A Rock To Tie A String Around

I love Rosemary’s Baby. I particularly love the Castanets and their over the top intrusive hospitality. I’m fascinated with little details, like how hideous Rosemary’s party dress is on the night that they have friends over and announce the pregnancy. It looks like a giant, mauve, polyester nightgown. I’ve always wondered what the ‘vitamin shake’ tastes like or why Rosemary actually consents to wear the smelly charm around her neck.

However, I don’t think it’s enough to save Roman Polanski. Polanski’s been in Swiss custody for nearly four weeks now and it’s starting to look as though he really is going to be extradited back to the United States despite the complaints and grumblings that have rolled back and forth across Hollywood.

No one wants to believe that Polanski is guilty, and when faced with the cold, hard facts that he confessed to drugging and raping a thirteen year old girl – they call it a ‘supposed crime’ or in Whoopi Goldberg’s words: “…something else, not rape-rape…” Evidently, rape is only rape when it happens twice. Or maybe rape is only rape when the accused rapist-rapist is not a hot Hollywood director with a tragically scarred past.

I give Polanski that – I wouldn’t wish his past on anyone. His mother was killed in Auschwitz, he was smuggled out of the Jewish Ghetto as a small child. His wife, Sharon Tate, and unborn child are murdered in cold blood by Charles Manson’s henchmen.

However, I don’t think it’s enough to save Roman Polanski. Lots of people have had horrible, terrible life stories and somehow they fought the urge to feed a bottle of Quaaludes to a child and sodomize her in Marlon Brando’s house. Yes, it was in Marlon Brando’s house while Brando’s then girlfriend, Angelica Houston, slept in another bedroom. That’s some good trivia.

I just don’t think that being a great artist cancels out rape, whether you call it ‘rape’ or ‘rape-rape’ or ‘date rape’ or ‘something else’. It just doesn’t work that way.

I have the same problem with Michael Jackson. His new movie ‘This Is It’ is going to be out on the 28th for a two-week, limited run. I have extremely mixed emotions. On one hand, he revolutionized an entire industry, created a musical empire, inspired countless artists. A world without Michael Jackson would be like a world without Elvis. He ceased to be a man and became an icon.

However, the part of him that was still human was horribly, terribly flawed. So flawed that he died in a drugged comatose state, so flawed that he was accused of multiple counts of molesting children. The fact that it never went to trial is more a testament to his money and ability to settle out of court than to the validity of the charges.

What do you do with artists that cross the line from flawed, tragic figures into felons? How much do you look past? How much can we forgive for entertainment?

They aren’t the only ones of course. At the height of his fame back in the late 1980’s, Mathew Broderick veered into the wrong lane of traffic in Northern Ireland and instantly killed a mother and daughter in an oncoming car. Although it was widely thought that Broderick was drunk, he was eventually only accused of careless driving and paid a grand total of $175 in fines.

Yet, he’s gone on to have an incredible career, entirely because we keep on watching him despite the fact that he destroyed a family back in 1987.

Shouldn’t this stuff count? Shouldn’t this stuff be enough that these ‘artists’ shouldn’t be allowed to keep on making Oscar winning movies just outside of the arms of the law? Shouldn’t someone pull Broderick off the stage on Broadway and demand justice?
I venture that art is more than just the final product. It is a sum total of its parts. Every piece of ‘art’ that follows heinous actions carries the weight of blood, and that blood becomes our responsibility when we pay for it to continue.

I think the responsibility of art lies not only in the hands of the artist but also in the integrity of the audience.

A little heavy maybe, but rest assured, Rosemary’s Baby was made in 1968, and therefore is unscathed, so is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, as it was made in 1986. I feel slightly less guilty because of this, but not much.

I know, two religious blogs in a row. But I couldn’t resist. It’s that time of year – not Halloween; it’s Book Burning Time! Or so says The Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina. In honor of the pagan holiday, the Baptists are going to light it up with a few satanic verses, oh, and they’ll be serving fried chicken and all the fixin’s. Yum.

Check it out:

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/n-c-church-to-burn-satans-books-including-works-of-mother-theresa/

Book burnings aren’t a new thing, hell; J.K. Rawlings is a millionaire many times over thanks to over-zealous religious groups that were hoping to shield innocent eyes. I guess what stood out to me in this particular book burning was the content of the bonfire. All Bibles except the King James Version, works by The Pope, Mother Theresa, even The Patron Saint of Christian Zealotry: Billy Graham.

I’d laugh if it weren’t so scary.

Local ministers who haven’t been drinking the crazy water have dubbed The Amazing Grace Baptist Church as “The Christian Taliban”. They’re not all that far off. Of course the book burners have little to no political power, influence, or resources to actually instigate the kind of movement that the Taliban did in Afghanistan. But the Taliban did use somewhat similar tactics. Essentially, they rode the coattails of an already conservative faith and culture, and then they started weeding out all the supposed liberal bias. Then, instead of just splintering and going on their way, they basically imposed their new regime on an entire country.

I think we need to come to a group decision on part of human race. There should be certain things that we can all agree upon. Like what a fundamentalist is. I think Billy Graham and Rick Warren should be uncategorically placed in the ‘Fundamentalist Stack’. I think anything written by Mother Theresa, The Pope and The Dalai Llama should automatically go in the ‘Way Wiser Than We Mere Mortals Can Ever Hope To Be So Mind Your Manners Stack’. Likewise I believe certain things should be placed in the ‘Makes You Feel Good But Without Any Residual Guilt Stack’. In this stack they could put John Denver, Bill Cosby, and all the Christian guitar players that are on the burn list for the Amazing Grace Baptist Church.

