Are We on Lorde's "Team"?

The New Zealand singer/songwriter known publicly as Lorde has presented the world with a new take on pop music from her powerful yet delicate vocals, poignant lyrics, and minimalist musical arrangements. Lorde's music often dares to challenge the status quo of pop starlets, expressing dissatisfaction with the "good life" of all-night parties, heavy drinking, and bratty behavior. Her hit song "Team" continues the theme first established in her number-one single "Royals", encouraging her audience not to get wrapped up in the world of Hollywood pipe dreams and consequence-free outbursts of immaturity. For Lorde, we all live in the real world where our words and actions will have long-lasting consequences for our lives and the lives of those around us. She calls on her audiences around the world to start thinking about growing up. Although Lorde has said in interviews that "Team" is "a tribute to her friends and country", is "speaking for the minority", and represents her "take on most modern music", these impulses speak to a broader movement that rejects the current industry standard presented by the media and encourages audiences to embrace a simpler and more authentic lifestyle.

The chorus of the song is where, I think, Lorde would say the tribute to homegrown New Zealand lifestyle is most obviously prevalent. The poetess speaks of living in cities "you'll never see on screen", cities that are humble and normal and lack the media glamor of New York or LA, or the cultural landmarks of London or Paris. In this context, Wellington and Auckland are media nonentities. They don't have the requisite glamor or significance to make them like the cities depicted in the movies, the sexy cities where sexy people spend their time doing sexy things and having a whole lot of fun. She says that the cities that she is familiar with are "not very pretty, but we sure know how to run things". At first glance, this could be seen as a jab at the inner city decay of some of these Hollywood cities; they may be pretty in the movies, but they are horribly mismanaged and ugly on the inside. In this case, the small, unnoticed cities are in a better position to become beautiful because, even though they lack the glamor, they are at least more civilized. However, the next line, "Living in ruins of a palace within my dreams", seems to upset this idyllic depiction of the country town. If the poetess is better off for living in a less media-influenced atmosphere, then why is she living in ruins? I think, despite the claim of being a tribute, this is more likely a critique of the progressive urbanization of smaller cities and country towns as the people who live in them insist more and more on creating a lifestyle for themselves that imitates the glamor of those cities presented by the media. The humble country life is set on converting itself into that sexy city full of sexy people doing sexy things and having a whole lot of fun. In this sense, the comment "we still know how to run things" is an ironic statement, implying that, even though we may not look as pretty as the people in the movies, we still know how to run our lives in the same way that they have given us as a model. We can pull off a pretty decent imitation. Suddenly, the idea of "team" gets confused: whose team are we on? "We're on each other's team", the poetess says, but sides are now conflated. In the context of hometown tribute, the poetess claims that she is on the same team as her New Zealand family and friends, the home crowd, as it were. However, the context of critique puts the small-town community on the same team as the Hollywood media conglomerates, which makes for a much more uncomfortable message.

This leaves us with the image of the ruined palace. In the sense of critique, how is this to be understood? We can imagine that the palace in the poetess's dreams reflects her glamorized image of what life is like within that elite sphere of sexy people in sexy cities doing sexy things. The image the media gives us of the "good life" is idealized in our minds and becomes an end goal for us. Ultimately, we want to attain happiness in our lives, and happiness is constructed for us in the depiction of Hollywood wealth, prosperity, freedom, beauty, and enjoyment. We want that for ourselves, and so we go out of our way to create the same atmospheres we see on screen in the reality of our own communities. The poetess points to the popularization of the nightclub lifestyle as one of these idealized "palaces" that, when actually lived out, becomes a ruinous place. Her depiction of the nightclub lifestyle is engaging because she is able to merge two idealized notions of the "good life" into one. In the first stanza, she compares the modern nightclub lifestyle with the lifestyle of the eighteenth-century beau monde popularized through the high society depicted in novels such as Jane Austen's. The poetess draws on the similarities between then and now, how we are still attempting to live out these fanciful courtship rituals in our behavior and dress in the nightclub: "Wait till you're announced / We haven't lost all our graces / The hounds will stay in chains / Look upon your greatness", and again "Call all the ladies out / They're in their finery/ ... Now bring the boys in". She creates a sense of the same social graces being enacted today that were enacted in centuries past. Women still parade themselves in their finest array for the men to see, as they wait, like hounds on chains, before they are invited to indulge themselves. The same complex games are being played between men and women now as they have been forever, a game that involves seeking out happiness without getting hurt. We continue to search in each other for the key to our idealized palaces. Our happiness above all, even in the Hollywood version of it, is communion with another, is true intimacy, is love. And we seek it in the places the media tell us we will find it, in the pretty palaces we see on the silver screen. The problem with this, for the poetess, is that this entire framework is built on lies. The media's depictions of happiness are not true. The nightclub lifestyle does not bring intimacy, happiness, and love, but lies, ruin, and brokenness.

