From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V2 #34 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Wednesday, April 23 2003 Volume 02 : Number 034 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 14:25:01 -0600 From: Christopher Bigelow Subject: RE: [AML] TWAIN & NELSON, _Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer_ (Daily Heral d) Seems strange that a nat'l publisher wouldn't have wanted to pick this up, if it really is so closely connected to a real Twain ms. Or why not the UC Press itself? Is CFI really the biggest player they could find to do this? There must be a story here; maybe no one else liked the way it turned out? Anyone know anything more? Chris Bigelow - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 15:07:37 -0600 From: Cathy Wilson Subject: Re: [AML] Passion in Art Richard Dutcher writes: Here's what I was most impressed with: artists pushing themselves to the breaking point. Last week we saw a performance on the U of U campus, Urban Tap by Tamango and his group. It was dance and music, almost all improv. It was the same kind of experience that Richard describes here. Of course this doesn't always mean sweat and sore muscles, but artistically and spiritually I felt Tamango and his group found the essence and core of their expression and gave 100% in the moment. It was astonishing. I feel that that sort of performance changes the world; the world can never be the same when an artist gives that way. Once in a while I may draw a line or move, dancing, that way. Once in a while I may write that way. Most of the time I am very aware that I don't. It has to do with taking risks, being true in the moment, and also with honesty, and most of the time, I see the dishonesty in my artistic effort. I often feel it's a curse with us LDS. To be truly honest and to give 100% can be very scary; I think most of us temper our deepest responses so we'll come across more palatable and benign and non-threatening and cleancut. Ah well, once in a while we get a performance that helps us see/feel past these limits and it's there in our database, at least. Cathy Wilson - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 17:32:49 -0600 From: "Bill Willson" Subject: Re: [AML] Hip-Hop I almost replied to this thread the other day, but thought I might get myself into trouble. Oh well, what'snew? [sic] Mary Jane Jones (Ungrangsee) wrote: (At the risk of opening myself to attack) I would challenge anyone seriously interested in music to listen to Lauryn Hill's "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" and not find that album a powerful artistic experience. Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, the Beastie Boys, even more hard-core artists like Naz, Ice-T, Notorious B.I.G. and even Eminem can bring work with outstanding artistic merit to the table. I had much the same thoughts, about putting myself in harms way, as you Marry Jane. Rejection by peers hurts, doesn't it? I have never cared much for Rap (rip-rap I call it.). But then Eminem got nominated and won at the academy, so I thought what the heck, even with that questionable recognition, maybe I should give the genre a closer look. So the other night, at the risk of the video police busting me, I rented "8 Mile." Even though the plot was not right on, nor did it come to any discernable point, I found myself coming away with a greater respect for the art form, and the artists who write and perform this style of "music?" Just considering the adversity and jeopardy these artists have to overcome in order to rise above the isolation of the "Free World" is enough to elicit awe, from my point of view. Talk about Artist's personal lives; anyone who can take the ghetto experience and put it into a form of writing that expresses the urban folk-lore, violence and hopelessness of the life style, and do it in such a way as to make it a mega-marketable success and become famous for it, deserves the acclaim of other artists who don't have a clue, about what this type of lifestyle is all about. "8 Mile" wasn't the greatest movie, and the story line was a bit exaggerated, but the experience of watching it definitely opened my eyes a bit wider. Hmmm? Maybe I should write a story about what a shot in the arm the "Singles Ward' would get if a convert from the "Free World" should join their ranks. It will happen you know. Bill Willson - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 13:59:49 +1000 From: "Clifford Dubery" Subject: RE: [AML] Does Theory Matter? Of course that title and the interpretation is a nonsense. We all apply a theory or many theories in our study of literature, all academics do is publish theirs and teach it to anyone that will listen. To say there is no verifiable theory of literature misses the point. Or are Literary Academics lazy? Clifford M Dubery Do you write articles? Click Below To Learn How You Can MASSIVELY BOOST Your Exposure for FREE! http://www.writers-viral-syndicator.com/Default.aspx?ID=1054 - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 22:43:42 -0600 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: [AML] Apple Biters Etc. Kim Madsen wrote: > People who are suffused with great joy usually have great peace of mind. > Peace to me means an absence of conflict. No conflict, no story. > > Peaceful folk generally don't have a need to express, explore, question. > Instead, they putter in their gardens, revel in their grandchildren, and > let sleeping dogs lie. However, anyone I've