I believe in the Contagion Theory of Crowd Psychology. I tell my students that it’s a bit like a zombie movie. We all operate on some level as a collective unconscious, and when an idea enters our collective psyche, it spreads like Land ‘O Lakes butter on a warm muffin. That’s why this bit of crazy scares me a little bit. It’s a step in the direction of siphoning off ‘true Fundamentalists’ from ‘fake Fundamentalists’ and putting those posers like Billy Graham and Rick Warren back in their place. But what is a ‘True Fundamentalist’ anyway? Are they like the crowd up the highway from me as a kid who didn’t allow dancing and didn’t celebrate holidays. Cause that’s going a little old school Puritan, which was the exact opposite intention of King James when he ordered his bible to be written in the seventeenth century.

According to the all-wise Wikipedia, King James ordered his Bible to be created so as to limit the power of the Puritans and push “the Episcopal structure of the Church of England and traditional beliefs about ordained clergy”. It was largely a political move. And not entirely a completely accurate one, the translators for King James weren’t skilled in Hebrew and Greek so they were faced with a daunting task of translating a language they knew very little of. Likewise they were under orders to anglicize the Latin words, basically make them more reader friendly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorized_King_James_Version

I’m guessing the Amazing Grace Baptist Church doesn’t read Wikipedia. If they did, they would see that the version of the holy book that they’ve latched onto is no more or less Satanic than any other version. They would see the Bible is a really, really old text, that has survived countless translations, political agendas, reorganizations, and overhauls. Maybe if they did do a little homework on where the King James Version really did come from they might find that it oughtta be on the pile too, maybe they’d all go running for the fire extinguishers.

I don’t know, maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. It does get chilly in North Carolina this time of year. Maybe the Amazing Grace Baptist Church is just doing their best to simultaneously stimulate book sales while also saving on the locals’ heat bills.

In any case, I hope my book gets burned someday. Maybe I’ll send one to the folks in North Carolina, it would up my sales, I’d maybe even make the news.

The Conservative Bible Project, a group of conservative Christians who have decided that the Bible suffers from liberal bias, are out to make things right again. That sounds like the beginning of a joke, right? Not so much really. This is real group people, and they are dead set on getting all the ‘liberal’ language out of the Bible and returning it to its original, Republican roots. Who knew Jesus was a member of the GOP? Actually, I suppose it would be God proper who was the Republican, Jesus was like his hippy, free-spirited son who ran away to join the socialist circus. I suppose we can all take a page from The New Conservative Bible to find out what happens when you do that…..

Seriously though…are they serious? You can check out this article on Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/conservative-bible-projec_n_310037.html

There really is a group who feels like their conservative senses are being offended by the raging liberal bias that was obviously manufactured by the Apostles to push their pinko agenda. One of the many things that The Conservative Bible Project is upset about is that the Bible as it stands today in it’s many, many interpretations is too dumbed down. Evidently the New International Version is only written at a seventh grade level. The King James Version is evidently written at a twelfth grade level, or eighth grade Canadian….which makes you wonder about those Canadians…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorized_King_James_Version

But The Conservative Bible Project thinks we should be reading at our grade level, they should talk to the literacy coaches at my high school, I hear about this all day long. Never mind that most major market paperbacks are written at roughly an eighth grade level. John Grisham hits right at ninth grade, Stephen King weighs in at ninth grade and Mitch Albom hits readers where it counts – third grade reading level.

I have an ongoing argument with the literacy coaches at my school, because it is my assertion that these ‘reading level evaluation’ for novels and whatnot mean absolutely squat. I don’t know many third graders that are reading ‘Tuesdays With Morrie’ and I know lots of grown-ups who read King.
Reading level is evaluated in several ways. One way is to examine the word density of the average sentence in the book. This means that if you write Les Miserablesesque Victor Hugo Viking Long Sentences – you will get a higher score. If you keep is simple, you will get a lower score.

There’s merit to simplicity. I’m sure at least a few of you have had to wade through Joseph Conrad. I had a particularly masochistic English teacher in high school that drug us kicking and screaming through ‘Lord Jim” Which technically falls at an eighth grade level. I consider myself pretty smart, and I read ‘Lord Jim’ in my senior year. If it wasn’t for the Cliff’s Notes….I would have had no earthly idea what happened in that book.

My point is that is doesn’t mean much.

That sentence alone probably just dumbed down my blog reading level to second grade.

I think people read what they are passionate about. One of the best books I’ve read this year was Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Graveyard Book’, which chimes in along with Albom’s books at third grade reading level.

I want to be entertained when I read something. I suspect that the New International Version of the Bible is so popular because it is actually readable as opposed to the King James Version, which I suffered through Sunday School with.

Still, I wish The Conservative Bible Project luck; they have a lot of work to do to get the liberal messages out. I wonder if in their version Jesus will send the lepers to their pre-approved HMO hospital for treatment or if he’ll right the carts of the moneylenders and start celebrating free enterprise. I’m curious, but then again, I’m also something of a third grader.