At the end of the first stanza, the poetess insists on the dance as the place where the innocent go to find intimacy, but it is also the place of lies, and the place where people can become comatose: "Dancing around the lies we tell / Dancing around big eyes as well / Even the comatose, they don't dance and tell". The physical action of dancing is compared to the mental metaphor of "dancing" around an issue, of avoiding it. We try to avoid admitting our innocence, our "big eyes" that long for the idealized palace to become a reality. We try to avoid the multiplicity of lies that crop up within the club culture -- feigned interest, feigned impulsivity; feigned desire; feigned honesty; feigned intimacy; feigned love -- by not speaking of them, by letting the dance speak for us. Even then, the dance itself becomes a lie, as two bodies come together when the two minds often couldn't be farther apart. As the idealized palace becomes more and more ruinous due to the failure of the lifestyle to make it a reality, the dance becomes almost a catatonic motion in which both parties go through the steps of the ritual almost by force of habit rather than desire. However, even the most comatose of participants will still laud the lifestyle as the means to happiness.

The poetess develops this theme in the second stanza as she expresses what the comatose refuse to tell: the nightclub lifestyle, the media-endorsed image of happiness, is a lie. "So all the cups got broke, shards beneath our feet": the cups from which we all tried to drink happiness have fallen to the ground, and we are now stepping on the broken shards. We need to recognize the pain that the false images of happiness have caused us; we need to admit that this dream world is not the proper vehicle for finding happiness and remove ourselves from it. The poetess admits with some defiance that she's "over getting told to throw my hands up in the air". She has lived the life, tasted its fruits, and found it lacking in substance. Her experience has shown her that "revel[ing] without a care" does not bring meaning or communion into one's life, nor is it of any use in building up the ruinous palace. The dream of love and intimacy has been replaced with a reality based on animalistic competition: "everyone's competing for a love they won't receive". Competition does not win love. Being the most beautiful, the most popular, the richest, the sexiest, the most like a Hollywood starlet, is not what achieves true love and intimacy between people. The most this can win is a superficial and unsatisfying brush with sexuality, but beyond that is nothing but ruins and shards. It leads to brokenness. The nightclub lifestyle does not lead to community, but to its exact opposite in competition. The foolishness of it is revealed in the fact that the true prize desired by those who compete -- love -- can never be won in this manner. The poetess suggests that what "this palace wants is release": what our innocent dreams really need is to be freed from their ties to the fantasy created by the media as a living advertisement for happiness. To be truly free is to seek out happiness in true love and intimacy, which is found away from the glitter of deception and competition.

In this sense of the song, we are on Lorde's team if we get ourselves out of the running, if we leave the competition, and if we focus on building up true community rather than living in the ruins of imperfect dreams. There comes a point where we need to let go of our attachment to what hurts us in order to find the true happiness that is at the heart of the palace.

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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!

What Has "Pompeii" to Do with Us?

It would seem that something about the tragic fate of the first-century AD Roman villa Pompeii has struck the imagination of the artistic world, considering the hype surrounding the film Pompeii slated for release this year and the popularity of the song "Pompeii" written by British alternative rock band Bastille for their album Bad Blood (2013). Unlike the film, which, from what I can tell, is some sort of tragic love story set in the shadow of an erupting Mount Vesuvius and borrowing a penchant for violence reminiscent of such films as 300 (2006), Clash of the Titans (2010), and Immortals (2011), Bastille's "Pompeii" uses the reference to the destroyed city as an allegory for our modern world which seems to thrive on revolutions, uprisings, factions, and protests, but fails to effect any real change in society as a whole. In some sense, the fate of Pompeii is the looming fate of us all who are too complacent or listless to possibly bring about the true change needed to keep ourselves from imminent destruction.

