What's So Dirty about Jason Derulo's "Talk Dirty"?

Hoo boy. I really hope this one doesn't need too much explaining. Singer/songwriter Jason Derulo's hit single "Talk Dirty" from his album Tattoos (2013) is exactly what the title would lead you to believe: dirty talk. As with Katy Perry's collaboration with Juicy J on "Dark Horse", "Talk Dirty" features a collaboration with rap artist 2 Chainz but, unlike "Dark Horse", 2 Chainz's addition to the song is not that much more spectacularly offensive then Derulo's lyrics. In an interview, Derulo claimed that the song was "shocking" and "out there", and he was definitely right. However, the shock factor has very little value since Derulo is not providing his audience with anything new. Chauvinism and racism have been around for centuries. What's shocking is that such distasteful vulgarity is being played on mainstream airwaves and we're soaking it up. It has been established culturally for quite some time now that both chauvinism and racism are "bad things", and yet our schizophrenic society deems these exact things, when put to R&B music, nothing much more than a bit of "good fun". Sometimes I wonder whether, if Hitler had put his Mien Kampf to music, the entire Western world would have simply followed the Pied Piper into the Third Reich.

The premise of the song harps on Derulo's international fame as a musical artist, which provides him the opportunity for sexual liaisons of all sorts with women from all kinds of ethnic and cultural backgrounds throughout the world. He marks his time in each country with the lipstick marks of the women he has gained intimate access to on the pages of his passport. The women he meets are his fans and know all the words to his songs, but they don't speak the English language. Therefore, conversations between the poet and his groupies are practically nonexistent; however, the language of sexuality is universal and can be performed regardless of verbal understanding. It's difficult to confuse the idea of a universal language of love with what the poet is talking about in this song, as women are anatomized to nothing more than "booties". This is the only part of the women that is "understood" by the poet, and it is how they are identified by 2 Chainz in his list of cell phone contacts, as he expresses in his addition to the lyrics. This is also pretty much all women are in the music video as well, which features women of many cultural and ethnic backgrounds dancing in such a way that the only thing about them that is "understood" by the poet is made most prominent. This is male chauvinism at its finest. The woman is objectified to such a degree that she is barely even human anymore. Her capacity for rational thought is nullified by the poet's inability to speak the language, as well as his dismissal of any attempt or interest in learning to communicate with her. In denying her the ability to communicate, the poet also denies the woman any sense of personhood outside of a sexualized body language that serves, not to communicate anything truly intimate about the woman herself, but merely as an invitation to coitus. But even this gesture of coming together as equals in a union of sexual pleasure is undercut by the insistence, largely on the part of 2 Chainz, that the sexual activity engaged in is oral, thereby relegating the woman to merely an instrument of male pleasure rather than an equal partner in the sexual act. At every turn, women are being degraded to subhuman, depersonalized, objectified sex toys made for the enjoyment of the kind of dominating machismo glorified by the male "rock star" culture.

As if this weren't enough of an insult already, the poet continues to dig himself deeper into his hole by using ethnic, cultural, and linguistic differences to further objectify these women. Their lack of fluency in the English language makes them completely devoid of any personal interest and relegates them merely to bodies. National and racial difference makes them less deserving of the personal investment that perhaps might have been paid to a North American, English-speaking woman. Their "conversations ain't long", denying them the possibility of forming any sort of meaningful relationship and encouraging nothing but a sexual liaison. The use of language as an introduction to intimacy that would have been required by an English-speaking woman is forfeited when met with linguistic challenges. Cultural difference becomes an excuse for instant objectification. If that's not racist, I don't know what is. The song provides such cringe-worthy examples of this attitude in the very lyrics, as a Japanese woman is heard saying the poet's name in broken English at the beginning of the song and ending it with the words, "What? I don't understand!" This lack of understanding is used to make these ethnic women look unintelligent, naive, and easily manipulated, especially sexually, enabling comparisons with a stratagem common to human trafficking rings in which women are brought to countries where the language is completely foreign to them in order to keep them from being able to ask for help. The music video also plays into this racist element of the song by showcasing women from different ethnic backgrounds performing stereotypically ethnic dances in stereotypically traditional attire, but all of these elements have been highly sexualized in order to bring a stereotypically North American flavor to the entire display. The whole depiction of "Talk Dirty" is racist, sexist, and degrading.

Fortunately for Derulo, the most criticism he seems to have received on this score is an accusation of "cultural ignorance". I wonder if that's all I'll get the next time I inadvertently paint all other ethnicities beyond my own with the same objectifying brush. Somehow, I think "bigot" and "racist" are the terms more likely to be used, and they should really be used in this case as well. 

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

Should We Fight for "Fight Club"?

Fight Club (1999), starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter, has come to define a generation of young men. However, this definition has been almost exclusively relegated to the violent aspect of the "fight clubs" started by the main characters, a place where men go to blow off steam, take out their frustrations, and generally share in the machismo characteristic of boys who spend their free time beating each other up. This attitude among real-life men about the value of Fight Club has often led to a devaluation of the film as a childish at best, misogynistic at worst, portrayal of senseless, testosterone-filled, glamorized, indulgent violence. Keeping with the devil-may-care attitude of the film, the 2003 Collector's Edition DVD release glories in the polarizing responses to the film by including quotes from critics within the DVD's insert. Many of these provide poignant examples of the incendiary reaction the film caused on its release: "...a witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone-crunching violence that actually thinks it's saying something of significance"; "Fight Club is to intelligent men what Catherine Breillat's Romance is to intelligent women -- an insult"; "I would deliver a long tirade against it if it weren't such a dog -- such a laborious and foolish waste of time..."; "Aside from the protracted beatings, this film is so vacuous and empty it's more depressing than provocative"; "It is an inadmissable [sic] assault on personal decency. And on society itself"; "It resurrects the Fuhrer principle". And then there's my personal favorite, which was apparently overheard at one of the film's premieres: "Why aren't there pickets here? Where is Cardinal Collins when we need him?" Puerile. Insulting. Foolish. Vacuous. Indecent. Fascist. A moral outrage. And yet, somehow, I think this is one of the most important films of the 21st century. I don't hold this opinion just because I'm a self-confessed violence junkie who counts Tarantino's Kill Bill and Snyder's 300 in my "top ten films" list. I hold this opinion because I recognize in Fight Club the kind of spiritual and cultural malaise that counts violence as a symptom. Fight Club is worth watching, not for the violence or the disturbing images, but for the spiritual sickness it portrays in the soul of a generation of 21st century men.

