Blurred minds

Robin Thicke did an interview with GQ last May re: his video for "Blurred Lines".

"A lot of my videos and songs have been so serious—about love and pride and relationships and hope and getting over insecurities and vulnerabilities. But lately, I've just wanted to have fun and enjoy my life, really appreciate all the great things that I have, like a great wife, a great child, and a great career. That shows up in the music with more humor and light-heartedness.
...
We tried to do everything that was taboo. Bestiality, drug injections, and everything that is completely derogatory towards women. Because all three of us are happily married with children, we were like, "We're the perfect guys to make fun of this." People say, "Hey, do you think this is degrading to women?" I'm like, "Of course it is. What a pleasure it is to degrade a woman. I've never gotten to do that before. I've always respected women." So we just wanted to turn it over on its head and make people go, "Women and their bodies are beautiful. Men are always gonna want to follow them around." After the video got banned on YouTube, my wife tweeted, "Violence is ugly. Nudity is beautiful. And the 'Blurred Lines' video makes me wanna..." You know." 

Makes her want to get a divorce, apparently.

Robin Thicke and Paula Patton Separate

Back in September I speculated that If I made a video in which naked women dance for me while I sing "I know you want it" "You the hottest bitch in this place", I'm not convinced that would be the most effective way to show my wife that I love her.  After some time reflecting, I still stand by that position.

After a photo hit the web last fall showing a reflection of Thicke's hand grabbing a helping of another woman's bum (at a party his wife was at), he told Star Magazine, "“My only comment about the so-called scandalous photo would be that my wife are I are perfectly in love and very happily married. So, no complaints there.”  Right.  No complaints.  Or apologies.  Or contrition.  Or self-awareness.

I try hard not to engage in Schadenfreude, and I can honestly say that I don't extract any pleasure the from this iceberg/Titanic interaction, but I can't help but feel that a lot of people are going to be startled out of bed tomorrow when the sun once again rises in the East.  As it turns out, disrespecting your wife in public - as humorous and light-hearted as you feel it may be - is a very effective way to lose your wife.  We anoint ourselves invincible and beyond statistics.  We are unique snowflakes.  Haters gonna hate.  The tragedy to me is to watch it slowly, repeatedly unfold.  Cognitive dissonance sets in so firmly.  

“It’s the greatest love of the century... ...As a relationship progresses, you fall in love again in so many deeper ways. You realize that you need each other and you can’t live without each other.”

That was the rest of Thicke's statement to Star.  That was post-butt-grab-photograph.  Post-Miley-Cy-rub.  There's really no difference between me and this guy; I love my wife with all of my heart.  But if I ever start believing that I am above... I don't know.  Above my capacity to make bad decisions, humanity...  This guy had things that he wanted to do, and he crafted an internal narrative to justify those things.  That's what we usually do, as humans: we decide what we are going to do, and then we come up with the reasons.  And I'm sure he had a lot of people around him encouraging him to do those things.  I believe he really did feel totally "in love" (whatever his working definition was) with his wife, and I believe he felt totally okay with doing all the other nonsense he was getting up to.  But your wife doesn't live in the world you create.  That's where it all falls down... when it intersects with another human being who has the power to tell you "no".  No amount of cognitive dissonance can bridge the gap to another person's heart.

My old pastor used to say "sin will always take you further than you expected to stray, and keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you ever meant to pay."  I always thought it was kind of rhymey-trite, but I still remember it six years later so I guess he wins that one.  Anyway, Robin Thicke had an idol, and now one more thing has been sacrificed to it.  Sin kills.  One thing it kills is relationships.  Also, watch for the sunrise tomorrow.

-J

Jesus Christ, super-white

"Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him" 
- 1 Corinthians, 11:14


"Son of God" is coming out this Friday, and my church is encouraging us to go see it and bring a friend.  European Jesus is kind of a sore spot for me, though.  I'm not saying everyone else should be up in arms, I hope the movie is good and I hope people see it and think about it.  To me it is a reflection of culture, and that movie producers know what audiences will tolerate. 





















