Orthodox Christian, Husband, Father, Working for The Children’s Tradition
Joined May 2013
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Two clear issues with this clip.
She misses horror’s tragic essence. The horror story doesn’t necessarily glorify darkness, when at its proper, it confronts us with evil, suffering, and mortality, deepening our understanding of the human plight. This cultivates fortitude in combating the evil or warns us against man’s undoing when choosing the evil.
Her rhetorical approach is dogmatic, not explorational. Rather than asking what horror reveals about human nature, she begins with a verdict. Prudence requires consideration with our engagement of stories, of course, but her posture here disqualifies any type of dialogue to the contrary.
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Of course there are many horror films that we should abstain from in the spirit of rejecting the celebration of the mutated. As we should in any genre that endorses an upside view of reality.
Something to consider, at its core, horror is a form of tragedy. It centers on the presence of evil, the corruption of what is good, the violation of the natural order, and often the downfall of the human person.
The question is not simply whether a film depicts darkness, but whether it invites us to weigh evil with moral seriousness or to delight in it as entertainment. There is a profound difference between confronting darkness to understand the gravity of evil and celebrating darkness for its own sake.
Yes, as Dostoevsky said, “Beauty will save the world” However, sometimes a soul requires tragedy first to awaken its sensibilities to the poisons of vice. Then the beauty of virtue becomes more clear.
Yes!
"Is the historic image of Christ as a mother pelican also an abomination?"
There is a difference between a symbol and a personal incarnation.
All things in some way symbolize God, for the whole world was made to show forth his glory and character, and so we can symbolize the character of Christ with a female pelican feeding its young, for all things tell us about the Logos who made them.
But It is a different thing to image the person of God incarnate.
Aslan isn’t a symbol, he is an incarnational supposal. When God shows up ‘in the flesh’ it’s not a symbol—its Himself.
Lewis is asking, suppose the Second Person of the Trinity, the SON, incarnated in a world of rational animals? What would that look like?
Lewis imagines a male lion, for God in relation to all creation is male, and the lion is the king of beasts; so in a world of animals, God the Son would incarnate as the male king. That is the work of a sound theological imagination.
Intersectional gender ambiguous chimera disco rainbow drag dragon-cat is not.
It's much more a symbol of pantheism where all things are equally God end identity is not ultimately real.
There is a good reason God instituted the Second Commandment. There is a reason iconographers in the post-incarnation Year of Our Lord follow a sacred tradition with strong guardrails. How we picture God structures our whole imagination and how we perceive the meaning of the world.
Patrick Faus retweeted
There is, of course, a reason that they have to come after Tolkien (Rings of Power) and now Lewis (with the upcoming Netflix production of The Magician's Nephew). For so many people, the works of the Inklings have been the gateway to much that is good and soul-saving, including (strangely enough) the Orthodox Church. Many young people, including your humble servant, were helped through spiritual crises through the fictional and non-fictional works of these men.
Their works have bred opponents of the spirit of the age.
For that reason, the spirit of the age is not content to leave them alone: it must appropriate them, drag them into the mud, sully them with ideologies wholly inimical to the stories, all the while saying "well actually this is what Tolkien/Lewis would have wanted" or "the Christian fans of Tolkien/Lewis don't actually 'own' their works" etc. I saw it happening in the "Inklings Studies" academic field a decade ago. Now, it's hitting popular adaptations.
For years I have been saying we can give the benefit of the doubt and judge things on their artistic merits when they come out, but after The Rings of Power, I'm done with that. The burden of proof is now on the adapters. If Gerwig's Narnia turns out to be a faithful celebration of the things Narnia is really about, I will be pleasantly surprised, yes, but most of all, I'll just be surprised.
Until proven otherwise, my assumption is that it's a donkey in a lionskin.
In addition to the Aslan news, did you see this subversion too @annielcrawford
Patrick Faus retweeted
John Senior and the Restoration of Realism is tremendous if you’ve not yet read it.
Also, the work of @aclassicalwoman with The Children’s Tradition is excellent. I’ve been reading through their homeschool curriculum based on the Integrated Humanities Program. It is terrific. I have a longer write up on it in the works.
Being that I have endeavored to build a school for boys with @meriwetheracdmy , the habit of my personal education is needed now more than ever.
I am on a quest to answer a number of questions, including but not limited to:
What is the best way to raise strong men?
What are the best books for a young man to read?
What is the best way for a young man to spend his time?
And fortunately my friends are in a constant state of recommending books to me that help answer these questions.
I am nearing the end of this one and have been quite charmed by John Senior. I have another of his that I will work through next.
So what book recommendations would you have for a man building a boys school? Please send them my way!
“Restorations never start at the collapsing top but always in the dull low places of simple hearts, not in the roaring of the wind but in the whistling of a gentle air”
- John Senior
Patrick Faus retweeted
Is piety to Homer a form of idolatry? This and more in my recent conversation with the lovely Patrick and Amanda at the Children's Tradition.
youtu.be/oOnRpIFq0LQ?is=iwtY…
It was a delight to talk with @annielcrawford on The Odyssey and how we should engage art.
youtu.be/oOnRpIFq0LQ?is=iwtY…
It was a delight to talk with @annielcrawford on The Odyssey and how we should engage art.
The response to this movie has ultimately demonstrated that the analytical approach to art prohibits our poetic sense. The analytical mind is blinded by its predetermined conclusions, rendering one incapable of seeing what is present as they are distracted by what is absent.
