My friend Matt wrote a comic with some great commentary on the relationship between the Church and culture.  Go read it, because it is good.

My love for Scott Pilgrim is not shared by all, however.  In fact, reviews have been very mixed, and the movie seems to have polarized the critics.  There does seem to be a trend among the bad reviews, however, and that is a tendency to review not the movie, but the perceived intended audience.

As the linked article indicates, many reviewers disliked the movie and lashed out against those who enjoyed it.  According to these particular reviewers, the movie (which both honors and lampoons hipster and video game culture in much the same way that Hot Fuzz honored and lampooned action movies) is only for shallow zomboids who have wasted their lives playing video games.

The real problem, however, is too painfully obvious: these critics just didn’t “get it.”  And it is okay not to “get it.”  What is not okay is claiming that those who did get it are somehow beneath you, or that you are better than them.  For me, one of the things that makes Scott Pilgrim so wonderful is that it appeals to things that I enjoy,  a vernacular I speak, and a sense of humor common among my peers.

[Spoilers begin!] When I see an establishing shot of Scott Pilgrim’s apartment paired with the oh-so familiar slap-bass of Seinfeld, that is funny to me.  When I see 64-hit combos and “KO” announcements a la Street Fighter portrayed in a semi-realistic setting, this has comedic value [Spoilers end!].  The humor is derived from a shared experience.  When you don’t have that same experience, it is natural for you not to find this nearly as funny as I.  That doesn’t mean that the experience is invalid.

What makes me most angry about the critical treatment of Scott Pilgrim is the lack of understanding that not everything has to appeal to everyone.  There are words for art that appeals to everyone; Words such as “broad” and “mediocre.”  People have very different sensibilities, with different ideas of what is funny, moving, or meaningful.  When you make something that is intended to appeal to everyone, you damage the impact your work can have on an audience.  You have to water something down to the point that it hardly says anything at all in order to take into consideration all of the different points of view that are out there.

Scott Pilgrim is not broad, nor is it mediocre.  It is also something that is not made for everyone, but that makes it all the more special for the people for whom it was made.

Update (8/21/2010): 1 random guy wrote a comic about the whole ordeal.

Okay, perhaps I am exaggerating.  I should say, rather, that our youth group leader implied that listening to Pearl Jam (and a few other choice music groups) was an un-Christian thing to do.

We spent one session of our weekly meetings watching a video, which was a few years old by the time I watched it, deploring the horrible evils thrust upon modern day youth by that terrible devil, MTV.  The basic idea is that because MTV showed videos in which un-Christian ideas were promoted, MTV itself was privy to a conspiracy to corrupt America’s youth and should never be watched by Christian children.  The video then went into some detail as to which videos were the most egregious offenders.  Mostly it was music I had not heard of; some R&B and hair metal bands from the early ’90s were included.  However, as the video progressed it started mentioning bands of which I was more aware.  Bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

I remember particularly the focus on the Pearl Jam song “Jeremy.”  For those of you who don’t know, “Jeremy” is a song based partly on the real life story of a boy named Jeremy from Texas who shot himself in front of his high school English class.  They criticized “Jeremy” and the video that was in frequent rotation on MTV for celebrating violence and enforcing a message of suicide being a reasonable way to deal with one’s problems.

However, that is not what the song is about.  Not at all, actually.  Here is what Eddie Vedder, singer of Pearl Jam and author of the song’s lyrics, had to say about the song:

It came from a small paragraph in a paper which means you kill yourself and you make a big old sacrifice and try to get your revenge. That all you’re gonna end up with is a paragraph in a newspaper. Sixty-three degrees and cloudy in a suburban neighborhood. That’s the beginning of the video and that’s the same thing is that in the end, it does nothing … nothing changes. The world goes on and you’re gone. The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself. Be stronger than those people. And then you can come back.

The truth is, there were some Christian folks out there who saw something violent on TV, something they didn’t like, and instantly thought that it must be bad because of its nature.  The problem is that the nature of “Jeremy” is a truth that is too hard and too terrible for a lot of people to handle: it is the story of a boy that the Church did not reach.  He was boy who was ignored by his parents, by his teachers, by his peers, and by the Church and found nothing but despair.

