Shawshank Redemption

Over the weekend I had the chance to view the film, Shawshank Redemption. This is not the first time that I have seen it but it is one of those movies that contains so much that you pick up on different things each time. To be brief, this film is about a man named Andy Dufresne, who was wrongly convicted of killing his wife, and along with her another man. The consequences were two life sentences back to back. This movie follows his life through his time at prison and a brief period afterward, meeting some interesting people along the way.

It is easy to the empire being portrayed in movies that are based in a prison. In a large building filled with convicted criminals in which many develop a "me first" mentality in order to survive. The depictions of attack, and preying on new-comers as well as those who show any signs of weakness. The fact that sin has entered the world is not something that we can deny and we certainly have to have rules put in place that does attempt to limit acts of law breaking. The empire strikes the beliefs in many people in the prison environment that they have to be hard asses within the prison and have a self centered personality. 

This movie does with no doubt show the ideas that parallel the kingdom as well. As Andy carries on in his journey knocking off the years of his sentence, he runs into some interesting people. The fact that relationships develop within this story is a key thing that reflects the kingdom. A long time resident of the prison "Red" becomes Andy's closest pal. "Red" is one of the prisons inmates who gets different things from the "outside" and supplies them to the inmates in exchange for smokes. Red and Andy's relationship shows how they work together to learn from each other to survive in Shawshank. 

Two parts of this movies stuck out to me while I was watching. The first was the same clip that we ended up watching during our class early on. This was where Andy had the chance to play music into the speakers for all the inmates to listen to and enjoy. Although the music was played in Italian, there was a feeling of warmth and most definitely imagination. Each person had the chance to react to the music in there own way and take out of it what they wanted. To me this way of listening to music that was demonstrated in this film is one of the best ways to really appreciate music.

The second part was where Andy and Red were sitting down outside in the dirt, Andy wraps up a conversation by saying. "Get busy living, or get busy dying!" this line sticks out to me in this film is because of the practicality of it. To me this line is saying that it is our duty to go out in the world and make things happen. We can not just sit back and watch the world go by. As Christians, this is what the Kingdom requires of us. 

"Babylon is Fallin'" by Slightly Stoopid

I seriously love Slightly Stoopid! They are a reggae/punk/psychedelic band from Ocean Beach, CA. For the most part their music is a fusion of mellow surf rock with different influences. A lot of their music is inspired by the sounds of Bob Marley, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sublime, Dr. Dre, and Led Zeppelin. Many of their songs glorify smoking pot (which is bad) or scorn long lost love, but “Babylon is Fallin’” has a surprisingly spiritual message. This song is pretty much crying out on behalf of the Kingdom. It identifies how messed up the world has become (“everybody losing control/people use and abuse this world/and now they’re just taking a stroll/these times have changed”). In the second part of the song they claim that time will tell when all the wealth is gone and people have to start giving their love. They claim, however, that if you open your eyes to these problems you can end up in heaven. As Christians, we know that that’s not the way it works. Giving your love in the name of the Lord isn't a bad thing, but counting on that alone to get you into Heaven doesn't produce the desired outcome. The song ends with the band identifying that there is hope for us (“there is light at the end of the darkness/why don’t you come out and see…”). I think that this song has a good message (besides the fact that the band claims that Heaven is yours if you just open your eyes and give your love). This song recognizes the problems with this world: people taking without reciprocating, and the fakeness of wealth and power. It shows that there is hope beyond what we know now. This song condemns the falsity, “utopia,” and seduction of the Empire, and cries out for the victory, purpose, and change available in the Kingdom. Finding this song was definitely a pleasant surprise giving that this band is normally totally Empirical and stoned.

Once

The movie Once was a very inspiring and powerful movie. It shows the power of music over human emotions. It also deals very strongly with the subject of longing. This movie left me with a feeling of awe afterwards, causing me to stare into space and think about my own deep longings and love for music and life. 

The story of Once is based in Dublin, Ireland, and centers around a man who remains nameless the whole movie. He is a single man who lives with his father and works at the family Hoover Vacuum repair shop. However, he is also a very talented singer/songwriter who spends his off-time and nights on the streets of Dublin, playing the songs he has written on a guitar so old and worn that his pick has chipped away the face of the guitar, revealing the inside of the guitar's body. His songs are full of sadness, longing for a woman who has left, leaving him alone and wishing for the times of the past. One night, as he stands on the street, absolutely belting his heartfelt lyrics, a young woman walks up to him and stands and listens, and then puts 10 cents into his guitar case. This meager offering starts a conversation, after which it is agreed that the girl will bring her broken Hoover vacuum to his shop the next day. 