Perhaps the first thing anyone sitting down to watch this film should come to terms with beforehand is that this is not a film that is going to provide you with any answers. It is not a "moral" film in the sense that it will show you the path on which to walk to gain any sort of happiness or peace. It is not an existential film; it is not going to reveal any of the answers to the questions, "Who am I?", "Where am I going?", "What is my purpose?". This is a film of questions, barbed questions, acidic questions, the questions that make you squirm in your seat, and draw back defensively, and feel like taking a long, hot shower to rid yourself of their cloying viscosity. Fight Club probes the deepest wounds in the masculine soul with a dull, unsanitary blade; it doesn't succeed in cutting anything out, and it very likely may have put another infection in, but no one can fail to recognize the wound afterwards. However, you will receive no answers, no advice, no doctor's note with a prescription that will make everything all better. I think this is why the majority of the most scathing criticisms of the film have come from men -- intelligent men, enlightened men, men who are comfortable with who they are, men who have made their peace with the world. However, Fight Club reminds us that men may have made their peace with the world, but the world has not made peace with men. Masculinity is constantly under attack, constantly being reshaped, reformed, reworked, to fit society's ideas of what "works", what "fits" within the utopian project of the enlightened, liberal, eternal city on earth. In Fight Club, men are not comfortable; they are under pressures they barely know exist, and the symptoms of such pressures, the desire to break out, manifests itself in the most extreme ways: depression, psychosis, violence. The film, although characterized by the symptoms, is not about them; it is about sickness that lies at the heart of it all.

Fight Club cuts to the heart of questions of masculine identity by pointing them out with startling clarity through its salient dialogue and caustic storytelling. Norton's unnamed character (for brevity and clarity's sake, known hereafter as Jack) lives a life full of things -- an education, a job, a societal function, an apartment full of Ikea furniture -- but devoid of meaning. He suffers from chronic insomnia and bouts of depression, which he finds a way to relieve by attending support groups for people suffering from different deadly physical diseases. The film shows its emphasis on feelings of emasculation and male displacement in society through Jack's attendance at a support group for men with testicular cancer called "Remaining Men Together". The physical cancer is a type for the spiritual cancer that preys upon ideas of masculine identity in culture; men are, in a sense, being emasculated through a type of domestication that renders them virtually androgynous machines, faceless consumers of things rather than men with passion and vitality. Jack and Tyler's conception of "fight club" becomes a spiritual support group that allows men to "remain men together", to support each other in their resistance of social emasculation, and to allow each other a physical outlet through which they can express their spiritual frustration at being "tamed". This coincides with author John Eldredge's insights into the masculine soul in his book Wild at Heart (2001), in which he insists that the heart of man is wild by nature and yearning for adventure, freedom, and passion, which he is being deprived of in modern society. Despite the so-called "social engineering" of gender, there is something in the heart of men, in his very nature, that pushes back against this and actively seeks for a way to express a masculinity that can be definitive, that can answer the desire for danger, for unpredictability, and for risk. No amount of social engineering can completely destroy this longing in the masculine heart, but, the more society attempts to emasculate and domesticate the heart of man, the more he will search for outlets on the fringes and in sincerely risky behaviors, like "fight clubs" and acts of machismo, in gang behavior and "rape culture".

This sense of loss and confusion about masculinity is exacerbated in the film by the void created by absent father figures and male role models. In a few snatches of conversation between Jack and Tyler, the film forces us to face the reality that men are suffering from a lack of direction and example when it comes to feeling comfortable as men in the world and feeling fulfilled in the lives they are expected to live in society. Jack speaks about how his father abandoned him and his mother to start another family in another city; he admits that he doesn't know his father, and the way he relates to him is through the vision of a consumerist society: his father is a corporation, consuming women and producing children, moving on to spread the franchise after success has been achieved in one geographical location. The male interrelationship has been defined, not by personal virtue, but by social success. Tyler reveals the litany of his father's expected social accomplishments -- go to college, get a job, get married -- but these events have been robbed of their personal significance. They are motions of the body, but not of the soul. They mark men as social beings, but are devoid of personal meaning. The fathers in both Tyler and Jack's lives have given them the motions, but no meanings. They can set up franchises, but not families. Jack's protest, "I can't get married. I'm a thirty-year-old boy", shows the acute sense men have of not knowing what it means to be "men". They have never been shown how.

This leads, in the case of Tyler Durden, to just the sort of answer one might expect: anger, resentment, and destruction. A rejection of stereotypes provided by the consumerist media of what a man should be, how he should look and how he should act, typifies the type of self-destruction Tyler advocates. He imagines a world where life is taken back to a state of survival, where mankind lives "naturally", freed from every kind of social structure: familial, economic, cultural, and religious. Father figures and role models and God all need to be torn down in order to rebuild man on the image of basic animal instinct. Tyler's ideas of masculinity comprise an all-out rejection of anything beyond the primal instincts of the Freudian id: sex and death. However, given the rejection of the father figure, the procreative aspect of sex is done away with through the "glass slipper of our generation", as Marla so neatly terms it, and so there is nothing really left but death. Even sex in some sense becomes an act of violence, an act of domination and dehumanization disguised as a thrill ride for adrenaline junkies. In the same way as A Clockwork Orange's particular brand of "ultraviolence" brought with it the sexual violence of gang rape, Fight Club's fisticuffs brings along with it a degradation of the role of woman from mother to pleasure object. Paradoxically, sex becomes just another "near-life experience", like violence, in which the momentary thrill of sexual union is prevented from being a true "life experience" by the depersonalization of the sexual partner. The claim that being raised only by women has resulted in an effeminate version of man allows Tyler to assert that men don't need women, and that allowing women to in some way define who men are ("boyfriend", "husband", "father") creates just as false a notion of masculinity as the showy abs on Calvin Klein models. Tyler sees the problem inherent in man's identity crisis as one of outside influence; for him, human society must be rendered completely devoid of meaning in order to recapture a true idea of what it means to exist.