ever known who has reached > that Nirvana hiked through a lot of doo-doo to get there. Great > happiness, great joy can only be quantified as "great" in opposition to > something else. If you don't know the sorrow, how can you know the joy? > Which explains why the stories which move me most show the movement of > someone from sorrow to joy: Les Miseables; What Looks Like Crazy on an > Ordinary Day; Cry, the Beloved Country; these and others like them are > the stories that caught a piece of the human condition, held it to the > light and expanded my understanding of humanity. The themes? Bigotry, > adultery, murder, war, child abuse, racism. Love, forgiveness, > acceptance, loyalty, honor. The words only mean something in comparison. This opens up some intriguing thoughts for me. Look out, I feel a new categorization springing into existence: Spiritually, there are three types of people. Actually, there's a fourth type, those who have permanently lost their way spiritually, but for the moment I'm going to ingore them. The first category is the innocent. Perhaps we can call them Edenites, those who haven't ventured out of the safe cocoon of unquestioned acceptance of their faith. The second category are the seekers. We can label them Apple Biters. They've been tossed into the lone and dreary world where innocence no longer serves them. They've experienced too much to be innocent again. They have the knowledge of good and evil, usually forced upon them by life. The third category are the arrivers. Let's label them Paridisians (as opposed to Parisians, who only _think_ they've arrived). They have fought Paul's good fight and won. They have learned to live in the world but not of it with complete peace. For illustration, I'll bandy about a stereotype or two. Edenites are the ones who grow up in some small Utah town with a population 99.9% Mormon and have never thought an unorthodox thought. Apple Biters are those who live in Salt Lake City, or even worse, some major metropolitan area outside the Rocky Mountain corridor, and can't accept the innocent paradigm of life because the School of Hard Knocks has taught them otherwise. Paridisians are General Authorities, those who have been through life and found their peace, and don't want to go back. The interesting thing is, categories one and three seem to be satisfied by the same sort of art, that which is affirming rather than exploratory. Edenites don't want to explore because they're afraid their fragile innocent worldview will be shattered by what they discover (it will be). Paridisians don't want to explore because they already have ("been there, done that") and they've discovered what they need to discover to find peace. Puttering in the garden is all the exploration they need. Apple Biters need a different kind of art. They are exploring, trying to figure things out, trying to learn what it means to be hopeful in the midst of horror. They have lost their innocence and are trying to figure out how to regain it. Jesus taught that we must become as little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. The operative word here is "become." What I find interesting is that to achieve the state of innocence that exalts us, we must first lose our innocence. The whole theme of the Garden of Eden story seems to be saying this. What two people were not already like little children if not Adam and Eve in Eden--the ultimate Edenites? Yet that was exactly the sort of existence God didn't want them to remain in. God in the form of Jesus taught us to become as little children, yet God wanted to oust the first two little children from paradise into a lone and dreary world that would rob them of their innocence. God seems to want us to lose our innocence, grow up, then choose innocence again. (Note the three-part structure of that formula.) Edenite innocence is not innocence by choice. It is not an informed innocence. The glory of God is intelligence, not innocent ignorance. It appears we cannot achieve exaltation using the innocence of Eden. We must crawl through the fire and experience all sorts of horrors that make us feel like we have every right to feel bitter, then deliberately, knowingly choose to become innocent as little children again in spite of it all. Only then can we be exalted. We don't even need to sin to accomplish this. No one experienced the horrors of life to the degree Jesus did. Yet he chose innocence, even in the midst of the horror. His, as all of ours need to be, was a deliberate, thoughtful choice, made by an aware agent fully capable of choosing for himself. It seems to me that the whole purpose of this life is to make us all Apple Biters and see where we will go. So much so that it's become a truism that great art is that which appeals to Apple Biters. Maybe Richard Paul Evans and Jack Weyland are great authors after all. They're great authors for Edenites and Paridisians. It's only in the eyes of Apple Biters that they seem lacking. But since most of us are Apple Biters and most of this life was intended to be experienced as an Apple Biter, it's tragic that LDS art seems only to cater to groups one and three. There's nothing wrong with being an Edenite. Everyone is at that level at some point. There's nothing wrong with being a Paridisian. On the contrary, isn't that our goal in life? But there is also nothing wrong with being an Apple Biter either. Apple Biting is the high adventure we were sent into mortal life to experience. There are, however, things wrong