The story which follows is one of a growing friendship between the man and woman, who both remain nameless the whole movie. Their friendship is based around the man's guitar playing and the woman's piano playing. They both play songs full of longing for their lost loves. Their songs both ask what they've done wrong, what they could do better, and wish for the happier, brighter days gone by. 

The whole movie, as you watch, you begin to long for the happiness of these characters, and you feel elated when something good happens, and feel crushed when something bad happens. As each stage of the movie goes by, the characters sing songs that build on one another, and show their confusion, pain, and hope.

Finally, the man decides to travel to London to try and get his love back. This breaks the cycle of apathy he had been in. This shows the apathy of the empire. We get caught in our own apathy, wishing for things to be different, but never doing anything about it. When the man finally decides to do something about his apathy, he finds true happiness. The same goes for the woman. She contacts her estranged husband, and they finally begin to build their relationship.

This movie shows us how our longings can finally push us into action, and can then lead us into true change and redemption. The suffering that the two characters have gone through leads them into true change and action, allowing their lives to be better. This movie fills me with hope, and inspires me to break cycles of apathy, constantly wishing for things to be different, and to actually do something about it. I think this movie shows us, beautifully, the power of longing and the impact it can have in improving our lives.

The Office: Prince Family Paper

In the latest episode of The Office, Michael is sent on a mission to find out about a competitive paper firm.  On his mission he takes the ever corky Dwight.  As they are about to go into the other paper company, Michael goes on and on to the camera about business being "survival of the fittest" in which the big shark, eats the littler shark, and so on until the tiniest organism shark is eaten.  He sees business from a clearly empirical standpoint.  It is all competition and greed.  Part of your businesses purpose is to take down other businesses on the road to success.  

However, as Michael enters the office, he realizes that it is a very family oriented business.  They only people that work there are the owner, his wife, and his son.  They have a large client base, but are completely dependent on their companies success for their well being.  These people are very kind to Michael, offering him coffee, helping him fix his car, and telling him all about their business.  They trust Michael.  Eventually, the owner of the Prince Family Paper company gives Michael their entire list of top clients.  This is the best possible result that Michael could have hoped for, and his boss would be very pleased.  However, after getting to know the Prince family, Michael realizes that he doesn't want to give the list to his boss because he knows that it will hurt the Prince family's business.  

In this part, Michael represents the kingdom.  "Live, and let live!"  he exclaims to Dwight, when Dwight insists that they should give the list to their boss.  Michael realizes in this moment that business is not solely about competition.  He realizes that business can be personal.  People's livelihoods are invested in their businesses, and when bigger corporations take them down, they are ruined.  Michael doesn't believe that competition should completely drive a company.  He recognizes the greed of this own company when he says "our sales our fine!  we dont need this clients!"  

However, Dwight is a representation of the empire in this episode.  Dwight is bound and determined that they must give the client list to their boss.  He says that it is the best thing for the company, and the Prince Family Paper company is weak and does not deserve to be in business.  After an epic chase around the office and a struggle for the list, Dwight eventually snatches the list from Michael, and forces his hand in calling their boss.  After Michael gives into the empirical values, Dwight comforts him by saying "guess who's stock just went up!"  to which Michael replies with "It bittersweet".  

This episode of The Office is a great example of the conflict between to empire and the kingdom.  It questions the way that the empire does business.  Big companies are notorious for taking small businesses clients and putting those companies out of business.  And they are driven by greed and competition, a perfect example of empirical values.  Unfortunately in this episode, and for much of the real business world, the empire wins.  

cosmopolitan

The other day I was in my friend’s room and decided to pick up one of her magazines. Her roommate is gone for second semester but the magazines are still mailed to her room. The magazine that I decided to pick up was cosmopolitan. However, I thought I would be reading this by myself, but instead two of my friends decided to sit beside me and we all looked at it together. Normally when I read a magazine I don't really read it. I flip through the pages looking at the pictures, and if something catches my eye, I might read it. If nothing does, there is always hope at the back of the magazine where people tell some of their most embarrassing moments. However, I decided to really look into this magazine. Some of the things in the magazine disgusted me. Whether it was the pictures or some of the topics that were in the magazine. Almost every page you flipped through was either implying sex, or outright talking about sex. I know that my parents do not allow me to receive magazines like that anymore because I have 3 brothers and also many people that come to my house, whether its friends or family members. My parents don't want those kinds of magazines lying around the house, and they do not approve of what they are implying.
The magazine cosmopolitan was clearly the empire works. I found nothing in that magazine that was implying the kingdom.

