{"id":7426,"date":"2013-05-25T18:42:44","date_gmt":"2013-05-25T22:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=7426"},"modified":"2013-05-25T18:42:44","modified_gmt":"2013-05-25T22:42:44","slug":"oh-the-places-you-might-not-want-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2013\/05\/oh-the-places-you-might-not-want-to-go.html","title":{"rendered":"Oh, the places you might not want to go!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Tomorrow, I get to watch my brother graduate, and I\u2019m quite excited for him, and, well, for the commencement speaker: Joss Whedon. \u00a0Since my brother is not a public figure, and Whedon is, I\u2019ll limit the content of this post to only one of these awesome people.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There were two quite interesting pieces on the arts in\u00a0The New York Times<\/em> this weekend. \u00a0A feature on Whedon mentioned his delightful habit of having Shakespeare parties while shooting Buffy<\/em>\u00a0and Angel<\/em><\/a>, and the impact this had on his plans for the show.<\/p>\n

[T]he readings helped Mr. Whedon learn about the untapped potential of his actors. After seeing Ms. Acker as Lady Capulet in \u201cRomeo and Juliet,\u201d he decided to kill off her \u201cAngel\u201d character and turn her into a merciless demon. He recalled: \u201cI was like, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ve never seen her be frightening. I think the world should see that, too.\u2019 \u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Once you cast someone<\/a>, you tend to keep seeing them through the lens of their role as currently\u00a0conceived. \u00a0Watching his actors experiment in another context gave Whedon the chance to reevaluate what he had to work with. \u00a0I\u2019ve liked having Shakespeare readings\u00a0chez moi<\/em> for similar reason \u2014 in a new context, my friends sometimes surprise me. \u00a0A viewing of\u00a0Passion<\/em> means I get to hear opinions I otherwise wouldn\u2019t have known how to elicit on the relationship of yearning,\u00a0eros<\/em>, and\u00a0agape<\/em>. \u00a0A reading of\u00a0Arcadia<\/em> means a friend who was reading the text for the first time gave Valentine a much warmer character than I would have expected could work.<\/p>\n

But there can be a cost to experimentation. \u00a0In the magazine section, there was a feature piece on BYU\u2019s animation program, and the prevalence of Mormons<\/a> in media<\/a>. \u00a0The part of the article I found most striking was the sense of responsibility the students expressed.<\/p>\n

Now, Strong said, he avoids even some PG-13 movies. \u201cYou never know what\u2019s going to come up on that screen, and once you see something, you can\u2019t get it out of your head. Ever.\u201d He thought a moment, then asked: \u201cWhat\u2019s the name of that film?\u201d I don\u2019t know what I expected him to say, but I was surprised when he said, \u201c \u2018Wedding Crashers.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

In high school, a friend persuaded him to sneak into the movie, and the nudity, as well as Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson\u2019s general attitude toward women, shook him. After that, when he saw a girl, his first thoughts would be about whether she was attractive; he felt himself moving through the world essentially casting or rejecting its inhabitants as possible extras in \u201cWedding Crashers.\u201d You could argue that this was only the harmless awakening of a teenage male mind. But Strong didn\u2019t see it this way. In fact, he feels so uneasy about this stretch of his life that later, when he began dating his future wife, he made a point of discussing it with her. (\u201cI had changed,\u201d he explained, \u201cbut I wanted anything like that to be open between us.\u201d)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Art can prompt yearnings or questions we\u2019d rather not be aware of; there was a reason that Plato thought it might be necessary to throw the poets out of his Republic. \u00a0It\u2019s not a matter of being ostriches with out head in the sand, but of not privileging a hypothesis<\/a>. \u00a0It\u2019s not\u00a0helpful<\/em> for Iago to ask about Desdemona\u2019s fidelity, since Othello is incapable of letting go of the question. \u00a0Our consumption of art shapes our assumptions, and it\u2019s useful to pause and think about what you want to feed into your model of the world, or what you want to reinforce a yearning for.<\/p>\n

This is why I was ultimately so uncomfortable when I saw\u00a0The Cabin in the Woods<\/em>, Whedon\u2019s admittedly brilliant horror story. \u00a0Unlike\u00a0Buffy<\/em>, where the heroine is strengthened, weakened, but mostly just defined by her connections to others, Cabin<\/em> seemed casually nihilistic. \u00a0In the final scene, the survivors seem to despair without being upset by their nihilism. \u00a0There\u2019s nothing left that they\u2019d like to preserve or fight for. \u00a0They give up on themselves, each other, and the rest of humanity.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019d been enjoying the\u00a0wit<\/em> of it all so much up to that point. \u00a0I felt a bit betrayed to have so much obvious cleverness and delight in creation go into the service of a story that seemed to discard all humanity, on net, as so much dust. \u00a0It felt like Whedon had used his abilities in the service of something that was antipathetic to all his care and concerns.<\/p>\n

I think this is what the LDS filmmakers\u00a0are worried about, and I think they\u2019re right to be concerned. \u00a0The\u00a0NYT<\/em> writer is clearly worried that the BYU films may become unbalanced somehow. \u00a0Too focused on morals, too cleaned up, or just too goshdarn cheery. \u00a0A movie that feels\u00a0untrue<\/em> is certainly not likely to be persuasive, but a film like\u00a0Of Gods and Men<\/em><\/a> can make it plain that there\u2019s nothing fantastical or saccharine about goodness.<\/p>\n

But Wheedon\u2019s story about Shakespeare nights makes it clear that it\u2019s useful to have a little noise and variance, even if you\u2019re pretty confident you\u2019re on to a good thing. \u00a0So I wouldn\u2019t be upset or surprised if the LDS animators end up making some films at odds with their values or that have effects on their audience that they didn\u2019t expect. \u00a0The main thing is that they won\u2019t be transgressive for the sake of transgression and edge. \u00a0It can be useful to sidle up on truth by exploring the grotesque. \u00a0After all, I\u2019m still not sure if my discomfort with the nihilism of Cabin<\/em> was Whedon\u2019s goal. \u00a0It was a horror movie, after all.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow, I get to watch my brother graduate, and I\u2019m quite excited for him, and, well, for the commencement speaker: Joss Whedon. \u00a0Since my brother is not a public figure, and Whedon is, I\u2019ll limit the content of this post to only one of these awesome people. There were two quite interesting pieces on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":7431,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[51],"class_list":["post-7426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-morality-in-practice","tag-at-the-theatre"],"yoast_head":"\nOh, the places you might not want to go!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Tomorrow, I get to watch my brother graduate, and I'm quite excited for him, and, well, for the commencement speaker: Joss Whedon. \u00a0Since my brother is\" \/>\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\/unequallyyoked\/2013\/05\/oh-the-places-you-might-not-want-to-go.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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