with each category if that old bugaboo, judgmentalism, rears its ugly head. There _is_ something wrong with remaining an Edenite indefinitely--otherwise Adam and Eve should still be frolicking away in the Garden. Edenites who remain there and criticize others for Biting Apples because it's too dangerous to explore--well, aren't they making the same choice one third of the hosts of heaven made? And look where it got them. There _is_ something wrong with Paridisians forgetting what it was like being an Apple Biter, and assuming what appeals to them ought to appeal to everyone or their moral character is in question. There _is_ something wrong with Paridisians thinking that what inspires themselves will inspire nonmember Apple Biters into exploring the Gospel, and creating works of art according to that belief (more on that in my article in the upcoming Irreantum). There _is_ something wrong with Apple Biters thinking it's their responsibility to decide when Edenites should Bite the Apple. Father waited for Adam and Eve to choose for themselves; so too ought Apple Biters to leave Edenites alone and let them enjoy their innocence until life tosses them out of the garden, which it certainly will at some point. (Elizabeth Smart must surely no longer be an Edenite.) We can place a tree of knowledge of good and evil before them to entice them, but after that it's up to them, not us, to grab for the apple. Meanwhile, let them eat of the fruit of the Garden. And there _is_ something wrong with Apple Biters complaining that Paridisians don't get it, like teenagers complaining that their parents don't get it. Those who explore learn things--that's the point of exploring--and once learned, they want to go learn other things, and not rehash what they've already done. "Been there, done that" is a real phenomenon. Nobody wants to chew the same food twice. What my three-part categorization teaches us is that no one is superior to another. All stages are necessary stages of development along the road to exaltation. And each stage requires a certain kind of art for nourishment. Let the Edenites have their feel-good faith affirming stories, their simple plots with black-and-white issues. Let the Paridisians have their peacefully uplifting, warm fuzzy, tear-to-the-eye art. They've fought the good fight and deserve a little peace. But let the Apple Biters, slugging it out in the trenches, also have their edgy art, the stuff that questions and explores, that teaches without having to personally experience the horrors. Let the ones who have lost their way and struggled to come back have the art that speaks to their circumstances and experiences, that helps them to make sense of what they've been through and find peace. Or that may even help them find their way back at all. Would you rob a struggling person of their road to peace simply because you don't need it? Some Mormons would. It appears that Deseret Book would. All three types of people are of value and worthy of respect. All three types of people are also guilty of pride, in believing they are better than the others. All three types of people need to adopt Christlike love toward the other two and follow that critical admonition of Jesus: "Judge not." - -- D. Michael Martindale dmichael@wwno.com ================================== Check out Worldsmiths, the new online LDS writers group, at http://www.wwno.com/worldsmiths Sponsored by Worlds Without Number http://www.wwno.com ================================== - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 23:55:03 -0700 From: Harlow S Clark Subject: Re: [AML] Educated Terrorists? On April 8 I posted the following letter to the Daily Herald from Cloyd Bird and asked how list members felt about being profiled as terrorists: >>>>> http://www.harktheherald.com/article.php?sid=78032 Abduction part of class warfare The Daily Herald on Sunday, March 30 Example of class warfare When Emanuel, 49-year-old Brian David Mitchell, allegedly kidnapped at knifepoint a 14-year-old girl, hid her in the ground, and forced her to marry him, that was terrorism, plain and simple. Why did he do it? Who knows all the reasons, but it is certainly another classic example of class warfare, in my opinion. It was the self-proclaimed prophet to the poor and homeless kidnapping the daughter of the rich businessman. If you investigate the reasons behind the World Trade Center bombing, you will find an anti-American, anti-business element in both terrorists, Mohammed Atta and Osama bin Laden. Then, too, maybe that is why Saddam doesn't like the cowboy capitalist George W. Bush. Consider that Stalin murdered millions of businessmen farmers during the 1930s, and then ask why the French don't like us much, and maybe you'll find Rousseau's tirades against business at the root of the French Revolution. Similar arguments can be applied to the environmental movement. Maybe it is time our educators got out of their box and started looking for some common denominators. After all, education is one of our fastest rising costs, and also the profile of most terrorists. Cloyd Bird <<<<< On April 10 Eugene Woodbury replied: >>>>> As both Atta and bin Laden are/were the well-educated scions of (very upper in bin Laden's case) middle class families, and "poor and uneducated" are adjectives I've never seen used to describe any environmentalist, and Hussein was recently ranked as one of the world's wealthiest political leaders (over a billion dollars squirreled away from black market