Jack provides a balance point for this spiritual "personality disorder" between the life of primal instinct practiced by Tyler and the domestic consumerism which typifies Jack's earlier life. The film does not try to replace one with the other, but reveals through Jack's rejection of Tyler's behavior that neither extreme is healthy. Masculine instinctual desire and emasculated cultural civility must be put in their proper order, which includes both a rejection of machismo and an acknowledgement of personal responsibility or purposiveness. Jack undergoes a transformation through which he realizes that Tyler's anarchic behavior is, at its core, not "masculine" but inhuman. However, there is no going back to his old life of resentful docility and depression either, as he expresses in his last words to Tyler: "My eyes are open." Now he must acknowledge his own power over his life and actions, and actualize those traits in him that truly do make him a man. Oddly enough, this gesture toward a possible resolution in the final twenty minutes of the film is accomplished in the person of Marla Singer, particularly through Jack's realization that Marla is more than a "tourist", a "tumor", or a "threat" to him, and that he actually cares for her. When Jack begins to understand the true complexity of his relationship with Tyler, it is Marla he calls for confirmation of his worst fears because she is the only one he trusts to tell him the truth. When he realizes the true intimacy of his relationship with her, he steps up to take responsibility for it, to take the blame for how he has been mistreating her in the past, and to promote his intentions to make life better for her in future in whatever way he can. When Tyler informs him that Marla must be disposed of because she "knows too much" about them, Jack is willing to risk his own life to protect hers. Fight Club is no fairy tale; Marla is definitely not a princess, and Jack is no prince. But there is something inherently heroic and masculine in his almost instantaneous desire to protect her, to take responsibility for his actions, and to entrust himself to her once he realizes that he "really likes" her. In an interesting switch, once Jack is able to take control of his own life, the hedonistic and misogynistic view of women promoted by Tyler is replaced by one of neo-chivalric care, security, and stability. For her sake Jack is able to overcome his anarchic alter ego and find equilibrium so that he might lead a truly fulfilling life. In a very real sense, Marla is Jack's "power animal"; she is the impetus for him to find his inner strength, to choose order and self-control over chaos and destruction. The best of man, in the end, is brought out in the defense of woman.

Despite this, it is important to remember that Fight Club -- either the film or the real-life enactment of it -- is not meant to provide an answer, but to make visible the longing for personal meaning in the lives of a generation of 21st-century men, a gendered significance that will address the very real and very unique needs of a man's soul. This may imply a certain sense of anarchy against those cultural movements that seek to relegate identity to media stereotypes, or social performance, or the consumerist machine, but it must at the same time resist the impulse to deny the personal significance of existence in this world in relation to others and the self. It is true, as Tyler says, that we are not defined by our jobs, or our bank accounts, or our worldly possessions, but it is also true that we are not animals with no personal significance beyond the need to fight and breed. Fight Club does not necessarily provide answers to the problem of masculine identity, but it does reveal it in a shocking way and attempts to find a balance between effeminate domesticity and nihilistic anarchy, neither of which encompass the totality of what it is to be a man.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

Can We Go All Out for "All of Me"?

John Legend's romantic R&B ballad "All of Me" is one of the most beautiful modern love songs to reach the airwaves. Legend wrote the song for his wife, model Chrissy Teigen, and it encapsulates the beauties of the love between husband and wife. The end of the music video features footage from Legend and Teigen's wedding, emphasizing the song's description of what makes for wedded bliss. The simple yet powerful piano ballad provides a neat complementarity to the simple yet powerful message of what is ultimately necessary to create a relationship of true love.

Legend hits all the rights notes as he describes the beauty and mystery of his relationship with his wife. Everything about her, from the natural grace and beauty of her body, to the mystery of her thoughts and emotions, to the expression of her varying moods are a source of profound joy and love in the poet's heart. What really makes this poem shine is the appearance of seeming contraries that are somehow subsumed into the marital relationship in such a way as to bring all things into a harmony that completes the other person in a way they couldn't be on their own. The repeated notions of "craziness" and "losing one's mind" in the love between them is made sense of in the idea of entering into a mystery with one another. What might seem to be utter nonsense -- that two people could actually become one -- is made into the most perfect sense when the mystery of the marital relationship is lived out in a kind of mutual surrender. The chorus expresses the giving of one's all to the other in exchange for the other's all; husband and wife make an exchange of all that they are, body and soul, to the other as an expression of the depths of their love for each other. In this gift of self, all contraries become harmonies. The end of the single life heralds the beginning of the new marital life; the loss of so-called "freedom" results in the winning of the freedom granted by a love built on generous trust in the other. The beloved can, on the one hand, be the "downfall" of the lover in that the beloved demands that all other possibilities for life and love be precluded by this one commitment to love. On the other hand, this "downfall" in the eyes of superficiality and selfishness becomes the "muse" of true love and beauty, true creativity and transcendence. The lover can understand more truly the depths of the human soul through his experience of the free gift of the beloved. The world opens up to new horizons when the souls is opened up to the experience of real love. Therefore, the "distraction" of love becomes the source of "rhythm and blues", the source of all creativity and industry; the distraction of love becomes the impulse to a more focused and purposive existence in the world.

Love is not all hearts and roses, however, and "All of Me" acknowledges that. There are both curves and edges to love; there are moments of softness and moments that are sharp enough to cut. There is both perfection and imperfection in every person, even in the most beloved, which provide both joy and struggle. There will be times of heartache and pain, when one perhaps will have to struggle to see the beauty through the tears. There will be times when the stress and turmoil of life in the world may try to break the lover or beloved; there will be times when trying moods will come over the lover or beloved and they will be challenged to stand by each other and continue to love despite selfishness or ingratitude. Love is not easy. Love is hard, perhaps one of the hardest things anyone is ever called to do in their life. It requires vulnerability and risk; it requires "cards on the table", a willingness to put oneself forward and lay oneself bare before the other. It requires us to give and not count the cost, to give and not hold anything back, to give one's all to the beloved. Love asks everything from us -- yet it is the only things that has the possibility of giving everything back to us a hundred fold. In "All of Me", Legend insists that marital love is a risk worth taking.