Popular music is full with this sort of imagery.  Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins sings in “Bullet with Butterfly Wings,” “Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage / and someone will say what is lost can never be saved / and I still believe that I cannot be saved.”  Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral is a whole album devoted to depression and despair that cannot be cured by drugs, sex, or power and in the end no answer can be found.  These works have been cited as being corruptive, heretical, and outright evil.  Yet I say that some of this kind of music is more Christian than many of the songs we sing on Sunday morning.  If not that, at the very least more meaningful.

I say this because theses songs represent the real pain that people experience in this broken world.  These songs bear witness to the depravity of this world, and the need we all have for God.  They also reflect the ways in which Christians have not only failed to be part of the solution, but often instigate the problems.  These songs are, above all else, honest.  They are honest about the problems we all face and the ways in which we try to deal with them. These are songs about real alienation and rejection that these artists have faced, and too often it is Christians who are doing the rejecting.  The anti-MTV video I was shown as a kid is proof-positive of that.  Rather than try to understand the pain of our broken world, we curse it and try to run away from it.

Do you blame the dark for being dark, or do you blame the light for not shining brightly?

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, I have to admit that I have tried Windows 7 Release Candidate, and it is easily the best piece of software that Microsoft has produced to date, with the possible exception of the X-Box 360 firmware.  Granted, the user interface may have borrowed a few things from Mac OS X and Ubuntu, namely the new dock (Mac) and file system (Mac, Ubuntu, and any other Unix), but all in all it is very useable and much more secure.  Couple this with the recent charity of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and you might think this is a brand new Microsoft.  They learned their lessons from the Vista debacle and their questionable morals of the past and now they are ready to turn over a new leaf.

Then this abomination appeared on my screen.  Seriously Microsoft?  I’m supposed to invite all my friends over so they can look at my computer running Windows 7?  You want me to invite people I have to see every day into my house and try to sell them YOUR damn product? Oh, but it’s okay, cause you provided activities.  We can all have fun sending emails and looking at internets (which raises the question, “How many internets are there?”).

Something that Microsoft needs to learn (and perhaps also the United Methodist Church, but that’s a blog post for another day) is that they AREN’T COOL.  You hear me?  Not cool.  I know that Apple is cool, and you are getting some kernel envy over there in Redmond, but you don’t need to be Apple!  You know what the best marketing campaign you could ever have would look like?  It would look like this:

Hey.  Our Operating System isn’t a piece of crap anymore.  In fact, it’s really good.

Then you could have individual commercials detailing how good your product is.  When you try to look cool, you just end up looking idiotic: because you aren’t cool.  And that’s okay!  I’m not cool, but I somehow manage to get by.  Ben Folds isn’t cool either. It’s alright not to be cool.  Maybe you should stop trying so hard to be cool and just focus and doing something right.  For once.

Spring in Oklahoma usually starts around mid-March. While the warmer weather did come around the usual time that year, the flora and fauna had a harder time coming around than usual. I was really afraid that the storm had killed off all the trees and that spring and summer would end up being just as barren as winter that year.

As the weather turned warmer I made an effort to spend more time outside. I started taking bike rides up and down Riverside Drive to enjoy the not-quite-as-cold weather and get some much needed exercise. It was on one of these rides that I saw something amazing. There was a tree by the river whose top half was almost completely broken off. The top of the tree hung off the trunk at a 45 degree angle. The limbs that would normally be reaching towards heaven were now dragging the muddy ground. The break in the tree exposed huge splinters and twists in the wood; but these things are not what made the tree amazing, as it looked like most of the trees in town at the time. The amazing thing was that the limbs of the tree were completely covered in thick, green leaves.

“For a tree there is always hope. Chop it down and it still has a chance– its roots can put out fresh sprouts. Even if its roots are old and gnarled, its stump long dormant, at the first whiff of water it comes to life, buds and grows like a sapling.” (Job 14:7-9, The Message)

Hard times can sometimes hit us, just like that storm hit Tulsa, when we are off our guard and unprepared. The damage of emotional or physical pain, the death of a loved one, sin, or even just our circumstances can be significant and long lasting. It can scar us, leaving its mark for everyone to see… but all of those things can’t stop the abundant life that God has given us any more than that storm could stop the coming of Spring. God’s love is stronger than any adversary or problem, and nothing can stop its arrival.

Just like there is always hope for a tree cut down, there is always hope for God’s people. No defeat can stop God from loving us.

So, I think, I will begin my blog simply with a prayer that is perhaps the sum of all I hope to accomplish here (or anywhere else, for that matter). 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.