A Thousand Words

Nerd

Gasm

!

Disregarded Scripture of the Day

"Now Dinah, daughter of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob, went out to see the girls of the place.

And when Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he seized her, lay with her, and humbled, defiled, and disgraced her.

But his soul longed for her and clung to Dinah, daughter of Jacob, and he loved the girl and spoke comfortingly to her young heart's wishes.

And Shechem said to his father Hamor, get this girl to be my wife."

-Genesis 34:1-4

So, I few things before I get to the point.

I'm struck by the really sick pathology on display in this story. This guy violated this woman, and then decided to whisper some sweet nothings in her ear so he can keep her because he'd had just such a good time.

Of course, never let it be said that the Bible lacks irony. Since Dinah was a daughter of Israel, her father insisted that Shechem and every other man in his kingdom be circumcised before he would even consider letting this marriage take place. And then, three days after every man in the town was trying to recover from a radical penile adjustment, Dinah's brothers snuck into the town and killed EVERY male.

AND they took all their land and livestock.

AND they enslaved all the women and children.

Like most men, Dinah's siblings do better with wrath than with empathy.

Now, while you're all pondering the full meaning of the term "payback of biblical proportions", consider this: poor Dinah, who had been held captive, presumably as a sex slave, in Shechem's house this entire time (why does this sound more and more like a prehistoric episode of "Special Victims Unit"?), is rescued, but never mentioned again. Cast aside and forgotten in the sweep of Judeo-Christian history.

Why I'm I spinning this little told yarn from the Old Testament?

One of my very favorite people in the world, Dr. Monica A. Coleman of Bennett College, is releasing her very first book, The Dinah Project, named after the program she created in her church in Nashville to support victims of sexual assault and informed by her own experiences as a survivor of sexual violence. Given the fact that churches are notoriously bad for providing substantive help to their parishoners who are victims of incest, molestation, rape or any other manner of sexual assault, the book is intended as a guide for church leaders on how they can organize more effective programs for their own congregation.

Yes, gentle reader, I know that I can count on one hand those of you who are clergy or some sort of church leader. I know that a lot of you aren't involved in any sort of organized religion.

But I also know for a fact that each and every one of you knows AT LEAST one woman who's been raped, if not more, and probably at least one man who's been raped or molested.

Or perhaps the pain touches a little closer.

And I'll leave it at that.

Check out the book.

The Dinah Project





Click here if you have something to share about this post

Head to Head
Now that the weekend is over, I'd just like to state, for the record, that, despite better actors, a bigger budget, and a major studio release, the 1989 Dolph Lundgren "Punisher" movie is still waaaaaay more fun than this year's version of "The Punisher" with Thomas Jane & John Travolta. While the two principles are pretty good and Laura Herring is quite bootylicious, but, there simply wasn't enough action in this movie for my tastes. Clearly, I'm a degenerate product of Reaganomics, but I like my action movies to have, well, you know, ACTION.

Somebody, anybody, please tell me why is it so hard to make an action movie that actually has action? I'm begging somebody. ANYBODY.

This gets back to my larger complaints about movies today. Now that everybody in this town has read McKee's Story a billion times, they're all so obsessed with character arc & development and seem to have completely forgotten the purpose of these movies. Who gives a crap if the characters are sympathetic, or even realistic, if the movie made me want to gouge my eyes out with a straw because I was so goddamn bored?

It's very simple. I don't care about how great a dad Hugh Jackman is in Swordfish. I don't care if The Rock is going to get to open his dream restaurant after The Rundown. If I go see an action movie, I want to see people running, people fighting, people shooting, and things blowing up. And I want to see them frequently and at regularly scheduled intervals.

Is that to much to ask, for fourteen dollars?!?!?


You tell me.

The Storm Is Over
I'm sure you've all heard me sing the praises of writer Micah Wright's ongoing comic series, Stormwatch: Team Achilles, about a United Nations team of normal human special ops charged with policing the world's superhumans, for months now. Well, unfortunately, it looks like you'll only hear me wax nostalgic about the good old days after July, because the title was just cancelled, largely due to slow sales.