"All of Me" offers a challenge to our love-starved but commitment-shy culture. It calls us to be bold and take the risk that comes with the total gift of self. It challenges us to hold nothing back, to work to be our best for another, to work to be truly complementary as men and women. It encourages us to see the beauty in the other, to see the beauty in love, to see the beauty in vulnerability. If I could clarify only one thing in the song, I would insist that it should also remind us that those "perfect imperfections", insofar as they represent character flaws rather than character traits, are parts of us that need to be harmonized through the generosity of putting the good of the other before ourselves, of truly seeking to become the best possible spouse we can be for the other, and of allowing love to change us in all the best ways possible. The challenge to love is precisely a challenge in that it calls us to be more than we could ever have possibly been on our own; it calls us to come out of ourselves and become fully alive by dying to self for the sake of another. This is the ultimate contrary that is harmonized in the mystery of marital unity: through death we find the best life in love.

Thank you, John Legend, for reminding us.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

Can We Shed Some Light on "Dark Horse"?

Katy Perry's hit single "Dark Horse" is, according to Perry herself, about a witch warning a man that, if he falls in love with her, she will be his last lover. Once he agrees to be with her, he will never be allowed to leave her without facing deadly consequences. The music video, while indulging in Perry's signature combination of sexualism and self-deprecating humor, follows this basic idea but modifies the "witch" concept by making Perry a magical Cleopatra who has the power to turn her would-be suitors into sand. Both Perry's original idea for the song and the music video create an image of female power over the bodies of men. Whether she is turning them into sand or threatening them with magic-induced destruction, or even "eat[ing their] heart out like Jeffrey Dahmer" as rap-collaborator Juicy J distastefully adds, the song emphasizes female dominance over male suitors in the realm of romance.

None of this is surprising coming from the poetess responsible for such confidence-boosting songs as "Roar", "Part of Me", and "Firework". However, the lyrics to this song express more clearly her fear of being abandoned by a lover rather than her true power over the lover himself. In fact, the entire idea of being a witch or a magical Cleopatra is nothing more than wishful thinking. The poetess is desperate to be loved but afraid of being hurt, so she threatens any potential lover with her particularly potent ire: "Make me your Aphrodite, / Make me your one and only, / But don't make me your enemy". The poetess is clearly asking for a loving and permanent relationship with her suitor rather than a short and sordid fling. The fact that she feels the need to threaten the man with vague ideas of personal harm if he tries to leave shows her helplessness in love rather than her strength.

Like it or not, this is part of what love is about. Love requires vulnerability. It requires you to put yourself out in the open, to lay your heart bare before the other, to allow the possibility of sacrifice and rejection and pain. Threatening to cause harm to a person you want to love you is not really love at all. You don't really want a lover; you want a slave at worst, or a pet at best. This is not love, but use. This is not a desire for personal relationship, but a desire for happiness-inducing things. But even with slaves and pets, pain and heartache are not impossible. Slaves run away, as do pets, and inevitably death gets us all. There is only one way to avoid pain in love: don't do it. As C. S. Lewis says in his book The Four Loves: "Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal." If we want to come out of this life with no scars, we can't even attempt to enter the battle. "Dark Horse" expresses the lovely fantasy of having pleasure without pain, love without struggle, and life without work. But if pain, struggle, and work are removed, pleasure, love, and even life begin to lose their inherent value and meaning. These things are of such high value because they are difficult to maintain. It is precisely because they require a full and complete commitment, regardless of what the world might throw at us, that we make them the goal and end and purpose of our existence. Being able to snap our fingers and have puppy-eyed flunkies panting at our heels may be momentarily thrilling, but no one would ever make the mistake of calling that "love"; it barely even qualifies as a relationship. In resorting to threats and magic, "Dark Horse" denies itself the very thing it desires: a meaningful and purposive romance.

But why does the poetess need to resort to such fantastical ideas in the first place? Why is she so caught between fear and desire, anger and love? Well, probably because of what Juicy J has to say for the male side of the conversation at the end of his little addition to the song: "Her love is like a drug: / I was tryin' to hit it and quit it, / But lil' mama so dope / I messed around and got addicted". In case you need a translation, I've become fluent in Rapese: he was intending to only have a one-night stand with the poetess, but she is so attractive that he can't help but to continue to see her. What a frank confession. This right here would be the root of all the fear and anger and threats and tears and desire for female domination that "Dark Horse" emotes from its pores. At the heart of this song is a heartbreaking situation that has become sadly a common phenomenon: a woman is being told that she is everything the man could want and he wants to become intimate with her immediately; she is happy with his flattery, but she wants to be appreciated for more than just the bodily pleasure she can provide, and no one can guarantee that the man in question will commit. The desire for meaningful relationships is constantly cut off by meaningless sex. Therefore, the woman feels the need to exert some sort of control over the man to keep him from leaving: she must have magic, or be some sort of living aphrodisiac, or she must threaten him. Female dominance, in this case, doesn't arise from female confidence but from female insecurity. Juicy J doesn't help the situation at all by perpetuating the myth that a man can be "addicted" or "entranced" or "changed" by his experience of an alluring woman if she allows him a "taste" of her. There are many women -- too many women -- who believe that showing a man how fun or how pleasing or how "bad" she can be by allowing physical intimacy will somehow magically make him a willing boyfriend -- and also, somehow, a "good" boyfriend. This is not how it works. A man who doesn't respect you enough to want to get to know you as a person, or to put your well-being above his own momentary pleasure, is not going to have any more respect for you in the morning, despite all the tricks you are able to pull the night before. You will not be his Aphrodite; you will be a notch in his bedpost.