operations), I don't see any logical connection between them and Brian David Mitchell. There seems to be far more fuel for Freud here (children rebelling against the paternal rule of their families, and etc.) than Marx. Was the letter writer perhaps waxing ironic or satiric? <<<<< I suppose I can imagine someone with theatrical training, like both Eric Ss or Thom Duncan or Nan McCulloch or Marianne Hales Harding, reading this and making it a hilarious satire of people who hold the attitudes expressed. The tools would be their vocal inflections and body language. In print one of the equivalents to those tools would be exaggeration, but exaggeration can be difficult to spot. You'd think for example that if someone said, "Anyone who doesn't hold the same political or religious beliefs as I do ought to be hanged," is so outlandish an exaggeration that any reader would see it as satire. However, when Daniel DeFoe said that he had captured the feelings of a certain part of the English public so well that people who really did think dissenters (non-C of E protestants) should be hanged thought he was an ally. I was 3/4 through, as were others in Ed Hart's 18th century BritLit class, before I caught on that DeFoe wasn't serious. That's why Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is read in junior high English classes throughout the English-speaking world and "The Shortest Way With the Dissenters" isn't. It's fairly easy to demonstrate that Swift's purpose has nothing to do with a new kind of baby food. My teacher began by examing the facts and statistics Swift places at the beginning of the essay. It's harder to demonstrate DeFoe's satire. He's mimicking opinions he hears around him, while Swift is taking an opinion no one would dare voice and presenting it deadpan as if it were an utterly civilized proposal on the floor of Parliament. The opinions in Cloyd Bird's letter seem extreme to me, but I've heard some version of all of them. I've even heard it stated as fact that the deaths in the WTC are the fault of those nasty liberals who foisted OSHA on us, because if there had been asbestos on the girders they could have withstood the intense heat generated by jet fuel ignited by crashing airplanes. On Thu, 10 Apr Amelia Parkin also replied, trying to work through the letter's logic, which defines the kidnapping as "an act of terror against a businessman," and leaps to include it with the actions of Stalin, the French revolutionaries and environmentalists--defining all these as actions against business people. (BTW, I particularly like Bird's comment "maybe you'll find Rousseau's tirades against business at the root of the French Revolution." I was taught from grade school through high school that the writings of one Thos Jefferson and friends, particularly one that talks about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as inalienable rights for everyone but slaves, was at the root of the French Revolution. Of course Rousseau's ax may have been one striking at the root of the monarchy, but it wasn't the only ax.) > i'm not really certain of what the writer of the letter was really > getting at. did he actually intend to argue that somehow anyone > who is anti-business in any way is a terrorist of some sort? That seems to be a large part of his argument. I'm fairly certain the farmers Stalin killed would have defined themselves as farmers, not businessmen. They would likely have thought of business people as the merchants who bought their crops and sold them supplies, but it's important to Bird's rhetorical purpose to define them as business people. He seems to see business as the highest good and sees anyone who doesn't like business as a terrorist, but what fascinates me is his inclusion of educated people with the rest of the terrorists. Because, you see, if education is "the profile of most terrorists" it is also the profile of a great many of Stalin's victims, millions, including Leon Trotsky, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and many many others. Indeed, to someone who is inclined to kill to protect their power it matters not if the person they kill more or less agrees with them as Trotsky did with Stalin (at least for a while). Education is much more dangerous than disagreement. To a despot of the right or left Eric Samuelsen and the Laird Jim are equally dangerous. This is easy to demonstrate. As Robert Slaven said in reply to my challenge to find the political content in the story about the traffic circle debate ("Politics and Literature," 4/8/03) "Well, aside from left-wing vs. right-wing kind of stuff, there's the obvious political undertone existing in the story that assumes that when a government makes a decision, the people have a right to intervene in support of or against the decision, and that their opinions are to be given equal weight in considering the decision. Painfully obvious to any modern American, of course, but it might throw off people in other countries or other times." I suspect almost everyone on AML-List shares the assumption Robert mentioned, that we have a right to be heard by those who govern us. That assumption makes us all dangerous to governments that don't believe government takes its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. Which means that both liberalism and conservatism as practiced in the west, whatever those terms mean, are liberal movements. There are a great many highly educated people on this list--people with high school diplomas, Bachelors' or