In retrospect, I suppose it was only a matter of time. Micah used his comic to relentlessly skewer modern America's political landscape, with characters like Patrick Kent, the illiterate President of the United States who is also a former Klansman, or the utterly inept morons who make up the official U.S. sponsored superteam, the Homeland Security Squadron, or their leader, who quits to go work for Corporate America as the Hallibastard, or Sonny Terns, a racist Southern senator that Stormwatch kidnaps and keeps tied up in their basement, forced to watch as they replace him with a pod person who redirects all his legislation to fund historically black colleges.

Who knows what was the straw that broke the camel's back? Was it the use of George Washington, now reincarnated through Freemason witchcraft, who's so horrified by what he sees as the perversion of America, that he becomes a terrorist and leads a guerilla army to try to overthrow the government?

Or maybe, just maybe, it was the most recent issue, where the real Merovingian, i.e. the Holy Grail, the descendent of Jesus & Mary Magdelene's love child, asks Stormwatch to assassinate his brother so that he can consolidate the power of the Mysterium Tremendum into himself and initiate the Second Coming.

And, when confronted with the descendant of the Word made flesh, Stormwatch's leader, the ultra-Machievellian Ben Santini, replies, "Superpowers don't impress me", and then cooly shoots a totally innocent bystander in the head and insists that the Merovingian raise him from the dead to prove his identity.

Just hardcore stuff. I'm really sad to see it go.

The interview in the title link above features Micah's thoughts on what worked, what didn't, and some of the things he was planning to do down the line. Check it out.

Rosebud

Once, I met a porcelain rose
Lying on the floor on the corner of a train.
Her pedals curved into a soft bulb
So precious and delicate
She begged to be cupped, cuddled, caressed
With the lightest touch
And the sunlight slipped over her ruby frame
And her scent conjured dreams
Sweeter than a field of poppies

And yet,
Only I seemed entranced by this gentle flower
All shades of men stepped
Over, and around, and behind, and sometimes on
The rose.
One or two snatched her from the ground,
Heaving her aroma with a great snort
Before dumping her
Back to the floor.
To them, my rose was just like any other bud
Decoration for the walls,
Or maybe an addition to a box of potpourri,
Mementos of flowers long since clipped and forgotten.
They make vases out of Yankees beer mugs
And ration out water until her pedals begin to wilt,
When the façade rapidly comes to an end.
Perhaps they avoid the rose because of the thorns
She’s grown, not realizing that they themselves
Plant the seeds for such defenses.

But I’ve fallen in briar patches before,
And I see past the thicket of thorns to the flower underneath.
I see her on a pedestal in my home,
Embraced by a soft bed of earth,
Bathed in sunlight that finally lets her blossom
I see the eternal spring she can bring,
Because, you see,
I love the rose.

But, then, the bell rang, and I could see that
This was my stop,
So I had to leave her behind.

Copywright © 2001 by Damon A. Young


comment, if you're so inspired....

Review: The Passion of the Christ

I saw Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" about a month ago. I started writing this post the day after and, well, as you can imagine, it started to get a little out of control.

So, let me take a step back.

Mel Gibson's father Hutton is a complete loon. The man has gone on record denying the existence of the Holocaust, and Mel refuses to rebuke him. Gibson himself belongs to a branch of Catholicism that rejects the reforms of the second Vatican council, one of which is the Holy See's official statement refuting the idea that Jews should be held accountable for Jesus's death. By his own account, he is not a good person.

Media accounts of the near-Fangoria level of violence in The Passion really made me reluctant to see it, let alone pay $14 at the Arclight for the privilege. I saw pictures of devote churchgoers, who probably won't see another movie from godless Hollywood all year round, walking out of theatres in tears. I worried with my friends that many of these folks aren't particularly media-saavy and will have a hard time keeping in mind that this is simply a movie, a distinctly interpreted exercise told through the prism of Mel Gibson's mind, and not a documentary about Christ's final moments.

A very large and vocal part of me did not want to see this movie. In fact, a large part of me even resented the existence of this movie. But I felt like I had to see it. I can't NOT talk about it, and I can't talk about it without seeing it.

Of course, it helped that I had a friend with free passes to the Magic Johnson Theatre at Crenshaw Plaza.