"Dark Horse" is a heartbreaking song that shows the pitiable state of relationships between the sexes. But it also shows that the desires of women for real love and security from men have not been killed off or changed or drowned out in a sea of meaningless hookups. If anything, they seem to be getting louder. Even Juicy J makes mention of "That fairy tale ending with a knight in shining armor, / She can be my Sleeping Beauty". Maybe not every woman wants to sleep for a hundred years and be waked by a kiss from a complete stranger, but there is that desire in every woman for a man who is truly willing to go out of his way to make her happy, to show her he loves her, not just for her body but for who she is as a person. The "fairy tale" ending we all desire is not "she married a prince she met yesterday"; that's the hookup culture's "fairy tale", and we all know that doesn't ever come true. The real "fairy tale" ending is the last sentence of every good story: "they lived happily ever after". This is what we want: we want to live; we want to be happy; and we want it to be forever. This is what we want from our relationships: we want them to be life-giving; we want them to be truly loving; and we want them to be permanent. This is the cry from every woman's heart. This is what prompts the poetess to say to her would-be lover: "it's a yes or no, no maybe". We want it to be all or nothing.

If we want to promote true female dominance in the world of romance, we will stick to our guns and insist on "nothing" if men are not willing to give their "all".

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

Brave New World: Not New, but an Impetus to be Brave

This post is a re-publication of a short write-up I did for the website of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy. I wanted to include it here because I do want this blog to feature some thoughts about the books that have influenced -- or are influencing -- our culture. The thing about books is that they are much longer and more complex than song lyrics, or even movies. Although there is enough material in Frozen for me to probably rehash it once or twice more, there is so much in books like Brave New World that it would take ten or more (probably more) posts to really do justice to the complexity of plots and characters. Therefore, writing posts about books takes a lot more time and effort than lyrics and movies. In time, I hope to have some more up here. For now, I'm offering a short sneak peek into one of the books that has influenced -- and continues to influence -- me.

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A book that has been a favorite of mine throughout my adult life is Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World. I first encountered this book quite by accident: a fellow student in my second year of university was writing a philosophy paper based on it and wanted some help organizing his thoughts. Having never read the book, I was unsure of how I could be of any help, so I decided to skim through it and try to pick out some major themes. What began as "skimming" turned out to be completely engrossing, and I finished the entire novel from beginning to end within two hours. I have not been able to stop talking about it since. It pops up in conversations ranging from literature to media to politics to economics to philosophy and theology. It has also cropped up in the university lectures I have given as an example or reference more than once.

Although Brave New World is dark, unsettling, and ends on a decidedly depressing note, it has always struck me as a truly prophetic work of literature. Written in 1931, Huxley envisions a future culture of hedonists who worship mass production, consider the word "mother" degrading, live lives of sexual uninhibitedness, and use drugs to avoid ever feeling negative emotions like loneliness, sadness, or guilt. Huxley predicts with eerie accuracy the breakdown of the family through reproductive technologies, the obsession with consequence-free sex divorced from love, the cultural brainwashing of children through schools and media, the scientific manipulation of human life to create "designer" children, and more cultural phenomena that, rather than depicting a distant possibility, act more like a mirror to our current society's deepest spiritual depravities. In a similar way to Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae in 1968, Huxley's Brave New World foretells the inevitable cultural devastation that occurs when we choose to accept the maximization of material pleasure as the foundation for our existence in the world.

Writing as an agnostic, it is perhaps not surprising that there is no redemption in Huxley's book: the system is not improved or overthrown; the protagonists do not convince the culture of their need for change; the only quasi-religious character in the story does not persevere in hope. It is a dismal ending, but all endings are dismal that preclude Christ. Brave New World issues a challenge for Christians in the Western world to do what Huxley could not: preach the message of a Savior who offers true freedom and happiness through his Cross and resurrection. The "Savage" in Brave New World could only offer condemnations; we can offer affirmation of our joy and the hope that springs from our faith in a God who offers so much more than the mass-produced cheap thrills out culture offers. Brave New World, for me, is both a tool and an impetus to evangelization in its ability to reveal both the unacknowledged desperation of our culture and the urgent need to present to our world the "better part" that is the source of true happiness.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

How Happy is Pharrell's "Happy"?

 The answer is: pretty dang happy. Seeing as the song is featured on the soundtrack to Despicable Me 2, it would have to be. The song is featured in a scene of the family film as Gru, the main character, realizing that he has surprisingly fallen in love with his quirky spy partner Lucy, dances through the streets on his way to tell her how he feels. The scene depicts Gru "sharing the love" that he has discovered in his relationship with Lucy by spontaneously joining an outdoor yoga class, playing along with a group of street performers, and encouraging isolated people to meet each other and start conversation. It's a great scene that emphasizes the joy that is the fruit of love, and how that joy radiates from us and touches everyone we meet.

Pharrell's song does the same. The repeated lyric "because I'm happy", coupled with invitations to clap and a danceable beat, undoubtedly bring a smile to the faces of those who listen. The music video also attempts to "share the love", as it depicts people of all shapes and sizes dancing their "happy dance" in the streets (the video also features Steve Carrell, the voice of Gru, and a few Minions). The music video's original release was accompanied by a much lengthier version, 24 Hours of Happy, which played the song on a 24-hour loop while showing video footage of people dancing in the streets. The entire message of the song is to let your joy shine in all that you do and bring it to those around you.

The lyrics themselves, written by Pharrell, exude the joy of loving and being loved. The first stanza expresses this fulfilling aspect of love by the poet telling the sunshine that it is no longer needed to brighten his day: "Sunshine, she's here, you can take a break". Love is the cause of his joy; no other thing is necessary to make his heart light. The second stanza follows a similar theme, addressing negativity and "bad news" by saying that it's not possible for them to take his joy away. The joy of love is stronger than that. It is not blown away by every foul wind, but weathers the storm with a smile and a song. The rest of the lyrics, though repetitive, offer the same expressions of happiness.

There are a couple of lines, however, that make me wary: "Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth / ... Clap along if you know what happiness is to you". Although the general message of "Happy" is a good one, these lines can't simply be taken at face value. The cause and effect seem to be inverted in the notion that "happiness is the truth". This idea can imply that our notions of happiness define our reality; for instance, McDonalds' fries make me happy and, therefore, it is true that I should spend as much time as possible with them, eating them, being made happy by them. You might think they are horribly unhealthy and the amount of cholesterol building up in my arteries is going to kill me, but that's only your reality. In my reality, they make me happy, so they are good, and that's the truth. Happiness is the truth. If we want to start stretching this into more dangerous territory, you could justify adultery by saying that this other person makes you happy, while your current spouse does not, so the truth is that your relationship with the other person is "real", while the marriage to your spouse is not. If we want to get absurd, we could say that murdering joggers in the park makes me happy so it is a real good for me, it is my truth, and shapes my reality. Who are you to deny me my happiness?