Jesus Christ Superstar

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Jesus of Nazareth

The Passion of the Christ

Son of God

The Bible (tv miniseries)

King of Kings

The Last Temptation of Christ

...

Forensic reconstruction of an adult Semite male living in the same place and at the same time as Jesus.
"From an analysis of skeletal remains, archeologists had firmly established that the average build of a Semite male at the time of Jesus was 5 ft. 1 in., with an average weight of about 110 pounds."
-Popular Mechanics

-J

Happily Ever After

And now, a list of movies which romanticize infidelity.

1) Camelot.

A delightful and classic musical. Guinevere gets bored with King Arthur and has an affair with Lancelot. 

Awards: 3 Oscars, 3 Golden Globes

Highlight: "If Ever I Would Leave You", Lancelot's doe-eyed musical number about how he's so in love that he won't stop seeing his best friend's wife behind his back. Aww, you charmer.

2) Shakespeare In Love.

Young Shakespeare finds his inspiration in young Viola, in a celebration of love shared by all except probably Mrs. Shakespeare who I guess is home raising their kids while all this is going on, and also probably the guy Viola is engaged to.

Awards: 7 Oscars (including Best Picture), 3 Golden Globes

Highlight: One of the bar patrons mentions Shakespeare's wife to Viola and after a brief moment of obligatory awkwardness (presumably to satisfy cultural expectations of at least token guilt) it is never mentioned again.  However Viola and Shakespeare's affair happens basically right in the face of her fiance and the movie goes out of its way to make fun of him for being cuckolded.

3) The Bridges of Madison County

Meryl Streep has an affair with Brad Pitt while her husband and children are away at the county fair. She is torn between passion and duty.  Eventually she takes the secret to her grave but reveals it in journals to her kids, whom she asks to sprinkle her ashes in the same place her lover's were scattered instead of burying her next to her faithful husband of many decades.  What a sweetie.

Awards: 1 Oscar, 2 Golden Globes

Highlight: "Robert, please. You don't understand, no-one does. When a woman makes the choice to marry, to have children; in one way her life begins but in another way it stops. You build a life of details. You become a mother, a wife and you stop and stay steady so that your children can move. And when they leave they take your life of details with them. And then you're expected move again only you don't remember what moves you because no-one has asked in so long. Not even yourself. You never in your life think that love like this can happen to you." - Meryl Streep, to Bradd Pitt, re: infidelity

There's a lot more.

In the Mood For Love (5 Hong Kong Film Awards)

The Notebook (8 Teen Choice "Awards")

Water For Elephants (1 People's Choice Award, Favorite Drama)

Brokeback Mountain (3 Oscars, 4 Golden Globes)

The English Patient

The Seven Year Itch

American Beauty

Titanic

...

-J

Meaning

Right, so a self-contained universe.

Even excusing the (current) inability of science to explain the nature or purpose of consciousness or the cause of the creation of the universe¹ science also cannot give any justification for any action.  If the universe is self-contained and there is no afterlife, no action we take can be said to be positive or negative.  Eventually either the universe will freeze or recontract and either way all life will be extinguished.  The only exemption is if we find a way to escape the corporeal universe.  Even if we become beings of energy in some far flung future, energy exists within the universe and within the laws governing the universe.  We must find a way to exist outside the universe for any action to have any meaning; for anything to be good, bad, valuable, noble, laudable, loving, or lasting.  Far before we wrestled with these quandaries, God proposed a way for us to exist outside of the universe through Jesus Christ.  This fact (the fact that it is claimed) gives Christianity an underpinning for any further moral propositions.  Other religions and spiritualities propose it too, so it isn't an exclusive claim, but it is a position that hard natural science cannot answer.  If we all came from nothing, and we are all returning to nothing, what possible point could there be to taking any action over any alternative given that neither choice will have any significance whatsoever in 10 billion years?  Nihilism is the only possible conclusion of the closed-system universe.