My initial reaction?

That was a great movie.



Surprised?

I am a Christian. Born and raised as a Protestant - United Methodist to be exact. I consider myself pretty faithful. I pray daily. I try to read the Bible daily. I tithe. On the other hand, I haven't regularly attended church since high school. I like to say that I haven't found a church that moves me yet. The ones that I have seen, either back at Princeton, or in my old home in Montclair, New Jersey, or, most recently, here in Los Angeles, always seem so contrived. After spending all of my formative years at Mt. Zion United Methodist Church back in Baltimore, I've probably heard just about every cliche` and overused Christian phrase on the planet. I can instantly tell when a minister is simply going through the motions and when he's actually speaking "The Word".

For those of you who may not be completely up on the Bible, one of the most interesting scriptures to me is the Gospel according to John, Chapter 1, Verse 1:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"

What's interesting to me is that, way back in the book of Genesis, the first thing God does is speak. And God's speech, the formulation of words, is the original creative act. Everything in existence, everything that IS, spawns from that Word.

Christian theology goes on to tell us that Jesus is, in fact, The Word, made into flesh. The power of God, squeezed into the form of a prehistoric Bob Villa.

I'm a writer. I've written my entire life, in one form or another. But I think I've only recently become truly aware of the power of writing, and of words. Stephen King once said that writing is a form of telepathy - a vehicle by which the author can insert their own thoughts into the heads of others. In Mark Millar's Superman: Red Son, Lex Luthor is able to defeat a Stalinist Man of Steel with a simple phrase, written on a slip of paper, that drives him to the brink of suicide. I wrote a poem to my ex-girlfriend that, when I recite it, even brings other women to tears. The right word from the right person can take you past Heaven.

There's a scene in "The Passion", where Pontius Pilate questions Jesus to determine his guilt, and Jesus tells him "whenever you hear Truth spoken, you hear my voice".

The point is, I know the Word when I hear it. Sometimes it's from the voice in the pulpit of my family's church. Other times, it's the casual comment of a total stranger. It's a song on Hot 92.3. It's the rhyme from a poet in a dank coffee shop. It's the affections breathed into my ear with a kiss at midnight.

Of course, that's the trick with the Word. It can come from anywhere, at any given time. As I struggled over the seemingly decadent lives of so many clergy, a very good friend who happens to be an AME minister told me that being called to preach in no way means that you're a good person.

I'm saying all this to say that, yes, Mel Gibson is an extremely imperfect messenger, but this movie forced me to confront issues with my own faith that I've been dodging for years.

Case in point: I've always tried to conceptualize God and Jesus in almost mathematical terms. For instance, if sin, theologically speaking, is the state of being separated from God, it's impossible for God to understand, and, therefore, absolve sin, without God somehow separating from himself. Which is, essentially, what Jesus is. He's a sliver of God. A slice. A portion of the whole.

But, to me, that's always meant that Jesus was not an ordinary man as we think of it. After all, he can see the future, heal the sick with a touch, walk on water, feed thousands with just a loaf of bread and a pair of fish, turn water into wine, tell demons to hit the bricks, and raise the dead, including himself.

Superman has nothing on this guy.

So, when people talk about how painful and costly the crucifixion is, and they're all so impressed with the sacrifice Jesus made, I always felt like they missed the point. To me, Jesus was not an ordinary man and his entire reason for being here was to die. It wasn't some great sacrifice. It was his mission. And, since he knows the future, he knows he'll succeed. Where's the drama and sacrifice in that?

Ironically enough, my daily Bible reading took me through the Easter story in the week before I saw The Passion, so the story elements were fresh in my mind. I'd forgotten that, according to the Bible, Jesus pleaded so hard with God to find another way, ANY other way, to complete his mission that he sweat blood. I'd forgotten that, as he hung on the cross, Jesus found a moment of abject dispair where he literally screams to the Heavens why has God forsaken him.

These two things helped to highlight for me what is the essential paradox about Jesus - he is the Word Made Flesh, but he still acts like a man. Because that's what he is.