The poet brings out two senses of both revolution and languor. The first refers to the physical effects of violent revolution, the marches and protests, the revolts and civil wars, the process of tearing down an old regime in order to build up a new one. The poet himself is caught up in a pessimistic listlessness concerning the desire for change in "the city that we love". He says that, when "left to his own devices", he is unable to accomplish anything concrete or to effect any sort of change in his own life. Meanwhile, the revolution is happening around him, "the walls kept tumbling down" and "great clouds roll over the hills". The poet locates his passivity throughout all of this urgent destruction in his own inability to be optimistic about any sort of new regime solving any of society's problems. Despite the optimistic intentions of the revolutionaries, the new structures feel exactly the same as the old. New figures may be in charge, but the inherent problems have not been solved. There are new faces, but the same old game. The poet laments: "But if you close your eyes,/ Does it almost feel like / Nothing changed at all?" The desire for revolution is undermined because the things that truly need to be changed are not being addressed. It is not the superstructures that are the problem, but the underlying attitudes that erected them in the first place. Revolution needs to come from within before it can be effective without.


The poet brings out the second sense of revolution and languor in the second and third stanzas. Rather than focusing on an exterior need for revolution, the poet looks to the interior of the human person and focuses on those aspects of life that cause us the most damage: our sins. The poet says that, even as the dust of violent revolution settles, "we were caught up and lost in all of our vices". Humanity continues to make the same interior mistakes regardless of the change in social structures. The human soul is still hopelessly caught in its own torpidity, its reluctance to face its own destructive behaviors and tear them down. It's easier to look outside oneself and blame the establishment for all of the problems we experience; it's easy to protest and get angry and attack a faceless structure that is detached from our personal reality. It's an entirely different thing to honestly face the horrors of one's own corrupt soul and protest against it, get angry at it, and attack those things in our lives, in our hearts and minds, that bring us to such suffering and unrest. In the third stanza, the poet asks, "O, where do we begin, / The rubble or our sins?" Where do we make a start to bring about social change? Do we start with the broken bricks of a broken society? Do we start sifting through the rubble of our superstructures looking for new ways to build up the human community? Or do we look squarely at our sins, out faults, our failings, and choose to reject them, uproot them, and never allow space for them to grow again? For the poet, the revolution must start inside with the honest and purposeful eradication of those things in us that keep us from contributing to the building up of a true human community of peace, love, and joy. Without that inner commitment to not be "part of the problem", as it were, there is no hope for societal change on any level.

Seeing with the clear eyes of the moral artist, the poet asks, "How am I going to be an optimist about this?" He has seen the uselessness of material revolution, the repetition of corrupt establishments and superstructures, no matter how good the intentions of the revolutionaries themselves. He has experienced his own languor, his own unwillingness to work for change and true revolution in his own heart. If this is the case, how can we be optimistic? How can we have any hope for true change in our broken society? Honestly, optimism may not be possible. We are a species of flawed and fallen creatures who will probably never be able to completely overcome all of the different aspects of suffering that we bring upon ourselves. An optimistic attitude that sees humanity on some sort of eternally positive trajectory, that sees us only improving as time goes on, is bound to disappoint. It is not real. It is not happening. In this case, we'd be better off embracing a realistic perspective that recognizes that we repeat the same mistakes today that we have since the dawn of time, just in new forms with new types of rhetoric to justify them. A thousand years from now, we'll most likely be doing just the same. However, being realistic does not preclude the ability to hope. We can be eternally hopeful about humanity on a personal level in that we are all innately capable of becoming the best people we can be. We all have that opportunity, as "Pompeii" expresses, to face our own sins and work to overcome them. We may not be able to revolutionize the world and solve all its problems in any realistic way, but we can always work to revolutionize ourselves, to improve ourselves a little bit each day, to perfect ourselves in whatever ways we can. If each and every person in the world would honestly work toward that level of individual revolutionizing, we would be much more likely to see positive changes in the world around us.

The people of Pompeii were suffocated in the ash and pumice spouted from Mount Vesuvius; archeological evidence suggests that they didn't even make a move to escape their fate. Bastille's song encourages us to avoid making the same mistake. We need to recognize the danger of suffocation in the rubble of false revolution and personal slothfulness, and make the move to escape our fate and truly live.