Of course, I'm taking the concept to its most extreme limits. But even the fact that we can take this notion to such extreme limits should give us pause. We should beware of falling into mental traps that promote the utilitarian philosophy of the pleasure principle. Jeremy Bentham, the 19th century proponent of utilitarianism, insisted that our entire human nature was built to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. Therefore, anything that could be done to increase your pleasure should be done, while anything that caused you pain should be removed from your life. Hence, Bentham was a strong proponent of divorce and laxity in the realm of sexual morals. He is the father of the modern phrase: "If it feels good, do it." The central problem with this is that happiness, as a feeling, is something that waxes and wanes, changes objects and intensity, and shifts with the circumstances of our lives. Therefore, our idea of the "reality" of our happiness is a constantly shifting thing; our reality becomes something unstable and entirely relative to our current situation and mood. I may like going to school today when I'm interested in the material, my teacher likes me, and I don't have any papers due; tomorrow, however, I might be bored, stressed, and tired, and school is nothing but a drag which steals away my happiness. Should I drop out and instead pursue the happiness of sleeping in and playing video games all day?

The idea that one's own subjective idea of feelings of happiness creates our own personal truths feeds the popular but destructive philosophy (or anti-philosophy) known as relativism. This ideology insists that there are no objective values, realities, or sources of happiness outside of one's own personal experience, and that no one person's experience can inform or set the standard for anyone else. Relativism, in effect, denies that there is a reality out there that creates the same objective values for every person on earth. With relativism, you cannot ever tell me that what I experience as a good in my life is not actually a good. You can't tell me to put an end to my heroin addiction because I enjoy it; it makes me happy; this is my happiness, not yours. Those side effects of my behavior may seem bad to you, but I'm willing to live with them, so you have no right to take away my happiness. We can all see the problem inherent in this way of thinking. And, in all honesty, when push comes to shove, none of us are truly relativists. We really do believe that there is an objective reality that applies to everyone. We really do believe in our heart of hearts that there are objectively evil things that cannot be justified by some relative pleasure principle that makes something okay for you but not for me. Murder is wrong. Rape is wrong. Theft is wrong. No matter how much anyone enjoys these things, they will always be wrong. Education is good. Acts of generosity are good. Acts of kindness are good. No matter how much anyone might dislike doing these things, they will always be good. Their value is intrinsic and objective; it is not up for discussion. This is reality. This is truth. And the more we are able to align our desires with the truth, the happier we will be.

Rather than happiness being a cause for truth, truth is actually a cause for happiness. We are really happy when a real person really loves us, not when some sort of electric impulse in our brain triggers a release of endorphins into our system. Being hooked up to some sort of "happy machine" (perhaps like the ones seen in sci-fi films like Minority Report) is not real happiness; we are not really happy when the causes for our happiness are false. An insane person who is happy because he thinks he lives in a palace on the moon with all the luxuries in the universe at his fingertips is not really happy. None of us would choose this for ourselves. We would rather choose unhappiness in reality than happiness built on lies and delusions. The good news is that happiness is a real thing, an objective reality that can be obtained by each and every one of us. It is more than an opinion, even more than just a "state of mind". There are actual concrete things in this world that are true causes for happiness for everyone: the beauty of nature, peace and prosperity, accomplished goals, smiles shared, good deeds, true love. We were built not just for pleasure, but for joy, real joy that comes from real things that really do make us objectively better and happier people.

And that's something to clap about.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

Is "Wrecking Ball" Actually a Wreck?

By now, almost everyone in North America, whether they listen to Miley Cyrus' music or not, has heard of the song "Wrecking Ball". The music video that was made for the song provided the public with images of the pop starlet riding a wrecking ball in the nude with just enough elusive camera angles and properly placed appendages to avoid full disclosure. Couple that with her and Robin Thicke's infamous performance at the MTV Music Awards, and "Wrecking Ball" has become almost synonymous in the public mind with that shocking sexualism that shouldn't really shock us anymore. Miley Cyrus' personal issues are one thing, but is the song "Wrecking Ball" actually a song that should not be listened to for fear one might turn into an attention-starved, sexed-up trollop?

As a disclaimer to this post, I should probably mention that music -- the actual notes, bars, and whatever else is involved -- and I have not reached any sort of intellectual understanding. I know what music I like to hear, and I know what music I don't like. But beyond that, the art of music is a veritable mystery to me. Knowing that, I don't plan to comment on the musical aspects of the song. I am a literary savant; I am approaching this song as a work of literature, as a poem. I am focusing on the lyrics. Seeing as the majority of people today are only exposed to poetry in the form of nursery rhymes, song lyrics, and forced readings in school, I think it's important to address the poetic tastes of our culture via the primary poetic source of the 21st century: lyrics. With that in mind, let's look at the lyrics to "Wrecking Ball" to see if there is anything objectionable in this much-buzzed-about song.

Perhaps before we go any further, we should admit that Miley Cyrus is not the poet responsible for "Wrecking Ball". A media conglomeration of five different singers/songwriters/producers came together to produce the lyrics (and, I'm assuming, the music) to this gem: MoZella, Stephan Moccio, Sacha Skarbek, Dr. Luke, and Cirkut. Whether they were all responsible for penning these lyrics or whether some focused exclusively on the musical aspect of things, I'm not sure. What I do know from this is that any idea that this song is about Miley Cyrus and her past relationships is about as farfetched as the script of Star Trek being written about episodes of William Shatner's life, especially since the song was first intended to be sung by Beyonce. So let's approach this as a poem without specific connections to any one person, place, or event, and attach only what literary value we can from the words themselves.

