aren\u2019t we listening, watching, wanting to know them, these neighbors, these Americans?<\/p>\n

Why aren\u2019t we paying attention to their pain that we don\u2019t really understand \u2013 their coming of age, loving, working, failing, dying, being betrayed in families and neighborhoods that mingle America with another culture besides Ireland, and do it here, in the midst of most of us, who don\u2019t give them a glance and don\u2019t think well of them?<\/p>\n

For decades, there has been murmuring about the near-absence of black American stories, black actors and actresses, in the Oscars. \u00a0Yes, a few have risen, briefly, for one nomination or one prize.\u00a0 But Jennifer Lawrence has been nominated seven times, and she isn\u2019t out of her twenties yet. That\u2019s the kind of myopia in our seeing, the kind of selectivity in our hearing, that is at issue in our American story-telling.<\/p>\n

In one way or another all this year\u2019s films are about the parable that undergirds our culture:\u00a0 the parable of the lost sheep and the Good Shepherd.\u00a0\"Lent<\/a><\/p>\n

Lost \u2013<\/em><\/strong> it\u2019s one of Jesus\u2019 repeated themes.\u00a0 Lost sheep, lost coins, lost sons, lost souls, lost hope, lost faith, lost love, lost chances, lost sense. And we all know we are lost, at some point in every day we feel it, the deep ache for which there are no words, our awareness that we cannot see the road ahead.<\/p>\n

And Jesus tells us what the Good Shepherd, good housewife, good father of prodigals, good Samaritan, does for and with the lost.\u00a0 We have the courage to tell these stories.\u00a0 But Jesus also talks about the Bad Shepherd.\u00a0 About the men who passed by the beaten man in the road and didn\u2019t stop. About the fellow who almost cut down his fig tree in anger at its fruitlessness, until the gardener stopped him.<\/p>\n

And that seems to be the story we do not wish to tell \u2013 the story in which we are the betrayer, the thief, the mean elder brother, Pharoah in someone else\u2019s freedom struggle.<\/p>\n

Who are we? Really, who? \u00a0In truth, we live all the roles. On Sunday, host Chris Rock, with the help of the Holy Spirit, will be asking, Can You Hear Me Now? <\/em><\/strong>\u00a0And Jesus, who repeatedly said, Those who have ears, let them hear,<\/em><\/strong> will be saying Amen.
\n_____________________________________________________________________
\nImages:<\/strong><\/em>
\n1. 2016 Oscars Poster with host Chris Rock.<\/strong><\/em> \u00a0oscars.go.com
\n2. Lamb.<\/strong> <\/em>by Francisco de Zurbaran, 1638. Madrid, Spain. Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 The Red Carpet. The fabulous stars. Millions of dollars\u2019 worth of couturier gowns. Jewels that spend most of the year locked away in safes. The buzz about who came with a new man, whose marriage is on the rocks, who brought mom.\u00a0 And all this is before you enter the great hall where the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2483,"featured_media":7622,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nCan You Hear Me Now? \u00a0The Lost Sheep at the Oscars<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"  The Red Carpet. The fabulous stars. Millions of dollars\u2019 worth of couturier gowns. Jewels that spend most of the year locked away in safes. 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