Wall-E

     The movie sets on earth which is piled with trash. We meet a stained robot called Wall-E, who works as a cleaner, picking up trash. It goes through the piles of trash and collects different things and brings it back to his garage where his only friend, a cockroach is waiting. One day he finds a plant and later on meets Eve, a glossy white robot sent by a huge ship to look for any living thing. Wall-E falls in love with Eve but when Wall-E shows Eve the plant, Eve takes it in its body and deactivates. Wall-E follows Eve as the huge ship returns and we find out that human beings had been living in the spaceship. People have become obese and the adventure begins as Wall-E and Eve work to bring the plant to Captain McCrea despite the oppositions of the other robots. The film ends with the people coming back to earth.

     What struck me most was the appearance and life style of the human beings in the Axiom (the spaceship). Everyone was obese and moving around in their hovering chairs which entertained them and fed them. This may be revealing what is to come to our world someday or atleast in the wealthy countries, especially the US where obesity is a rapidly increasing issue. While Wall-E follows Eve as it is being escorted to the captain's chamber, we see a fat guy, John, falling off his hovering chair and unable to come back on it. It was a humorous moment but this inability to physically move becomes a huge problem later on in the movie. Auto, the evil robot, must be prevented and Captin McCrea dramatically shuts it off barely standing up. I felt that this movie had a message or in an extreme sense, a warning, towards what might happen if we do not control ourselves from over consuming.

     The origin of evil in this movie is the trashing of the earth. Since the earth was filled with trash and no longer able to produce and sustain life, human beings were forced to leave. Forced to consume unhealthy foods which require no vegetation and to live on chairs inorder to minimize the ocupation of space, people become obese. This seems to be where our world is heading towards. Life in the empire is full of pollution and destruction of the environment for selfish desires, as we saw in the short 10 minute video on the corporations and their evil acts of damaging not only terrirory in the US but all around the world. Another issue of the film are the evil robots. As the advancement of techonology has been expolsive, people of the empire have idolatized and have placed their reliance on machines. But this film reveals that this lifestyle of the empire is dangerous.

     The saviour figure of the movie is Wall-E. Without its work and findings, humans would have not been able to return to earth. But it is ironic that the plain, old and rusty robot is the heroe figure. This is goes along with the up-side-down Kingdom of God where the weak, small and the unattractive are used.

1. What message is Wall-E trying to communicate to us and what lessons should we learn from it?
2. What can we do about the rising issues related to pollution, consumerism and obesity?

Weird is the new normal

The Bachelorette is movie directed and written by Leslye Headland. It is a comic twist of what the reality of an American has become to be. The movie centers in three friends that have been asked to be bridesmaids of the “last member of their clique” in high school. Reagan (a perfectionist and jealous friend), Gena (a sarcastic rebel) and Katie (a not-very-book-smart girl) while mocking Becky (the soon-to-be-wife)for being a plus-size, they break the wedding dress hours previous to the ceremony which leads them to go through a series of “adventures” involving drugs, sex and love. The movie shows that the empire has been controlling us in a way that makes us believe that if we do the “right things” – go to school , have an education, be beautiful in the societal limits, be a size 00… we will find someone to get married; even though, that is obviously not how you find someone to love. Even though the movie itself was the typical American movie where the characters do all these "messed up" things to fix something they did wrong, it makes you reflex on how people have been influencing you in a way that you say to yourself, “you are not perfect, you need to be more perfect or else you’ll end up alone.” Not only does the empire encourage us to distortion the beauty that God has gifted us, but also to make the not-right-things “the norm”. For example, the movie portrays sex before marriage as a completely normal thing, Why? Because in the twenty first century fornication is being practiced by many, even Christians; majority wins, right?  Also, even though the characters did drugs, no real police men were found addressing the problem. Although the messages: love always wins; everyone is beautiful the way they are; there are still gentlemen in the world, but also “jerks”; if a door closes, there is always a window opened, etc. were developed, other issues of the real world were shown as normal things , although they are really important and sensitive problems (sex before marriage, adultery, abortion, swearing, stealing, prostitution, racism, etc.) But there is a catch, even though the empire wants to monopolize our imagination (believing either that there is only one way to serve God and that Christians should act a certain-determined way or that there is no God and we are "free" to do whatever we want to) we should always remember that God wants us to use our "weird" imagination to glorify His name in different ways according to the talents He has given us -which are all different.
As I said before, the actual message of the story is good, but do you think that because of that all the other “bad things” can be justified? Do you feel like society has been pressuring to be a certain way? Knowing this, would you keep being influenced by narrow-minded standards? 

trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aXt6qV4WoA

review: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20483133_20620160,00.html

Cultural Artifact 2 | The Words

This weekend I watched The Words, originally shown at Sundance Film Festival; a romantic, mysterious and suspenseful drama about a young writer by the name of Rory Jansen, played by Bradley Cooper, who finally achieves his life goal of finally writing a book that a printing house will publish. The only catch is that he didn't write it; instead he found it hidden inside of an old briefcase that he finds in an old antique shop. As his eminence rises and his novel skyrockets in the bestselling ladder, the truth haunts him when the elderly, original writer confronts his actions.

Typically I'm not one for romantic movies, given that they’re unrealistic and entail foreseen events that are idealized for the 21^st century couple. Instead, The Words captures problems that every writer, publishing house, suffering relationship and distressed pasts undergo.

Redemption plays a glacial role in this movie. Lying and guilt transform into content, demanding viewer interaction with the morals involved. Through layers of history interpretation, the culture of the two faded into more of a “let it be” mentality between Rory and the nameless “old man” (the original writer), played by Jeremy Irons. The old man at first comes off as threatening, like Christianity seems to most people, but with time and workability, the words he was writing, for the woman he loved counted for the both of them, for both of their losses. I believe that this movie connects with the class because of the cultural pull-strings that the empire inhibits upon us to steal anything that is inspirational to us and call it our own, instead of making things our own for God’s kingdom, as Crouch asserts in chapter one, page 25 of Culture Making, “Culture is not just what human beings make of the world, it is not just the way human beings make sense of the world; it is in fact part of the world that every human being has to make something of.”

1. Does enlightenment sometimes provide irrational decisions?

2. In The Words, Rory had gone months with writer's block and printing houses denying him the approval of publishing his work. Why do we sometimes feel entitled to sin when things seem impossible?

John Mayer: Continuum

A lot of people turn to music when they want to express their feelings in a stronger way. Released on September 9, 2006, Continuum is John Mayer's third album. Containing many nationwide hit songs such as "Waiting on the world to change," "Gravity," "Vultures," and more, this album showed a change in John Mayer's work as this album was thought to be more of a blues and soul compared to his previous albums of pop-rock. Although some of his songs in this album reveals life through the kingdom of God, most of his songs reveals life through the empire. For example "Waiting on the world to change" reveals about life in both ways. John Mayer and his friends have awakened and are able to see things from different perspectives. They know that the government controls power by using the military to enforce certain things and uses the media to bend the truth and hide their doings. However, what they fail to do in this song is to take action. Instead they are at a distance staring at the world and waiting for the world to change. Even though they have become aware of the empire, they are still trapped in the system, feeling powerless to make a change. One of his other songs, "Your Body is a Wonderland" reveals life through the empire. This song is mainly about him having sex with his girlfriend. What's sad about this song is that it shows that in order for songs to sell better it has to attract people. Our society has become one that we are attracted more to the empire and by the empire here I mean sex. Sex was created by God to be a good thing but the empire has distorted it. This has become apparent in us because as we hear the word "sex" we feel at least a little bit of discomfort. This album reached 2nd on the U.S Billboard 200 chart, but it never reached 1st because it got impeded by Justin Timberlake's album FutureSex/LoveSounds, released at the same time. I remember this quote from this movie called "the Chronicle." In this movie when one guy tells the other that he didn't ever have sex, the other guy says to him "how can you be this cool?" Sex has become distorted so much in our society and in the U.S. particularly that a stereotype has been established among teenagers that you can't be "cool" without having sex. It has become strange to not have sex. I remember in Biology class when studying diseases, seeing the statistics of sexual intercourse happening between students in an average American public high school. It was crazy how it turned out. It wasn't strange for someone to have had sex with at least 3 or 4 different people. It is easy to say the John Mayer speaks to people with differing intensities. Although some of his songs don't have a particular meaning, there aren't many artists who are able to point out problems in society like John Mayer does with songs like "Waiting on the world to change".

Discussion questions:
1. What kind of music do you listen to and do you ever think about the lyrics and the song's meanings?

2. Is it even possible to produce music that reveals life through the kingdom of God that the general audience will find it attractive? Why or why not?