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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!

Augustine's "Confessions": Language vs. Literature

The Confessions of Saint Augustine of Hippo constitutes the world's first autobiography and has been perhaps one of the most influential pieces of biographical literature in the Western world. It has changed lives, shaped monasteries, influenced philosophy, and inspired theology. There are few books in the world that analyze with such honest frankness the wounds which humanity inflicts upon itself, and the rationalization we use to run from God only to be thrust back into His arms again. The first time I read it cover to cover, I was just emerging from a rather painful place in my life where I was in a prime position to look over my own self-inflicted wounds, and so I could recognize much of my own "wandering by the way" in Augustine's life story. It was a book of profound movement for me, an impetus to move myself to a place of rest where I could find peace for my troubled heart. But I won't get into that. There are a hundred and one things I could talk about when it comes to Augustine's Confessions, but that would make for an incredibly long post, so I plan to look at one small element of interest here and will perhaps return to look at others in future posts. For now, I'd like to muse on some of the things Augustine has to say about both the dangers and the goods involved in language and literature

Within the first three books of the Confessions, Augustine charts the development of his first sins from childhood to adolescence, critiques his early education and later schooling, and describes his first friendships and his adoption of Manichaeism. Within these first three books, Augustine lays the foundation, and even gives some very detailed accounts, of his need for God's mercy and salvation. There is this beautiful line near the beginning of the book that explains Augustine's entire purpose in writing: "Through your own merciful dealings with me, O Lord my God, tell me what you are to me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation." The entire Confessions is Augustine's revelation of the sinful depths to which he had fallen, and his joyful discovery of God's abundant love and mercy for him. He expresses this reality of God in some of the most beautiful language, making full use of his extensive education in Roman rhetoric, which qualifies him as one of the most compelling authors in all of Christendom. This, perhaps, is what distinguishes the scholastic from the mystic in Christian theology: our rational soul may be convinced by scholastic logic and methods of reasoning, but it is the beautiful love language of the mystical soul that moves our hearts to long after that same love.

However, Augustine is not the most positive of literary theorists; in fact, he utters some pretty harsh invectives against the Greco-Roman epics and tragedies. As a teacher of rhetoric -- what we would probably consider "literature" in the modern university -- Augustine has a deep preoccupation with language and how we use it. He spends a large portion of the first three books discussing the difference between literature and literacy. Literacy is the ability to read and write, to spell correctly and maintain good grammar, so we can make ourselves understood to others and so that we can understand them. Literature, for Augustine, is the fictional stories that people tell for education, for entertainment, or for some sort of remuneration in the form of money or fame. For Augustine, literature is tied very closely to sin: it often tells lies by presenting immoral behavior as something desirable. Literature can be a grave spiritual danger. Literacy, on the other hand, is simply the accumulation of words and language, and there is nothing immoral about that. But is it true that all literature is an evil that should be avoided? Does Augustine subscribe to what Socrates says in Plato's Republic that story-tellers should be banished from the city, and that even stories mothers tell to their children should be censored?

Augustine begins with musings on what it must have been like to be a baby, an infant. The word "infant" in Latin, infans, literally means "one unable to speak". This is how we all start out: we have no command of language, no way to express ourselves, no speech, no words, no literacy. But Augustine points out that just because we were not able to express ourselves in words does not mean that we did not have desires within us that we longed to communicate to others. This is central to Augustine's conception of what it means to be human: we are created beings that long to be in communion with others; we long to know and be known; we want to make known our inner thoughts and desires so that they may be fulfilled. And the way by which we do this is through the acquisition of language. Even God makes Himself known to us in this way through His Word, both in Scripture and in His living Word, Christ Himself. Words are the building blocks of communion with both God and our fellow man.

Augustine speaks of the frustration of being a baby who has no words to communicate its desires. All a baby can do is cry for what it wants and get frustrated when it is misunderstood. We are probably all familiar with this feeling, even though we are fully capable of speech. Sometimes we get in arguments with others and it seems that, no matter what we say, we can't get through to them. We can't make our inner thoughts known to them in a way that they can comprehend. I've seen the frustration on my younger sister's face when she tries to speak to me and I can't understand her. She's fourteen years old, but she has Down Syndrome and her speech is underdeveloped, so oftentimes I don't always understand what she's telling me. Especially because her mind has developed faster than her speech, it's difficult to see her struggling to make her thoughts understood. It's as if there is a block between her and me which keeps me from truly coming to know her, to be in communion with her. I find it easy to agree with Augustine that the acquisition of language is a primary good because it makes possible the acquisition of so many other goods, including the primary good which is God.

