Nick Milne is pursuing a PhD in English at the University of Ottawa. In his spare time he writes gory musicals and walks around cities.
His old blog may be found here, his Facebook profile here, and e-mails may be directed to this address.
Samuel Johnson on Blogging
"To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practises on others: in conversation we naturally diffuse our thoughts, and in writing we contract them; method is the excellence of writing, and unconstraint the grace of conversation."
The Marxist and Augustinian readers frequently overlap (although they disagree on Divine inspiration). One might even say that the Marxist believes his reading follows a perverted rule of charity, yielding interpretations that ought to serve the greater good. Of course, real Marxism fails because the actual world ultimately does not operate in the way that Marx fantasizes. But this is precisely why Marx is so useful in the literary setting. Marxism first assumes that the world is manmade, and then concludes how the world will operate based on this assumption.
If the first comment on his article (scroll to the bottom) is anything to go by, however, things may get a bit mixed before it’s all over.
Contrary to the short-lived evidence, I have not in fact given up blogging for Lent. I’ve just been busy with some marking and some substantive reading besides, and that’s going to continue for the rest of the night and tomorrow. Anything posted here will only be by way of taking a break, so expect it to be sparse. I can hear your hearts breaking from here, of course, but you’ll just have to soldier on.
Maybe something later. For the moment I’ve got larger concerns.
In the meantime, an all-purpose round-up of information about it all is available here. The Holy Father’s annual Lenten message can be read here.
Renowned guitarist Richard Thompson and two of his band members performing Thomas Ravenscroft’s furious carol “Remember O Thou Man” in the back of a cab can be seen here. You couldn’t possibly regret it; all of the Black Cab Sessions are great, but this is the only one that could easily be described as Lenten in character.
Today is Shrove Tuesday. Get out there and rejoice (and repent), you villains, for tomorrow will be a day of markedly different character.
In the meantime, unfortunately, I don’t have much else to say. Preparations for a seminar on questions of history and memory in the poetry of Thomas Hardy are more or less consuming my time, for the moment, and I’ll have to give that my full attention until this evening, when the seminar takes place. After that I’ll cut loose in my cautious way in preparation for what comes tomorrow, so don’t expect much of anything else to be posted until Ash Wednesday proper.
I do intend to respond to the various and recent comments (Colm and Craig and Godesalc, among others, certainly deserve answers), but not immediately, unfortunately.
So I ended up watching it after all, at a local bar (the commentary from those in attendance was… interesting, to say the least), and it wasn’t as bad as it looked like it would be. Some decisions that seemed awful in theory turned out to have worked pretty well in practice, and, while there were still some disappointments, the direction that the thing took overall was fairly promising. I’d like to see them work out the kinks and give it another shot next year.
Hugh Jackman’s hosting work was genial and sparse – there were times when one quite forgot he was even there – and his opening number was a delight. I regret that it was pretty loud in the bar and I couldn’t always hear it all that well, but the misinterpretive dance number for The Reader came through loud and clear, and was richly deserved. The second musical number, with Beyonce Knowles (and apparently produced by Baz Luhrmann), also looked excellent, but I’m afraid I heard even less of it. No doubt footage of it will be uploaded somewhere in short order.
While the problems occasioned by the new format for the presentation of the acting awards were in some cases apparent (five former Best Actors giving out the award to the new guy and neither Daniel Day Lewis nor Forest Whittaker were anywhere to be seen), on the whole the new approach worked very well. We don’t really need to see clips from each performance given how hard it is to isolate something that’s truly evocative of the material at hand, and the little appreciations offered of each nominee by the previous winners were intriguing in their content and delivery. It seems also to be a just concession to the fact that even those performances that don’t win are excellent in their own right, and deserve some sort of clear endorsement beyond the mere fact of nomination.
Even the “best original song” fiasco turned out better than I had thought, and I’m starting to understand why they made the call that they did. Inasmuch as all three songs were excellent, none of them would necessarily have stood so very well on their own as a isolated performance. “Down to Earth” is very long and involved, and the two songs from Slumdog both have a certain repetitive quality to them. This is not to detract from any of them at all, of course, but mixing them together in the way that they did makes a certain degree of sense, in retrospect (especially since “O Saya” could not be performed in its entirety without Maya Arulpragasam, who is presumably busy with her infant son, born a week or so ago). It’s also the case that I like seeing mash-ups in the mainstream anyway, and to see one of this calibre performed live, and with such choreography as it had, was pretty great.
All in all, then, it was alright. Some of the wins surprised me (Penelope Cruz, for example), and some were gratifying (Kate Winslet). And while the best picture of the year didn’t win Best Picture, the best of the five nominated assuredly did. That, at least, is something.
The novel’s vision is bleak, but not desparing or misanthropic. You will find no reassurances here about the basic goodness of man, but neither is it nihilistic. The world, even when blasted and laid waste, presents a real moral challenge, and though many fail the test, the good continues to beckon, brooding over the bent world.
I have always found the rosary difficult if not excruciating, my mind wandering wildly without destination, forever unwilling to focus on those mysteries we’re supposed to be contemplating in able peace and repose. But no, no, I will not, it seems, for all the jade of Cathay keep my mind upon the Virgin and her Child, even in the bare minimum of just imagining the event the mystery portrays, let along the apparent deep meditation in which I’m supposed to be engaging.
The young scallawags at the Chesterteens report that one of Chesterton’s wife’s poems has been set to music; a link is provided.
Meanwhile, at Insight Scoop, there’s a richly informative article – written by one Cardinal Ratzinger, of whom a few people may have heard – describing just what’s going on in Bernini’s astonishing chair altar at St. Peter’s Basilica.
