21July2009
Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.
There was an English editor named Thomas Bowdler who, in the early 1800s, published the Family Shakespeare. This was a work that removed all the passages in Shakespeare that could possible give offense. “Out, out damn spot” became “Out crimson spot”, etc. The overall sense was maintained, but the poetry and grittiness of Shakespeare removed. The man has become a verb, to bowdlerize is to “expurgate (a written work) by removing or modifying passages considered vulgar or objectionable.” (thanks dictionary.com)
We as Christians do the same thing. I remember reading bedtime Bible stories to my sons when they were young. The stories were indeed Bowdlerized. Perhaps the supreme example of this was the old VeggieTales esisode of King George and the Ducky. Let’s face it, this version of David and Bathsheeba is so cleaned up that almost nothing of the original remains. This always sorta bothered me about VeggieTales. Overall, I found them to be very creative and well-executed. But I somehow always thought that they were on surer ground when they were doing original stories, rather than bowdlerizing Bible stories.
There’s a good book Phil Vischer wrote about the rise and fall of Big Ideas productions: Me, Myself and Bob. It was interesting enough. Phil didn’t deal directly with many criticisms of their work, like Bowdlerizing.
I always thought that a good way to counter the criticism of playing fast and loose with the Biblical text would be to take a text ultra literally. Computer animation or CGI would be a perfect medium to present some of the stranger prophetic passages. A good warm-up could be the vally of dry bones from Ezekiel 37. The one I’d really like to see would be the rebuilt temple and kingdom from Ezekiel 40 and following. Imagine the voice-over simply reading the passage and the corresponding visual building up everything that’s described. It could all be white rectangular solids, then when the narrator says that they were made of wood or had carvings on them like palm trees, the texture map gets applied to the white solids. Maybe someday somebody will take a run at it.
4July2009
Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.
Have fun with a great musical take-off. This is for those in a narrow age-range: old enough to remember West Side Story and young enough to get the internet jokes.
14June2009
Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.
Interesting concept for a website: just put up a YouTube channel. See the website of the ad agency Boone Oakley. It’s a very creative YouTube video. Unusual concept, especially for an ad agency.
10June2009
Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.
I’ve written before about the bandwidth of a minivan full of CD-ROMs, or a SUV full of DVDs. Now Pingdom is reporting that Google knows the same thing. They have an article about how FedEx is faster than the Internet. Enjoy.
6June2009
Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.
A while back a friend of ours said that their pastor told the congregation that “He didn’t see anything Christian in Lord of the Rings” and didn’t encourage anyone to see it. As the Monty Python lads would say “Yes, well, that’s the sort of blinkered, philistine pig-ignorance I’ve come to expect..” I’ll try to spell it out for you slowly and maybe you’ll get it.
There is no one figure of Christ in Lord of the Rings (LOTR) as there is in Lewis’ Narnia tales. In LOTR there are, in fact, three Christ figures. These figures represent three of the offices of the Christ: prophet, priest and king.
The prophet figure is Gandalf. He roams among men, encouraging, exhorting and counceling them. The apex of his story line is where he battles a major force of darkness and returns from the dead as the untimate authority of his order.
The priest figure is Frodo. The priest has to make sacrifice to expurge sin and evil. It’s Frodo’s task to bear the ring of evil up the mountain of darkness to its destruction. He stumbles along the way and has to be helped out. He accomplishes his task at great personal cost: he is wounded and his wounds will never heal.
The king is of course Aragorn. He has to win his kingdom through battle in order to secure his bride. But he and his bride are separated: one is mortal, the other immortal. The immortal must relinquish immortality and be doomed to death in order for the wedding to take place. Aragorn must take up his rightful place as king, the office he was born to hold. This was prophecied from days of old. But he’s not just a warrior because it’s said “the hands of the king are hands of a healer.”
Ok people, does ANY of this sound familiar?!?!
25May2009
Posted by Brent under: common sense politics.
A few years back, I heard a political debate among the minor candidates for Governor of Georgia (I believe). The Socialist candidate was running on a platform of “If elected, I’d immediately raise the minimum wage to $100″ After all, if raising the minimum wage is good, why not go whole hog? Raising the minimum wage to $100 would immediately make us all rich, right? Most people see the consequences at once. Either a) we’d all be immediately unemployed as all our jobs flew oversees or b) inflation would immediately make $100 spend like $10.