As a toddler, Augustine begins to learn to speak organically by watching others and imitating the sounds they make, learning what words indicate what things and how they are strung together to make coherent sentences. He speaks of how he "schooled" his mouth to make the same sounds that other people made so that he could communicate his ideas to them. This is a natural form of "schooling" that grows from Augustine's natural, God-given abilities, unlike the schooling he will receive as he grows up. But, as often happens in the Confessions, a greater ability often provides a greater danger of abuse, so that Augustine can say, "I waded deeper into the stormy world of human life" at the same time as he rejoices in gaining mastery over his native language. With every gain in ability for good, human beings are also granted a greater ability for evil. While a small child with a limited capacity for speech, with a limited ability to work his will on other people, Augustine was also limited in his ability to sin. Now that he has mastered language, he has been opened up to a larger world of both virtue and vice. His exposure to abuses in language, such as lying, false praise, boasting, descriptions of immoral acts, and other vices, create that "stormy world" into which he describes himself wading.

As a young boy, Augustine is sent to school to learn grammar, but he finds it boring and painful because the children must learn by constraint and punishment. He enjoys reading literature more than learning to spell because the stories are entertaining. This is hardly surprising, perhaps, but Augustine is troubled by this because the stories through which he was taught the nuances of fine rhetoric centered on immoral stories of the gods. Augustine mentions specifically some of the Greco-Roman myths that he read about as a boy: Aeneas and Dido's love affair, Aeneas's later abandonment of Dido, and Dido's suicide; one of Jupiter's many adulterous relations with human women in which he impregnated Danae by sending a golden shower into her lap. Learning these stories as a boy only served to put Augustine's mind "in the gutter", as the saying goes, before he had the opportunity to build up any of the opposing virtues, thereby planting the seeds of greater sins in his adolescence. Augustine says he thoroughly enjoyed reading the Greco-Roman epics and tragedies, but that he learned things from them that greatly damaged his spiritual welfare. Because of this experience with literature in his youth, Augustine struggles with this difference between literacy and literature. On the one hand, literacy is a good thing, objectively good; it is good to be able to read and write and express the thoughts inside our hearts. On the other hand, literature can be corrupting: it can tell stories about immoral or evil things, while making them seem good or useful or entertaining.

Augustine shows us another aspect of literature that can become a danger to our souls when he talks about some of his experiences when he had gone on to what we would consider nowadays as "university". He left home to move to Carthage around the age of nineteen to continue his schooling in rhetoric and lived an admittedly dissolute lifestyle. One aspect of this lifestyle that Augustine dwells on at length is going to see plays, tragedies particularly, and being emotionally moved by them. He liked to see dramas that would inspire strong emotions in him, especially melancholy ones. This is one of the powers of literature, of good story-telling, that we become emotionally invested in the characters and in their joys and sorrows. Augustine looks specifically at the content of these tragic tales: Aeneas and Dido engage in fornication, Aeneas abandons Dido and breaks his vows to her, and Dido kills herself in grief. The tragic drama of the story is supposed to makes us feel sympathy and sadness for these characters, but the reality of their tale is that they were committing grave sins with one another, against one another, and against themselves. Their souls were already dead long before their bodies were. But the emotional connection that we can form with these characters and their sorrows can warp our apprehension of the realities of sin and death. This is what Augustine finds so repulsive about these tragedies he used to love. Their emotional content warped his ideas of what is truly lovable and what is truly sorrowful in this life. The very thing that sets literature apart from the other sciences -- theology, philosophy, and so on -- is also the very thing that can make it truly dangerous to the life of the soul. Nothing makes a more compelling argument to the will than emotional investment. Therefore, Augustine says, literature that aims at making us sympathetic to sin or emotionally invested in the plight of sinners as heroes instead of sinners can be damaging to the life of our souls. In Augustine's own life, he saw such investment blind him to the tragedy of his own sinful life and provided justification or, even worse, affirmation of his dissolute lifestyle.