Which changes a great many things. When Jesus does all of his miracles, and then says to his disciples that they can do these things, too, if they only had faith, it makes you wonder about the nature of faith.

I have a very good friend who speaks constantly on manifestation and energy and tapping into the intelligent source of creation. She'd sooner shoot herself than ever actually use the word "God" (which, needless to say, gives me pause), but she is also completely confident in her world view. There isn't a single doubt in her mind.

I really, really hate people who don't have doubts. I want to attack them, to know what gives them the nerve to actually think that they've got it all figured out. But, I've forced myself to realize that my problem isn't with them for their arrogance. It's with myself, because I'm riddled with doubt. I always have another question. I can always conceive of the alternative. In many ways, I think that much of the really harsh criticism of this film from the left, from people like Christopher Higgins, starts in this same place - an utter disdain for the faithful. Mel's issues only make it easier.

But I also realize that you can't really acquire faith. Just like when Morpheus says that no one can ever actually be TOLD what the Matrix is. You have to use building blocks. Use the fact that I have faith that I'll wake up tomorrow morning in my right mind and with all my fingers and toes as a way to expand my faith to bigger things.

The Passion also made me re-examine the nature of sin. As I've said before, sin is that which separates you from the divine. So, in many ways, we define our own Hell. We all have our own interpretations of what it means to be God-like, and we all have a sense on how close we, individually, meet our own standards. I've always taken the fire images of Hell to be metaphors for the state of constant longing, when you know that you must spend all eternity outside of God's presence.

The Passion paints a different picture of sin, as illustrated through it's depiction of the final fate of Judas Iscariot. As Judas agonizes over his betrayal of Jesus, a pair of kids start to taunt him for being a crazy man. But their taunts become more violent, to the point that they actually snap and bite at him. Their faces contort into grotesque monstrous images. In the end, they form a horde, like a pack of wolves, that drive Judas from the city and into a hangman's noose of his own making. It's as if they were conjured by his own spiritual torment.

I'm reminded of a passage in Genesis, where God tries to warn Cain, as he senses his growing anger and jealousy towards Abel, that, if he does wrong, "Sin crouches at his door, seeking to consume you." Somewhere else in the Bible, Satan is likened to a lion, stalking the Earth, in search of souls to devour. Which must have been what Dante had in mind in his image of the final circle of Hell in the Divide Comedy - Judas, trapped in Satan's mouth, chewed on like Prometheus, but never dying, for all eternity.

It's an interesting contrast to what we see of Jesus in the movie, on his arduous journey to Golgotha, where the crowds and the Roman soldiers continue to whip and kick and beat him, even after he's been lashed to within an inch of his life and forced to carry a giant log up and down city streets. In the very beginning of the film, Satan warns Jesus that no one man can bear the sins of the entire world. if the demon children are a representation of the sins of one man, it gives new meaning to the enormity of the task that is set before the Messiah.

Now, for those of you who aren't Christian or interested in theology, who've managed to stick around all the way down through my missives about this film and my religious faith, my hats' off to you. I'm simply saying all these things to illustrate one point. As a Christian, particularly as a media-savvy, jaded, non-church-going, somewhat secular Christian, this movie had a tremendous amount of meaning for me, and, for that, I'm grateful to Mel for making it. And, as a filmmaker, I applaud the absolute artistry that went into its construction. Since it seems to be on track to be one of the highest grossing films of all time, I'm curious to see if it gets remembered next year at Oscar time.

But, just like I believe that this is a film made by Christians and intended largely for Christians, I don't know that I can adequately gauge how offensive it is to Jews. Personally, I don't think it's particularly anti-Semetic. Yes, some of the main villains are the Jewish high priests, but I didn't get the sense that the film was saying that they were bad because they were Jews and, therefore, all Jews are bad. After all, aren't Jesus and all of his supporters Jewish? Moreover, a point could be made that the film illustrates what the Jewish high priests may have felt was a legitimate greviance with Jesus. After all, they're living under an occupation, and some dude who seems to have his own cult appears out of nowhere, claiming to be God incarnate, and that he's mad at his own priests so he's going to destroy their temple and make himself king of the Jews. Blasphemy & insurrection, all wrapped into one package. It would almost be like what you'd expect most pastors to do if some guy showed up today and claimed to be the second coming. Conservative Christians would be calling for his head on a platter.