I posed this in a sort of offhand way in a recent post about the atheist bus advertisements being proposed (and likely now to be accepted) in Ottawa, but it’s been gnawing at me and it could stand to be reiterated. I’d appreciate input from those of you who feel inclined to give it.
It has been argued (scroll down to the second quoted passage) that the adoption of these atheistic advertisements should be supported by Christians because it leads to debate and, what’s more, if we don’t support their adoption, our own rights to free speech and inclusion in the public square may be trampled next. If we want to be given a fair hearing in that public square, we should demand the same treatment for anyone.
As convincing as this is from a purely humanistic perspective, it does not seem to me to be a very becoming position for a Christian to take. It implicitly buys into a relativistic discourse that assumes that all claims have equal weight and deserve equal consideration – that does not take the truth of any such claim into account. For my own part I can see no reason whatever for a Christian to support the propagation of blasphemous lies in the public sphere or anywhere. If this lack of support leads to a political backlash against the Christian, well, so be it. The Gospel was spread pretty effectively even without the sides of buses as a venue.
And thus the question:
Is it worse for a Christian to have his rights trampled or to lend support to the propagation of atheism?
I know what my answer is, and I know that it’s unpopular from the perspective of the intellectually robust Christian humanism of the sort practiced by the thinking conservatives in our camp. There is no purely political reason good enough to justify any Christian supporting these advertisements. There is no reason to think that we can, when standing before our Lord under judgment, get away with some mealy-mouthed excuse to the effect of “well, yes, Lord, I did help atheists lead people away from You, but at least I didn’t rock the boat politically.”
Now, if there are good and well-established reasons for a Christian to support the utterance of blasphemous lies in the public square, I guess I have no choice but to get behind them. I’m not as well-read on these issues as I’d like to be, after all, and goodness knows I’ve been wrong before. For the time being, though, I just don’t see it.
Vernunft of The New Skepticoffers a sad tale of graduate students and giggling and Hobbes’ Leviathan:
Why attend a class called “Law, Politics, and Human Nature”? Even the students can’t seem to tell.
Selections from Hobbes’ Leviathan were assigned for this week’s meeting. One of the two professors teaching the class raved over the prose style and the cleverness of the author. He also mentioned that, in his words, “I read it again over the weekend…” A student giggled at that.
I’m stunned.
The reasons he’s stunned are well worth reading, so go do it.
My own Leviathan-related experience is limited, though a recent event involved it: while browsing the philosophy section at the local Chapters (a big chain of big bookstores; think Borders or Barnes & Noble) I happened to notice – anybody would have – a pair of cute girls looking at material a few shelves down. They were young, though not excessively young; certainly young enough that their presence was unusual. I thought that they had perhaps mistakenly overshot the New Age/Spirituality section a few feet away.
“Oh look, Leviathan” one of them said with delight, pointing at what was indeed the volume in question. “I love his writing… Hobbes’, I mean.” Her friend couldn’t agree, for her own part, and offered up the alternative of Marcus Aurelius. The first girl admitted of that emperor’s excellence and the two reached an entente. They then departed. I watched them go.
I guess they’re well within their rights to do this, and it could easily be excellent, and I will assuredly see it on opening night, but I can’t for the life of me understand the reasoning behind this:
Just as the acclaimed Sci Fi Channel series “Battlestar Galactica” enters its final episodes, Universal has quietly entered into negotiations with Glen A. Larson to write and produce a big-screen version of the property he created.
[...]
The movie effort would have no connection to the [current] series and would relaunch the story in a new medium. However, staples such as the characters Adama, Starbuck, and Baltar will remain.
It’s… it’s sort of a strange idea. I don’t think we’ve necessarily hit the saturation point on all of this yet, so running with the story and its characters is fair game. But if the movie is intended to be a return to the lighthearted “adventures in space” format that was the signature of the original show – as opposed to the blood-drenched moral seriousness of its current incarnation – it may prove insurmountably confusing.
This sobering account of the current prospects for tomorrow’s Academy Awards ceremony makes for surprising (but not shocking) reading. It has long been known that the Academy has been struggling to make the show more profitable and attractive to the viewing public, but they seem to have no idea what they’re doing. If you want regular people to watch this thing, don’t go around excising all of the stuff that they like. Don’t alienate the popular stars. Don’t sacrifice spectacle for more speech time. Don’t nominate movies nobody has seen or cares about for best picture (I’m looking at you Frost/Nixon and The Reader), and especially don’t do that when they aren’t actually the best movies of the year in the first place. The Reader? Really? Really. Slumdog Millionaire looks like a lock to win, and that’s fine, but there’s no need to give it such ridiculous company. Last year’s inclusion of Michael Clayton was bad enough. And let’s not even dwell too heavily on the tragic exclusion of The Dark Knight from consideration for both best picture and best director – you know, that film that pretty much defined the whole year, and just cracked the billion-dollar mark in revenue this week, and which was actually better reviewed than the similarly-appointed Titanic. Let’s not dwell on it, I say, lest our hearts should break.
And then there’s this:
…the producers lost Peter Gabriel who refused to sing his Best Original Song from Wall-E, “Down To Earth”, in what he claimed was the insulting allotted time of only 65 seconds for each of the 3 tunes in a medley.
Of course! Everyone knows that the viewing audience just hates singing and dancing. Gloss it over! Cut it out. Steamroll that crap and never look back. Never mind that all three nominated songs this year are actually excellent and would provide for some spectacular and entertaining performances if handled properly (particularly Slumdog’s “Jai Ho”).
Screw this. Y’all can watch if you want to, but I guess I’ll just check how it all worked out on Monday.