Greys Anatomy

This last Thursday I watch the show Grey’s Anatomy. This show always has multiple stories going on in one episode but I want to focus on just one. There was a man who was in prison for murdering five women. He was sentenced to the death penalty. About a week and a half before he was going to be executed, he was stabbed with a sharpened toothbrush. He was rushed to the hospital and had to be given full care. He had many complications and they had to do surgery on his brain to help swelling to go down. At this same time there was a young little boy who had many health issues. He was in need of a transplant or he would die. It was very sad because he was extremely young and had many loved ones that could not stand to see him go. Not only was the family extremely consumed by this whole ordeal but the staff was working around the clock to do everything in their power to save this boy. When this man found out about the young boy, he wanted to give his organs and die in the hospital rather than in the prison. Some of the staff agreed that it was a good idea because he was going to die in a week and this boy had is whole life ahead of him. But others thought it was wrong since they took an oath to give their best to save their patient’s life. To them it went against the rulebook. There was one person that had a little compassion for the man on death row and that was Meredith Grey, everyone else only gave him the care they had to and nothing more.
They came to the conclusion that they should all do what was best for their patient’s health and didn’t allow the man to die. The young boy ended up getting organs from another donor and lived. The man on death row did have to go back to be killed. When he walked into the room he could see all the angry family members of the people he had killed. Towards the back of the room he saw Meredith’s face which was the only friendly face in the entire crowd. She decided to show him compassion in a room full of hated.
Through out this entire show compassion was easy to find. Lots of the staff had compassion on the little boy, the woman who had to pull the plug on her husband had compassion on the little boy as well, and Meredith had compassion on the man who everyone gave up on. The empire would not ever give that man a second chance but those who know Christ know that we need to forgive and have compassion on everyone, even those who seem like a lost cause.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

Recently in class we watched King Corn. A film about two guys who decide to grow corn on an acre of land for a year to see the whole process of exactly what happens to corn from start to finish. In the film they discovered that a major part of the corn crop goes to making high fructose corn syrup. This syrup is used in a wide variety of products. In fact, if you go down to the local gas station or walk through a grocery store, a majority of the food there contains this corn syrup. Even the beef we eat is most likely corn fed beef. This might not be so disconcerting if this high fructose corn syrup was good for us. However, our bodies can't break down large quantities of this syrup. Since its in a large quantity of our foods we have a high intake of it. This disturbed me. If you look at a majority of the juices or sodas you will find that it contains high fructose corn syrup. Statistics show that if you drink one pop a day you are two times more likely to get diabetes that someone who doesn't drink much pop. This is due to partially to the corn syrup. That's a scary fact.

After class I went home and turned on the tv. As if to combat the information I just saw in king Corn a commercial came on. The commercial was a couple sitting in a park. The woman offers the man a bit of a pop sickle and he says, "I thought you loved me." So she said then have two bites. The man says, "don't you know that has high fructose corn syrup in it? You know what they say about high fructose corn syrup don't you?" "No, what do they say?" He doesn't have a response, showing he really doesn't know a whole lot about it. So she goes on to explain that its a cheap substitute to sugar and that its ok for you in moderation. Now given what I just saw in the movie this is kind of ironic. Ok so its good for you in moderation, but its in most of our products. We consume large amount of corn syrup with out consciously knowing it. What does that mean? How can I consume high fructose corn syrup in moderation when its in so many products?

This just shows you the efforts of a company to keep up its profits. The public is leery about high fructose corn syrup so they have to put out a video to convince consumers its ok. The market can been so manipulative its scary. This commercial definitely cries out for the empire, trying to convince the consumption of high fructose corn syrup. If you don't pay attention they will pull the wool over you eyes.

Here's the commercial:



Update (rob vg-r): Here's a response from the King Corn guys:

Griffins Game

On Wednesday I went to the Grand Rapids griffins hockey game against the Toronto Marlies. It was an exciting game and the Griffins won the game in overtime. Even though the game of hockey is a sport it was still very clear that the league is a business at heart and its main purpose is to make money and they were extremely creative in how they went about trying to accomplish this.
There were all kinds of advertising techniques used some of which I had never even seen before and I have been watching professional hockey since I can remember. Before the puck (which was delivered to the referee by a pharmacist on skates) was even dropped the team’s mascot Griffin came flying out of the zamboni entrance on a shiny new all-terrain utility vehicle which he drifted around the ice as an another mascot threw t-shirts out into the stands. Everything was sponsored by someone, from the instant replays shown on the jumbo-tron to the crazy events performed by fans during the intermission to win prizes. The team even had invented their very one Griff Gatlin Gun, which I will admit was pretty sweet, as it spun rapidly shot t-shirts high into the stands, which advertised a cosmetology school. Also during that same intermission various coupons were dropped from the rafters and rained down on the fans like confetti. With all this going on alongside the game it’s not hard to notice that we live in a very capitalist empire.
Music was also a key part in attending the hockey game. It was used quite effectively to invoke a wide variety of emotions in the fans depending on the circumstance and even creating a creating a greater sense of community as a result. In the case that the griffins scored a loud exciting song would be played alongside the goal horn, which would create a real sense of excitement among the fans and in turn them cheer louder. If the opposing team gets a penalty and is arguing the call with the referee something like “Hit the Road Jack” wouldn’t be unusual or if on the other hand a Griffin’s player received a penalty that the fans didn’t agree with a song would be played that gave the referee a hard time like “Why Don’t You Get a Job?” by The Offspring. In virtually every situation a suitable song would be played, if there was a fight the start of “Eye of the Tiger” might have been played, all of which not only served to stir up the fans emotions, but also as a result everyone got into the game more, which created as sense of community among the people who were rooting for the same cause as you, and not to mention a much greater atmosphere.
Music was not the only tool used to create a greater sense of community among the fans, there were many other tools used, even some of the promotions served this purpose in some way and there were some things that were done solely for the entertainment of the fans because if the are not entertained they won’t come back and the team will lose money. For example they did the “kiss cam”, which will focus on a couple (most times) and they will have to kiss on the camera, this seems like a simple exercise, but it can be surprisingly entertaining like when the cameraman gets a smart idea and focuses the camera on two Marlies players beside each other on the bench. Everything done during the game, even the game itself, is a direct result of the empire and capitalism, which, in this case, I would argue is a good thing as it makes for an extremely entertaining experience.