Masters' degrees or Doctorates. It's not a mistake or perversion of our language that the kind of education we received is called Liberal Education. It's called Liberal Education, because it is the kind of education befitting people who live in Liberty, people who are free, Liber. So it fascinates me that Bird should lump those who pose the greatest threat to someone like Stalin, and are probably most vulnerable to him (if you wear glasses you're as noticeable to a dictator as someone with black skin is to a klansman) right up there as cohorts with Stalin. Amelia ends her post with this comment: > Harlow, perhaps you can tell us what you have been thinking about > lately and wanting to write about. Perhaps it would help us discuss > some real issues. right now i feel like i am grasping at straws. and > i would very much like to hear your thoughts. OK, thanks for asking. I've already suggested part of what I've been thinking about. Another part is connected to an e-mail petition I got awhile back. So this post doesn't get too long (OK, too late for that already), and to give time for reaction if anyone wants to, I'll quote the petition, then talk about its rhetoric in a separate post. I'm not particularly interested in debating the issue the petition presents (Richard Johnson has already eloquently stated much of my concern with the issue when he talked about how his children were placed in a position of choosing between what their parents said or what their conservative born-again Christian high-school teachers said), but I am quite interested in how to interpret the petition rhetorically. >>>>> Subject: Petition to President Bush Please Do NOT let this petition stop and lose all these names. If you do not want to sign it, please forward it to everyone you know. Thank you!!! PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION BELOW TO PRESIDENT BUSH AND PASS THIS ON UNTIL THERE ARE 1000 NAMES, THEN SEND TO: President@whitehouse.gov To add your name to the bottom, click on "forward." You will be able to add your name to the list and then forward it to your friends. Or, if you prefer, you can copy and paste, and then add your name to the bottom of the list. Dear President Bush: Many of us were deeply touched to hear you recite a portion of Psalm 23 in your address to this great nation in the dark hours following the terrorists attacks. We were encouraged and comforted to know that we truly had a believer working with us and for us in our nation's highest office. We, the people of America, are requesting that you lift the prohibition of prayer in schools. As the pledge of our great country states, we are to be "One nation, under God." Please allow the prayers and petitions of our children in schools without the threat of punishment. Currently adults and children in the schools are prohibited from mentioning God unless of course His name is uttered as part of a curse or profanity. Madeline Murray O'Hare is dead. Let her legacy of atheism in our schools die with her! Sincerely, The People of America (Mark 10:13-14)"People were bringing little children to Jesus to have Him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this He was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." PETITION TO REINSTATE PRAYER IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS: [at the end after a list of 852 names the petition repeats this comment:] PLEASE! DO NOT LET THIS PETITION STOP AND LOSE ALL OF THESE NAMES. IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO SIGN JUST PLEASE FORWARD TO EVERYONE IN YOUR MAIL BOX WHO HAS NOT ALREADY RECEIVED IT. >>>>>> It's hard for me to take this seriously as a petition, partly for reasons I'll discuss in another post, partly because, if I were circulating a petition I certainly wouldn't include a statement at the end telling unsympathetic recipients how they could thwart the petition, and partly because there's no verification mechanism. If I wanted to I could sign all the 200 personas I've created for AML-List, from theric duncan to Thom-Marylin-Margaret-D. Michael Jingleheimer Schmidt, and noone could tell whether they were real people or not. Heck, since my theric persona challenged my personhood I'm not even sure _I'm_ a real person. (What kind of a name is Harlow, indeed.) But if I can't take it seriously as a petition, how do I respond to it rhetorically? More about that later. Harlow S. Clark - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 00:59:20 -0700 From: Harlow S Clark Subject: Re: [AML] Temple in Literature On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 13:24:07 -0600 "clark" writes: > ___ Michael ___ > | I'll follow my characters everywhere they go and witness > | everything they do. It's what fiction is for. > | [...] > | I'm recommending telling the story as effectively as possible. > | You should include as much information about the sex as you > | need, and no more. > ___ > > That's fine. I think you are in the minority on that - unless the > details of personal hygiene really do interest you that much. I can't resist asking, how did we get from sex to hygiene? > The fact is that some stories are more appropriate than others. You > might be interested in the story of a person's intestinal track but I > don't think most are. I also can't resist adding that one of the classic episodes of The Magic Schoolbus involves a trip down Ralphie's (?) intestinal tract--with a due acknowledgement in the call-in sequence at the end that the intestine