Does Augustine have anything redeeming to say about literature at all? Well, he wrote the Confessions, for one thing, which, although it is obviously not meant to be "fiction", is indeed a story, the story of a soul's journey from darkness to light, sickness to health, agitation and despair to peace and joy. The Confessions are also filled with some of the most beautiful examples of poetry in praise of God, poems that express the depth of love and gratitude that comes from a heart that was restless until it found its rest in Him. Augustine gives two reasons for why he is writing this book: to praise God for the wonders He has worked in Augustine's life by saving him from his sins and bringing him into the light of truth; to share with anyone who might read them the depths to which God is willing to come to save us from ourselves. Literature, then, for Augustine, should be edifying and didactic; it should build us up and teach us something. And, above all, it should glorify God. In his Confessions, Augustine attempts to do for literature what God has done for him: convert it to God's use and transform it into a vehicle by which humanity can grow in virtue rather than vice, in truth rather than lies. Literature needs a firm foundation in philosophy, an experience of which Augustine describes in emotional terms: "I was aroused and kindled and set on fire to love and seek and capture and hold fast and strongly cling ... to wisdom." Philosophy keeps literature honest and helps it to actively seek universal truth in its depictions of the human condition, whatever it might be. Literature also needs a firm foundation in the Scriptures, from which so much of literature's goodness and beauty can flow. Scripture is, in its essence, a love song written by God for humanity to express His deep desire to be one with us and His never-failing commitment to our salvation: "He brought me forth into a broad place; He delivered me, because He delighted in me" (Ps. 18:19); "You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride" (Song 4:9); "I have taken you by the hand and kept you" (Is. 42:6); "I led them with cords of compassion, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who raises an infant to his cheeks" (Hos. 11:4); "I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you" (Jn. 14:18); "As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you; abide in My love" (Jn. 15:9). When the beauties of Scripture are kept at the heart of literature, the literary work will become life-giving and enriching; it will reflect the beauty and goodness inherent in the love story it imitates. God, as the greatest Author of all, gives us a pattern on which to base our own sub-creations in the world of art. When these principles are applied, literature takes on its most fruitful and dynamic form, and becomes a medium by which we can eventually find rest for our restless hearts.

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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 Let Go of "Let It Go"?

In a previous post, I pointed out some of the issues surrounding the storytelling in Disney's film Frozen. In this post, I'd like to tackle the issues surrounding the Academy award-winning song "Let It Go", performed by Idina Menzel. However, I'd prefer to view it as much as possible as a separate entity from the film itself. Although the song is intimately linked to the plot movement of the story and the character development of Elsa, there are many elements within it that go beyond the confines of the Frozen storyline and address ideas and behavior choices that are more applicable on a universal level. Elements of Frozen, and Elsa's character particularly, may be noted, but I'd like to keep this discussion about the message of the song more than the message of the movie, since the two are very different from one another. In one sense, it's strange that "Let It Go" has become the defining song of the film whose message is that true love sacrifices itself for another person, whereas this song expresses almost the exact opposite. In fact, if this had been any other Disney movie, "Let It Go" would be considered the villain's song. And, really, it is.

The lyrics, while intended in the film to be a representation of the inner thoughts and feelings of Elsa, can be considered characteristic of many adolescent (and even adult) experiences of self-discovery and burgeoning self-esteem. Neither of these things should be looked down upon. In fact, self-discovery should be encouraged in every person throughout the entirety of one's life, not just in the personality-defining, angst-ridden throes of a painful adolescence. Self-esteem is also a good thing that should be encouraged. However, when these are placed as ultimate goods in comparison to being a "good girl", when isolation is encouraged rather than integration, when  subjective individualism takes the place of communal understanding, we start to see serious issues cropping up. The poetess correlates the complexity of her personality with a "swirling storm" which must be constantly kept under control in order to be "good", implying that, when the "storm" breaks into the public sphere, the goodness of the poetess is lost. The problem inherent in this statement is the conflation of moral goodness with having a good reputation or the good opinion of the public. The idea is that, if the poetess's true self, her inner storm, were unleashed on the public, she would be rejected by them and vilified. "Being yourself" or expressing your inner thoughts, feelings, or anxieties to others is considered "bad", an imposition, and to be avoided at all costs. The poetess tells herself to "conceal, don't feel" in order to maintain her reputation as a "good girl", as if the definition of goodness relied on wearing masks and being robotic. "Goodness" is about "faking it", about playing a role in society that pleases others, about following social norms in order not to cause a stir or make others uncomfortable. "Goodness" is one's ability to follow social norms and please society; "badness" is one's failure to conform and the display of unsolicited emotion.