People keep forgetting to point out that after Circe makes her feminist tirade, Nolan undercuts her ideology by the fact that she is wrong about Odysseus and his men and herself has wickedly turned her sister into a crow.
He consistently presents postmodern tropes in a way that undercuts them. It’s rather tragic that conservatives cannot see this because they decided to pre-judge the movie before giving it a chance.
“And may the good gods give you all heart desires: husband, and house, lasting harmony too. No finer, greater gift in the world than that when man and woman possess their home, two minds, two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies, a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory”
- Homer, The Odyssey
Yes! As someone who has seen it, this adaptation understands the essential need of piety for a culture to work. Without piety brutality follows.
One of my students emailed me asking about the Odyssey. He loved it but is second-guessing his own discernment after seeing all the conservative criticism of the film. He specifically mentioned how the movie derivates from the original story. Here is my response:
Much of a person's reaction depends on the priors they bring to the film. If you think diversions from Homer's text are equivalent to a flaw, then you are set up to dislike every adaptation ever, because that's literally what it means to adapt or re-tell a story - if you didn't change anything, you would be just reading the Greek to yourself.
Moreover, Homer's Odyssey itself is an adaptation of the oral tradition - think about how details and characters vary between Homer and the Greek playwrights or between Homer and Virgil. Remember how all the Arthurian stories were developed and retold and changed over the years and still are being changed! Have you seen Malcom Guite's new Galahad and the Grail? It's incredible. Highly, highly recommend.
And when transposing a text to a film, many things have to change in order to accommodate the unique nature and needs of the visual medium. As an analogy, what might happen to a song when it gets transposed into a symphony of vice versa?
Most of the negative reviews so far seem to me to complain that "it's not Homer" which is silly or "it's woke" which seems unsupported apart from a few casting choices. While I very much dislike the casting of Page, that is one big mark in the negative column which the many marks of an amazing movie might overcome.
So the two key questions for me as I go to see the film next week are these:
First, there are deep, transcendent truths about the nature of Fathers and Marriage and Kingdoms woven into the Odyssey. Does the new adaptation reflect those truths or does it try to subvert them?
Second, Homer was a master poet and artist. Does the new film honor that artistry with its own? That aesthetic can be different; in fact, I believe it ought to be. Historically accurate obsessions are appropriate to history class and documentaries, not to art. Remember all the Renaissance styled images of the Virgin Mary?
I most enjoy contemporary art when archetypal tropes and perennial truths are reincarnated in a new form that sheds transcendent light on our own contemporary situation. It is the marriage of transcendent and particular that makes art powerful and great.
Does Nolan take the transcendent Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Odyssey and re-embody it in a new form that will help us see the role of the Father and the nature of a Kingdom again with fresh eyes? Will the film help us love fatherhood again and long for the return of the King?
Pageau seems to think so and I haven't seen him be wrong before. He understands art from the inside out while most critics are stuck inside a modernist paradigm and current culture war (concerned about accuracy in the particulars and scoring political points - they are trapped in the immanent) and that prevents them from understanding the role and nature of art or assessing it wisely.
I will be looking for the archetypal meaning - does Nolan reflect or distort the Truth (which is different from 'facts')? - as well as the aesthetic merits - do his choices in dialogue, visuals, character, plot, etc... work together as a whole to communicate a coherent vision?
Are the themes that Nolan develops in harmony with the essential story of the Odyssey or are they imposed upon it in a way that distorts the heart of what Homer has bequeathed to us? (Here, I see another problem with critiques of the film so far - I don't recognize the Homer many people claim to be defending. Homer wasn't telling a straight forward, ra ra, war is awesome and Odysseus is a Chad kind of film.)
Finally, does the medium match the message with seamless integrity or does he make poor choices for perhaps political reasons that compromise the meaning or aesthetic unity of the story?
I will find out for myself next week.
There's a new version of this post
Patrick Faus retweeted
First thoughts on The Odyssey.
There is a scene at the very beginning of the film in which, in the absence of his father, Telemachus is being trained by the blind Eumaeus, Odysseus’s loyal servant. Eumaeus warns that the reason Telemachus is constantly being bested by his sparring partner is that his defense is too quick. He must move more slowly, open his chest, invite the attack, and use his opponent’s momentum against him.
In the spirit of Odysseus, deep trickery is at work in this film.
Don’t let the apparent compromises fool you. The Odyssey is an absolute triumph. It is made with a profound love for the source material, filled with deep pathos: the return of the father, the elevation of the son, and the restoration of proper order despite all the sins perpetrated by the guardians of that order.
It is a film about the end of one world and the beginning of another; about remembrance, return, and the perpetuation of an order after a long wandering through chaos.
It’s The Odyssey.
“The Great Books movement, so good in many ways, is based upon a false rhetorical assumption: students simply don’t have the prerequisites such an education supposes. Tutors in their seminars betray the sweet reasonableness they have espoused by introducing Plato, Aristotle or St. Thomas to unformed minds who haven’t exercised and purified their imaginations first in the child’s garden of verses as Robert Louis Stevenson called it. I mean the thousand good books that children and adolescents used to read before they tried the great ones. In my own direct experience teaching literature at universities, I have found a large plurality of who students who say, Treaure Island what they call “hard reading,” which means too difficult to enjoy with anything approaching their delight in Star Wars or electronic games”
John Senior, The Restoration of Christian Culture
Patrick Faus retweeted
You're being laughed at because you don't understand the distinction between fiction and myth.
A myth is a sacred story.
The Odyssey is mythic, a sacred story that is foundational to Greek culture and to the West.
The details of myths inform the character of its people.