GOOD GUIDE - Cultural Artifact 2

Throughout this interim I have been trying to find out more information on what companies actually care about the people they work with, and the environment that they are working in. After a couple days of searching on the Internet I found this sweeeettttt website called www.goodguide.com. Above there is a short youtube video that explains in more detail what this company is trying to do. Basically this website was created by a bunch of business men and women along with scientists who test products and do research on products the companies that produce them. They test anything from makeup, clothes to food, appliances, and pet food. Then they rate each product based on numerous factors such as animal testing, organics, nutrition, fair trade, labor conditions, environmental impact etc. What is really cool about this site is that you can create a checklist of the factors I mentioned above that matter the most to you (or you can check all of them) then you can search for a product and the site will run it through your checklist and see if it passes or not. If it does not pass the website will post alternative brands that do fulfill the criteria you want your product to meet. The website has rated hundreds of brands from designer products to suave, old navy, gap, nike etc..The best part is you can sign up for free for the website's services, and they even have a free app called goodguide. The app for smart phones lets you scan barcodes when you shop and then, just like the website it will run it past your check list and tell you if the brand meets the standards you set, and if not it will show other choices that are better. I think this is a very good example of the use of creativity, and imagination. This way consumers can be conscious of their purchases, and know where their money is going. This artifact reveals the truth behind products of the empire and allows individuals the chance to make choices that are more socially responsible. I would encourage everyone in this class to check it out it is really really awesome! This artifact shows that human purpose does not have to be limited by lack of knowledge or ignorance it also shows that redemption can be found in unexpected places such as different companies that are taking a stand against the typical corporation economic viewpoint. What would happen if we all took a few minutes to check out the website, and found different products and companies to support? What are some other ways we can use our talents, and imagination to create innovative and apocalyptic cultural artifacts?

Princess Mononoke

The story of Princess Mononoke revolves around an exiled prince, named Ashitaka, who is searching a way to remove a curse of hatred that will spread and consume his life.   While he search for a way, he met many people with different rank and goals that they want to achieve for a better future for them, even though there methods or goals are wrong to some. When Ashitaka met the leader of the iron village, Eboshi, to seek some answers of his curse, he learns that Eboshi is trying to make the humans survive at all cost against the forest and their gods. She believes that the human’s purpose is to survive against the gods, destroy their lands, and make a prosperous city for the humans. This is a great goal for us humans to live happily, but methods are wrong. We all have different methods way to accomplish our goals in life, whether it is reasons, survivability, or simply emotions that drives us to our goals. Let me take hate as an example, to both sides of the war, both gods and humans have an immeasurable amount of hate towards each other. They are willing to kill any traitors to keep up the war. We are no different from them. We have wars and crimes in our world. We let our hate drives us easily to cause violence and destroy one another without knowing the damages that we cause around us. Even their all mighty forest god has some hatred towards both sides. Our God may have times that he will release his hate on us, but he is a forgiving God and we must be a forgiving community to each other. If we were to have hate consume us and war with each other, then we will be dancing in the empire’s hands, even though it for our sake.

What should we do when our lives are in danger, but we risk many things in the process?

How can we be a forgiving community when we have so many emotions that drive us away from it?

I Got an Apocalyptic View

For my second cultural artifact, I listened to the fourth album of Girls Generation. The alum came out on January 1^st. Girls Generation is a Korean pop idol that has taken the South Korea by storm ever since their debut. The group consists of nine members (all female) who are very beautiful and have slim bodies. Their new album is called ‘I Got a Boy’. Their main song ‘I got a Boy’ has been number one on Korean music charts for all of this month. I have liked this group since their debut and have never thought about what they might have been implying in their songs and the different concept of the albums. When the new album came out, I was able to notice things that I would have never noticed with this class. What this album says about women in society is to find the best looking man. Just like the title says, the song talks about how they have got a man who is handsome and fantasy like. I thought about this line and how it really undermines the role of women. In a society where women and men are equal is all aspects, you have young women who are singing that they are nothing without men. Why is it that men complete woman in society? I know that God made both a man and a woman to be in one union together but the empire has distorted that to something other. The bond and the relationship between a woman and a man has become business like. It is all about saying to one another, “you become what the empire portrays us to be or we cannot be together”. To be truthful, there is not portrayal of the kingdom of God in the album what so ever. I watched the music movie and it just emphasized what the empire thinks about women. First thing that every woman should be is slender. All nine members of Girls Generation are very slim and have “nice” figures. Second thins that all woman should have is nice clothes and clothes that are revealing. The music portrays the members in tight jeans or a shirt that does not cover their bellies (the t-shirts were so short that it made me wonder if they ran out of fabric while they were making the shirts). The third aspect is that they must be pretty. To tell you the truth, the beauty corporations are thriving in South Korea. From make up to plastic surgery, it is essential and almost a norm in South Korea. I see no aspects of the kingdom of God in the music video or the album. I am very patriotic, and even though I only lived in Korea for half of my life, I have always been proud of my country and the hardships that they have overcome after the Korean War. Industrially, Korea has climbed to the top but culturally we are degrading ourselves every time we produce these kinds of music. How do we see the world, with the glasses of apocalyptic or the empire? If we had the choice (which we do) do you think that we would get rid of these useless things the empire creates? Although I am embarrassed of myself for listening to these kinds of music for such a long time, I guess this is all part of growing up and realizing what is important and not.