Ostensibly, the lyrics portray the painful experience of a breakup. No surprise there -- this is a Bilboard Hot 100 song, after all. I think a hundred songs just like it pop up on the radio every month. What I did find interesting about the lyrics to this song was the distinct image of the wrecking ball as a symbol of a kind of destructive love. The lyricist says that s/he wanted to force the openness in the relationship by breaking down the beloved's "walls" that keep the lover and beloved apart. The attempt to force intimacy, to force a closeness in the relationship before true intimacy had been established, results in both lovers being "wrecked". There is a sense of blindness in the rush to be intimate: the lover "just closed my eyes and swung"; both lovers "jumped never asking why". Any idea of prudence, caution, or patience is thrown to the wind, and the movement from interest to infatuation to intimacy is given the force of destruction. The idealization of the beloved by the lover ("I put you high up in the sky and now you're not coming down") in some sense demands a response, and, when a response is not immediately given, the lover attempts to force a response, unintentionally starting a "war". The beloved's resistance to intimacy is implied in the seeming necessity on the lover's part to use force and wrecking balls and chains to gain access. The desire for a more cautious courtship is attacked by the lover's impetuosity, blindness, and misguided idea that love requires nakedness, whether physical, emotional, or psychological. In this sense, the lover is right to say, "I should have let you win", with the meaning of "I should have let you have your way", by respecting the beloved's desire to develop the relationship more slowly and allow a natural intimacy to blossom. The war between the impetuous lover and cautious beloved ends with even more destruction: "crashing in a blazing fall", "ashes on the ground", and "wrecked" individuals.

"Wrecking Ball", it seems, carries within it the ugly truth about our society's modern ideas about equating intimacy with sexual activity, relationships built on infatuation, and the so-called "hookup culture". These social phenomena do leave people "wrecked" and struggling to come to terms with their failed romances. Forcing intimacy does not create love; more often, it destroys it. The better path to take would be one in which both parties respect the boundaries of the other, build up a true knowledge and sincere friendship over time, and use prudence to assess whether the other person is the "right" one to establish a truly intimate relationship with. Maybe this doesn't sound very romantic when put in such pragmatic terms, but there is something beautiful about being able to say, "I married my best friend". And there is something very beautiful about being able to be truly naked before that one person who you are able to be completely yourself with, who, rather than knocking down your walls, is willing to wait to be invited inside and shown around. And that's not a bad lesson to learn from a Miley Cyrus song.

It's better than being naked on a wrecking ball, at any rate.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

Frozen: Best Disney Movie Ever?

After winning the Oscar for both Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song at the Academy Awards this year, Frozen is being hailed as the greatest film to come out of the Disney studios in the past two decades. According to the memes and comments running around on Pinterest, Tumblr, and Facebook, the common consensus among girls aged 12 - 26 seems to reecho this praise. Frozen has ushered in a new "golden age" of Disney films that embraces both the princess tradition and the Broadway flair, while reestablishing its relevance to the ideals and struggles of young "Millennials". The story of two princesses, sisters who share a close bond but are estranged by older sister Elsa's lack of control over her unexplained icy powers, is one that seems to promote friendship and support between women rather than a reliance on male heroes. Much has been made of the pragmatic wisdom of Elsa's exclamation that younger sister Anna cannot possibly get engaged to someone she just met that day, marking a deviation from the usual course of Disney lovers who meet, fall in love, and marry within the span of a few days. And, of course, the painfully obvious message of the film (verbally affirmed by the living snowman Olaf) that true love means sacrificing yourself for another person provides the warm, fuzzy heart of the entire Frozen story. All in all, it is considered a film with important messages for all ages.

A story with these messages might not give me that much to complain about if the story itself actually supported the morals it claims to. And, in some instances, it does. However, the story of Frozen takes a couple of turns that tend to take away from its central message, sometimes replacing it with others. The beginning of the story sets the stage for character growth and the development of a beautiful relationship between two sisters with the problem of Elsa's uncontrolled icy outbursts that end up putting Anna in mortal danger. However, the opportunity for personal friction between the two is cut short by the arbitrary decision that Grand Pabbie the Troll King's healing powers remove Anna's memories of Elsa's powers. Because Anna doesn't remember that Elsa has powers, the story removes the opportunity for Anna to resent Elsa's powers precisely because she knows they are the reason they cannot play together. This resentment would then be something that Anna has to overcome and love her sister through, thereby providing her with the opportunity to love truly, to sacrifice her own desires for the sake of the one she loves. The problem of friction between the sisters is almost reestablished when Anna declares to Elsa her intent to marry Hans, receiving Elsa's shocked response and the refusal of her blessing. This moment, regardless of Anna's memory, would provide enough tension between the sisters to promote Anna's growth from self-centered and resentful younger sister to understanding, loving, and rehabilitating savior. This opportunity is passed over as well, since Anna's rediscovery of Elsa's powers has zero effect on her (she barely pauses to process the fact before flying to her sister's aid) and her plans to marry Hans, regardless of Elsa's blessing, are in no way hampered. The entire confrontation becomes a moot point from which neither sister gains and serves only to provide contrived plot movement so that Elsa's power can "accidentally" be revealed to the public. Oh, and I guess Disney gets to score some cynical points against first loves and brief courtships.

Maybe we could leave aside the whole engagement thing if the story kept the focus on the relationship between the two sisters. Since, after all, that is the main focus of the story and men are not important, it should be quite easy to send both sisters off into the snow to have a heart-to-heart in which they learn significant lessons about themselves and each other. This could be a perfect opportunity to learn what love truly is from each other. Unfortunately, after Elsa's Broadway-worthy extravaganza in which she creates her own ice palace, she essentially becomes a side character as almost all character development moves to the new arrival Kristoff and his briefly antagonistic but quickly romantic relationship with Anna. Rather than seeing the two sisters come to terms with their own inner demons (resentment and self-centered impetuosity on Anna's part, and self-loathing and a desire to lash out on Elsa's), we get to witness the character development of Kristoff as he quickly melts from self-proclaimed misanthrope to point number three in a completely unnecessary love triangle. By taking the focus off of Elsa and shoving another man into the picture, Frozen's insistence that it isn't about boys starts to fall flat. The other major drawback is that Elsa's strong, intriguing, and sympathetic character is given hardly any treatment, which is probably the worst blow to the entire story.