The problem with this is obvious: social conformity is not equivalent to moral goodness. Far from it. Moral goodness has to do with behavior choices that aspire to the attainment of virtuous habits; goodness is something you practice, like being on time for work to make a habit of justice, or giving your spare change to the homeless to make a habit of generosity. Moral goodness is about your own personal growth as a human being and has nothing to do with public opinion. In fact, it can be argued that moral growth increases the less public opinion is aware of it. Being just and generous is not worth much if the only reason you're doing it is to gain a good reputation. Another important aspect of moral goodness is that it has an objective value that does not change. Acts of justice will always be just, even if public opinion about the act changes. It will always be just to be on time for work, even if all your coworkers consistently arrive late and your supervisor informs you that being on time is not going to get you a raise. It will always be an act of generosity to give to those who are less fortunate then ourselves, even if public opinion is that they "deserve" to be poor because they're lazy. Public opinion blows with every change in direction of the wind; it is an exercise in futility to spend one's life trying to appease it. Moral goodness never changes and it is always profitable: even if public opinion doesn't reward you for your efforts, you will be a more confident and happier person despite them.

Herein lies the danger of conflating "good girls" with "socially accepted girls": the two are rarely combined. It is in the striving for social acceptance that young people (all people, really) receive the worst blows to their self-esteem and their self-knowledge. By chasing the social ideologies blown about us -- the images that show us how we should look, what we should eat, how we should act, what we should wear, what we should say, what opinions to hold, how to be popular, how to be liked -- we necessarily set ourselves up for failure, disappointment, resentment, heartache, self-doubt, and an unfulfilled life. The price we pay for reputation is too high and ends in too many regrets. Many of us, like Elsa, will find ourselves turning our backs on the world and striking out on our own to build castles of isolation around our hearts where nothing can ever touch us again. Oftentimes, especially when social acceptance is masquerading as moral goodness, our rejection of public opinion can lead to a rejection of the rules of objective morality as well: "No right, no wrong, no rules for me, / I'm free". This is the great mistake of all movement toward "freedom" from social constraints. In rejecting the superfluous expectations of public opinion, we often throw away the very things that can help us to both build up true esteem for ourselves and help us gain true knowledge about ourselves: the objective moral laws that entreat us to be just, to be merciful, to be generous, to be modest, to be temperate, to be chaste, to be courageous, to be truly loving in that self-sacrificing way that Frozen tries to exemplify. It is not in having no rules that we become truly free; it is not in having no boundaries that we truly set out on the road to self-discovery. It is the very farthest thing from the truth when the poetess exclaims defiantly that "That perfect girl is gone"; the perfect girl had never even existed. To conform to social expectations is not to be perfect. Perfection is gained through the practice of moral virtue, through building up those habits of justice and patience and courage and love that bring out the best we have to offer. Our true selves are not discovered or revealed until we begin to go beyond the superficiality of life, until we break through the isolation of wearing masks, and truly reach out to others in our imperfection and invite them to grow perfect along with us.

"Let It Go" fits the narrative of Frozen quite well as it reveals the disjunctive sense of herself that Elsa is experiencing at that moment. She is still caught in the mindset that believes that goodness is found in living up to social expectation; she has failed to do so and has rejected society altogether in favor of isolated navel-gazing. But this is not where the story ends. Elsa still needs to learn that she will only find self-fulfillment in the practice of the virtue of love for society and within society. We can truly say, "The cold never bothered me anyway" when what we mean by it is that the displeasure of society will never stop us from pursuing virtue and acting in accordance with moral goodness. We cannot end the story with "Let It Go". It can't be the anthem of a generation. It can never be anything more than a momentary resting place before we pick ourselves up and continue on the journey of self-discovery which ends in love for both ourselves and others.

After all, isn't that what the film is all 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!

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!