-J 



1 I used to think that perhaps after expanding as much as it could expand², gravity³ took over and caused the universe to contract back into a single point which then re-big-banged into a new universe.  Which is fine, but still falls prey to the old "turtles all the way down" problem.

2 Into what, exactly, is the universe expanding?  If the universe is getting bigger, what exists outside it?

3 Yeah, this doesn't make a lot of sense either.  Why do all particles attract all other particles?  

Reviews Of Movies You've Already Seen presents: Frozen

So Disney's Frozen is a film as fluffy as freshly fallen snow, with roughly the same nutritional content.  It was in various stages of proposal and shelf since the 90's, but was finally thrown together after the tremendous success of Tangled.    Another reviewer keenly pointed out that the one-word titles of these films make them gender neutral so they don't drive off the boys (see Brave) with their female lead characters.

Anna and Elsa are sisters, and Elsa has ice powers summarized as follows:

Anna falls in love with a boy in just one day.  The boy turns out to be a jerk.  The moral of the story is that it takes slightly longer than one day to fall in love with someone, although you don't need to know any more about them.  The extra time by itself is sufficient.

The movie is a musical.  The message to our young people from the songs is as follows:

1.	"Frozen Heart" Ice is icy.  This theme make Frozen Heart one of only two songs in the film with reasonable morals.
2.	"Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" Anna sings this to Elsa who has annexed her sister out of her life.  Sometimes you need to pretend that people don't exist, though, for their own good.  Especially if you were previously close and they really care about you.
3.	"For the First Time in Forever" Anna is keen to get her flirt on.  If you've been repressed or had strict rules, it's important to mentally build up any opportunity to operate outside them as much as possible.  You may not have another chance, so fall in love as fast as possible with little or no outside consultation.
4.	"Love is an Open Door" Anna sings a love duet with a guy she has so much in common with, except he turns out later to be suddenly and plot-forcingly evil.  Singing a duet and doing a robot-dance with someone is plenty to base a marriage decision on.
5.	"Let It Go" Elsa's big number, where she gives the world the finger.  Remember kids, if you are different or ostracized, go create a world of your own far from everyone.  It's for the best.
6.	"Reindeer(s) Are Better Than People" The other song in the film with a reasonable lesson.  Well-argued and no longer than it needs to be to establish its point.
7.	"In Summer" Research is unnecessary.  Dream big.
8.	"For the First Time in Forever (Reprise)" Anna sings this to Elsa to try to talk her back down from the edge.  See, if the world rejects you, you still can't just turn your back on the world.  You're not allowed, because apparently the same things that made you a pariah also cause everyone else to have a bad time.  Incidentally, Elsa originally shuts out Anna on strict orders that Anna is not allowed to know about the ice powers for Anna's own protection.  But nothing awful happens to Anna whatsoever once she learns about Elsa's ice powers, rendering the entire brutal sisterly rejection at the beginning of the film totally needless.

9.	"Fixer Upper"

Amazing.  This song manages the Disney trifecta of treating an existing significant other as a plot obstacle to be overcome, interrupting a time-critical issue with a big musical number, and asserting that all takes to improve someone is the power of love.  It's also pretty catchy.  At the same time it's hard to enjoy because they are dancing around and relentlessly frustrating the main characters from communicating successfully that Anna is about to DIE.

Frozen is short, cute, and has pretty visuals.  The ice powers are very well executed and a lot of fun to watch.  The snowman character is only about half as annoying as the previews suggested, and even if you don't like him he's not in too many of the scenes.  His song is a good time for a bathroom break.  The other tunes are serviceable but about as deep as the first dusting of snow in winter, and the plot isn't any thicker; Mom and Dad die early, per Disney usual, but no one gets married at the end which is sort of novel.  You could find worse ways to spend an hour and a half / $12.  Frozen doesn't have much more to say than "don't be a jerk", which is a position it's hard to nitpick but at the same time one that I really hope isn't super revelatory to any audience.  Overall two and a half out of five snowflakes; Frozen is to film what gum is to food: a placeholder, but with a refreshing burst of ice.

-J