works in such a way as to prevent objects in the intestine, like yellow schoolbusses, from reversing course and going out through the stomach and mouth just because they don't want to ride to the end of the tract. > Further that notion of "appropriateness" is key. You suggest > that you *don't* think anything goes and instead tie "what goes" to > some authenticity relative to a "story." But that merely avoids the > question by pushing it down a level. What makes a story > appropriate or inappropriate? Well obviously, appropriateness is determined by whether Miss Frizzle wants to take the class and the bus somewhere or not. > Surely you'd agree that there are some well written, compelling > stories that are inappropriate? Without an other descent to > the pornography realm, consider a book that give the *real* > *full* look into a killer's mind.Would you *really* be interested > in a story that focused in on say Sadaam's sons and their > rape and torture in all its glorious Technicolor? Surely, Clark, you're aware that there are people who devote their lives to collecting detailed stories of rape and torture in all its glorious Technicolor. One of the more memorable student research papers I got used some primary sources. The student had traveled with her family to Lithuania or Latvia to pick up her brother after his mission, and gone to a former KGB facility where the people who were tortured there spent their time as tour guides, bearing witness to what had been done in that building. She included some of their stories. Not easy reading, but a very good paper. Harlow S. Clark ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today! - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 07:58:21 -0700 From: thelairdjim Subject: Re: [AML] Rape in Mormon Lit What's complex about High School? There are no complexities at all. It's extremely simple. People are inherently and naturally carnal and sensual and when there is no religion, society, culture, or education to curb the natural passions then they indulge them. Drinking, smoking and sleeping around can certainly ruin your life, as much now as ever before. It's just that when your parent's whole goal for your life is to get into a good college, and they have no other plans for you, then you succeed as soon as you get into Harvard. Even graduating from Harvard doesn't make one a success, however. A success needs more than money, and when money is the whole purpose of existence, then it's really not that hard to accomplish. There is no change here except in the relaxing of standards--there are none. Ten abortions won't keep you off the board; a couple of drunk driving arrests won't either. So long as you pay child support it doesn't matter if there's five kids with five mommies who need it. There still is a class difference--a very slight one, between upper and lower middle class--and losers still drink, smoke, and sleep around. The difference is that they don't have parents who are driving them relentlessly towards "a good school." One would think that the accomplishment of happiness would be the goal of even an irreligious life, but happiness is immaterial. Just got to get into "a good school," everything else will work itself out. Except it doesn't. I know people who hit and run while drunk, and run because there's a lesser penalty for hit and run than for drunk driving, since nobody was hurt. I know a number of people in their thirties who think the most fun to be had in the world is to completely forget what happened the night before--too drunk to remember. Why that's fun I don't know, since they can't remember. I know a number of people who did hard-core drugs while in high school and are still functioning today. They hold down jobs, they pay their taxes, and they have no idea of the worthwhile things in life. Kids are a nuisance, God...who knows, who cares? Art is going to a concert; charity is paying taxes; love is the seven-year itch. These are the bulk of my friends. Some went to good schools and some didn't. Some have degrees and some don't. Some were stoners (we called them freaks in one of my high schools) and some were preppies. Equally miserable. Stereotypes are always false, at least in the small part. It may be harder to detect the smooth hypocrite but then it always will be. The fact is God doesn't reveal our sins to others, and piercing a plausible facade is no easy task, and harder for young women than for anybody else on the planet. The generic rule still stands, though. Drinking and smoking and sleeping around are things that failures do. Not all of them fail, but the numbers still bear out the generalization. Jim Wilson aka the Laird Jim On Saturday, Apr 19, 2003, at 19:50 America/Phoenix, Ben and Jessie Christensen wrote: >I was thinking > about this > recently because of a movie review the other day talking about a new > movie > about high school students (Better Luck Tomorrow), which is all about > well-off honors students in Southern California. The reviewer thought > it > interesting that everyone in the movie partied hard, even the > "high-achievers"; he specifically cited a scene where the entire > debate team > gets drunk while celebrating a victory. This made me realize that there > still seems to be a dichotomy in many adult's minds that there are > "good > kids" and "bad kids", and only losers drink, smoke and sleep around. [snip] - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 14:32:49 -0700 From: Harlow S Clark Subject: Re: [AML] Artists' Personal Lives On April 11, I mentioned the movie director who thinks it ironic that we ask kids to do things in a film (like kissing) that we wouldn't want them to do in real life, and mentioned an episode of CSI or Law and Order centering around a kiddie porn photo. I want to expand just a bit on what I said. The photo was a profile shot of a young teenager, topless, leaning against a wall, most of her breast hidden by her arm. I suppose the studio used a double, but it bothers me that in a film about sexual exploitation of children the film makers felt they had to show us the photograph in question. Richard Dutcher faced a similar choice in _Brigham City_, and I think he handled it better. We know what's in the pornographic closet without having to see titles of the videos, or samples of them. Now, if the point of this CSI or Law and Order episode is that the suspect is a child-molesting pornographer all we need to know is that fact, we don't have to see a sample of his collection. But there was a different point to be made, and it bothers me that they chose to make it in the way they did. The film emphasizes that this is really a photo of a 13-year-old by having it slightly out of focus and the investigation technician scans it and works some magic to remove the blur and bring the face into sharp focus. (And I could hear the photo editor at the paper saying, "One thing I cannot do, despite what you see on TV, is bring a picture into focus that was shot out of focus.") By showing us the actress's face come into sharp focus in that scene, the movie is insisting on a certain kind of realism, asking us to suspend disbelief and agree that the model for the photograph and the young teen actress are the same person. But if I do suspend my disbelief and say, "OK it's really her in the photo," then I begin wondering about the morality of taking a pornographic picture of a young teen actress so you can tell a story about how destructive child porn is. And I wonder about that morality even if I can suppose rationally that they digitally put the actress's head on some other model's body, because when a film insists on the level of realism this film was insisting on the insistence itself invites me to wonder who really posed for the photo. What think ye? In the second part of that April 11 post I talked about finding Louis Owens' novels _The Sharpest Sight_ and _Bone Game_ in the UVSC library and said, "If both were movies they would likely be rated R for language and theme and violence. And I believe the Lord guided me to read them." And woke up the next morning thinking, "Does that last sentence sound arrogant, like I'm saying 'The Lord is my librarian, I shall not want for reading material, he leadeth me beside the still reading room' so don't question my reading choices?" And I started thinking about the rhetorical function of that phrase, "I believe the Lord guided me to read them." Why did I say that? Was I trying to forestall criticism? After thinking about it for awhile I remembered that the comment was a response to Dianna Graham's question (4/8/03), "Is the World's Film Library really so small that nothing else out there could teach us, move us, change us just as much without assaulting us at the same time?" It seemed to me a good, thoughtful and provocative question that asked for a good, thoughtful and provocative response, which I attempted by saying what I see Louis Owens doing in _Bone Game_ that I simply don't see elsewhere. And again, I feel grateful I found his books, but in thinking about how the phrase "Lord guided me to read them" works rhetorically I started thinking about the idea we hear in the culture occasionally that the people on the other side of the veil have a tremendous interest in us and want to help us. With _Heaven Knows Why_ Samuel W. Taylor started a genre of comic novels about angels that includes Kenny Kemp's _I Hated Heaven_, Dan Yates's novels, Levi Peterson's "The Third Nephite," and probably several others. The angel in _Heaven Knows Why_ is a worker in the Current History Division of Heaven who is concerned about his wayward grandson and takes steps to correct the situation, so I started thinking, do I have an ancestor who might be taking an interest in me, and guiding certain aspects of my reading? I prefer to think that person would be my great grandfather, Charles Rich Clark, who met my great grandmother, Annie Elizabeth Waldron, when she took a class from him. (Or Annie could be my guide, my Beatrice, if Heaven assigns guides across genders.) My father says Charley should have been one of the great teaching legends in the Church, right alongside Karl G. Maeser--who asked him to teach at the BY Academy, but Brigham Young called Charley's father, Ezra T., to do some colonizing around Georgetown Idaho, in the Bear Lake area, and he wanted Charley to go with him. Charley was a man of good taste, my father says, and travelled around to estate sales buying up old pioneer diaries and papers, so I like to think he would have an interest in my reading, and know what would help me. When he died his daughter didn't understand the value of his collection of historical documents and had a big bonfire out back. Maybe that's why there are so many teachers and writers in the Clark family--someone has to make up for all that loss. Harlow S. Clark ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today! - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V2 #34 *****************************