Changing of the guards..

The other day I watched the inauguration of President Barack Obama. I thought that the whole ordeal is an extremely interesting example of Empire and Kingdom values. It started off with several significant politicians entering and taking seats. The whole process actually reminded me of a wedding- which is typically a very religious event.

We talked about how lots of times empires will use religious language to entice people into their view and way of life. This was definitely evident in the inauguration. For example, both Biden and Obama were sworn in with Bibles, yet one of the first things Obama mentioned in his speech was how America was a land of multiple religions and faiths. We talked about this a little bit in class, but it was interesting that in doing so, he placed America above all of the faiths. Obama used America as the greater metanarrative that ties all of us together, and our faith is secondary. In this view, we would be American Christians, rather than Christian Americans. Unfortunately this subtle difference in language can really affect the way that people view America and how it interacts with different stories/metanarratives.

Obama’s inauguration address will most certainly go down in American history as a historic event. While I am not trying to take away from the significance of what transpired, I couldn’t help but notice how he contradicted himself so many times within the same speech as well as to reassert the power of the empire. For example, Obama said that he wanted America to work along side poor nations and try to relieve a lot of their major problems, and that other affluent nations should follow along. But in a few sentences later he talked about how the American lifestyle was essentially non-negotiable. And it is this way of life that is continuing the ever widening gap between affluence and poverty. This also has interesting implications when Obama moved onto talk about environmental issues. If the American lifestyle is not going to change, how are we going to progress beyond oil and develop any of the alternative energy sources that are thrown around in political circles?

I think that ultimately Obama addressed the empire in his inauguration address. While he did allude to Kingdom values, which are great things- I think that it is really important to examine different aspects of our lifestyles and find alternatives that are more socially and environmentally sustainable. But, he chose to use the empire as a means to carry this out, rather than faith. While I think that Christians can work with the government to attain Kingdom values and changes in the world, we need to not be afraid to go beyond the government. We cannot expect it to carry out our faith for us.

Sports Illustrated

I read a couple of Sports Illustrated Magazines over the past few days. Sports Illustrated is an extremely popular sports magazine that is sent out weekly. It covers all the sports, but focuses especially on professional sports that are presently happening. Most of the content in issues I read talked about football and the Super Bowl.
It may seem like an artifact that only talks about sports would not have much to say about the empire, but in fact there are many subtle issues discussed. Sports Illustrated or SI has much to say about the purpose man. I feel like SI is telling me that men who are successful athletes are somehow better than I am. The ways many of the articles talk about the athletes seem to give me the feeling that they are superior to me. These athletes have money, power, fame, and super model wives, and SI implies that that these athletes are somehow superior to me. They are seen as heroes, but in reality they are no different then I. Unfortunately this flawed view of success is quite common in the empire; in fact it is extremely popular in magazines. Time, People, Rolling Stones, News Week, Vogue, Forbes, and of course SI all have one thing in common the idolization of mere people. All of these magazines put these “celebrities” in a class that is inherently better than us “common” people. The empire is telling us that if we aren’t a celebrity then we are nothing. The only way we will be happy is if we are as famous and rich as that person. The sad truth is many people buy into this lie from the empire. These people consume these magazines and dream of being as successful, beautiful, rich, or famous as the people in it. Thankfully there is hope. The Kingdom accepts all people; in fact the people that the empire may see as lesser the Kingdom sees as greater. This is another example of the backwards kingdom. So next time the empire tells you that you are a second class citizen just remember that makes you a first class citizen of the Kingdom; and that is what really matters.