Speaking of the love triangle, I don't think there's been a more useless waste of male characters since Twilight's Edward and Jacob. The "Team Hans" and "Team Kristoff" factions that are inevitably cropping up on the internet are an assured testament to that. Of course, the problem with "Team Hans" is that Frozen's plot twist has given them no real leg to stand on: Hans is a villain. I have deep-seated issues with this presentation of the two male characters. Hans first appears to us as the golden boy of the film: he is gentlemanly, but carries himself with a boyish awkwardness that is endearing; he is caring and kind, but strong and firm when he needs to be; he is noble, both in staying behind to care for the kingdom and in going after Anna when it seems that she has miscarried; finally, he is depicted doing acts of charity by handing out blankets to the poor of Arendelle who are unprepared for Elsa's eternal winter. Kristoff, on the other hand, first appears as a gruff workaholic who only cares about his reindeer and doesn't like people for no discernible reason. Even though we are given a bit of backstory on Kristoff in the film's opening as the young boy cutting ice with the men and seemingly enjoying himself, the film provides no ostensible reason for the development of Kristoff's misanthropic behavior. He has less reason to hate the world than hipsters. And yet he is presented as this isolated person whose sensitive side must be drawn out by the boisterous and open personality of his female romantic interest. Even beyond the fact that this exact same relationship had just been portrayed in the last Disney film (Tangled 2010 -- Flynn Rider, anyone?), the addition of Kristoff to the mix is entirely superfluous. A story supposedly about two sisters does not need two male characters -- unless both girls will end up with one, I suppose. Since that's not the case in Frozen, only one character -- Hans, in my opinion -- is necessary. There would have been nothing wrong with portraying Hans as a truly honorable, loving, and good man rather than a secret villain whose charity is nothing but a mask to hide his murderous intentions. I'm not against a character being complex, but the idea that virtue is not complex is a false notion. Evil is boring. Hans got boring the very minute he admitted he was the villain. He instantly became another egomaniacal Machiavel bent on world domination -- or, at least, Arendelle domination. If there's one thing that's been done to death almost as much as princes and princesses marrying within three days, it's villains on power trips. Why not show a virtuous man struggling with the fact that there are some things he can't heal, like a frozen heart and a relationship between two sisters? There is complexity and struggle here without sacrificing virtue or resorting to cynicism by showing outward signs of charity as a mask through which evil men gain the people's trust. Besides, when was the last time Disney showed us a truly virtuous man? Prince Phillip in Sleeping Beauty (1959)? I think the time is long overdue for Disney to give boys a hero they can look up to rather than encouraging them to be content with mediocrity until a girl comes along. This is not to say that Kristoff is a bad character; the story probably could have functioned just as well with him instead of Hans. And, of course, he shows his own nobility when he insists on respecting the relationship between Anna and Hans despite his feelings for her, which is one of the story's better moments and serves as Olaf's prime example of true love. The biggest problem with the love triangle is simply that it takes away from the development of the relationship between the two sisters by distracting us with the relationship of the two suitors. All those claiming that this film stands out because it's about sisterhood of necessity need to explain away the entire middle of the story and invent some sort of character development for Elsa and Anna, because it does not exist in the film.

On that note, let's talk about the problem with Anna and the idea of "true love". When Anna admits that she doesn't know what true love is because the man she loved didn't love her back, Olaf responds with the moral of the film: true love sacrifices itself for others. The example presented is Kristoff's act of bringing Anna back to Arendelle to kiss Hans even though he loved her himself. Although this is not much of an act of heroism, since it is demanded of everyone that we respect the relationships of others, love does not need to be heroic to be true, and Kristoff's act of self-denial is a loving one. However, Anna immediately resolves her true love problem by instantaneously transferring her feelings for Hans to Kristoff and bounding off to kiss him instead. This is highly problematic and flies in the face of anyone who says this film teaches people not to fall in love too quickly. Anna falls in love with Kristoff just as quickly and just as blindly as she fell in love with Hans. It just so happens that Kristoff doesn't turn out to be a villain. It also reinforces the idea that true love only exists if the person loves you back; as long as someone offers you the feeling of being loved, it is perfectly acceptable to transfer your affection to another object. The person of Kristoff becomes less important than the fact that he is willing to kiss her. Even if Anna had reached Kristoff in time, that kiss would not have worked. Thank goodness Disney was able to contrive a different ending so that an act of true love could actually be committed by Anna herself or else the story would have had a pretty dismal ending.

The climax of the story is the silver lining in amongst all the clouds. The beautiful moment of self-sacrifice in which Anna saves Elsa from Hans hits all the right notes. Although the dialogue between the two sisters is tediously pedantic, the heart is in the right place: Anna saves Elsa for no other reason than that she loves her. And this recognition of being loved despite her frightening powers melts the heart of the Snow Queen, and then melts the enchanted winter blanketing Arendelle. What would make this scene even more conclusive is if there was any evidence of Elsa or Anna having developed as sisters or as characters. Anna has not changed at all, but maybe we can let that slide because the plot failed to give her any impulse to change in the first place. She changed boyfriends. And that's about it. Elsa, who had much more possibility for personal growth, changes from fearful to despairing to angry to grief-stricken to placidly sweet like a mood ring. Her change in character is not caused by serious self-reflection or self-revelation, but simply by the word "love". Love is what allows her to have complete mastery over her powers, but we are not sure how exactly "love" is meant to be understood. Does Elsa now just "love" everybody, so she can undo the winter? Is she feeling "love" at that moment and, as long as she "feels the love", everything will be all right? Despite the clear-cut moral given by Olaf, Elsa's evolution from fear to love is anything but clear. If the plot had actually focused on the sisters rather than on Anna's love affairs, maybe we would have received a clearer vision of the intensely captivating character created in Elsa. It is a real shame that Frozen misses the boat on this one: the Disney archives are full of Annas; there is only one Elsa, and she was sacrificed on the altar of cynicism about romantic love.

All of this to say that Frozen is not a bad film. It is one of the most visually stunning animated films to reach theaters, full of life and color and music. Its attention to detail is remarkable and the Scandinavian cultural history is vibrant. It provides the same brightness and energy, as well as quirky comedic banter, that, along with its forerunner Tangled, serve to mark the beginning of a new era in Disney films. However, Frozen lacks in a very real way the strength of story that would have made this film what people say it is: a story about strength in sisterhood, about women rescuing each other from frigidity and isolation, about prudence and wisdom and true love.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!