The New Normal? Hopefully...

I recently watched a show called "The New Normal". It aires Tuesday at 9:30pm on NBC. The premise of the show is based off of the three main characters, "Blondie" played by Georgia King, Andrew Rannells as Brian and Justin Bartha as David. Brian and David are a happy gay couple living in L.A. The only thing they still want is a baby. They meed Blondie, a single mother who has run away to L.A. from her overbearing grandmother (but she follows them there). Brian and David find Blondie from a surrogacy program Blondie agrees to be the surrogate for Brian and David's baby because the money will help with her dream to go to law school. But as the shows progress, Blondie, Brian, David and Shania (Blondie's daughter) become more of a family. The episodes from this season tell stories and show the preparation everyone involved is taking before the baby comes. I think one of the biggest eye openers in the show is the type of characters created. We have Brian and David, who are in a relationship and aren't afraid to show it, Blondie, who is running away from her super conservative grandmother Jane, and Rocky, who is Brian's African American assistant. The diversity of the characters is helpful for the viewers to keep an open mind and help them connect to the real life as well. Homosexuality is still something that most Americans find "hard to talk about" but I do believe that shows like The New Normal and Modern Family are trying to show Americans that its good to talk about it and there is nothing really different about it. I think this show is crying out to the kingdom so that people all over the world will know about "issues" facing us in the future, especially with homosexuality. I think this show is redemptive to the point that it is making aware differences in American and around the world that may be "new" to some people. Some of the problems that happen in the show are exactly what happen to real people. In the episode I just watched, Brian and David try their hand at being parents when they send Blondie to a spa for a week, while they watch Shania. Human purpose is to love one another,  just as you would want to be loved. God made us all different. But we all live in His image. If a person is different it doesn't give you the right to treat them differently.  The kingdom of God will accept everyone who loves God above everything else. Whether the person is straight, gay, bisexual, black, white, of African decent, loves movies, loves books etc. The empire seems to think that if your not a certain way or keep up with the cultural norm then you don't deserve what others have. This is wrong, and shows like The New Normal are trying to fix that.

Questions:

Would you say that America, or even Calvin College is trying hard enough to understand homosexuality? What is something that you would do to get more information?

Do you believe that the Kingdom of God is everywhere? (In everything and every person?)

music and life

For my cultural artifact post I wanted to do something music
related, but I didn’t want to go through a cd. Instead I tuned to a website
called 8tracks.com. on this site users can compile playlists of their favourite
artists and songs and share them with other users. The particular playlist I used
is called “Punk Rock Prom Queen”, and is a combination of artist like
blink-182, sum 41 and other punk bands.

These particular songs I found dealt mostly with
relationships. To these artists in these songs evil originates from a
relationship that either breaks, or when the two people don’t end up together. Redemption
is found when one accepts the other back (usually the guy accepting the girl)
or if the relationship is successful. I suppose this says quite a bit about
what the empire wants us to focus on. All these bands are not groups who would
not be considered Christian, nor do I believe any of them to profess to be
either. That being said, the empire likes to put the focus of our attention a
perfect relationship. If the empire can get us to focus on a relationship, then
it is easier for them to trap us with advertisements that show us that true
happiness can be found with two things: a) a woman on our arm and b) whatever
product they’re trying to sell.
However, I think that if we look into some of the songs a
little deeper we can find some Kingdom meaning in them. God desires that we
have a good, strong relationship and I personally feel that these songs can
give a view of what we are looking for, especially if we are not sure ourselves.
For me, being very word oriented, and gifted with a vivid imagination, I find
that I can imagine what these artists are singing about, then more easily apply
that to my own life.

1)
If you have a girlfriend, or girl you would like
to be in a relationship with, is there a song that you can hear, and then you
find yourself thinking about her?
2)
What are other things that songs can help us imagine/get
us through?