On the other hand, I can see how it would be uncomfortable at best for Jews to see guys wearing their religious regalia and acting like Snidley Whiplash. In fact, I have a friend who felt that the depiction of Judas' demon childen tormentors was also an anti-Semetic statement because, presumably, the children were Jews. Or the fact that Satan is seen lurking among the high priests during the scouring.

At the end of the day, I don't think it's anymore helpful for Christians to tell Jews that the movie isn't anti-Semetic than it is for White people to tell Blacks that a movie like "Traffic" isn't racist when it shows Erika Christiansen being used as a sex slave for a Black drug dealer. The issue isn't intent, but, rather, how much these things play into and, perhaps, legitimize existing stereotypes. Ultimately, no one can tell anyone else what they can or cannot be offended by. Whether you intended to offend is irrelevant if offense is actually taken. If Jews say they find the movie offensive, it is, by definition, offensive to Jews. The issue, therefore, creates what one of my friends in academia calls "a teaching moment".

Until this movie came out, I had no appreciation for just how Christian our culture is from the perspective of non-Christians. That, in and of itself, makes its existence worthwhile.
Moreover, now that I have some perspective on it, I can see just how much the fact that I am a Christian colors my profound reaction to that movie. Conversely, I'm now aware how much, if you were not raised in a Christian tradition, that "The Passion" probably appears gratuitously violent and exploitative. In many ways, if you don't know the basics of the Gospels, the movie may not even make any sense.

But these conversations, both with the larger community and within myself, wouldn't even exist if the film did not exist. And for that, despite all the egregious faults of the messenger, I am deeply appreciative of the message.

P.S. - but I'm still angry that, after all the trouble to make it authentic by using Latin and Arameic, they STILL couldn't get a brown-skinned Jesus. "Historically accurate", my ass. I guarantee you Jim Caviezel does NOT have hair like wool or feet of brass. Ya dig?


p.p.s. - and when is somebody going to do a Mary Magdelene movie? This book, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala REALLY has me intrigued.


Apparently there's a forgotten, non-Canonical gospel (one of the Dead Sea Scrolls? not sure) written by Mary herself, where she is actually one of Jesus' apostles and one to whom he revealed some secret knowledge. Needless to say, this didn't make Peter and the boys happy. Was there a bit of Hater-Ade served at the Last Supper?
I must admit, despite my good Christian upbringing, Gnosticism fascinates me. Like looking at the deleted scenes on a DVD.

Hearts On Her Sleeve
Part of being an engineer involves getting past the theoretical and moving to the practical. It's not enough to conceive of a problem - we also have to propose solutions.

Here, I'm going to talk about a big problem, and how one sista is trying to make her contribution to the solution.

Forget what Jay-Z tells you. He does not, in fact, love girls, girls, girls, girls. Consider the utter disdain for women most of his lyrics and the lyrics of the lion's share of mainstream hip-hop today. Now, whether he loves Beyonce is, quite honestly, not my concern. But, at least according to this article in the Village Voice, there are at least 15 slang terms for Black women in modern hip-hop vernacular.

And they're all bad.

Hoodrat. Skeezer. Hoochie. Trick. Ho.

The insidiously disrespectful "Wifey".

And, of course, the old stand-by: Bitch.

And, while the study examines the overall trends away from love, commitment, and lasting family relationships and the unpleasant corrolations with HIV infection rates among the hip-hop generation, it also touches on the degree to which sistas have completely internalized the notion of their own worthlessness.

Which is why I was so geeked to read the article about Black Girl Apparel in the L.A. Weekly.
Basically, fashion designer Reny Monk decided that the easiest way to proclaim the joy of being a Daughter of the Nile was to simply stamp it in big bold letters on every conceivable piece of clothing: Tops. T-Shirts. Shorts. Even underwear. So, the black woman and those of us who love to watch her will find her being affirmed at every stage of her dressing (or undressing) ritual.

There is genius in simplicity, folks.

Check her out, and send her and the Black ladies in your life a little love.