Blue Like Jazz

I've been seeing some movie adaptations lately and have concluded I enjoy the movie better if I haven't ever read the book.  Part of what led me to this conclusion was seeing Blue Like Jazz.  I went to the movie knowing it was not going to really be what most people traditionally think of when they think of a movie adaptation of a book.  Not only did I have the hints and trailer from Donald Miller's blog, I had his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, which tells the story of the creation of the story for the movie that eventually became BLJ (and is generally pretty great), and anyone who reads about how they wrestled with the nonfiction story to craft a fictional story with a more traditional plot had to know the movie would not be the book made into a film.  I would hazard to say that anyone who read the book would know that it wasn't really suitable to be made into a movie as is.

I read reviews that varied really wildly (the kind that make you wonder if they saw the same movie).  They were not bad reviews because they identified exactly what they liked/disliked clearly enough that potential viewers might be able to tell if this movie was something they should see.  I went in really not knowing what to expect.

It wasn't a bad movie.  It was well-produced/filmed.  The music was fitting.  The acting was sometimes uneven, but the cringe-worthy moments were pretty rare.

The big problem for me was not the overall story/character arc in the details of the plot.  I irked myself by being irritated with the plot.  They worked so hard on the thing, and I read about it in A Million Miles, and I guess I expected there wouldn't be any smoking guns/loose ends.  They had to re-make it from scratch, basically, so it wasn't like they had to make agonizing decisions about which plot threads to leave in and which to excise, as is often the case with books adapted into movies.  So why were there still these things included that were not vitally necessary? 

Example: the best friend thread served no real purpose.  There was a great setup, and I kept waiting for the resolution, and they just abandoned it, leaving the gun sitting there, feeling sheepish.  You don't keep stuff like this in your movie if you want it to be really excellent.  Was it Flannery O'Connor who talked about killing the darlings during editing?  Best friend, you had a couple of funny moments in the beginning, but they were not actually vital/related to the real story.  Being crude and funny was not enough to justify your existence.  When you came back later, you were used to show us things the movie had already clearly shown us about the main character, and then you set up something that never panned out.  I hate to say it, but you were redundant and useless.  Best friend, you should have been on the cutting room floor, not because of your acting but because of your lack of relevance to the overall story.  Don and the guys should have known this!

It is, of course, easy to point fingers.  They were not my darlings.  It's a movie that is still worth seeing for reasons similar to reasons why the book is worth reading: these stories start conversations people should be having.  Do I maybe wish for something more like a dramatized documentary based on the book?  Well, yes.  But that's not what they were trying to do, so my expectations on that score are irrelevant.

Does this adaptation succeed in the end?  Well, maybe.  If it managed to somehow rope in a wider audience who had not read the book and made them go out and read the book or have conversations, then it did.  I just don't know if that's what happened.

Challenging Horizons and Stuff, Part I

"It seems as well that students are hearing from the media and their parents about the supposed liberal indoctrination going on in the academy, and they are thus more likely to view unfamiliar topics and somewhat uncomfortable feelings not as signs that they are being challenged to learn and expand their horizons but as the intrusion of ideology in the classroom."- tsylvain

I came across this comment about an article.  It stopped me and made me think even more than the article did.  I remember this one kid at my conservative Christian college who pitched a fit every time our honors art history class watched a movie about art that showed paintings of nudes or discussed nude sculptures.  He complained so strenuously about the book we were required to read for one portion of that class that the professor was told he couldn't have us read that book. 

The book in question was The Intellectuals by Paul Johnson.  It was about how brilliant and revolutionary thinkers often lived lives full of personal depravity and immorality, and if actions are motivated by beliefs, what do the actions of their lives say about what they really believed?  I think one of the lessons in question was supposed to be that we can't dismiss great ideas just because flawed people came up with/promoted them, but we also have to be careful that we don't get caught up in charisma and ideas with no substance.  The idea behind reading the book was probably to encourage critical thinking so we wouldn't grow up to be anti-intellectuals who dismiss good arguments due to distracting but simple ad hominem and straw man attacks. 

I don't know for sure what the point of the assignment was because we never got to read or discuss the book with our professor.  The reason this student complained so stridently about the book was because it took great pains to clearly depict the depravity in question, and the student thought it was liberal indoctrination, and he wasn't going to put up with it.  At least I think that was it; they didn't really tell us, so I only know what I heard.

Another student told me that maybe lust was an area this student really struggled with, and he just had to get out of any situation where he might be encouraged to lust or think about things that would encourage lust.  If so, that's fair.  If you struggle with a sin to the point where even getting close to it seriously messes you up, then of course you should avoid any similar situations.  But just because something causes you to stumble/leads you toward sin does not mean the same is true for everyone else. 

Romans 14 gets into this in verses 12-23.  I find it easier to sling around verse 14 (which says that if you think something is a sin, then you shouldn't do it because if you do it believing it is a sin, then to you it is a sin) than to figure out how to apply the rest of the verses about catering to the weaker brother.  This is complicated stuff, made more complicated by living in a community made up of people at different places in life with different struggles. 

Frankly, what makes this whole concept/dynamic hard for me to understand is the fact that I have never been much of a herd animal; giving in to peer pressure was never a problem.  Half the time I was so oblivious that I didn't even know it was there, so the idea that people might do something they think is wrong just because others are is kind of a foreign concept to me.  Why would someone do that? 

But while I'm living in verse 14, maybe others watching me are stumbling over my behavior because to them it is sin, but they are following me, so they do it.  I would like to think this is not true because I am antisocial by nature; I do not have many close friends who could watch my behavior in the first place, but the possibility exists.

How shall I then live?  (Look for more on that in part II.)

Singled Out, Part I

So I'm reading Singled Out, and it's kind of blowing my mind.  I am loving this book.  (Disclaimer: This doesn't mean I agree with everything it says.)

You know how sometimes you read something, and it just articulates perfectly something that's been stewing around sloppily in your backbrain for months or years?  This book is full of such articulate moments.

It starts out by talking about the positive and negative views of celibacy within the US/American church and outside of it, and this discussion is fascinating and quite frequently horrifying.  The areas of overlap are quite sobering, and I think they're important for singles, marrieds, and others to seriously consider. 

The US church in particular needs to carefully consider who we're marginalizing.  I know my church does because they've told me quite plainly that all their focus is on married couples with children (families, as they refer to them), and there is nothing (time, energy, money, advertisements) left over for anyone else. 

As a member of "anyone else," this is somewhat problematic to me.  Is that really the kingdom of God as represented on Earth?  Seriously?  I tried to lead some things and organize some things and stir up discussion, but it didn't really work.  I don't have the energy to fight it anymore.  Perhaps this is connected to why so few singles post-college are involved in churches.  Well, I guess that doesn't matter if the churches don't care about us anyway . . .

But then people get all judgmental about people who call themselves Christians but don't want to have anything to do with churches.  I dunno, but I think there's a broken link in here somewhere.

Your thoughts?